Mr. Marx's Secret Part 41

"I have never heard otherwise," I told him. "But when I asked my mother once at which church I was christened, she could not tell me and forbade me to ask again."

Lord Langerdale looked puzzled for a moment, and then asked me my age, which I told him.

"Do you remember the time when news came of Mr. Ravenor, after he had been supposed to have been dead for so long?"

"Yes. It is about my earliest distinct recollection," I answered.

"Do you remember how your mother received the news?"

Yes, I remembered. Even at that moment a vision rose up before me. I saw her standing beneath the ivy-covered porch of our farmhouse, her beautiful face ghastly with sudden pallor, and her wild eyes riveted upon my father's burly figure, as he shouted out the tidings. I described the scene to Lord Langerdale.

"And afterwards did she ever mention Mr. Ravenor's name to you? Did she see anything of him?" he asked, when I had finished.

Briefly I told him of her warnings, of my meeting with Mr. Ravenor, of his proposal to adopt me, and of my mother's death, and how at the end she suddenly turned round and left me to his guardians.h.i.+p. When I had finished he laid his hand upon my arm.

"Let us go upstairs to my rooms," he said kindly. "If my wife were to come in now and learn the truth--and I'm a bad hand at keeping anything back from her--I'm afraid the shock would be too much for her. Come with me and I will tell you your mother's history."

So I rose and followed him with beating heart.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A PAGE OF HISTORY.

Lord Langerdale's suite of apartments was on the second floor, and when we reached them it was no small relief to me to find the room into which we turned empty. I sank mechanically into the chair to which he pointed, whilst he himself remained standing a few feet away from me.

"From what you have told me," he said gravely, "I have not the least doubt but that my wife and your mother were sisters."

I gave a little gasp and began to wonder whether this was not all a wild dream. Lord Langerdale remained silent, whilst I recovered myself in some measure.

"Will you tell me about it?" I asked slowly. "I don't understand."

"I will tell you everything," Lord Langerdale said kindly. "This is a great surprise to you, of course, and quite as great a one to me. Here is the story--or, rather, as much as I know of it."

He cleared his throat and took a chair by my side. Everything else in the room except his face was blurred and indistinct, and his voice seemed to come to me from a long distance. But every word he uttered sank into my heart.

"Your grandfather was a very poor and very proud English baronet--Sir Arthur Montavon. My wife Elsie and your mother were his only children, and they were twins. They were presented at Court together, created an equal sensation, and were at once allowed to be the beauties of the season. This was the time when I first knew them, so it is here that I begin my tale.

"Six months after their appearance in Society, Elsie was engaged to be married to me. But your mother seemed to be more difficult to please. She refused several very good offers, and at the end of her first season she was still free.

"I don't know exactly how or where she first met him," Lord Langerdale continued slowly; "but before the following spring your mother was betrothed to the Count de Cartienne. At that time he was one of the richest, the best-looking, and most popular men about town. There seemed to be nothing which he could not do, no art in which he was not proficient, and he was pa.s.sionately in love with your mother. Whether she ever really cared for him I cannot tell; but if she did, it could only have been a very transitory feeling.

"The marriage-day was fixed and was a general topic of conversation. I even believe that your mother had begun to prepare her trousseau, when something happened. Count de Cartienne was deposed from his post of chief favourite in Society, which he at one time held, by a younger and more extraordinary man. That man was----"

"Mr. Ravenor!" I exclaimed.

Lord Langerdale nodded.

"I don't think," he went on, "that you can possibly imagine from the Mr.

Ravenor of to-day what he was when he became the rage of London Society.

He had just returned from his first journey in the East, after some perilous adventures, which had filled the columns of the newspapers for weeks and had already created a strong curiosity about him. I met him, I think, on the first evening he entered a London drawing-room, and I will never forget it.

"He was as handsome as a Greek G.o.d, with limbs magnificently developed by his hardy, vigorous life and rigid asceticism, with the head of a Byron, the manners of a Grandison, and the fire and eloquence of a Burke, when he chose to open his mouth.

"Men and women alike were fascinated, which was all the more remarkable as he sought no intimate amongst the former, and studiously avoided compromising himself with any of the latter, although, Heaven knows, he had no lack of opportunity. The only man with whom he seemed to be on at all friendly terms was de Cartienne; and the only woman to whom he paid any save the most ordinary attention was your mother."

Lord Langerdale paused for several moments and seemed wrapped in a brown study, from which my impatience aroused him. He continued at once:

"Things went on smoothly for a time, and then rumours began to get about.

At first there were only faint whispers, but presently people began to talk openly. Count de Cartienne had better beware, they said, or he would lose his bride. At first he treated all such suggestions with contempt, but the time came when he was forced to consider them seriously.

"Mr. Ravenor published a small volume of poems anonymously, amongst which were some pa.s.sionate love-sonnets addressed to A. M. Everyone was talking of the book and wondering who the new poet was, when, through some treachery in the publisher's office, the secret leaked out, and everyone then knew that those thrilling love-songs were addressed to Alice Montavon.

"De Cartienne went straight to Mr. Ravenor and demanded an explanation.

Mr. Ravenor acknowledged the authors.h.i.+p of the poems, and did not deny that the verses in question were addressed to your mother; further than that he would not say a word, and simply referred de Cartienne to her.

"He went straight to her, poor fellow! and was met with a piteous entreaty that he would release her from her engagement. She loved Mr.

Ravenor and could marry no one else. What followed remains to some extent a secret; but this much we know:

"There was a furious scene between de Cartienne and your mother, which ended in his refusing to give her up and threatening to shoot his rival if ever he saw them together again. Sir Arthur Montavon, who was deeply in de Cartienne's debt, swore that the marriage should take place, and apparently they gained their end, for Mr. Ravenor suddenly disappeared, and it was reported that he had left the country. On the very day before the wedding, however, Society was furnished with a still more sensational piece of scandal; your mother left her home secretly and the companion of her flight was Mr. Ravenor!"

I could sit still no longer, but rose and walked up and down the room with quick, unsteady strides. Lord Langerdale watched me with a great and growing pity in his honest face. There was silence between us for several minutes, during which, after one keen, restless look of inquiry, I kept my face turned away from his. Then he continued his story in a somewhat lower key:

"For two days de Cartienne was virtually a maniac. Then he seemed suddenly to come to his senses, and I think we all--Elsie and I especially--dreaded his terrible, set calmness more even than his previous fury. He made no wild threats, nor did he talk to anyone of his intentions. But we all knew what they were; and when he left London, secretly and alone, we trembled, for we knew that he was going in search of your mother. He needed no help, for he was himself a born detective, and possessed in a marvellous degree the art of disguising himself.

"Every day we searched the newspapers anxiously, dreading lest we should read of the tragedy which we feared was inevitable. But we heard nothing.

The weeks crept on into months and the months to years and still we heard nothing--not even from your mother.

"We advertised, made every possible form of inquiry, but in vain. Then came the news of Mr. Ravenor's s.h.i.+pwreck and supposed death, and we concluded that your mother had perished with him. I accepted a foreign appointment, and only returned to England, after ten years' absence, last week. I heard at once of Mr. Ravenor's marvellous return to life and I wrote to him. The only reply I received was a single sentence:

"'You can tell your wife that her sister is dead. I have no more to say.'

"Only yesterday, to my amazement, I met de Cartienne again, and with him, you, who, I felt sure from the beginning, must be Alice's son. It may seem strange to you that I should know so much and yet know no more. But it is so."

I turned round and faced him slowly.

"Do you mean to say, then, that after her elopement my mother never once communicated with her father or sister?"

"Only in this way. She left a private message for my wife, telling her through whom to forward a letter, but not disclosing her whereabouts. Sir Arthur Montavon intercepted the message and took advantage of it to write a cruel, stern letter, forbidding her ever to appear in his presence again, or to address him or her sister; and I am sorry to say that, at his command, my wife, too, wrote in a censorious vein, hoping to make up for it by sending another letter a few days afterwards. The first letter your mother received; the second missed her. She inherited a good deal of her father's firmness, almost severity, of disposition, and I have no doubt that the receipt of those letters would lead her to cut herself off altogether from her family."

"Then you do not even know where she and Mr. Ravenor were married?" I asked huskily.

Lord Langerdale shook his head, and I noticed that he failed to look me in the face. I braced myself up with a great effort.

"Lord Langerdale," I said quietly, "this is a matter of life or death to me. You seem to avoid my question. Answer me this: Have you any reason to suppose that--that there was no marriage?"