University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
SHOWING WHAT MAKES A HORSE-STEALER A GENTLEMAN.

It was the first day of September, and most of the gold threads
were drawn from the tangled and vari-colored woof of London
society. “The season” was over. Two gentlemen stood in the
window of Crockford's, one a Jew barrister (kersey enough for
more russet company by birth and character, but admitted to the
society of “costly stuff” for the equivalent he gave as a purveyor
of scandal), and the other a commoner, whose wealth and
fashion gave him the privilege of out-staying the season in town,
without publishing in the Morning Post a better reason than
inclination for so unnatural a procedure.

Count Spiridion Pallardos was seen to stroll slowly up St.
James' street, on the opposite side.

“Look there, Abrams!” said Mr. Townley Mynners, “there's
the Greek who was taken up at one time by the Aymars. I
thought he was transported.”

“No! he still goes to the Aymars, though he is `in Coventry'
everywhere else. Dallinger had him arrested—for horse-stealing,
wasn't it? The officer nabbed him as he was handing Lady
Angelica out of her carriage in Berkeley square. I remember
hearing of it two months ago. What a chop-fallen blackguard it
looks!”

“Blackguard! Come, come, man!—give the devil his due!”
deprecated the more liberal commoner; “may be it's from not
having seen a gentleman for the last week, but, hang me if I

don't think that same horse-stealer turning the corner is as crack-looking
a man as I ever saw from this window. What's o'clock?”

“Half-past four,” replied the scandal-monger, swallowing, with
a bland smile, what there was to swallow in Mynners's two-edged
remark, and turning suddenly on his heel.

Pallardos slowly took his way along Piccadilly, and was presently
in Berkeley square, at the door of the Aymars. The porter
admitted him without question, and he mounted, unannounced,
to the drawing-room. The ladies sat by the window, looking out
upon the garden.

“Is it you, Spiridion?” said Lady Aymar, “I had hoped you
would not come to-day!”

“Oh, mamma!” appealed Lady Angelica.

“Welcome all other days of the year, my dear. Pallardos—
warmly welcome, of course”—continued Lady Aymar, “but—to-day—oh
God! you have no idea what the first of September is—
to us—to my husband!”

Lady Aymar covered her face with her hands, and the tears
streamed through her fingers.

“Pardon me,” said Pallardos, “pardon me, my dear lady, but
I am here by the earl's invitation, to dine at six.”

Lady Aymar sprang from her seat in astonishment.

“By the earl's invitation, did you say? Angelica, what can
that mean? Was it by note, Count Pallardos?”

“By note,” he replied.

“I am amazed!” she said, “truly amazed! Does he mean to
have a confidant for his family secret? Is his insanity on one
point affecting his reason on all? What shall we do, Angelica?”

“We may surely confide in Spiridion, whatever the meaning
of it, or the result”—gently murmured Lady Angelica.

“We may—we may!” said Lady Aymar. “Prepare him for
it as you will. I pray Heaven to help me through with it this
day without upsetting my own reason. I shall meet you at dinner,
Spiridion.”

With her hands twisted together in a convulsive knot, Lady
Aymar slowly and musingly passed into the conservatory, on her
way to her own room, leaving to themselves two lovers who had
much to talk of beside dwelling upon a mystery which, even to
Lady Angelica, who knew most of it, was wholly inexplicable.
Yet it was partially explained by the trembling girl—explained
as a case of monomania, and with the brevity of a disagreeable
subject, but listened to by her lover with a different feeling—a
conviction as of a verfied dream, and a vague, inexplicable
terror which he could neither reason down nor account for. But
the lovers must be left to themselves, by the reader as well as by
Lady Aymar; and meantime, till the dinner hour, when our
story begins again, we may glance at a note which was received,
and replied to, by Lord Aymar in the library below.

It seemed like the first day after a death, in the house of Lord
Aymar. An unaccountable hush prevailed through the servants'
offices; the grey-headed old butler crept noiselessly about, making
his preparations for dinner, and the doors, that were opened and
shut, betrayed the careful touch of apprehension. With penetrating
and glassy clearness, the kitchen clock, seldom heard
above stairs, resounded through the house, striking six.

In the same neglected attire which she had worn in the morning,
Lady Aymar re-entered the drawing-room. The lids were
drawn up around her large eyes with a look of unresisting distress,
and she walked with relaxed steps, and had, altogether, an absent
air and seemed full of dread. The interrupted lovers ceased talking
as she approached, but she did not remark the silence, and
walked, errandless, from corner to corner.

The butler announced dinner.

“May I give your ladyship an arm?” asked Pallardos.

“Oh God! is it dinner-time already!” she exclaimed with a
voice of terror. “Williams! is Lord Aymar below?”

“In the dining-room, miladi.”

She took Spiridion's arm, and they descended the stairs. As
they approached the dining-room, her arm trembled so violently
in his that he turned to her with the fear that she was about to
fall. He did not speak. A vague dread, which was more than
he had caught from her looks—a something unaccountably heavy
at his own heart—made his voice cling to his throat. He bowed
to Lord Aymar.

His noble host stood leaning upon the mantel-piece, pale, but
seeming less stern and cold than suffering and nerved to bear
pain.

“I am glad to see you, my dear count!” he said, giving him
his hand with an affectionateness that he had never before manifested.
“Are you quite well?” he added, scrutinizing his features
closely with the question—“for, like myself, you seem to
have grown pale upon this—September dullness.”

“I am commonly less well in this month than in any other,”
said Pallardos, “and—now I think of it—I had forgotten that I
arose this morning with a depressior of spirits as singular as it

was unendurable. I forgot it, when I received your lordship's
note, in the happiness the day was to bring me.”

The lovers exchanged looks, unremarked, apparently, by either
Lord or Lady Aymar, and the conversation relapsed into the
commonplaces of dinner-table civility. Spiridion observed that
the footmen were excluded, the old butler alone serving them at
table; and that the shutters, of which he got a chance glimpse
between the curtains, were carefully closed. Once or twice Pallardos
roused himself with the thought that he was ill playing the
part of an agreeable guest, and proposed some question that might
lead to discussion; but the spirits of Lady Angelica seemed
frighted to silence, and Lord and Lady Aymar were wholly
absorbed, or were at least unconscious of their singular incommunicativeness.

Dinner dragged on slowly—Lady Aymar retarding every
remove with terrified and flurried eagerness. Pallardos remarked
that she did not eat, but she asked to be helped again from every
dish before its removal. Her fork rattled on the plate with the
trembling of her hand, and, once or twice, an outbreak of hysterical
tears was evidently prevented by a stern word and look from
Lord Aymar.

The butler leaned over to his mistress's ear.

“No—no—no! Not yet—not yet!” she exclaimed, in a
hurried voice, “one minute more!” But the clock at that
instant struck seven, counted by that table company in breathless
silence. Pallardos felt his heart sink, he knew not why.

Lord Aymar spoke quickly and hoarsely.

“Turn the key, Williams.”

Lady Aymar screamed and covered her face with her hands.

“Remove the cloth!” he again ordered precipitately.

The butler's hand trembled. He fumbled with the corner of
the cloth a moment, and seemed to want strength or courage to
fulfil his office. With a sudden effort, Lord Aymar seized and
threw the cloth to the other end of the apartment.

“There!” cried he, starting to his feet, and pointing to the
bare table, “there! there!” he repeated, seizing the hand of
Lady Angelica, as she arose terrified upon her feet. “See you
nothing? Do you see nothing?”

With a look, at her father, of blank inquiry—a look of pity at
her mother, sunk helpless upon the arm of her chair—a look at
Pallardos, who, with open mouth, and eyes starting from their
sockets, stood gazing upon the table, heedless of all present—she
answered—“Nothing—my dear father!—nothing!”

He flung her arm suddenly from his hand.

“I knew it,” said he, with angry emphasis. “Take her, shameless
woman! Take your child, and begone!”

But Pallardos laid his hand upon the earl's arm.

“My lord! my lord!” he said, in a tone of fearful suppression
of outery, “can we not remove this hideous object? How it
glares at you!—at me! Why does it look at me! What is it,
Lord Aymar? What brings that ghastly head here? Oh God!
oh God! I have seen it so often!”

“You?—you have seen it?” suddenly asked Lady Aymar, in
a whisper. “Is there anything to see? Do you see the same
dreadful sight, Spiridion?” Her voice rose, with the last question,
to a scream.

Pallardos did not answer. He had forgotten the presence of
them all. He struggled a moment, gasping and choking for self-control,
and then, with a sudden movement, clutched at the bare
table. His empty hand slowly opened, and his strength sufficed

to pass his finger across the palm. He staggered backward with
an idiotic laugh, and was received in his fall by the trembling
arms of Lady Angelica. A motion from Lord Aymar conveyed
to his faithful servant that the phantom was vanishing! The
door was flung open, and the household summoned.

“Count Pallardos has fainted from the heat of the room,” said
Lord Aymar “Place him upon my bed! And—Lady Aymar!—
will you step into the library—I would speak with you a moment!”

There was humility and beseechingness in the last few words of
Lord Aymar, which fell strangely on the ear of the affrighted and
guilty woman. Her mind had been too fearfully tasked to comprehend
the meaning of that changed tone, but, with a vague feeling
of relief, she staggered through the hall, and the door of the
library closed behind her.