CHAPTER XX.

THE OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA.

"Curs'd by Superstition eerie, Grim it stands a ruin dreary, Round it spread the marshes lonely, Haunted by dim shadows only, Shadows of an evil seeming, Such as rise in ghastly dreaming, Overhead the sky of crimson, Reddens slowly from the dim sun, Silently the sluggish waters Undermine the tower which totters, And the ocean's sullen boom, Prophesies the coming doom, When the house shall sudden sink, Shattered o'er destruction's brink, And the dark night's gloomy pall Evermore brood over all."

Eustace, with his whimsical fancy for bestowing appropriate names on all things, had christened his ancestral residence Castle Grim, and he certainly could not have hit upon a happier title for such a dreary place.

Standing on the verge of wide-spreading marshes, it faced towards the sea, which was only a little distance away, and the salt winds from the ocean roared day and night round the lonely house. For it was lonely, no habitation being within miles, owing to the malaria which arose from the marshes making the whole neighbourhood unhealthy to live in. Gartney had another residence, much more comfortable, situated in the midland shires, but, with his usual fantastic nature, preferred when staying in the country to inhabit this semi-ruinous mansion.

Whoever built it must have been fond of solitude, and much given to self-communings of a dreary nature, for certainly no one with a healthy mind could have found pleasure in contemplating the melancholy stretches of the marshes and in hearkening to the sullen roar of the surges breaking on the sandy shore. Few of the Gartney family had stayed in it since its erection, and it was reserved for Eustace, in whom the melancholy nature of some far-off ancestor was revived, to make it a habitable residence.

Perhaps the weirdness of the place had a fascination for his poet nature, or the dismal fenlands pleased his distorted imagination, but at all events, Eustace was rarely in England without paying a visit to Castle Grim, and staying there a few days, before his departure to distant lands.

Other people not being so fond of this awesome place, Gartney could get no ordinary servants to stay in it, and consequently it was left to the care of an aged pair, man and wife, who did not mind where they lived so long as they had a roof to cover them, food to eat, and a chance of earning a decent income. They looked after the crazy old place thoroughly, and when their master paid it a visit contrived to make him pretty comfortable considering all things. But as a rule, they lived a Robinson Crusoe-like life, seeing no one from week's end to week's end, save when they went into Denfield for provisions.

Mr. and Mrs. Javelrack, the guardians of this unpleasant mansion, had received a telegram from its owner, telling them that he was coming, and consequently the male Javelrack had driven to the Denfield Station for his master, while the female Javelrack set the rooms in order and prepared a meal for Mr. Gartney.

Eustace had not brought his valet to Castle Grim, as that worthy would immediately have given notice had he been asked to stay in such a nerve-shaking place. So he drove away from the station slowly in the dog-cart with his quaint old retainer beside him, and his portmanteau behind.

It was a very decent dog-cart taking it all round, and the horse in the shafts was not by any means a bad specimen of his kind, as Gartney allowed the Javelracks a decent sum yearly to keep up the place, and they made amends for their lonely life by surrounding themselves with all the luxuries they were able. Report said they were misers, and perhaps there was some truth in the rumour, but whenever Eustace came down, he always found things in order, so he never troubled his head to ascertain what proportion of the income he allowed they had spent on the place, or what portion they stowed away in odd corners. Indeed, if he had found that these two old servants were spending as little as they could without being found out, and putting the rest by for a rainy day, he would not have been particularly annoyed, for they were only within their rights in having some pleasure in Castle Grim.

Eustace wrapped himself well up in his ulster, for the winds blew very keenly across the marshes, and as the horse was restive, they soon left the village behind and were moving rapidly across the straight road which stretched a narrow white thread until it vanished on the verge of the horizon. The gables of Errington Hall showed whitely above the sombre woods around it, but after a rapid glance at the roof which covered the woman he loved, Gartney shook the reins impatiently to make the horse go faster, and stared resolutely at the red glare of the sky lowering over the wild waste landscape.

"I'll see her to-morrow," he thought, as the hoofs of the horse beat steadily on the hard white road, "and then I can see for myself how things stand between her and Guy."

Some long sombre clouds lowered heavily over the crimson of the horizon as if Night, like some dark-winged bird, was waiting to settle down on the chill earth, and a keen cold wind, blowing sharply from the distant ocean, brought the salt odours of the sea to their nostrils.

Javelrack, his huge form bowed by age and rheumatism caught from the marsh mists, sat grimly silent beside his master with his large, hairy, brown hands clasped on his lap, and his mahogany-coloured face with its wiry black beard, so screwed up with facing the cutting wind, that under his weather-stained brown hat he looked like a fantastic Chinese idol. Eustace, wrapped up in his own thoughts, paid no attention to his silent companion, but, bowing his head against the blast, indulged in visions of Alizon Errington.

A dreary country, with the wide spreading marshes stretching on either side for miles, and the long straight road running through the heart of the swamp. Sluggish, slimy pools of oily stillness, fringes of stately reeds swaying to and fro in the blast, smooth patches of green grass, pleasing to the eye but treacherous to the unwary foot. Here and there a broken-down fence, deeply implanted in weeds of luxuriant growth, bordering deep ditches of black earth filled with stagnant water, on which floated green slime, rows of depressed-looking willows, and on occasions the gaunt stump of a tree sticking up as if to mark the site of a submerged forest.

Then suddenly against the dull red of the sky a misshapen pile of gables and chimneys on the verge of a slight rise, girdled by a gaunt ring of leafless trees. Beyond, heaps of wind-blown sand covered with sparse vegetation standing as a barrier between the marshes and the ocean, which tossed in waves of blood under the evil red sky as it moaned in a querulous voice on the starved-looking strip of sandy beach. And this was Castle Grim.

Eustace stopped the tired horse at the door of the house (or rather the horse stopped of its own accord), and giving the reins to Javelrack, jumped down. At the door he was met by Mrs. Javelrack, large and gaunt as her husband, with the same embrowned face and the same distorted features, suggestive of Chinese deities. Indeed, as the male Javelrack took the portmanteau into the house and stood by his wife, they looked like two ogres inhabiting Castle Grim, who were prepared to make a meal of Eustace as soon as he was safely within the walls.

The male ogre, however, took his master's portmanteau into his bedroom, and then coming out again, took the dog-cart round to the stables, while Mrs. Javelrack, her face twisted into a hideous grin meant for a smile, brought hot water for the weary traveller.

"Don't be long with the dinner, Mrs. Javelrack," called Eustace as she closed the door.

"No sir," croaked Mrs. Javelrack in a hoarse voice, as if she had been a frog out of the marsh, "it 'ull be ready as soon as you, sir."

Mr. Gartney washed himself in the warm water, which took away the smarting feeling in his face caused by the keen salt wind, and having changed his clothes sauntered into the one habitable room of the place, which did for dining-room, drawing-room, and music-room, for Eustace had sent down a very good piano, which stood in one corner.

"Humph! rather spoilt by the damp," he said to himself; as he ran his lithe fingers over the keys, "or perhaps the amiable Mrs. Javelrack has been trying to cultivate music."

The ogress brought in the dinner and waited on Eustace in a ponderous manner, giving him all the news of the neighbourhood, which was remarkably scant, and talked all through the meal in a subdued roar. When Eustace had finished, she removed the dishes, brought in some coffee, and, after making up the fire, retired to the kitchen and the company of Mr. Javelrack. Gartney heard them chatting even through the thick walls, for the dampness of the marshes had made them both somewhat deaf, and consequently they shouted so loudly at one another, that it was difficult at times to tell whether it was the ocean roaring or the ogres conversing.

It was a very comfortable room, having been furnished by Eustace according to his own ideas, and the walls, instead of being papered, were hung with dull red cloth after the fashion of tapestry, which waved at intervals as the searching winds crept in shrilly through crack and cranny. A wide fireplace in which blazed a large coal fire between the grotesque brass dogs, several comfortable arm-chairs, and on one side, a small book-case containing a selection of Gartney's favourite authors. At the distant end of the room a grand piano, with the music piled neatly beside it, a cumbersome, old-fashioned sofa, and a deep, square window with diamond panes, and a quaint oaken seat set in its depths.

Eustace drew an arm-chair close to the fire and near to the small table upon which Mrs. Javelrack had placed his coffee, produced his pipe, and was soon puffing away in a most comfortable manner. He picked up a slim volume of poems entitled "Rose dreamings," and turned over the pages listlessly as he sipped his coffee, feeling a drowsy sensation steal over him. A verse in the poem called "Temptation," however, roused him from this lethargic state, and throwing down the book, he paced restlessly up and down the room repeating the four lines quietly to himself:

"This love so hard the winning. For ever will endure, If all the world be sinning, Why should we two be pure?"

"I'm afraid she won't take the same view as that," he muttered to himself discontentedly, thinking of Lady Errington. "And yet, if she doesn't love her husband, she may have a kindly feeling for me. As to the child, surely no woman--not even this Madonna--can devote herself exclusively to it. Still, the child is the obstacle between herself and her husband, so perhaps it will be the obstacle between herself and me. Oh! I could love her! I could love her if she would only let me! She will let me! I'm certain of it! Guy has no brains, and she is starving for the want of intellectual food. The child is the excuse, but that is the real reason of the coldness between them."

One of the most extraordinary parts of Gartney's delusion concerning his chance of success with Lady Errington lay in the fact that his present reasoning was diametrically opposed to the views he held when first meeting Lady Errington. He then asserted that she would never care for her husband, but when she became a mother would lavish all her love on the child. This view of Alizon's character was a correct one, as Eustace in his innermost heart well knew, but he wilfully deceived himself in thinking that now she had obtained her heart's desire she would give it up for the sake of a man whom she had hardly seen. Eustace, however, had been so uniformly triumphant with the female sex, that the idea of failing with Alizon never entered his mind, and he thought that if he laid siege to Lady Errington, in a dexterous fashion, she would give up everything--husband, child, name, and home--in order to gratify his selfish desire.

When he came to England after his many months' absence in Arabia, Gartney had determined not to see Lady Errington, feeling that he loved her, or rather her idolized memory, so much, that he would not be able to suppress his passion, and thus behave dishonourably towards his cousin Guy by running away with his wife. Aunt Jelly, however, by telling him of the estrangement between the pair had banished this honourable hesitation from his heart, as he felt himself forced by Fate to see the woman he loved face to face. It was a very convenient excuse with which to quiet his conscience for this wrong-doing, and having settled in his own selfish mind that Fate was too strong for him, he determined to estrange husband and wife still further, so that he would have less trouble in overcoming Lady Errington's scruples to his dishonourable proposals.

This idea which he held had been singularly strengthened by the remark of Aunt Jelly, when she said that Guy in his present state would be the prey of the first clever woman that came along. Eustace therefore determined to introduce Guy to some clever woman who would entangle him in her net, and the woman he had fixed upon in his own mind for this vile purpose was--Mrs. Veilsturm.

It was curious that he should have fixed on this special woman to do this, seeing that he was ignorant of Mrs. Veilsturm's grudge against Lady Errington, and did not know how eagerly she would seize this opportunity of revenging herself on the woman who had slighted her so scathingly. He merely chose Mrs. Veilsturm because she was beautiful, clever, and unscrupulous, so a hint to her would be quite sufficient to induce her to fascinate Guy by all the means in her power.

Eustace Gartney was by no means a thoroughly bad man. Indeed, he had very good qualities, although they were, to a great extent, neutralized by his indomitable selfishness, and therefore he suffered several qualms of conscience over the dishonourable scheme he had in hand.

His intense egotism and love of gratifying self, however, came to his aid, and he argued himself into a satisfactory frame of mind by Heaven only knows what sophistry.

"She doesn't care a bit about her husband," he reflected, pacing the room with measured strides, "she never did care about him, and it's a pity to see a clever woman like that tied to an unsympathetic log. With me, her life will be much happier than with him, and after he gets a divorce I will marry her, and we will live abroad, where there will be no narrow-minded bigots to scoff at what they will call her false step. I'll do it, at whatever cost! My life will be a blank without her, and she will be unhappy with Guy, so it will be far the best for both of us to come together, even at the cost of a public scandal. I'm sorry for Guy, but the one must suffer for the many, and I daresay in after years he will thank me for taking from him a wife from whom, even now, after less than two years of married life, he is estranged."

So Eustace, sophist as he was, argued in favour of his dishonourable passion, and would have even succeeded in persuading himself that he was a much-injured person by having to undergo such trouble, but for a certain uneasy feeling that he ruthlessly crushed down.

Having settled his plans to his own satisfaction, Eustace had another smoke, then going to the window, drew aside the curtains and looked forth into the black night.

The wind was rising and whistled shrilly round the house, lashing the dark waves into lines of seething white foam which glimmered ghost-like through the gloom, while overhead the thin filmy clouds raced across the sky over the face of the haggard-looking moon. He could hear the thunder of the surge on the distant beach, the wind muttering drearily among the trees, and casting his eyes overhead he saw the pallid moonlight streaming in ghastly radiance through the ragged clouds.

Dropping the curtain with a sigh, he sauntered across to the piano, and began to improvise a weird fantasy in keeping with the feelings aroused by the wild scene without. The roll of the sea, the wuthering of the wind, and the rustle of the reeds were all transmuted into strange harmonies under the touch of his skilful fingers, and stealing out at intervals from amid the tempest of sound, stole a strange, sobbing strain, fitful and wayward as the breeze, as if some malicious demon were piping heart-stealing love-songs to the sky, and the night, and the lonely marsh.

He remained some time at the piano, following his changeful fancies, but when the clock struck nine he closed the instrument, and had one final pipe before going to bed. As he sat in front of the fire, looking into the heart of the burning coals, he went over again in his own mind the details of the scheme by which he hoped to secure his cousin's wife to himself.

"Yes," he said aloud in the silence of the room, "it is all right! There is no flaw!"

There was a flaw, however, and one which, in his blind egotism and complacent selfishness, he entirely overlooked, and that was the love of the mother for her child.