CHAPTER VII.

NEMESIS.

During the long voyage of nearly three thousand miles to Batavia, Derval's health and strength came back, but not his old elasticity of spirit. He had ever one thought--Clara! and the disappointment and mortification he endured were keen and bitter.

Now the once happy time of love and lingering at Finglecombe seemed, indeed, as an unreal mirage, a vanished oasis in the dull grey desert of his existence. He ceased now to seek for such explanations of her silence as his imagination might suggest; though times there were, when a great terror came over him, that she was dead; yet it was passing strange, that it was amid the mighty waste of the Indian ocean he was fated to hear some tidings of her--tidings that were, certainly, somewhat bewildering.

In latitude 12° south and longitude 100° west, the _Amethyst_ spoke with a large steamer, from the Red Sea, bound to Australia, and from which Captain Talbot obtained some London papers, which proved of keen interest, when so far from home, though they were a month or two old.

In one of these Derval saw, among fashionable gossip, a marriage as being on the tapis between "the only daughter of Lord Oakhampton and young Mr. Hampton of Finglecombe, Devonshire."

Derval could scarcely believe his eyes, as he read this strange notice again and again. What did the mystery mean--or to what or whom did it point? Could it be some mistake with regard to himself? Had Lord Oakhampton given to Clara his consent to their engagement. If so, whence her mysterious silence? That his half-brother, Rookleigh, was the person to whom the printed piece of gossip referred, never once occurred to honest Derval; but whatever it meant, the date of the paper, some six weeks old; assured him that she must have been at that period alive and well. This episode gave him much food for reflection, and his mind was full of it when the _Amethyst_ encountered that terrible gale, in which she did not founder, though another vessel did so within sight of her.

The tornado, for such it was, struck her suddenly, at a time when, luckily for the ship and all on board, she was running about ten knots an hour, with all her sails close-reefed, through haze that thickened fast to warm rain. The rise of the whirlwind was instantaneous, and the fore and main topsails were blown clean out of the bolt-ropes, while a sea was shipped that rolled aft leaving all on deck knee-deep in water.

The wind was not blowing steadily, but, strange to say, came in a series of rapid and dreadful gusts, tearing up the sea in such a fashion that the whole air was a mass of foam as high as the mainyard. The _Amethyst_ careened heavily over to her port side, with her gunnel in the water, and her whole deck afloat with fragments of sail, ropes, spars, and blocks flying about. The masts bent like willow wands, and overhead all the loose rigging flew wildly about in loops and bights.

In addition to the thunder of the sea, and the deep hoarse bellowing of the gusty wind, was the crackling and crashing of blocks and ropes, of sails and of all loose objects, dashed hither and thither, as wave after wave deluged the deck.

Amid this hurly-burly of the elements, the mysterious paragraph was ever in Derval's mind, and he thought how hard it would be to perish now, and never know the meaning of it, or learn whether happiness or misery were awaiting him at home.

Home! how mighty was the waste of waters he had to traverse ere he could see its white cliffs again.

So violent was the fury of the storm, that to see the hands aloft endeavouring to furl or secure the fragments of the topsails, was calculated to strike terror, as momentarily they seemed in danger of being whirled off into the air.

Half a mile distant a partly dismasted ship, with the flag of the Royal Naval Reserve flying reversed at her gaff-peak, could be seen rising and falling beautifully on the long waves, at one time showing all her bows and nearly all her side, anon the whole line of her deck swept of everything from stem to stern, with her drenched crew clinging to the lower rigging or belaying pins. One moment she seemed lifted as if on the summit of a green hill, and the next seemed sunk in the deep dark valley; but it soon became evident to the eyes of Captain Talbot, and of all on board the _Amethyst_, that the buoyancy of the stranger was gone--that she must have sprung a leak and was settling down in the water with terrible rapidity.

Even if boats could have been hoisted out, it would have been impossible to have succoured her in such a sea, and ere long, while a cry came across from her crew, to be echoed by another from that of the _Amethyst_, she went down by the stern and vanished from sight with every man on board of her.

"And this might have been our fate!" was the thought of Derval.

The tempest passed away to tear up other oceans, but so agitated was the water, that the _Amethyst_ pitched and lurched heavily, while a new set of topsails were bent upon her; all damages made so far good, and with a steady breeze she began to enter the straits of Sunda. By noon next day the south-east point of the Isle of Lombock, with its great conical peak, eight thousand feet in height, bore S.S.W. on the starboard bow, and Captain Talbot steered for the strait of Allas, passed the isle to the westward and that of Sumbawa to the westward, which is reckoned the best and safest way to the eastward of Java; and at the beginning of the end of his pilgrimage, after running along the shore of Madura--the land of cotton, rice, and edible nests--Derval heard, with a sigh of satisfaction, the anchor let go in the roads of Batavia, as the ship swung at her moorings, with thirty-five fathoms and the small bower out, and the hands went aloft to furl the sails.

In his anxiety to return, to be off again as soon as possible, no man in the ship equalled Derval in his activity, with regard to getting the cargo out and another in, and daily he counted the hours while watching from the deck the lovely low green isles that stud the beautiful bay, the white-walled city, with its two-and-twenty bastions--"the Queen of the East," with all her palaces, villas, and trees, for there the Dutch, true to their national taste, have covered every available spot with verdure, flowers, and the brightest foliage.

Finally, the ballast and the last casks of sugar and turmeric were on board, the hatches battened down, and the boats hoisted in, and after a month's sojourn, in which he did not spend an idle hour, with a glow of joy he heard the orders given that were to take the ship out of the roadstead of Batavia.

"Mr. Grummet," cried the captain, "weather bit the chain forward, man the windlass, heave and haul! Mr. Hampton, get the topsails loose--I see they are furled with reefs."

"Away aloft, my lads," said Derval, "make sail on her with a will."

"Sheet home and hoist away--up with the yards to the caps; let fall the courses."

Some of the head sails were now roused out of their nettings, the foretopmast, staysail, and spanker were set, and then she was fully under weigh. She went through the water "like a thing of life," and the flat Batavian shore began to sink.

"Home to England at last--home!" thought Derval as he looked over the side and saw the waves running under the counter, while he began to reckon for the thousandth time the probable period the homeward voyage might consume.

And now to take another homeward glance while that long voyage is in progress.

It was quite natural now, seeing so much as he did of a girl so beautiful as Clara, that in Rookleigh, though as yet he had never dared to attempt to caress her, or do more than take her passive or unwilling hand in his, the admiration of her person and inclination for her should increase, as a sense of propriety in her grew upon him; and also, that the opposition and indifference, with which he knew her heart was filled, should invite him to stronger efforts to reach, to win, and control it.

An illness that fell upon her delayed the marriage, which Rookleigh had duly paragraphed in the papers as forthcoming. He knew now, that the ship which had perished near the Straits of Sunda was not the _Amethyst_; and he knew, moreover, from a visit he paid to her owners, that she was now on her homeward way, and that there was no time to be lost!

Yet the season of spring was nearly over before Clara, who had recovered slowly, at her father's pleasant house in the western suburbs of London, could face in any way the fate before her,--a fate that seemed terribly close now, and from which there was no escape but her own death, or the degradation of her father.

She saw, as part of a terrible phantasmagoria, her wedding dress, and other dresses, her nuptial trousseau, strewed all over her room, on her bed, on the chairs, reflected over and over again in the pier-glasses; her toilet-table littered with ornaments which, though rare and beautiful, she loathed to wear.

Guests were, of course, invited--a few only, however, as her father wished the sacrifice (for such he deemed it too) completed very quietly; the bridesmaids were selected--only four, all in the same costume, with ornaments the gift of the bridegroom; and to Clara, their flippant gossip, their conversation for ever on one topic--the marriage--girls whom she only knew as having met them "in society," or little more,--were a source of perpetual worry and irritation to her.

Rookleigh's mother, now in all her glory, came and went at will, quite _en famille_ at Lord Oakhampton's house; and she too, with her pale hazel eyes (the golden tint had faded out of them now), was another source of irritation to Clara, who looked so white, so wild-eyed and nervous, that her father, poor man, was crushed in heart and soul at the sight of her.

She felt like a poor little fly in the toils of some enormous spider. Never before did she think it was in her gentle nature to loathe any human being as she loathed this young man, whom she was so shortly to promise to love, honour, and obey, and with whom she was to go through the long weary years of the life that lay between to-morrow and the grave.

And in these years that would inexorably come, what might not his conduct become, and his treatment of her be, if, in the first flush of his own youth and of her beauty, he would be thus so unyieldingly cruel as to make her hand, freedom, and happiness the price of her father's title and honour, for the little that remained to him of a long, blameless, and honourable life--for Rookleigh still had the trump card of playing to win the coronet for his absent brother.

Then a wild gust of horror and dismay would come over her, ever and anon, when she thought of the coming hour when she must inevitably and irrevocably become the wife of Rookleigh, and there could be no escape from him but by death--and she felt that she dared and could not die--or by flight--a flight that "society" would speedily twist into a terrible scandal!

The afternoon was drawing into evening--one Clara would never forget, for Mr. De Murrer was to arrive with the marriage settlements and contract for signature, and Clara, who had begged to be left for a little time to herself--her miserable self--was seated in a bay window lost in bitter thought, looking at the flowers of spring, and wondering how all would be with her when the time came that they had faded away and been replaced by those of summer.

Already soft showers had expanded the buds that but a week ago were closed, the foliage of the brightest green was hiding the dark branches of the trees. On all hands she heard the notes of the birds, and with that tendency which we have to note trifles when in great tribulation, she found herself watching with curious interest the bees and the butterflies among the bright parterres of flowers where the geranium, the heliotrope, the light green leaves of the echevaria and the cups of the tulips mingled.

All nature looked sweet; but the spring suggested nothing of hope to Clara, and she was past weeping now, in the bitter conviction that it availed her nothing; but a shiver passed over her, when she found that Rookleigh, claiming a bridegroom's privilege, had come upon her unannounced, and was bending smilingly over her--could he do otherwise, for the girl was adorably beautiful, and was so nearly now his own!

"To-morrow, Clara, my darling," said he in a voice of more tenderness than it was quite his nature or his habit to assume, for true tenderness was not in him, "think of to-morrow, for long ere this hour we shall be united for life, and far away together!"

What she replied she never precisely knew, or cared perhaps to remember, so quickly did certain events come to pass just then.

The stoppage of a vehicle at the front porch, an important ring at the door bell, was followed by steps in the entrance-hall, and then a servant announced that "Mr. De Murrer was in the library, where Lord Oakhampton awaited Miss Hampton and Mr. Rookleigh."

"We are to sign the contract, and so forth, so take courage, Clara," said Rookleigh, taking her by the hand, but she shrank on hearing voices below.

"A stranger is there!" said she timidly.

"Oh, only some fellow he has brought, no doubt, to witness our signatures; he has delayed unaccountably long, so come, darling."

Clara entered the half-darkened library, pale as snow, and trembling very much, and saw her father and Mr. De Murrer mutually shaking hands, and then with--Derval Hampton!

On reaching London, the latter was doubtful at first what to do to obtain information of Lord Oakhampton's movements, of Clara, of his brother, and how to gain a clue to all that must have transpired during his protracted absence. As money was necessary for him, in the first place, he drove from the docks to Gray's Inn in quest of Mr. De Murrer, and at his chambers found that dapper little gentleman leisurely tying up with red tape a bundle of very legal-looking documents, which proved to be the contract and marriage settlements of "Rookleigh Hampton, Esquire, of Finglecombe, and the Honourable Clara Hampton," and thereby hung a wondrous tale!

It was with something of a sigh in his breast that the worthy little lawyer tied up these documents, for he disliked and mistrusted the bridegroom, and was astonished and grieved by the bearing of the luckless and too evidently repugnant bride. In all his legal experience he had met nothing like this.

Warmly indeed did he welcome Derval.

"Just in time, my dear young friend; just in time!" he exclaimed.

"Time for what?" asked the sunburned and weatherbeaten Derval.

"The wedding--of course, you know all about it."

"Wedding--whose?"

"Your brother."

"And--and--" stammered Derval, as the newspaper paragraph flashed upon his memory.

"Miss Clara Hampton--a good marriage indeed; a strange, but very good way of compromising the claim to the coronet--a consolidation of mutual interests, I take it to be; a family compact, quite."

With his eyes fixed alternately on the speaker's face, and then, as one in a dream, surveying the great square of the Inn, with its monotonous brick walls and uniform rows of windows, Derval heard all this with equal astonishment and dismay.

"I am just about to take these papers to Lord Oakhampton's; you will go with me, of course, and sign them as witness."

"Clara false--so fair, yet so false!" was Derval's bitter thought, as he threw himself into a chair.

A very few words served to enlighten him as to the conspiracy of which they had both been the victims--as to the pressure which must have been put upon the unhappy Clara to save her father's title, during his life at least, by the sacrifice of herself; and more exasperating to him was the knowledge that this pressure had been put upon her by Rookleigh, while acting nominally in the interests of an absent brother; and he knew in a moment that Rookleigh--the medium of their correspondence--must, for his own nefarious ends, have effectually suppressed it!

"And now, as we are on this unpleasant subject," said the lawyer, opening a drawer and taking therefrom a paper, "what was the meaning of this mysterious document that Rookleigh framed and you signed?"

"It referred, I understood, to a sum of money I lent him."

"Of what folly you were guilty! _he_ should have signed an acknowledgment to _you_. Good heavens! you sailors are strange fellows."

"Then what are the contents of the paper?"

"Merely that you make over to your brother the whole of the £500 per annum left you by your father, with all your right, title, and interest therein."

Derval was astounded and bewildered not at his own folly and simplicity, but by the systematic baseness of his brother.

"Oh, wretch!" he exclaimed; "was it not enough to rob me of all, even my poor patrimony? but to seek to rob me too of Clara, my affianced wife!"

For a few moments his emotions were stifling, and he gasped rather than breathed.

"I must own," said Mr. De Murrer, "that when the post brought this singular document, signed by you, and witnessed by Rookleigh, the _framer_ of it, illegally expressed and on unstamped paper, I was sorely puzzled; but, luckily, it is every way valueless."

"Save in so far as revealing the perfidy of which he is capable--the double villain!"

"While searching your father's papers for documents in connection with the peerage affair, I came upon one which completely alters all your affairs, and that I shall show you in time," said Mr. De Murrer.

"He need no longer now pretend to act in my interests in pressing on the peerage case, and not a moment must be lost in freeing my poor Clara from the trammels--the evil of mental misery--by which he has surrounded her."

"Good, good!" said the little lawyer, rubbing his hands. "The contract and the settlements won't be signed, after all, and may go with Rookleigh's document into the waste-paper basket. But I was due with them at Lord Oakhampton's an hour ago--a hansom will take us there in half that time; and now, my dear Derval, let us be off!"

To the confusion of Rookleigh, the mystery of the letters was all unfolded now, and when the cheques he had paid Miss Sally Trix came to be known, through Mr. De Murrer, a light was thrown upon his transactions with her, and the use to which he had put her with Clara; thus link after link was found, and the chain of his cruelty and duplicity was complete!

Rookleigh did not wait for the elucidation of all the reader knows. His brother's sudden appearance in the library was more than enough for him; he evacuated Lord Oakhampton's house with all speed, and even quitted London that night, a prey to baffled spite, ambition, and treachery.

"Oh, Derval, Derval," said Clara, as she reclined upon his breast, "may God forgive that man for all he has made me suffer!"

"And me too, darling!"

If Derval's blood boiled at his half-brother's perfidy, it boiled still more when he thought of how a head-wind in the channel or elsewhere might, by delay, have affected the fortune of all who figured in the tableau in Lord Oakhampton's library. But the good ship _Amethyst_ had brought the wind with her, bravely and splendidly had she run, and scarcely sheet or tack were lifted, "for," as Joe Grummet said, "the girls at home were tallying on to the tow-rope."

The document which the lawyer had found among Greville Hampton's papers proved to be nothing less than a will, dated subsequent to one on which they had all acted, and which reversed its terms, for £500 yearly were all that accrued to Rookleigh, while all else he possessed was bequeathed to Derval; so the hand of Nemesis fell heavily on the former.

So the wedding dresses, the wedding cake and breakfast, and the bridesmaids too were all required eventually; but a different bridegroom knelt by Clara's side before the altar rails at St. George's, Hanover Square, while Rookleigh and his amiable mother were left at Finglecombe "to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."

Captain Talbot was groomsman, and old Joe Grummet, who with difficulty was restrained from hoisting a flag of the Royal Naval Reserve out of the drawing-room window, as a prelude to the rice and slippers, got disreputably tipsy in the butler's pantry, and pulled all the housemaids about, in the exuberance of his joy, making quite a riot in the servants' hall.

LONDON PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.