Fantômas, Pierre Souvestre [suggested reading .TXT] 📗

he had just been the central figure, Charles Rambert, or Jérôme Fandor, walked down Juve's staircase wondering. "Why should he take so much trouble about me? What interest or what motive can he have? And how on earth does he find out such a wonderful lot of things?"

XX. A Cup of Tea

After the tragic death of her husband, Lady Beltham—whose previous life had inclined to the austere—withdrew into almost complete retirement. The world of gaiety and fashion knew her no more. But in the world where poverty and suffering reign, in hospital wards and squalid streets, a tall and beautiful woman might often be seen, robed all in black, with distinguished bearing and eyes serene and grave, distributing alms and consolation as she moved. It was Lady Beltham, kind, good and very pitiful, bent on the work of charity to which she had vowed her days.

Yet she had not allowed herself to be crushed by sorrow; after the tragedy which left her a widow, she had assumed the effective control of her husband's property, and, helped by faithful friends, had carried on his interests and administered his estates, spreading a halo of kindness all around her.

To help her in the heavy correspondence entailed by all these affairs, she found three secretaries none too many. On M. Etienne Rambert's recommendation, Thérèse Auvernois was now one of these, and the young girl was perfectly happy in her new surroundings; time was helping her to forget the tragedy which had taken her grandmother from her at Beaulieu, and she enjoyed the company of the well-born, well-bred English gentlewomen.

Lady Beltham was reclining on a sofa in the great hall of her house at Neuilly. It was a spacious room, furnished half as a lounge and half as an office, and Lady Beltham liked to receive people there. A large glass-enclosed balcony commanded a view over the garden and the boulevard Richard Wallace beyond, with the Bois de Boulogne beyond that again. A few minutes before, a footman had brought in a table and set out tea-things, and Lady Beltham was reading while Thérèse and the two young English girls were chattering among themselves.

The telephone bell rang and Thérèse answered it.

"Hullo? Yes ... yes: you want to know if you may call this evening? The Reverend—oh, yes: you have just come from Scotland? Hold on a minute." She turned to Lady Beltham. "It is Mr. William Hope, and he wants to know if you will see him to-night. He has just come from your place in Scotland."

"The dear man!" exclaimed Lady Beltham; "of course he may come," and as Thérèse turned lightly to convey her permission to the clergyman waiting at the other end of the line, she caught a smile on the face of one of the other girls. "What is the joke, Lisbeth?" she enquired.

The girl laughed brightly.

"I think the worthy parson must have smelt the tea and toast, and wants to make up for the wretched dinner he got in the train."

"You are incorrigible," Lady Beltham replied. "Mr. Hope is above such material matters."

"Indeed he isn't, Lady Beltham," the girl persisted. "Why, only the other day he told Thérèse that all food deserved respect and esteem directly a blessing had been asked upon it, and that a badly cooked steak was a kind of sacrilege."

"A badly cooked pheasant," Thérèse corrected her.

"You are both wicked little slanderers," Lady Beltham protested gently, "and don't know the blessing a good appetite is. You do, Susannah, don't you?"

Susannah, a pretty Irish girl, looked up from a letter she was reading, and blushed.

"Oh, Lady Beltham, I've been ever so much less hungry since Harry's ship sailed."

"I don't quite see the connection," Lady Beltham answered. "Love is good nourishment for the soul, but not for the body. However, a good appetite is nothing to be ashamed of, and you ought to keep your roses for your future husband, and qualify in every way to be an excellent mother of a family."

"With lots and lots of children," Lisbeth went on wickedly: "seven or eight daughters at the very least, all of whom will marry nice young clergymen when their time comes and——"

She stopped speaking and the light chatter died away as a footman entered and announced the Reverend William Hope, who followed him immediately into the room, an elderly man with a full, clean-shaven face and a comfortable portliness of figure.

Lady Beltham offered him a cordial hand.

"I am delighted you are back," she said. "Will you have a cup of tea with us?"

The parson made a general bow to the girls gathered about the table.

"I got a wretched dinner in the train," he began, but Lisbeth interrupted him.

"Don't you think this tea smells delicious?" she asked.

The parson put out his hand to take the cup she offered to him, and bowed and smiled.

"Precisely what I was going to observe, Miss Lisbeth."

Thérèse and Susannah turned away to hide their amusement, and Lady Beltham adroitly changed the subject. She moved towards her writing-table.

"Mr. Hope must have much to tell me, girls, and it is getting late. I must get to business. Did you have a good journey?"

"Quite as good as usual, Lady Beltham. The people at Scotwell Hill are very plucky and good, but it will be a hard winter; there is snow on the hills already."

"Have the women and children had all their woollen things?"

"Oh, yes: twelve hundred garments have been distributed according to a list drawn up by the under-steward; here it is," and he handed a paper to Lady Beltham, who passed it on to Susannah.

"I will ask you to check the list," she said to the girl, and turned again to the clergyman. "The under-steward is a good fellow, but he is a rabid politician; he may have omitted some families that are openly radical; but I think charity should be given equally to all, for poverty makes no political distinctions."

"That is the right Christian view," the clergyman said approvingly.

"And what about the sanatorium at Glasgow?" Lady Beltham went on.

"It is very nearly finished," the good man answered. "I have got your lawyers to cut down the contractor's accounts by something like fifteen per cent, which means a saving of nearly three hundred pounds."

"Excellent," said Lady Beltham, and she turned to Thérèse. "You must add that three hundred pounds to the funds of the Scotwell Hill coal charity," she said. "They will want all of it if the winter is going to be a hard one," and Thérèse made a note of the instruction, full of admiration for Lady Beltham's simple generosity.

But Mr. Hope was fidgeting on his chair. He seized an opportunity when Lady Beltham, busy making notes, had turned her deep and steady eyes away from him, to say in a low tone:

"Have I your permission just to mention—poor Lord Beltham?"

Lady Beltham started, and her face betrayed an emotion which she bravely controlled. Hearing the name pronounced, the three girls withdrew to the far end of the room, where they began to talk among themselves. Lady Beltham signified her assent, and Mr. Hope began.

"You know, dear friend, this has been my first visit to Scotland since Lord Beltham's death. I found your tenants still grievously upset by the tragedy that occurred nearly a year ago. They have got by heart all the newspaper accounts of the mysterious circumstances attending Lord Beltham's death, but those are not enough to satisfy the sympathetic curiosity of these excellent people, and I was obliged to tell them over and over again in full detail—all we knew."

"I hope no scandal has gathered round his name," said Lady Beltham quickly.

"You need have no fear of that," the clergyman replied in the same low tone. "The rumour that got about when the crime was first discovered, that Lord Beltham had been surprised in an intrigue and killed in revenge, has not won acceptance. Local opinion agrees that he was decoyed into a trap and killed by the man Gurn, who meant to rob him, but who was either surprised or thought he was going to be, and fled before he had time to take the money or the jewels from the body of his victim. They know that the murderer has never been caught, but they also know that there is a price on his head, and they all hope the police—— Oh, forgive me for recalling all these painful memories!"

While he had been speaking, Lady Beltham's face had expressed almost every shade of emotion and distress; it seemed to be drawn with pain at his concluding words. But she made an effort to control herself, and spoke resignedly.

"It cannot be helped, dear Mr. Hope. Go on."

But the clergyman changed the topic.

"Oh, I was quite forgetting," he said more brightly. "The under-steward has turned out the two Tillys, quite on his own authority: you must remember them, two brothers, blacksmiths, who drank a great deal and paid very little, and created so much scandal in the place."

"I object to the under-steward doing any such thing without referring to me first," Lady Beltham exclaimed warmly. "Man's duty is to persuade and forgive, not to judge and punish. Kindness breeds kindness, and it is pity that wins amendment. Why should a subordinate, my under-steward, presume to do what I would not permit myself to do?"

She had sprung to her feet and was pacing excitedly about the room; she had wholly dropped the impassive mask she habitually wore, concealing her real personality.

The three girls watched her in silence.

The door opened anew, and Silbertown came in, the major-domo of Lady Beltham's establishment at Neuilly. He brought the evening letters, and the girls speedily took all the envelopes and newspapers from the tray and began to sort and open them, while the major-domo entered into conversation with his mistress, and the Rev. William Hope seized the opportunity to say good night, and take his leave.

Many of the letters were merely appeals to help in money or in kind, but one long letter Lisbeth handed to Lady Beltham. She glanced at the signature.

"Ah, here is news of M. Etienne Rambert," she exclaimed, and as Thérèse instinctively drew near, knowing that she, too, might hear something of what her old friend had written, Lady Beltham put the letter into her hand. "You read it, my dear, and then you can tell me presently what he has to say."

Thérèse read the letter eagerly. M. Etienne Rambert had left Paris a week before, upon a long and important journey. The energetic old fellow was to make a trip in Germany first, and then go from Hamburg to England, where he had some business to attend to on behalf of Lady Beltham, with whom he was on more confidential terms than ever. Then he meant to sail from Southampton and spend the winter in Colombia, where he had important interests of his own to look after.

While Thérèse was reading, Lady Beltham continued her conversation with her major-domo.

"I am glad you had the park gate seen to this afternoon," she said. "You know how nervous I am. My childhood in Scotland was very lonely, and ever since then I have had a vague terror of solitude and darkness."

The major-domo reassured her: he had no lack of self-confidence.

"There is nothing for your ladyship to be afraid of; the house is perfectly safe, and carefully guarded. Walter, the porter, is a first-rate watch-dog and always sleeps with one eye open. And I, too——"

"Yes, I know, Silbertown," the young widow replied; "and when I give myself time to think I am not nervous. Thank you; you can leave me now."

She turned to the three girls.

"I am tired, dears; we won't stay up any later."

Lisbeth and Susannah kissed her affectionately and went away. Thérèse lingered a moment, to bring a book, a Bible, and place it on a table close to Lady Beltham's chair. Lady Beltham