Harry hurried down to Cheltenham, hardly knowing what he was going to do or say when he got there. He went to the hotel and dined alone. "What's all this that's up about Captain Mountjoy?" said a stranger, coming and whispering to him at his table.
The inquirer was almost a stranger, but Harry did know his name. It was Mr. Baskerville, the hunting man. Mr. Baskerville was not rich, and not especially popular, and had no special amusement but that of riding two nags in the winter along the roads of Cheltenham in the direction which the hounds took. It was still summer, and the nags, who had been made to do their work in London, were picking up a little strength in idleness, or, as Mr. Baskerville called it, getting into condition. In the mean time Mr. Baskerville amused himself as well as he could by lying in bed and playing lawn-tennis. He sometimes dined at the hotel, in order that the club might think that he was entertained at friends' houses; but the two places were nearly the same to him, as he could achieve a dinner and half a pint of wine for five or six shillings at each of them. A more empty existence, or, one would be inclined to say, less pleasurable, no one could pass; but he had always a decent coat on his back and a smile on his face, and five shillings in his pocket with which to pay for his dinner. His asking what was up about Scarborough showed, at any rate, that he was very backward in the world's news.
"I believe he has vanished," said Harry.
"Oh yes, of course he's vanished. Everybody knows that—he vanished ever so long ago; but where is he?"
"If you can tell them in Scotland Yard they will be obliged to you."
"I suppose it is true the police are after him? Dear me! Forty thousand a year! This is a very queer story about the property, isn't it?"
"I don't know the story exactly, and therefore can hardly say whether it is queer or not."
"But about the younger son? People say that the father has contrived that the younger son shall have the money. What I hear is that the whole property is to be divided, and that the captain is to have half, on conditions that he keeps out of the way. But I am sure that you know more about it. You used to be intimate with both the brothers. I have seen you down here with the captain. Where is he?" And again he whispered into Harry's ear. But he could not have selected any subject more distasteful, and, therefore, Harry repulsed Mr. Baskerville not in the most courteous manner.
"Hang it! what airs that fellow gives himself," he said to another friend of the same kidney. "That's young Annesley, the son of a twopenny-halfpenny parson down in Hertfordshire. The kind of ways these fellows put on now are unbearable. He hasn't got a horse to ride on, but to hear him talk you'd think he was mounted three days a week."
"He's heir to old Prosper, of Buston Hall."
"How's that? But is he? I never heard that before. What's Buston Hall worth?" Then Mr. Baskerville made up his mind to be doubly civil to Harry Annesley the next time he saw him.
Harry had to consider on that night in what manner he would endeavor to see Florence Mountjoy on the next day. He was thoroughly discontented with himself as he walked about the streets of Cheltenham. He had now not only allowed the disappearance of Scarborough to pass by without stating when and where, and how he had last seen him, but had directly lied on the subject. He had told the man's brother that he had not seen him for some weeks previous, whereas to have concealed his knowledge on such a subject was in itself held to be abominable. He was ashamed of himself, and the more so because there was no one to whom he could talk openly on the matter. And it seemed to him as though all whom he met questioned him as to the man's disappearance, as if they suspected him. What was the man to him, or the man's guilt, or his father, that he should be made miserable? The man's attack upon him had been ferocious in its nature,—so brutal that when he had escaped from Mountjoy Scarborough's clutches there was nothing for him but to leave him lying in the street where, in his drunkenness, he had fallen. And now, in consequence of this, misery had fallen upon himself. Even this empty-headed fellow Baskerville, a man the poverty of whose character Harry perfectly understood, had questioned him about Mountjoy Scarborough. It could not, he thought, be possible that Baskerville could have had any reasons for suspicion, and yet the very sound of the inquiry stuck in his ears.
On the next morning, at eleven o'clock, he knocked at Mrs. Mountjoy's house in Mountpellier Place and asked for the elder lady. Mrs. Mountjoy was out, and Harry at once inquired for Florence. The servant at first seemed to hesitate, but at last showed Harry into the dining-room. There he waited five minutes, which seemed to him to be half an hour, and then Florence came to him. "Your mother is not at home," he said, putting out his hand.
"No, Mr. Annesley, but I think she will be back soon. Will you wait for her?"
"I do not know whether I am not glad that she should be out. Florence, I have something that I must tell you."
"Something that you must tell me!"
He had called her Florence once before, on a happy afternoon which he well remembered, but he was not thinking of that now. Her name, which was always in his mind, had come to him naturally, as though he had no time to pick and choose about names in the importance of the communication which he had to make. "Yes. I don't believe that you were ever really engaged to your cousin Mountjoy."
"No, I never was," she answered, briskly. Harry Annesley was certainly a handsome man, but no young man living ever thought less of his own beauty. He had fair, wavy hair, which he was always submitting to some barber, very much to the unexpressed disgust of poor Florence; because to her eyes the longer the hair grew the more beautiful was the wearer of it. His forehead, and eyes, and nose were all perfect in their form—
"Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command."
There was a peculiar brightness in his eye, which would have seemed to denote something absolutely great in his character had it not been for the wavering indecision of his mouth. There was as it were a vacillation in his lips which took away from the manliness of his physiognomy. Florence, who regarded his face as almost divine, was yet conscious of some weakness about his mouth which she did not know how to interpret. But yet, without knowing why it was so, she was accustomed to expect from him doubtful words, half expressed words, which would not declare to her his perfected thoughts—as she would have them declared. He was six feet high, but neither broad nor narrow, nor fat nor thin, but a very Apollo in Florence's eye. To the elders who knew him the quintessence of his beauty lay in the fact that he was altogether unconscious of it. He was a man who counted nothing on his personal appearance for the performance of those deeds which he was most anxious to achieve. The one achievement now essentially necessary to his happiness was the possession of Florence Mountjoy; but it certainly never occurred to him that he was more likely to obtain this because he was six feet high, or because his hair waved becomingly.
"I have supposed so," he said, in answer to her last assertion.
"You ought to have known it for certain. I mean to say that, had I ever been engaged to my cousin, I should have been miserable at such a moment as this. I never should have given him up because of the gross injustice done to him about the property. But his disappearance in this dreadful way would, I think, have killed me. As it is, I can think of nothing else, because he is my cousin."
"It is very dreadful," said Harry. "Have you any idea what can have happened to him?"
"Not in the least. Have you?"
"None at all, but—"
"But what?"
"I was the last person who saw him."
"You saw him last!"
"At least, I know no one who saw him after me."
"Have you told them?"
"I have told no one but you. I have come down here to Cheltenham on purpose to tell you."
"Why me?" she said, as though struck with fear at such an assertion on his part.
"I must tell some one, and I have not known whom else to tell. His father appears not at all anxious about him. His brother I do not altogether trust. Were I to go to these men, who are only looking after their money, I should be communicating with his enemies. Your mother already regards me as his enemy. If I told the police I should simply be brought into a court of justice, where I should be compelled to mention your name."
"Why mine?"
"I must begin the story from the beginning. One night I was coming home in London very late, about two o'clock, when whom should I meet in the street suddenly but Mountjoy Scarborough. It came out afterward that he had then been gambling; but when he encountered me he was intoxicated. He took me suddenly by the collar and shook me violently, and did his best to maltreat me. What words were spoken I cannot remember; but his conduct to me was as that of a savage beast. I struggled with him in the street as a man would struggle who is attacked by a wild dog. I think that he did not explain the cause of his hatred, though, of course, my memory as to what took place at that moment is disturbed and imperfect; but I did know in my heart why it was that he had quarrelled with me."
"Why was it?" Florence asked.
"Because he thought that I had ventured to love you."
"No, no!" shrieked Florence; "he could not have thought that."
"He did think so, and he was right enough. If I have never said so before, I am bound at any rate to say it now." He paused for a moment, but she made him no answer. "In the struggle between us he fell on the pavement against a rail;—and then I left him."
"Well?"
"He has never been heard of since. On the following day, in the afternoon, I left London for Buston; but nothing had been then heard of his disappearance. I neither knew of it nor suspected it. The question is, when others were searching for him, was I bound to go to the police and declare what I had suffered from him that night? Why should I connect his going with the outrage which I had suffered?"
"But why not tell it all?"
"I should have been asked why he had quarrelled with me. Ought I to have said that I did not know? Ought I to have pretended that there was no cause? I did know, and there was a cause. It was because he thought that I might prevail with you, now that he was a beggar, disowned by his own father."
"I would never have given him up for that," said Florence.
"But do you not see that your name would have been brought in,—that I should have had to speak of you as though I thought it possible that you loved me?" Then he paused, and Florence sat silent. But another thought struck him now. It occurred to him that under the plea put forward he would appear to seek shelter from his silence as to her name. He was aware how anxious he was on his own behalf not to mention the occurrence in the street, and it seemed that he was attempting to escape under the pretence of a fear that her name would be dragged in. "But independently of that I do not see why I should be subjected to the annoyance of letting it be known that I was thus attacked in the streets. And the time has now gone by. It did not occur to me when first he was missed that the matter would have been of such importance. Now it is too late."
"I suppose that you ought to have told his father."
"I think that I ought to have done so. But at any rate I have come to explain it all to you. It was necessary that I should tell some one. There seems to be no reason to suspect that the man has been killed."
"Oh, I hope not; I hope not that."
"He has been spirited away—out of the way of his creditors. For myself I think that it has all been done with his father's connivance. Whether his brother be in the secret or not I cannot tell, but I suspect he is. There seems to be no doubt that Captain Scarborough himself has run so overhead into debt as to make the payment of his creditors impossible by anything short of the immediate surrender of the whole property. Some month or two since they all thought that the squire was dying, and that there would be nothing to do but to sell the property which would then be Mountjoy's, and pay themselves. Against this the dying man has rebelled, and has come, as it were, out of the grave to disinherit the son who has already contrived to disinherit himself. It is all an effort to save Tretton."
"But it is dishonest," said Florence.
"No doubt about it. Looking at it any way it is dishonest, Either the inheritance must belong to Mountjoy still, or it could not have been his when he was allowed to borrow money upon it."
"I cannot understand it. I thought it was entailed upon him. Of course it is nothing to me. It never could have been anything."
"But now the creditors declare that they have been cheated, and assert that Mountjoy is being kept out of the way to aid old Mr. Scarborough in the fraud. I cannot but say that I think it is so. But why he should have attacked me just at the moment of his going, or why, rather, he should have gone immediately after he had attacked me, I cannot say. I have no concern whatever with him or his money, though I hope—I hope that I may always have much with you. Oh, Florence, you surely have known what has been within my heart."
To this appeal she made no response, but sat awhile considering what she would say respecting Mountjoy Scarborough and his affairs.
"Am I to keep all this a secret?" she asked him at last.
"You shall consider that for yourself. I have not exacted from you any silence on the matter. You may tell whom you please, and I shall not consider that I have any ground of complaint against you. Of course for my own sake I do not wish it to be told. A great injury was done me, and I do not desire to be dragged into this, which would be another injury. I suspect that Augustus Scarborough knows more than he pretends, and I do not wish to be brought into the mess by his cunning. Whether you will tell your mother you must judge yourself."
"I shall tell nobody unless you bid me." At that moment the door of the room was opened, and Mrs. Mountjoy entered, with a frown upon her brow. She had not yet given up all hope that Mountjoy might return, and that the affairs of Tretton might be made to straighten themselves.
"Mamma, Mr. Annesley is here."
"So I perceive, my dear."
"I have come to your daughter to tell her how dearly I love her," said Harry, boldly.
"Mr. Annesley, you should have come to me before speaking to my daughter."
"Then I shouldn't have seen her at all."
"You should have left that as it might be. It is not at all a proper thing that a young gentleman should come and address a young lady in this way behind her only parent's back."
"I asked for you, and I did not know that you would not be at home."
"You should have gone away at once—at once. You know how terribly the family is cut up by this great misfortune to our cousin Mountjoy. Mountjoy Scarborough has been long engaged to Florence."
"No, mamma; no, never."
"At any rate, Mr. Annesley knows all about it. And that knowledge ought to have kept him away at the present moment. I must beg him to leave us now."
Then Harry took his hat and departed; but he had great consolation in feeling that Florence had not repudiated his love, which she certainly would have done had she not loved him in return. She had spoken no word of absolute encouragement, but there had much more of encouragement than of repudiation in her manner.