It was some time before he would bring himself to admit it even to himself, for he was wont1 to pride himself on his superiority to all attacks of the tender passion.
Often and often had he amused himself and his chosen companions by ridiculing2 the conditions of those weak mortals who allowed themselves to be carried away by what he termed a weak and contemptible3 affection for the other sex.
Marriage, he used to say, was entirely4 a matter of business. A man didn't marry until he was obliged, and then only did so to better himself. As to love, and that kind of thing—well, it was an exploded idea—a myth which had died out; at any rate, too absurd a thing altogether for a man possessed5 of common sense—for such a man, for instance, as Jasper Adelstone. He had seen plenty of pretty women and was received by them with anything but disfavor. He was good-looking, almost handsome, and would have been that if he could have got rid of the sharp, cunning glint of his small eyes; and he was clever and accomplished6. He was just the man, it would have been supposed, to fall a victim to the tender passion; but he had stuck fast by his principles, and gone stealthily along the road to success, with his cold smile ready for everyone in general, and not a warm beam in his heart for anyone in particular.
And now! Yes, he was in love—in love as deeply, unreasoningly, as impulsively7 as the veriest school-boy.
This was very annoying! It would have been very annoying if the object of his passion had been an heiress or the lady of title whom he had in his inmost mind determined8 to marry, if he married at all; for he would have preferred to have attained9 to his ambition without any awkward and inconvenient10 love-making.
[113]
But the girl who had inspired him with this sudden and unreasoning passion was, much to his disgust, neither an heiress nor an offshoot of nobility.
She was a mere11 nobody—the niece of an obscure painter! She was not even in society!
There was no good to be got by marrying her, none whatever. She could not help him a single step on his ambitious path through life. On the first evening of his meeting with Stella, when the beauty, and, more than her beauty, the nameless charm of her bright, pure freshness, overwhelmed and startled him, he took himself to task very seriously.
"Jasper," he said, "you won't go and make a fool of yourself, I hope! She is entirely out of your line. She is only a pretty girl; you've seen a score, a hundred as pretty, or prettier; and she's a mere nobody! Oh, no, you won't make a fool of yourself—you'll go back to town to-morrow morning."
But he did not go back to town; instead, he went into the conservatory12 at the Rectory, and made up a bouquet13 and took it to the cottage, and sank deeper still into the mire14 of foolishness, as he would have called it.
But even then it was not too late. He might have escaped even then by dint15 of calling up his selfish nature and thinking of all his ambitions; but Stella unfortunately roused—what was more powerful in him than his sudden love—his self-conceit16.
She actually dared to defend Lord Leycester Wyndward!
That was almost the finishing stroke, unwittingly dealt by Stella, and he went away inwardly raging with incipient17 jealousy18.
But the last straw was yet to come that should break the back of all his prudent19 resolves, and that was the meeting with Stella and Lord Leycester in the river-woods, and Lord Leycester's attack on him.
That moment—the moment when he lay on the ground looking up at the dark, handsome, angry, and somewhat scornful face of the young peer—Jasper Adelstone registered a vow20.
He vowed21 that come what would, by fair means or foul22, he would have Stella.
He vowed that he would snatch her from the haughty23 and fiery24 young lord who had dared to hurl25 him, Jasper, to the dust and insult him.
What love he already possessed for her suddenly sprang up into a fierce flame of jealous passion, and as he rode home to the Rectory he repeated that vow several times, and at once, without the loss of an hour, began to hunt about for some means to fulfill26 it.
He was no fool, this Jasper Adelstone, for all his conceit, and he knew the immense odds27 against him if Lord Leycester really meant anything by his attention to Stella; he knew what fearful advantages Leycester held—all the Court cards were in his hands. He was handsome, renowned28, noble, wealthy—a suitor whom the highest in the land would think twice about before refusing.
He almost guessed, too, that Stella already loved Leycester;[114] he had seen her face turned to the young lord—had heard her voice as she spoke29 to him.
He ground his teeth together with vicious rage as he thought of the difference between her way of speaking to him and to Leycester.
"But she shall speak to me, look at me like that before the game is over," he swore to himself. "I can afford to wait for my opportunity; it will come, and I shall know how to use it. Curse him! Yes, I am determined now. I will take him from her."
It was a bold, audacious resolution; but then Jasper was both bold and audacious in the most dangerous of ways, in the cold, calculating manner of a cunning, unscrupulous man.
He was clever—undoubtedly clever; he had been very successful, and had made that success by his own unaided efforts. Already, young as he was, he was beginning to be talked about. When people were in any great difficulty in his branch of the law, they went to him, sure of finding him cool, ready, and capable.
His chambers31 in the inn held a little museum of secrets—secrets about persons of rank and standing32, who were supposed to be quite free from such inconvenient things as skeletons in cupboards.
People came to him when they were in any social fix; when they owed more money than they could pay; when they wanted a divorce, or were anxious to hush33 up some secret, whose threatened disclosure involved shame and disgrace, and Jasper Adelstone was always ready with sound advice, and, better still, some subtle scheme or plan.
Yes, he was a successful man, and had failed so seldom—almost never—that he felt he could be confident in this matter, too.
"I have always done well for others," he thought. "I have gained some difficult points for other people; now I will undertake this difficult matter for myself."
He went home to the Rectory and pondered, recalling all he knew of old Etheridge. It was very little, and the rector could tell him no more than he knew already.
James Etheridge lived the life of a recluse34, appearing to have no friends or relations save Stella; nothing was known about his former life. He had come down into the quiet valley some years ago, and settled at once in the mode of existence which was palpable to all.
"Is he, was he, ever married?" asked Jasper.
The rector thought not.
"I don't know," he said. "He certainly hasn't been married down here. I don't think anything is known about him."
And with this Jasper had to be content. All the next day, after his meeting with Stella and Leycester, he strolled about the meadows hoping to see her, but failed. He knew he ought to be in London, but he could not tear himself away.
His arm felt a little stiff, and though there was nothing else the matter with it, he bound it up and hung it in a sling35, explaining to the rector that he had fallen from his horse.
[115]
Then he heard of the party at the Hall, and grinding his teeth with envy and malice36, he stole into the lane and watched Stella start.
In his eyes she looked doubly beautiful since he had sworn to have her, and he wandered about the lane and meadows thinking of her, and thinking, too, of Lord Leycester all that evening, waiting for her to return, to get one look at her.
Fortune favored him with more than a look, for while he was waiting the boy from the post-office came down the lane, and Jasper, with very little difficulty, persuaded him to give up the telegram to his keeping.
I am sorry to say that Jasper was very much tempted37 to open that telegram, and if he resisted the temptation, it was not in consequence of any pangs38 of conscience, but because he thought that it would scarcely be worth while.
"It is only some commission for a picture," he said to himself. "People don't communicate secretly by telegram excepting in cipher39."
So he delivered it unopened as we know, but when he heard that sudden exclamation40 of the old man's he was heartily41 sorry he had not opened it.
When he parted from Stella at the gate, he walked off down the lane, but only until out of sight, and then returned under the shadow of the hedge and waited.
He could see into the studio, and see the old man sitting in the chair bowed with sorrow; and Stella's graceful42 figure hovering43 about him.
"There was something worth knowing in that telegram," he muttered. "I was a fool not to make myself acquainted with it. What will he do now?"
He thought the question out, still watching, and the old man's movements seen plainly through the lighted windows—for Stella had only drawn44 the muslin curtain too hurriedly and imperfectly—afforded an answer.
"He is going up to town," he muttered.
He knew that there was an early market train, and felt sure that the old man was going by it.
Hastily glancing at his watch, he set his hat firmly on his head, dipped his arm out of the sling, and ran toward the Rectory; entering by a side door he went to his room, took a bag containing some papers, secured his coat and umbrella, and leaving a note on the breakfast-table to the effect that he was suddenly obliged to go to town, made for the station.
As he did not wish to be seen, he kept in the shadow and waited, and was rewarded in a few minutes by the appearance of Mr. Etheridge.
There was no one on the station beside themselves, and Jasper had no difficulty in keeping out of the old man's way. A sleepy porter sauntered up and down, yawning and swinging his lantern, and Jasper decided45 that he wouldn't trouble him by taking a ticket.
The train came up, Mr. Etheridge got into a first-class carriage,[116] and Jasper, waiting until the last moment, sprang into one at the further end of the train.
"Never mind the ticket," he said to the porter. "I'll pay at the other end."
The train was an express from Wyndward, and Jasper, who knew how to take care of himself, pulled the curtains closed, drew a traveling cap from his bag, and curling himself up went to sleep, while the old man, a few carriages further off, sat with his white head bowed in sorrowful and wakeful meditation46.
When the train arrived at the terminus, Jasper, awaking from a refreshing47 sleep, drew aside the curtain and watched Mr. Etheridge get out, waited until he approached the cab-stand, then following up behind him nearer, heard him tell the cabman to drive him to King's Hotel, Covent Garden.
Then Jasper called a cab and drove to the square in which his chambers were situated48, dismissed the cab, and saw it crawl away out of sight, and climbed up the staircase which served as the approach to the many doors which lined the narrow grim passages.
On one of these doors his name was inscribed49 in black letters; he opened this door with a key, struck a light, and lit a candle which stood on a ledge50, and entered a small room which served for the purpose of a clerk's office and a client's waiting-room.
Beyond this, and communicating by a green baize door, was his own business-room, but there were still other rooms behind, one his living-room, another in which he slept, and beyond that a smaller room.
He entered this, and holding the light on high allowed its rays to fall upon a man lying curled up on a small bed.
He was a very small man, with a thin, parchment-lined face, crowned by closely-cropped hair, which is ambiguously described as auburn.
This was Jasper's clerk, factotum51, slave. He it was who sat in the outer office and received the visitors, and ushered52 them into Jasper's presence or put them off with excuses.
He was a singular-looking man, no particular age or individuality. Some of Jasper's friends were often curious as to where Jasper had picked him up, but Jasper always evaded53 the question or put it by with some jest, and Scrivell's antecedents remained a mystery.
That he was a devoted54 and never tiring servant was palpable to all; in Jasper's presence he seemed to live only to obey his will and anticipate his wishes. Now, at the first touch of Jasper's hand, the man started and sat bolt upright, screening his eyes from the light and staring at Jasper expectantly.
"Awake, Scrivell?" asked Jasper.
"Yes, sir, quite," was the reply; and indeed he looked as if he had been on the alert for hours past.
"That's right. I want you. Get up and dress and come into the next room. I'll leave the candle."
"You needn't, sir," was the reply. "I can see."
Jasper nodded.
[117]
"I believe you can—like a cat," he said, and carried the card with him.
In a few minutes—in a very few minutes—the door opened and Scrivell entered.
He looked wofully thin and emaciated55, was dressed in an old but still respectable suit of black, and might have been taken for an old man but for the sharp, alert look in his gray eyes, and the sandy hair, which showed no signs of gray.
Jasper was sitting before his dressing-table opening his letters, which he had carried in from the other room.
"Oh, here you are," he said. "I want you to go out."
Scrivell nodded.
"Do you know King's Hotel, Covent Garden?" asked Jasper.
"King's? Yes, sir."
"Well, I want you to go down there."
He paused, but he might have known the man would not express any surprise.
"Yes, sir," he said, as coolly as if Jasper had told him to go to bed again.
"I want you to go down there and keep a look-out for me. A gentleman has just driven there, an old man, rather bent56, with long white hair. Understand?"
"Yes," was the quiet reply.
"He will probably go out the first thing, quite early. I want to know where he goes."
"Only the first place he goes to?" was the question.
Jasper hesitated.
"Suppose you keep an eye upon him generally till, say one o'clock, then come back to me. I want to know his movements, you understand, Scrivell!"
"I understand, sir," was the answer. "Any name?"
Jasper hesitated a moment, and a faint color came into his face. Somehow he was conscious of a strange reluctance57 to mention the name—her name; but he overcame it.
"Yes, Etheridge," he said, quietly, "but that doesn't matter. Don't make any inquiries58 at the hotel or elsewhere, if you can help it."
"Very good, sir," said the man, and noiselessly he turned and left the room.
Little did Stella, dreaming in the cottage by the sweet smelling meadows and the murmuring river, think that the first woof of the web which Jasper Adelstone was spinning for her was commenced that night in the grim chambers of Lincoln's-inn.
As little did Lady Wyndward guess, as she lay awake, vainly striving to find some means of averting59 the consequences of her son's "infatuation" for the painter's niece, that a keener and less scrupulous30 mind had already set to work in the same direction.
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1
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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ridiculing
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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conservatory
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| n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的 | |
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bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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mire
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| n.泥沼，泥泞；v.使...陷于泥泞，使...陷入困境 | |
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dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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18
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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19
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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fulfill
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| vt.履行，实现，完成；满足，使满意 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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30
scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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31
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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recluse
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| n.隐居者 | |
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sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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39
cipher
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| n.零；无影响力的人；密码 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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42
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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50
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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51
factotum
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| n.杂役；听差 | |
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52
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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54
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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55
emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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56
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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57
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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averting
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| 防止，避免( avert的现在分词 )； 转移 | |
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