CHAPTER XXVII.

Lady Alice Redcliffe makes General Lennox's Acquaintance.

Old General Lennox stopped a servant on the stairs, and learned from the staring domestic where Lady Alice Redcliffe then was.

That sad and somewhat virulent old martyr was at that moment in her accustomed haunt, Lady Mary's boudoir, and in her wonted attitude over the fire, pondering in drowsy discontent over her many miseries, when a sharp knock at the door startled her nerves and awakened her temper.

Her "come in" sounded sharply, and she beheld for the first time in her life the General, a tall lean old man, with white bristles on brow and cheek, with his toilet disordered by long and rather rapid exercise, and grim and livid with no transient agitation.

"Lady Alice Redcliffe?" inquired he, with a stiff bow, remaining still inclined, his eyes still fixed on her.

"_I_ am Lady Alice Redcliffe," returned that lady, haughtily, having quite forgotten General Lennox and all about him.

"My name is Lennox," he said.

"Oh, _General_ Lennox? I was told you were here last night," said the old lady, scrutinising him with a sort of surprised frown; his dress and appearance were a little wild, and not in accordance with her ideas on military precision. "I am happy, General Lennox, to make your acquaintance. You've just arrived, I dare say?"

"I arrived yesterday--last night--last night late. I--I'm much obliged. May I say a word?"

"Certainly, General Lennox," acquiesced the old lady, looking harder at him--"certainly, but I must remind you that I have been a sad invalid, and therefore very little qualified to discuss or advise;" and she leaned back with a fatigued air, but a curious look nevertheless.

"I--I--it's about my wife, ma'am. We can--we can't live any longer together." He was twirling his gold eyeglass with trembling fingers as he spoke.

"You have been quarrelling--h'm?" said Lady Alice, still staring hard at him, and rising with more agility than one might have expected; and shutting the door, which the old General had left open, she said, "Sit down, sir--quarrelling, eh?"

"A quarrel, madam, that can never be made up--by ----, _never_." The General smote his gouty hand furiously on the chimneypiece as he thus spake.

"Don't, General Lennox, _don't_, pray. If you can't command yourself, how can you hope to bear with one another's infirmities? A quarrel? H'm."

"Madam, we've separated. It's worse, ma'am--all over. I thought, Lady--Lady--I thought, madam, I might ask you, as the only early friend--a friend, ma'am, and a kinswoman--to take her with you for a little while, till some home is settled for her; _here_ she can't stay, of course, an hour. That villain! May ---- damn him."

"Who?" asked Lady Alice, with a kind of scowl, quite forgetting to rebuke him this time, her face darkening and turning very pale, for she saw it was another great family disgrace.

"Sir Jekyl Marlowe, ma'am, of Marlowe, Baronet, Member of Parliament, Deputy Lieutenant," bawled the old General, with shrill and trembling voice. "I'll drag him through the law courts, and the divorce court, and the House of Lords." He held his right fist up with its trembling knuckles working, as if he had them in Sir Jekyl's cravat, "drag him through them all, ma'am, till the dogs would not pick his bones; and I'll shoot him through the head, by ----, I'll shoot him through the head, and his family ashamed to put his name on his tombstone."

Lady Alice stood up, with a face so dismal it almost looked wicked.

"I see, sir; I see there's something very bad; I'm sorry, sir; I'm very sorry; I'm _very_ sorry."

She had a hand of the old General's in each of hers, and was shaking them with a tremulous clasp.

Such as it was, it was the first touch of sympathy he had felt. The old General's grim face quivered and trembled, and he grasped _her_ hands too, and then there came those convulsive croupy sobs, so dreadful to hear, and at last tears, and this dried and bleached old soldier wept loud and piteously. Outside the door you would not have known what to make of these cracked, convulsive sounds. You would have stopped in horror, and fancied some one dying. After a while he said--

"Oh! ma'am, I was very fond of her--I _was_, desperately. If I could know it was all a dream, I'd be content to die. I wish, ma'am, you'd advise me. I'll go back to India, I think; I could not stay here. You'll know best, madam, what she ought to do. I wish everything the best for her--you'll see, ma'am--you'll know best."

"Quite--quite; yes, these things are best settled by men of business. There are papers, I believe, drawn up, arranged by lawyers, and things, and I'm sorry, sir--"

And old Lady Alice suddenly began to sob.

"I'll--I'll do what I can for the poor thing," she said. "I'll take her to Wardlock--it's quite solitary--no prying people--and then to--perhaps it's better to go abroad; and you'll not make it public sooner than it must be; and it's a great blow to me, sir, a terrible blow. I wish she had placed herself more under direction; but it's vain looking back--she always refused advice, poor, poor wretched thing! Poor Jennie! We must be resigned, sir; and--and, sir, for God's sake, no fighting--no pistoling. That sort of thing is never heard of now; and if you do, the whole world will be ringing with it, and the unfortunate creature the gaze of the public before she need be, and perhaps some great crime added--some one killed. Do you promise?"

"Ma'am, it's hard to promise."

"But you _must_, General Lennox, or I'll take measures to stop it this moment," cried Lady Alice, drying her eyes and glaring at him fiercely.

"Stop it! _who'll_ stop it?" holloed the General with a stamp.

"_You'll_ stop it, General," exclaimed the old lady; "your own common sense; your own compassion; your own self-respect; and not the less that a poor old woman that sympathises with you implores it."

There was here an interval.

"Ma'am, ma'am, it's not easy; but I will--I _will_, ma'am. I'll go this moment; I will, ma'am; I can't trust myself here. If I met him, ma'am, by Heaven I _couldn't_."

"Well, thank you, _thank_ you, General Lennox--_do_ go; there's not much chance of meeting, for he's ill; but go, don't stay a moment, and write to me to Wardlock, and you shall hear everything. There--go. Good-bye."

So the General was gone, and Lady Alice stood for a while bewildered, looking at the door through which he had vanished.

It is well when these sudden collapses of the overwrought nerves occur. More dejected, more broken, perhaps, he looked, but much more like the General Lennox whom his friends remembered. Something of the panic and fury of his calamity had subsided, too; and though the grief must, perhaps, always remain pretty much unchanged, yet he could now estimate the situation more justly, and take his measures more like a sane man.

In this better, if not happier mood, Varbarriere encountered him in that overshadowed back avenue which leads more directly than the main one to the little town of Marlowe.

Varbarriere was approaching the house, and judged, by the General's slower gait, that he was now more himself.

The large gentleman in the Germanesque felt hat raised that grotesque head-gear, French fashion, as Lennox drew nigh.

The General, with two fingers, made him a stern, military salute in reply, and came suddenly to a standstill.

"May I walk a little with you, General Lennox?" inquired Varbarriere.

"Certainly, sir. _Walk?_ By all means; I'm going to London," rejoined the General, without, however, moving from the spot where he had halted.

"Rather a long stretch for me," thought Varbarriere, with one of those inward thrills of laughter which sometimes surprise us in the gravest moods and in the most unsuitable places. He looked sober enough, however, and merely said--

"You, know, General, there's some one ill up there," and he nodded mysteriously toward the house.

"Is there? Ay. Well, yes, I dare say," and he laughed with a sudden quaver. "I was not sure; the old woman said something. I'm glad, sir."

"I--I think I _know_ what it is, sir," said Varbarriere.

"So do I, sir," said the General, with another short laugh.

"You recollect, General Lennox, what you promised me?"

"Ay, sir; how can I help it?" answered he.

"How can you help it! I don't quite see your meaning," replied Varbarriere, slowly. "I can only observe that it gives me new ideas of a soldier's estimate of his promise."

"Don't blame me, sir, if I lost my head a little, when I saw that villain there, in _my_ room, sir, by ----" and the General cursed him here parenthetically through his clenched teeth; "I felt, sir, as--as if the sight of him struck me in the face--mad, sir, for a minute--I suppose, _mad_, sir; and--it occurred. I say, sir, I can't help it--and I couldn't help it, by ---- I couldn't."

Varbarriere looked down with a peevish sneer on the grass and innocent daisies at his feet, his heel firmly placed, and tapping the sole of his boot from that pivot on the sward, like a man beating time to a slow movement in an overture.

"Very good, sir! It's your own affair. I suppose you've considered consequences, if anything should go wrong?"

And without awaiting an answer, he turned and slowly pursued his route toward the house. I don't suppose, in his then frame of mind, the General saw consequences very clearly, or cared about them, or was capable, when the image of Sir Jekyl presented itself, of any emotions but those of hatred and rage. He had gone now, at all events; the future darkness; the past irrevocable.