The Spider and the Fly

Leicester returned to the Petrel to assist Lady Ethel, in a state of mind not enviable.

"I'll drive you home, Lady Ethel, if you are too tired," he said, "but if you are not my mother will be delighted beyond measure to make you comfortable. What do you say, Fitz? Will you take refuge with us for to-night? I'll ride over to Coombe Lodge and set Lady Lackland's fears at rest."

Now Fitz was very willing to stay so near Violet Mildmay, and Ethel was not unwilling, though she demurred.

But Leicester's strong will decided for them, and it followed that they were on their way to the Cedars while he was galloping toward Coombe Lodge to apprise Lady Lackland of her children's safety and their whereabouts, also to order a box of clothes, which Ethel declared was positively necessary.

The captain's attention continued during the journey home and even to the door of the ladies' rooms, for he insisted that they should take precautions against colds, and in his quiet, unassuming way saw that their comforts were attended to.

So it followed that Violet's maid was waiting with hot water, a fire fit to roast an ox, and an amount of commiseration altogether too much for Violet's patience.

The first thing she did was to throw up the window and lean out upon her white, well-rounded arms, the next, after inhaling a long breath of the storm-freshened air, was to request Marie to suppress the fire as quickly as possible and throw out the hot water.

Marie picked off the coals daintily and walked away. Directly she had gone Violet slipped the bolt on the door and dropped down upon the bed with a long-drawn sigh.

"'My darling! my darling!' Did he say that to me or was I dreaming? Oh, no, he never could have said it. I must have been dreaming, I did nearly faint, and so I must have fancied that he said so. He could not; it is not possible. He has never been anything else but grave and courteous, he would not forget himself in a moment; his is not the kind of nature – no, no, it is absurd!" And she sighed and smiled.

"I cannot think what is coming to me lately. I am all fancies and dreams and nonsensical imaginings. First I fancy I see a villain in my father's oldest friend, then I fancy I see a ghost in the old tower, and now, the maddest thing of all, I fancy I hear a grave, well-bred gentleman like Leicester Dodson address me as 'his darling!' Oh, it is absurd!"

A dinner – partly fresh and partly a rechauffé of the ruined one – was served up, and the captain did his best to raise the spirits of the ladies.

Mrs. Mildmay, whose very ignorance of nautical matters had preserved her from alarm, was very cheerful and praised the yacht and all pertaining to it with liberal amiability, and, as for the storm, why, if Violet did not take cold, which after her warm bath she would not be likely to, it only added a zest to the trip.

Violet smiled with grave amusement, and did not think fit to enlighten her aunt as to the fate of the hot water, and the captain chimed in as usual from his leaning post outside the veranda, where he smoked a cigar of an evening within speaking distance of the ladies inside.

"I called at Coombe Lodge this morning," he said, with a pause which he filled up with his cigar.

Violet, who lay on a couch, had closed her eyes, but the captain saw that she was not asleep.

"And how is Lady Lackland?" asked Mrs. Mildmay.

"Better I found her, I am glad to say, much better. The earl had not come down yet; parliamentary duties kept him in town I suppose. Pity, a great pity. The peasant in his cot, beneath the blue sky and on the heather-covered hill, is to be envied by an earl in London this weather. By the way," he continued, glancing at Violet and speaking in a low tone as if he were anxious not to awake her, "I heard of rather a damaging trait in Leicester's character."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Mildmay, very much interested, and looking up from her knitting.

"Yes; Lady Lackland knows more of him than we do, of course; she sees him at balls and concerts, at friends' houses and parties. Mr. Leicester Dodson, so I hear, is a terrible flirt."

"Oh, dear me, I am sorry to hear that," said Mrs. Mildmay, shaking her head over her knitting and entirely unconscious of the sudden pallor which had fallen upon the motionless face opposite her and which the captain had quickly noted.

"Yes, not very dreadful, is it? It is not fair to accuse the young fellow – as nice a young fellow as ever lived! – behind his back, but I do hear two or three stories of broken hearts and scattered vows – but nothing very tangible. But be sure Lady Lackland would not have mentioned it if she had not some grounds for regretting it."

"Regretting it?" said Mrs. Mildmay, who could never see through hints and inuendoes and always required things to be as plain as plate-glass.

"Don't you see, my dear madam," said the captain, lowering his voice to a musical pitch, which was as distinct as a trumpet call to the ears of the motionless girl, "don't you see that the young fellow is really in love with Lady Ethel and that he would win her but for Lady Lackland's doubt of his steadiness. A flirt, my dear madam, is to be evaded by every prudent mother and every sensible girl – "

Violet rose, white and statuesque.

"I was nearly asleep," she said, looking round the room with a sad, stupefied look in her eyes of dumb pain, like some one roused to a sense of a lifelong misery. "I – I am very tired, aunt, and I think I shall go to bed."

The captain was by her side, ringing for her candle, in a moment, and she smiled – yes, smiled at him as he pressed her hand and murmured a good-night.

Brave Violet! what did that smile cost her?

She had heard every word, and every word rang in her ears and stabbed at her breast when she laid her head on her pillow.

While Violet was lying awake and burning with mortification and a wounded heart Jemmie Sanderson was down on his knees beside his straw pallet in the policeman's cot thanking Heaven for the safe return of his benefactor and greatly worshiped Leicester. He loved Leicester with a love that passed all calculation. He had stood unnoticed in the crowd, close to the ladies and gentlemen, when they had landed and, unseen by Leicester, he had stood close behind him, weeping his childish heart out with happy tears of joy and gratitude.

So the two, woman and boy, were at the same time enduring widely different feelings for the same man.

Life is full of strange contradictions.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PART OF A FLIRT

Quite unconscious of the stab in the back, so to speak, which the cunning Captain Murpoint had delivered him, Leicester spent the evening in entertaining his guests, Lord Fitz and Lady Ethel.

In the morning Leicester and his guests walked over to the Park.

He would have liked to have been alone, but that was impossible under the circumstances, so he contented himself with hoping that he might get an opportunity of speaking to Violet alone.

But Violet had spent the wakeful night in planning for herself a desperate course of action.

She was, as she told herself at breakfast time, prepared to meet "the flirt" on his own ground.

Nothing would do for Mrs. Mildmay but that she insisted that the Cedars' party should remain all day to dinner, and to see the evening out, and a footman was dispatched with the invitation for Mr. and Mrs. Dodson.

"I am so delighted you have come," said the good-natured lady; "for I do think Violet is quite triste and needs a little excitement."

They were standing on the lawn chatting, and Leicester glanced up at the upper windows expecting to see a blind down.

"Miss Mildmay not well?" he asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Mildmay. "But a little low spirited, I think. She will brighten up when she hears that you are here. James," and she called to a footman who was passing, "please ask Miss Violet to come down."

But Violet did not need any information.

She saw the group approach from her window, and as Leicester's long limbs strode across the lawn her heart beat violently.

"He has come for another flirtation, has he?" said the mortified, suffering girl. "Well, he shall not be disappointed. He shall see that two can play at his contemptible game."

So saying she thrust a camellia in her glossy hair, called a smile, perhaps the first artificial one she had ever forced, to her beautiful face, and stole down the stairs, bursting upon the group like a vision of Oriental beauty.

Leicester advanced, but Violet passed him and went to kiss Ethel. Then she shook hands cordially with Bertie, added a blush when repeating the salutation for Lord Fitz, and pretended to have forgotten that Leicester had not received a word.

"I'm so small," he said, with a smile, "that no wonder Miss Mildmay overlooks me."

"Did I not shake hands?" said Violet, looking him full in the face, not with coldness, but with a pleasant, indifferent, painfully frank friendship. "Did I not? How stupid of me! But I was overwhelmed with surprise," and she gave him her hand with a cool, self-composed smile which staggered him.

Before three minutes had passed Lord Fitz plucked up courage to say:

"Miss Mildmay, you said you would show me your flowers."

"Did I?" said Violet. "Then I will redeem my promise," and, with a smile, she led him to the conservatory – that very conservatory in which Leicester had lounged but a few days ago, listening to her frank laughter and drinking in the charm of her youth and beauty.

With a blush of pleasure, Fitz walked off with her, and soon his boyish laugh could be heard from the greenhouses, joined with Violet's musical peal.

What had happened to cause her to treat him so?

Yesterday she was all frank delight in his presence.

To-day she treated him with the haughty insolence and indifference of a sultana.

"Ah!" said Leicester, with a growl. "They are all alike. The best of them cannot resist a lord."

He was not in the best of humors for a collision with the captain, but Captain Murpoint greeted him ardently.

"None the worse for your weather yesterday, I see," he said, in his soft, silky voice. "I was just coming after you. Mr. Fairfax, who is the most inventive genius in the way of pleasure I have ever had the happiness of meeting, has set up a target and we are all shooting at it with arrows which remind me of nothing so much as the arrows which the Brahmins give their children to play with."

"Confound the Brahmins!" thought Leicester, but he walked by the side of the captain to where the clever Bertie had set the arrow pastime going, and then the captain left him to order some sherry and soda water.

Mrs. Mildmay begged him to light a cigar, and Leicester, who really wanted one, gave way.

He seated himself on a bench and watched the party, wondering whether Lord Fitz had finished his second wreath, and what the pair in the conservatory were doing now.

Presently he heard their laughing from the back of him, and it stung him to the quick.

"Confound her!" he muttered. "Why should I let her see her wickedness at flirting is cutting me up so? By Jove, I'll show her two can play at that game. I'll make up to Ethel Boisdale." So saying he drew his legs to the ground, pitched his cigar into the shrubbery and went up to Ethel.

"Now, Lady Boisdale," he said, "I am going to enter the lists, and I bet you a box of Jouvin's best – I have your size – that I hit the bull's-eye three times out of six."

"Oh, I shall bet," said Ethel, "because I am sure I shall win. Why, we have been trying ever so long, and have not hit it once."

"There goes then," said Leicester. "Hit or miss. Hit it is. That's once. Twice, I have missed it. Three times, that's a hit. Four times, missed it. Missed it again, missed it again. That's the sixth time, and I've lost."

Then he rattled on as lively and entertaining as Bertie himself, so startling that honest friend that he did not know what to make of it.

All through the glorious afternoon the plot and counterplot were carried on.

At dinner Leicester devoted himself to Lady Ethel, talked to her with an amount of badinage and excitement that was most unusual.

After dinner Fitz went straight up to Violet, who was sitting talking to Ethel, and seated himself in a chair beside them.

Leicester dropped down beside Mrs. Mildmay and Mrs. Dodson and joined in a discussion upon croquet.

But the captain did not let him rest.

"I think there's a frigate coming across," he said. "It's rather misty, but I fancy I can distinguish the masts."

Leicester rose and walked to the window.

From the place where he stood, he could hear, as the captain had intended that he should, every word Fitz and Violet were saying.

The young lord, excited by the wine to an extraordinary pitch of courage, was making love, hot and furious.

Violet, just a little frightened, was laughingly and rather nervously evading him.

Leicester's cheeks flushed, and, his eyes, hidden by the field glass, flashed passionately.

"Consummate coquette!" he murmured, "she is either fooling the boy or angling for a coronet – she whom I thought the soul of purity and disinterestedness. Which is it? By Heaven, I will know!"

And, much to the captain's amusement, he dropped the field glass and said, with an air almost of command:

"Miss Mildmay, your eyes are better than either mine or Captain Murpoint's; pray lend us their aid."

Violet hesitated a moment, then, with a smile which barely covered a peculiar feeling of nervousness, rose and came forward.

"Step outside," said Leicester, in his deep voice, and before she knew what he was going to do he drew her hand within his arm and led her out. "Do you see," he said, "out yonder? or have you no eyes for anything to-night but Lord Fitz Plantagenet Boisdale?"

"Mr. Leicester!" exclaimed Violet, with dignity, still trembling inwardly.

"Pardon me," he said, in a deep whisper, drawing her farther from the window and speaking in an earnest, almost pleading tone, "pardon me. I was wrong to speak so, but let me plead as an excuse some provocation. I have not wounded you, Miss Mildmay, by those few words one-tenth so much as you have me by one of a thousand you have spoken to-day."

Violet tried to draw her hand away, but his strong, hard hand retained it against her will.

"Wait one moment, I implore you," he said. "Wait while you tell me wherein I have offended you."

"Really," said Violet, with a low ripple of amusement which maddened him. "This is like a charade – "

"Tell me," he said, interrupting her almost sternly, "have you forgotten yesterday? Miss Mildmay, speak to me if you can as an honest woman should speak to an honest man. If the assurance of my devoted – "

"Oh, stop – pray stop!" said Violet, with a laugh which was calculated to madden a less passionate and willful temper than Leicester's. "What a contradiction! In one breath you assert your doubt of my honesty and assure me of your devoted – what? Oh, no! no more, Mr. Leicester! Pray be assured that I am not offended – not with any one! I am quite happy, and I don't understand you in the least. Shall we go in?"

She moved toward the window as she spoke, smiling with maddening wickedness, and fanning herself hurriedly, her heart throbbing all the while like a wild animal within her bosom.

Leicester turned with stern courtesy.

"By all means," he said. "I hope you have not caught cold!"

She dropped him a mocking curtsey and passed through the window.

Leicester stood for a moment looking at her as she glided with her peculiar grace into the chatter of voices and the light dance music which Ethel, with Bertie at her side, was evoking at the piano, then turned and strode out onto the terrace.

He leaned his arms on the coping and stared into the night.

"What is she? a flirt, a heartless coquette, a beautiful falsehood, or what?"

As he asked himself the question he heard the bushes stir beneath him.

It did not attract his attention, and he did not glance down until he saw something dark move from beneath the laurels.

Then, with his usual rapidity of resolve, he lightly vaulted over the terrace and dropped close beside the figure.

It rose from the ground surprised and startled.

Leicester's hand grasped a man's shoulder, and turned him round.

It was Captain Murpoint's servant, Mr. Jem.

In a moment Leicester saw part of the hand.

The fellow was not a burglar on the scout, but a skulking eavesdropper.

"You've been listening, my friend," said Leicester, angrily, and with an ominous gathering light in his eyes.

"That's a falsehood!" shouted Jem, who had been imbibing ale – and some quantity of it – at the "Blue Lion".

"Let that teach you greater caution and respect for the future, my friend," said Leicester, and he struck the daring scoundrel a straight blow full of unmitigated scorn.

Jem started, turned livid with rage, fear and hate, then slunk away like a beaten hound and stole off.

After delivering punishment to Jem for his eavesdropping, Leicester walked round to the stables and ordered the Cedars' carriage.

When the carriage was ready he returned to the drawing-room, and, going up to his mother, whispered:

"I have ordered the carriage for you; do not let them think you are surprised."

Mrs. Dodson nodded and looked up at him inquiringly. She saw that something had gone wrong.

At that moment a peal of silvery laughter proceeded from the corner of the room where Lord Fitz and Violet were seated.

Leicester started and frowned and then Mrs. Dodson knew what ailed him. She knew that he was in love with Violet Mildmay.

When Leicester had left, Violet's smiles disappeared.

She answered Lord Fitz at random, and grew cold and even stately.

Lord Fitz hoped when they were saying good-night that she would relapse into her bright amiability, but he was disappointed.

She wished him good-night with a smile that was the perfection of friendly indifference.

All the guests had gone, and Violet sat alone in the now silent drawing-room.

Her heart was heavy, her eyes and her whole frame weary.

As she reached her room she saw a light making its way from the captain's room, and heard the soft hum of his voice as he murmured his favorite air from "Faust."

"How good-natured he seems!" she thought. "He is really my friend, and yet I cannot quite like him."

So she went to bed thoroughly unhappy, dissatisfied with herself for acting the flirt and dissatisfied with Leicester for being one.

Although the captain was humming so carelessly, he was not idle.

No sooner did the sound of Violet's closing door greet his ear than he ceased the humming and drew his chair to his bureau.

He had prepared his pens, ink, etc., on the table; there was every sign of a hard night's work.

He drew from the bureau his strange purchases, the sheet of parchment and the flour dredger, spreading the parchment upon the desk.

It looked very yellow and old, and anything but a nice material for a document.

But for the captain's purpose it was apparently not at all too passé, for he drew from his pocket a small bottle of cold coffee, and with a paint brush carefully washed the surface of the parchment on both sides.

Then he held it near the candle to dry, and after a close scrutiny nodded with satisfaction.

The ink next underwent manipulation.

It was good black ink, evidently too good, for the captain carefully diluted it with water.

Then he took from his pocket a bundle of letters, and selecting the longest spread it out upon the bureau, lit a cigar and studied the handwriting with the closest attention.

It was the handwriting of John Mildmay, and the letter was one of many he had written to his good and kind friend, Captain Howard Murpoint.

"I can imitate that, I think," muttered the captain; "let me try."

For half an hour he persevered, and at the end of that time he had succeeded in imitating the handwriting of his dear, dead friend so closely that John Mildmay's ghost, if it had risen and peeped over the forger's shoulder, could not have distinguished the forgery from the original.

"There," he muttered. "I'll defy all the lawyers in the world to detect that. Now for the deed."

He drew the parchment toward him, and, proceeding with the greatest care and minuteness, drew up a document, which he signed with the name of John Mildmay.

The deed purported to be witnessed by an old coachman and his wife, both of whom were dead.

Then he took his flour dredger, and poured into it from a box which he had concealed in his dressing-case a quantity of finely powdered dust.

When the box was full he shook a little from the top upon the desk and the table.

Then he unlocked the door and touched the bell which summoned Mr. Starling.

After a few moments the door opened and Jem entered.

The captain looked up and frowned inquiringly.

There was a red mark across Jem's face, an ugly flush which rendered the sullen, ferocious countenance more evil and desperate looking.

"Shut the door and lock it," said the captain.

Jem did so and stood fingering the dressing-gown with shifting eyes and sullen, evil mouth.

"Come here," said the captain. "What's that on your face?"

"What's what?" said Jem, without raising his eyes.

"You know well enough," said the captain, eying him closely. "Are you sober enough to tell me how you came by that blow? If so, out with it. Who gave it to you?"

"It was Mr. Leicester, curse him!" burst out Jem, and with an oath. "He caught me a-listening by the terrace."

"Ah!" exclaimed the captain, with a gleam of malicious delight in his eyes. "My young lad, Leicester, was it? Oh, you must bear it, my dear Jem, grin and bear it. I think it will be black and blue. Never mind, Jem, it will make him laugh in the morning, and he'll ask you how it is."

"Don't, don't!" groaned the infuriated man, hoarsely. "Don't work me up, captain. Don't! I shall go mad! I'll be even with him! I'll make him rue the night he struck me, dog as I am!"

"Do you want revenge, Jem?"

Jem looked up from the floor with savage eyes.

"You do? Then I'll show you how to get so sweet, so rich a one that you'll bless me, Jem. But first I've got a word with you, Mr. Starling. You are getting careless. You'll never make a good servant. You are idle. Look at the dust on that table!"

Jem looked and stared.

"That's a pretty state for a gentleman's writing-desk to be in! You have not dusted that for a week!"

"I dusted it this morning, sir," said Jem, looking round with bewilderment.

Then the captain took up the dredger from beneath the table and held it up with a smile.

"Conjuring, Jem – magic! By this simple contrivance we get the dust of years in one moment. Put it in your pocket and light the lantern."

Jem stared in silence profound and amazed for a minute.

"But," he said, with a troubled face, "you ain't going into that beastly room, captain?"

"I am, and so are you," said the captain. "No words; remember your blow and your revenge. You work for it to-night while you obey me."

Jem caught up the lantern with desperate bravado and lit it.

Meanwhile the captain exchanged his coat for a pea-jacket, and drew a thick pair of stockings over his boots.

Jem, following his instructions, did likewise, and then waited for further orders.

"You could pick locks," said the captain, "one time, Jem; have you forgotten the art?"

Jem grinned.

"Not quite. I dare say I could manage it."

"Good," said the captain. "Have you got the tools?"

"I never goes without 'em," said Jem, "they're very simple, and they don't take up much room, and no gentleman should be without 'em." And as he spoke he drew from his pocket a small piece of steel and a stout piece of wire bent at the end in the form of a hook.

The captain nodded approvingly.

"Quite right, Jem," he said, "and now for the deed. If you feel nervous take a sip of this," and he poured out a glass of brandy.

Jem tossed the dram down eagerly, but, fiery as the liquid was, it did not dispel his dislike and horror of the task before him, and when the captain in his stealthy way opened the window the strong ruffian shuddered.