"My dearest own boy! You must come in and sit down. You must be very quiet over it. Try not to make a scene, my dear. I am not strong enough.
It has shaken me so terribly. I heard you had come, and were with Ascot.
And I have been trembling in every limb. Not from terror so much of you in your anger, as because my conscience is not clear. I may have hidden things from you, Charles, which you ought to have known." And Lady Ascot began crying silently.
Charles felt the blood going from his cheeks to his heart. His interview with Lord Ascot had made him suspect something further was wrong than what he knew of, and his suspicions were getting stronger every moment.
He sat down quite quietly, looking at Lady Ascot, and spoke not one word. Lady Ascot, wiping her eyes, went on; and Charles's heart began to beat with a dull heavy pulsation, like the feet of those who carry a coffin.
"I ought to have told you what was going on between them before she went to old Lady Hainault. I ought to have told you of what went on before Lord Hainault was married. I can never forgive myself, Charles. You may upbraid me, and I will sit here and make not one excuse. But I must say that I never for one moment thought that she was anything more than light-headed. I,--oh Lord! I never dreamt it would have come to this."
"Are you speaking of Adelaide, Lady Ascot?" said Charles.
"Of course I am," she said, almost peevishly. "If I had ever----"
"Lady Ascot," said Charles, quietly, "you are evidently speaking of something of which I have not heard. What has Adelaide done?"
The old lady clasped her hands above her head. "Oh, weary, weary day!
And I thought that he had heard it all, and that the blow was broken.
The cowards! they have left it to a poor old woman to tell him at last."
"Dear Lady Ascot, you evidently have not heard of what a terrible fate has befallen me. I am a ruined man, and I am very patient. I had one hope left in the world, and I fear that you are going to cut it away from me. I am very quiet, and will make no scene; only tell me what has happened."
"Adelaide!--be proud, Charles, be angry, furious--you Ravenshoes can!--be a man, but don't look like that. Adelaide, dead to honour and good fame, has gone off with Welter!"
Charles walked towards the door.
"That is enough. Please let me go. I can't stand any more at present.
You have been very kind to me and to her, and I thank you and bless you for it. The son of a bastard blesses you for it. Let me go--let me go!"
Lady Ascot had stepped actively to the door, and had laid one hand on the door, and one on his breast. "You shall not go," she said, "till you have told me what you mean!"
"How? I cannot stand any more at present."
"What do you mean by being the son of a bastard?"
"I am the son of James, Mr. Ravenshoe's keeper. He was the illegitimate son of Mr. Petre Ravenshoe."
"Who told you this?" said Lady Ascot.
"Cuthbert."
"How did he know it!"
Charles told her all.
"So the priest has found that out, eh?" said Lady Ascot. "It seems true;" and, as she said so, she moved back from the door. "Go to your old bedroom, Charles. It will always be ready for you while this house is a house. And come down to me presently. Where is Lord Saltire?"
"At Lord Segur's."
Charles went out of the room, and out of the house, and was seen no more. Lady Ascot sat down by the fire again.
"The one blow has softened the other," she said. "I will never keep another secret after this. It was for Alicia's sake and for Petre's that I did it, and now see what has become of it. I shall send for Lord Saltire. The boy must have his rights, and shall, too."
So the brave old woman sat down and wrote to Lord Saltire. We shall see what she wrote to him in the proper place--not now. She sat calmly and methodically writing, with her kind old face wreathing into a smile as she went on. And Charles, the madman, left the house, and posted off to London, only intent on seeking to lose himself among the sordid crowd, so that no man he had ever called a friend should set eyes on him again.
CHAPTER XXX.
MR. SLOANE.
Charles Ravenshoe had committed suicide--committed suicide as deliberately as any maddened wretch had done that day in all the wide miserable world. He knew it very well, and was determined to go on with it. He had not hung himself, or drowned himself, but he had committed deliberate suicide, and he knew--knew well--that his obstinacy would carry him through to the end.
What is suicide, nine cases out of ten? Any one can tell you. It is the act of a mad, proud coward, who flies, by his own deed, not from humiliation or disgrace, but, as he fancies, from feeling the consequences of them--who flies to unknown, doubtful evils, sooner than bear positive, present, undoubted ones. All this had Charles done, buoying him up with this excuse and that excuse, and fancying that he was behaving, the cur, like Bayard, or Lieutenant Willoughby--a greater than Bayard--all the time.
The above is Charles's idea of the matter himself, put in the third person for form's sake. I don't agree with all he says about himself. I don't deny that he did a very foolish thing, but I incline to believe that there was something noble and self-reliant in his doing it. Think a moment. He had only two courses open to him--the one (I put it coarsely) to eat humble-pie, to go back to Cuthbert and Mackworth, and accept their offers; the other to do as he had done--to go alone into the world, and stand by himself. He did the latter, as we shall see. He could not face Ravenshoe, or any connected with it, again. It had been proved that he was an unwilling impostor, of base, low blood; and his sister--ah! one more pang, poor heart!--his sister Ellen, what was she?
Little doubt--little doubt! Better for both of them if they had never been born! He was going to London, and, perhaps, might meet her there!
All the vice and misery of the country got thrown into that cesspool.
When anything had got too foul for the pure country air, men said, Away with it; throw it into the great dunghill, and let it rot there. Was he not going there himself? It was fit she should be there before him! They would meet for certain!
How would they meet? Would she be in silks and satins, or in rags?
flaunting in her carriage, or shivering in an archway? What matter? was not shame the heritage of the "lower orders"? The pleasures of the rich must be ministered to by the "lower orders," or what was the use of money or rank? He was one of the lower orders now. He must learn his lesson; learn to cringe and whine like the rest of them. It would be hard, but it must be learnt. The dogs rose against it sometimes, but it never paid.
The devil was pretty busy with poor Charles in his despair, you see.
This was all he had left after three and twenty years of careless idleness and luxury. His creed had been, "I am a Ravenshoe," and lo! one morning, he was a Ravenshoe no longer. A poor crow, that had been fancying himself an eagle. A crow! "by heavens," he thought, "he was not even that." A nonentity, turned into the world to find his own value!
What were honour, honesty, virtue to him? Why, nothing--words! He must truckle and pander for his living. Why not go back and truckle to Father Mackworth? There was time yet.
No!
Why not? Was it pride only? We have no right to say what it was. If it was only pride, it was better than nothing. Better to have that straw only to cling to, than to be all alone in the great sea with nothing. We have seen that he has done nothing good, with circumstances all in his favour; let us see if he can in any way hold his own, with circumstances all against him.
"America?" he thought once. "They are all gentlemen there. If I could only find her, and tear her jewels off, we would go there together. But she must be found--she must be found. I will never leave England till she goes with me. We shall be brought together. We shall see one another. I love her as I never loved her before. What a sweet, gentle little love she was! My darling! And, when I have kissed her, I never dreamed she was my sister. My pretty love! Ellen, Ellen, I am coming to you. Where are you, my love?"
He was alone, in a railway carriage, leaning out to catch the fresh wind, as he said this. He said it once again, this time aloud. "Where are you, my sister?"
Where was she? Could he have only seen! We may be allowed to see, though _he_ could not. Come forward into the great Babylon with me, while he is speeding on towards it; we will rejoin him in an instant.
In a small luxuriously furnished hall, there stands a beautiful woman, dressed modestly in the garb of a servant. She is standing with her arms folded, and a cold, stern, curious look on her face. She is looking towards the hall-door, which is held open by a footman. She is waiting for some one who is coming in; and two travellers enter, a man and a woman. She goes up to the woman, and says, quietly, "I bid you welcome, madam." Who are these people? Is that waiting-woman Ellen? and these travellers, are they Lord Welter and Adelaide? Let us get back to poor Charles; better be with him than here!
We must follow him closely. We must see why, in his despair, he took the extraordinary resolution that he did. Not that I shall take any particular pains to follow the exact process of his mind in arriving at his determination. If the story has hitherto been told well it will appear nothing extraordinary, and, if otherwise, an intelligent reader would very soon detect any attempt at bolstering up ill-told facts by elaborate, soul-analysing theories.
He could have wished the train would have run on for ever; but he was aroused by the lights growing thicker and more brilliant, and he felt that they were nearing London, and that the time for action was come.
The great plunge was taken, and he was alone in the cold street--alone, save for the man who carried his baggage. He stood for a moment or so, confused with the rush of carriages of all sorts which were taking the people from the train, till he was aroused by the man asking him where he was to go to.
Charles said, without thinking, "The Warwick Hotel," and thither they went. For a moment he regretted that he had said so, but the next moment he said aloud, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!"