The Master of the Ceremonies

The blood began to flow again, this time with a big wave of passionate rage in Richard Linnell’s breast. He was furious. How dared that handsome libertine profane Claire Denville by even thinking of her? How dared he bring him there, to play beneath the window – the window he had so often watched, and looked upon as a sacred temple – the resting-place of her he loved.

He was ready to seize the Major by the throat; to fight for her; to say anything; to dash down the instrument in his rage; to turn and flee; but the next moment the cool, calm voice of the Colonel brought him to his senses, and he recalled that this was his secret – his alone – this secret of his love.

“I did not know the Major was warm there. Well, she’s a handsome girl, and he’s welcome, I dare say.”

Linnell felt ready to choke again, but he could not speak. He must get out of this engagement, though, at any cost.

As he was musing, though, he found himself drawn as it were to where the Major and his friends were standing in front of the silent house, and the Colonel said:

“Come, my lad, let’s run through the piece, and get home to bed. I’m too old for such tom-fool tricks as these.”

“I will not play! It is an insult! It is madness!” thought Richard Linnell; and then, as if in a dream, he found himself the centre of a group, fuming at what he was doing, while, as if in spite of his rage, he was drawing the sweet echoing strains from the violin, listening to the harmonies added by his friend, and all in a nightmare-like fashion, playing involuntarily on, and gazing at the windows he had so often watched.

On, on, on, the notes poured forth, throbbing on the night air, sounding pensive, sweet and love-inspiring, maddening too, as he tried to check his thoughts, and played with more inspiration all the while till the last bar, with its diminuendo, was reached, and he stood there, palpitating, asking himself why he had done this thing, and waiting trembling in his jealous rage, lest any notice should be taken of the compliment thus paid.

Did Claire Denville encourage the Major – that libertine whose amours were one of the scandals of the place? Oh, it was impossible. She would not have heard the music. If she had she would have thought it from some wanderers, for she had never heard him play. She would not notice it. She would not heed it. In her virgin youth and innocency it was a profanation to imagine that Claire Denville – sweet, pure Claire Denville – the woman he worshipped, could notice such an attention. No, it was impossible she would; and his eyes almost started as he gazed at the white-curtained windows, looking so solemn and so strange.

No, no, no; she would not notice, even if she had heard, and a strange feeling of elation came into the jealous breast.

“Come,” he said hoarsely, “let us go.”

“One moment, lad. Ah, yes,” said the Colonel. “Gloriana has heard the serenade, and is about to respond to her lover’s musically amatory call. Look, Dick, look.”

Richard Linnell’s heart sank, for a white arm drew back the curtain, and then the catch of the window fastening was pressed back, and a chord in the young man’s breast seemed to snap; but it was only the spring of the window hasp.

Click!

Volume One – Chapter Seven.

After the Storm

The “ghastly serenade” it was called at Saltinville as the facts became known.

That night Richard Linnell was standing with his teeth set, his throat dry, and a feeling of despair making his heart seem to sink, watching the white hand that was waved as soon as the sash was opened. Half blind with the blood that seemed to rush to his eyes, he glared at the window. Then a sudden revulsion of feeling came over him as a familiar voice that was not Claire’s cried, “Help! – a doctor!” and then the speaker seemed to stagger away.

The rest was to Richard Linnell like some dream of horror, regarding which he recalled the next morning that he had thundered at the door, that he had helped to carry Claire to her room, and that he had afterwards been one of the group who stood waiting in the dining-room until the doctor came down to announce that Miss Denville was better – that Lady Teigne was quite dead.

Then they had stolen out on tiptoe, and in the stillness of the early morning shaken hands all round and separated, the Major remaining with them, and walking with Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell to their door.

“What a horror!” he said hoarsely. “I would not for the world have taken you two there had I known. Good-night – good-morning, I should say;” and he, too, said those words – perhaps originated the saying – “What a ghastly serenade!”

Nine days – they could spare no more in Saltinville, for it would have spoiled the season – nine days’ wonder, and then the news that a certain royal person was coming down, news blown by the trumpet of Fame with her attendants, raised up enough wind to sweep away the memory of the horror on the Parade.

“She was eighty if she was a day,” said Sir Matthew Bray: “and it was quite time the old wretch did die.”

“Nice way of speaking of a lady whose relative you are seeking to be,” said Sir Harry Payne. “Sweet old nymph. How do you make it fit, Matt?”

“Fit? Some scoundrel of a London tramp scaled the balcony, they say. Fine plunder, the rascal! All those diamonds.”

“Which she might have left her sister, and then perhaps they would have come to you, Matt.”

“Don’t talk stuff.”

“Stuff? Why, you are besieging the belle. But, I say, I have my own theory about that murder.”

“Eh, have you?” cried the great dragoon, staring open-mouthed.

“Egad! yes, Matt. It was not a contemptible robbery.”

“Wasn’t it? You don’t say so.”

“But I do,” cried Sir Harry seriously. “Case of serious jealousy on the part of some lover of the bewitching creature. He came in the dead o’ night and smothered the Desdemona with a pillow. What do you say, Rockley?”

The Major had strolled across the mess-room and heard these words.

“Bah! Don’t ridicule the matter,” he said. “Change the subject.”

“As you like, but the feeble flame only wanted a momentary touch of the extinguisher and it was gone.”

At the house on the Parade there had been terrible anguish, and Claire Denville suffered painfully as she passed through the ordeal of the examination that ensued.

But everything was very straightforward and plain. There were the marks of some one having climbed up the pillar – an easy enough task. The window opened without difficulty from without, a pot or two lay overturned in the balcony, a chair in the drawing-room, evidently the work of some stranger, and the valuable suite of diamonds was gone.

The constable arrested three men of the street tumbler and wandering vagrant type, who were examined, proved easily that they were elsewhere; and after the vote of condolence to our esteemed fellow-townsman, Stuart Denville, Esq, which followed the inquest, there seemed nothing more to be done but to bury Lady Teigne, which was accordingly done, and the principal undertaker cleared a hundred pounds by the grand funeral that took place, though it was quite a year before Lady Drelincourt would pay the whole of his bill.

So with Lady Teigne the horror was buried too, and in a fortnight the event that at one time threatened to interfere with the shopkeepers’ and lodging-letters’ season was forgotten.

For that space of time, too, the familiar figure of the Master of the Ceremonies was not seen upon the Parade. Miss Denville was very ill, it was said, and after the funeral Isaac had to work hard at answering the door to receive the many cards that were left by fashionable people, till there was quite a heap in the old china bowl that stood in the narrow hall.

But the outside world knew nothing of the agonies of mind endured by the two principal occupants of that house – of the nights of sleepless horror passed by Claire as she knelt and prayed for guidance, and of the hours during which the Master of the Ceremonies sat alone, staring blankly before him as if at some scene which he was ever witnessing, and which seemed to wither him, mind and body, at one stroke.

For that fortnight, save at the inquest, father and daughter had not met, but passed their time in their rooms. But the time was gliding on, and they had to meet – the question occurring to each – how was it to be?

“I must leave it to chance,” thought the Master of the Ceremonies, with a shiver; and after a fierce struggle to master the agony he felt, he knew that in future he must lead two lives. So putting on his mask, he one morning walked down to the breakfast-room, and took his accustomed place.

Outwardly he seemed perfectly calm, and, save that the lines about his temples and the corners of his lips seemed deeper, he was little changed; but as he walked he was conscious of a tremulous feeling in the knees, and even when seated, that the curious palsied sensation went on.

On the previous night Morton had come in from a secret fishing excursion, to find the house dark and still, and he had stood with his hands in his pockets hesitating as to whether he should go and take a lesson in smoking with Isaac in the pantry, steal down to the beach, or creep upstairs.

He finally decided on the latter course, and going up to the top of the house on tiptoe, he tapped softly at Claire’s bedroom door.

It was opened directly by his sister, who had evidently just risen from an old dimity-covered easy-chair. She was in a long white dressing-gown, and, seen by the light of the one tallow candle on the table, she looked so pale and ghastly that the lad uttered an ejaculation and caught hold of her thin, cold hands.

“Claire! – Sis!”

They were the first warm words of sympathy she had heard since that horrible night; and in a moment the icy horror upon her face broke up, her lips quivered, and, throwing her arms around her brother’s neck, she burst into such a passion of hysterical sobbing that, as he held her to his breast, he grew alarmed.

He had stepped into the little white room where the flower screen stood out against the night sky, and as the door swung to, he had felt Claire sinking upon her knees, and imitating her action, he had held her there for some time till the attitude grew irksome, and then sank lower till he was seated on the carpet, holding his sister half-reclining across his breast.

“Oh! don’t – don’t, Claire – Sis,” he whispered from time to time, as he kissed the quivering lips, and strove in his boyish way to soothe her. “Sis dear, you’ll give yourself such a jolly headache. Oh, I say, what’s the good of crying like that?”

For answer she only clung the tighter, the pent-up agony escaping in her tears, though she kissed him passionately again and again, and nestled to his breast.

“You’ll make yourself ill, you know,” he whispered. “I say, don’t. The dad’s ill, and you’ll upset him more.”

Still she sobbed on and wept, the outburst saving her from some more terrible mental strain.

“I wanted to come and comfort you,” he said. “I did not know you’d go on like this.”

She could not tell him that he was comforting her; that she had been tossed by a horrible life-storm that threatened to wreck her reason, and that when she had lain longing for the sympathy of the sister who now kept away, saying it was too horrible to come there now, she had found no life-buoy to which to cling. And now her younger brother had come – the elder forbidden the house – and the intensity of the relief she felt was extreme.

“Here, I can’t stand this,” he said at last, almost roughly. “I shall go down and send Ike for the doctor.”

She clung to him in an agony of dread lest he should go, and her sobs grew less frequent.

“Come, that’s better,” he said, and he went on in his rough boyish selfishness, talking of his troubles and ignoring those of others, unconsciously strengthening Claire, as he awakened her to a sense of the duties she owed him, and giving her mental force for the terrible meeting and struggle that was to come.

For she dared not think. She shrank from mentally arguing out those two questions of duty – to society and to her father.

Was she to speak and tell all she knew?

Was she to be silent?

All she could do was to shrink within herself, and try to make everything pass out of her thoughts while she was sinking into the icy chains of idiocy.

But now, when she had been giving up completely, and at times gazing out to sea with horrible thoughts assailing her, and suggestions like temptations to seek for oblivion as the only escape from the agony she suffered, the life-raft had reached her hands, and she clung to it with all the tenacity of one mentally drowning fast.

There was something soothing in the very sound of her brother’s rough voice speaking in a hoarse whisper; and his selfish repinings over the petty discomforts he had suffered came like words of comfort and rest.

“It has been so jolly blank and miserable downstairs,” he went on as he held her, and involuntarily rocked himself to and fro. “Ike and Eliza have been always gossiping at the back and sneaking out to take dinner or tea or supper with somebody’s servants, so as to palaver about what’s gone on here.”

A pause.

“There’s been scarcely anything to eat. I’ve been half-starved.”

“Oh, Morton, my poor boy!”

Those were the first words Claire had uttered since the inquest, and they were followed by a fresh burst of sobs.

“Oh, come, come. Do leave off,” he cried pettishly. “I say it’s all very well for the old man to growl at me for fishing, but if I hadn’t gone catching dabs and a little conger or two, I should have been starved.”

She raised her face and kissed him. Some one else was suffering, and her woman’s instinct to help was beginning to work.

“What do you think I did, Sis? Oh, you don’t know. I’d been up to Burnett’s to see May, but the beggars had sneaked off and gone to London. Just like Franky Sneerums and wax-doll May. Pretty sort of a sister to keep away when we’re in trouble.”

“Oh, don’t, my dear boy,” whispered Claire in a choking voice.

“Oh, yes, I shall. They’re ashamed of me and of all of us. Just as if we could help the old girl being killed here.”

A horrible spasm ran through Claire.

“Don’t jump like that, stupid,” said Morton roughly. “You didn’t kill her.”

“Hush! hush!”

“No, I shan’t hush. It’ll do you good to talk and hear what people say, my pretty old darling Sis. There, there hush-a-bye, baby. Cuddle up close, and let’s comfort you. What’s the matter now?”

Claire had struggled up, with her hands upon his shoulders, and was gazing wildly into his eyes.

“What – what do people say?” she panted.

“Be still, little goose – no; pretty little white pigeon,” he said, more softly, as he tried to draw her towards him.

“What – do they say?” she cried, in a hoarse whisper, and she trembled violently.

“Why, that it is a jolly good job the old woman is dead, for she was no use to anyone.”

Claire groaned as she yielded once more to his embrace.

“Fisherman Dick says – I say, he is a close old nut there’s no getting anything out of him! – says he don’t see that people like Lady Teigne are any use in the world.”

“Morton!”

“Oh, it’s all right. I’m only telling you what he said. He says too that the chap who did it – I say, don’t kick out like that, Sis. Yes, I shall go on: I’m doing you good. Fisherman Dick, and Mrs Miggles too, said that I ought to try and rouse you up, and I’m doing it. You’re ever so much better already. Why, your hands were like dabs when I came up, and now they are nice and warm.”

She caressed his cheek with them, and he kissed her as she laid her head on his shoulder.

“Dick Miggles said that the diamonds would never do the chap any good who stole ’em.”

Once more that hysterical start, but the boy only clasped his sister more tightly, and went on:

“Dick says he never knew anyone prosper who robbed or murdered, or did anything wrong, except those who smuggled. I say, Sis, I do feel sometimes as if I should go in for a bit of smuggling. There are some rare games going on.”

Claire clung to him as if exhausted by her emotion.

“Dick’s been in for lots of it, I know, only he’s too close to speak. I don’t know what I should have done if it hadn’t been for them. I’ve taken the fish I’ve caught up there, and Polly Miggles has cooked them, and we’ve had regular feeds.”

“You have been up there, Morton?” said Claire wildly.

“Yes; you needn’t tell the old man. What was I to do? I couldn’t get anything to eat here. I nursed the little girl for Mrs Miggles while she cooked, and Dick has laughed at me to see me nurse the little thing, and said it was rum. But I don’t mind; she’s a pretty little tit, and Dick has taught her to call me uncle.”

Volume One – Chapter Eight.

The First Meeting

It was the next morning that the Master of the Ceremonies made his effort, and went down to the breakfast-room, where he sat by the table, playing with the newspaper that he dared not try to read, and waiting, wondering, in a dazed way, whether his son or his daughter would come in to breakfast.

The paper fell from his hands, and as he sat there he caught at the table, drawing the cloth aside and holding it with a spasmodic clutch, as one who was in danger of falling.

For there was the creak of a stair, the faint rustle of a dress, and he knew that the time had come.

He tried to rise to his feet, but his limbs refused their office, and the palsied trembling that had attacked him rose to his hands. Then he loosened his hold of the table, and sank back in his chair, clinging to the arms, and with his chin falling upon his breast.

At that moment the door opened, and Claire glided into the room.

She took a couple of steps forward, after closing the door, and then caught at the back of a chair to support herself.

The agony and horror in his child’s face, as their eyes met, galvanised Denville into life, and, starting up, he took a step forward, extending his trembling hands.

“Claire – my child!” he cried, in a husky voice.

His hands dropped, his jaw fell, his eyes seemed to be starting, as he read the look of horror, loathing, and shame in his daughter’s face, and for the space of a full minute neither spoke.

Then, as if moved to make another effort, he started spasmodically forward.

“Claire, my child – if you only knew!”

But she shrank from him with the look of horror intensified.

“Don’t – don’t touch me,” she whispered, in a harsh, dry voice. “Don’t: pray don’t.”

“But, Claire – ”

“I know,” she whispered, trembling violently. “It is our secret. I will not speak. Father – they should kill me first; but don’t – don’t. Father – father – you have broken my heart!”

As she burst forth in a piteous wail in these words, the terrible involuntary shrinking he had seen in her passed away. The stiff angularity that had seemed to pervade her was gone, and she sank upon her knees, holding by the back of the chair, and rested her brow upon her hands, sobbing and drawing her breath painfully.

He stood there gazing down at her, but for a time he did not move. Then, taking a step forward, he saw that she heard him, and shrank again.

“Claire, my child,” he gasped once more, “if you only knew!”

“Hush! – for God’s sake, hush!” she said, in a whisper. “Can you not see? It is our secret. You are my father. I am trying so hard. But don’t – don’t – ”

“Don’t touch you!” he cried slowly, as she left her sentence unspoken. “Well, be it so,” he added, with a piteous sigh; “I will not complain.”

“Let it be like some horrible dream,” she said, in the same low, painful whisper. “Let me – let me go away.”

“No!” he cried, with a change coming over him; and he drew himself up as if her words had given him a sudden strength. “You must stay. You have duties here, and I have mine. Claire, you must stay, and it must be to you – to me, like some horrible dream. Some day you may learn the horrible temptations that beset my path. Till then I accept my fate, for I dare not confide more, even to you. Heaven help me in this horror, and give me strength!” he muttered to himself, with closed eyes. “I dare not die; I cannot – I will not die. I must wear the mask. Two lives to live, when heretofore one only has been so hard!”

Just then there was a quick step outside, and the tall figure of Morton Denville passed the window.

The Master of the Ceremonies glanced at Claire, who started to her feet, and then their eyes met.

“For his sake, Claire,” he whispered, “if not for mine.”

“For his sake – father,” she answered, slowly and reverently, as if it were a prayer; and then to herself, “and for yours – the duty I owe you as your child.”

“And I,” he muttered to himself, as he stood with a white hand resting upon the table. “I must bear it to the end. I must wear my mask as of old, and wilt Thou give me pardon and the strength?”

Morton entered the room fresh and animated, and his eyes lit up as he saw that it was occupied.

“That’s better!” he cried. “Morning, father,” and he clasped the old man’s hand.

“Good-morning, my dear boy,” was the answer, in trembling tones; and then, with the ghost of a smile on the wan lips, “have you been – ”

Morton had boisterously clasped Claire in his arms, and kissed her with effusion; and as he saw the loving, wistful look in his child’s face, as she passionately returned the caress – one that he told himself would never again be bestowed on him – a pang shot through the old man’s breast, and the agony seemed greater than he could bear.

“So – so glad to see you down again, my dear, dear, dear old Sis,” cried Morton, with a kiss at almost every word. Then, half holding her still, he turned to the pale, wistful face at the other side of the room, and exclaimed:

“Yes, sir. Don’t be angry with me. I have been down again, catching dabs.”

Volume One – Chapter Nine.

Wearing His Mask

“Really, ladies, I – er – should – er – esteem it an honour, but my powers here are limited, and – ”

“Rubbish!”

“You’ll pardon me?”

“I say – rubbish, Denville.”

“Mamma, will you hold your tongue?”

“No, miss; if it comes to that, I won’t! Speaking like that to your own mother, who’s always working for you as I am, right out here on the open cliff, where goodness knows who mayn’t – ”

“Mother, be silent!”

“Silent, indeed!”

“Ladies, ladies, you’ll pardon me. I say my powers here are – er – very limited.”

“Yes, I know all about that, but you must get invitations for mamma and me for the next Assembly.”

“I’ll try, Miss Dean, but – you’ll pardon me – ”

“There, don’t shilly-shally with him, Betsy; it’s all business. Look here, Denville, the day the invitations come there’ll be five guineas wrapped up in silver paper under the chayny shepherdess on my droring-room mantelpiece, if you’ll just call and look under.”

“Really, Mrs Dean, you – you shock me. I could not think of – er – really – er – I will try my best.”

“That you will, I know, Mr Denville. Don’t take any notice of mamma I hope Miss Denville and Mrs Burnett are well.”

“In the best of health, Miss Dean, I thank you. I will – er – do my best. A lovely morning, Mrs Dean. Your humble servant. Miss Cora, yours. Good-morning.”

“A nasty old humbug; but he’ll have the invitations sent,” said Mrs Dean, a big, well-developed, well-preserved woman of fifty, with bright dark eyes that glistened and shone like pebbles polished by the constant attrition of the blinking lids.

“I wish you would not be so horridly coarse, mother; and if you don’t drop that ‘Betsy’ we shall quarrel,” said the younger lady, who bore a sufficient likeness to the elder for anyone to have stamped them mother and daughter, though the latter was wanting in her parent’s hardness of outline, being a magnificent specimen of womanly beauty. Dark and thoroughly classic of feature, large-eyed, full-lipped, perhaps rather too highly coloured, but this was carried off by the luxuriant black hair, worn in large ringlets flowing down either side of the rounded cheeks they half concealed, by her well-arched black brows and long dark lashes, which shaded her great swimming eyes. Her figure was perfect, and she was in full possession of the ripest womanly beauty, as she walked slowly and with haughty carriage along the cliff, beside the elder dame.