The Man in Grey

“ He knew that the hatred he felt for the Man in Grey had its counterpart in the heart of Constance de Plélan. The secret agent had only been in the province four months, and already the Chouans had felt the weight of his relentless courage, his astuteness and his power. M. le Comte d'Artois, brother and messenger of the uncrowned King, had been sent back to England with ignominy through the instrumentality of this one man, and when Mademoiselle de Plélan had asked for a volunteer to lay this powerful enemy low, Blue-Heart had offered himself, heart and soul, ready to strike and take every risk. ”

“ The cry proceeded from a woman's lips; it was immediately followed by a violent imprecation from one of the Chouans. The Man in Grey, dazed, bewildered, not understanding, had only heard that cry, straight in front of him, right from out the thicket whence had come the report and flash of the assassin's musket. The rough hands that held him relaxed, and there was a wild confusion of cries and oaths and a scrambling and scrimmage in the undergrowth behind him. ”

“ Just for the space of one second the colourless eyes of the Man in Grey lit up with a quick and intense light; it seemed for the moment as if an exclamation difficult to suppress would escape his thin, bloodless lips, and his whole insignificant figure appeared to be quivering with a sudden, uncontrollable eagerness. But this departure from his usual quietude was so momentary that M. le préfet failed to notice it, whilst M. le Procureur remained as usual uninterested and detached.
"Poor Maxence!" resumed M. Vimars after awhile. "He had, as far as is known, not a single enemy in the world. ”

“ Grey, I am a man spare of my speech to those with whom I am unacquainted, and the world calls me a soured, malicious man. And yet, when I think for a moment that one so young as you are, endowed as I must suppose with no ordinary talents, and actuated as I will believe with a pure and honourable spirit, should be the dupe, or tool, or even present friend of such a creature as this perjured Peer, it gives me pang. ”

“ Grey were not like two young people of equal years. Why trouble him, a man of middle age, with what he might think a silly, girlish love-story? and, above all, why wound him by what is the sharpest pain to a loving heart, the sudden discovery of things hitherto concealed, but which ought to have been told long ago? ”

“ Grey, my arm is weak. I cannot raise it. Take my hand. You will be good to her when I am dead. I know what the world may say. It may say, Grey, that you and I are not equals; that I might have bestowed the guardianship of my daughter's fortune among houses such as the Fleureys' or the Midharsts'. But I know what you are and what your father was, and I am placing what I value above all earthly things in your keeping. I am an old man, and the doctors may be right this time. I am old and weak, Henry Grey, and I want you to be her friend when I am dead. ”

“ The faint yet almost mesmeric fragrance of orange flowers and violets floated in the folds of her garments, and seemed lurking in the waves of gray hair that glistened in the bright steady glow of the red grate; and moved by one of those unaccountable impulses that sometimes decide a man’s destiny, Dr. Grey took the exquisitely beautiful hand from the book and enclosed it in both of his. ”

“ He spoke with a note as of warning in his voice.
"Do you know what it is that you would do?" he asked. "Have you heard the tale of the countryman who warmed a viper at his hearth, which afterwards did him to death?"
"The fable I know," answered Grey with a smile, "but I do not see the application in the present."
"Perchance you may have reason to understand it, if you do as you purpose towards Lionel Field. A man consumed by vanity and envy is not the safest wearer of one's discarded shoes."
"But is there any other?" asked Grey. "I know of none." ”

“ He would have held out his hand in fellowship to his quondam pupil; but the young actor's face had suddenly flushed a deep crimson, and he pulled his companion down a side alley, laughing loudly, and affecting not to have seen the other. Plainly, he feared reproaches and recriminations, and was stung by the goad of an uneasy conscience.
Grey smiled a little as he pursued his way.
"It is something strange," he mused, "how that a man can never forgive one whom he has injured! ”

“ Her smiles, her rapid speech, her low laughter, her quick movements, her playful moods with the rangers, the dark and passionate glance, which rested so often on her lover, the whispers in the dusk as hand in hand they paced the campfire beat—these helped Gale to retain his loosening hold on reality, to resist the lure of a strange beckoning life where a man stood free in the golden open, where emotion was not, nor trouble, nor sickness, nor anything but the savage's rest and sleep and action and dream. ”

“ No one heard him, no one knew he was there; but as he stood in the silence and darkness he heard distinctly his grandfather's voice, and this was what he heard:
"I must tell you, my son, and you, my minister; but no one else, not Grey—no, no, not, the boy Grey, who loves me so much. His life must not be shadowed with disgrace. He must not hate me in my coffin. Oh, Grey! Grey! May God bless him and give him every needful happiness, and make him so good and noble that his life will blot out the stain upon our name." ”

“ A message from below warned them that the coach which was to convey them to Lord Romaine's house was now at the door.
"You are tired, sir," spoke Grey, suddenly waking from his reverie and turning to the old man, who rose with an air of lassitude which his strong will could not entirely conceal; "I fear me you are not quite yourself to-night. This constant acting is something too great a strain upon you." ”

“ He had brought success and prosperity by his talents to others, but he was to be left to die in obscurity and want. Ah well, better men than he had been treated just so. He desired of Grey to leave him to die alone, and to go forth and make his own way in the world that had no room for a feeble and broken man whose work was done. ”

“ As the door closed I caught sight of the inspector’s face turned earnestly toward me. In his eyes I read my duty, and girded up my heart, as it were, to meet—what? In that moment it was impossible to tell.
The next enlightened me. With a total ignoring of my presence, due probably to his great excitement, Mr. Grey turned on his companion the moment he had closed the door and, seizing him by the collar, cried:
“Fairbrother, you villain, why have you called on your wife like this? Are you murderer as well as thief?”
Fairbrother! this man? ”

“ But alas! a maiden may not choose for herself."
"Still there is life here," spoke Grey quickly, "and it behoves us to know men as well as books. I have studied both. I will study them again. I would fain learn all that life has to teach, whether for weal or woe. No hermit-monk was ever truly a man. Yet there be times when one shrinks in amaze from all one sees and hears." ”

“ Grey’s reckoning.
As they looked across the great sea the horizon seemed to have receded to an incalculable distance, and the airs that came to them across that broad expanse, unsullied by the faintest trace of man or his 16 works, were purer than are often vouchsafed to mortals. Blythe felt her heart grow big with the sense of space and purity, and this wonderful swift passage through the upper air. ”

“ Grey is the only man I shall ever love,—is the only man who can lift me to his own noble height of excellence. I know it is customary to laugh at a girl’s protestations of undying devotion, and that the theory of feminine constancy is as entirely effete as the worship of the Cabiri, or the belief in Blokula and its witches; but, unfortunately, the world has not sneered it entirely out of existence, and I am destined to furnish a mournful exemplification of its reality. Whether my nature is unlike that of the majority of women, I shall not undertake to decide ”

“ Grey could hardly be expected to share her view that talent and superb execution had never by themselves attracted the plaudits of the crowd, or that the only man who could please the million was the man born with the taste of the million. Mr. Grey had been lucky enough to inherit this taste. Why demand that he look a gift horse in the mouth?
But the judgment of youth is direct and pitiless! It seemed nothing less than ridiculous to Janet that Mr. Grey should seriously pose as a fount of the divine fire, and calmly invite her to become a ministering angel to the sacred fount. ”

“ Grey stood directly in the line of fire, and the audacious man who thus held him at his mercy was scarcely a foot from the door leading into the hall. Marking the desperation of his look and the steadiness of his finger on the trigger, I expected to see Mr. Grey recoil and the man escape. But Mr. Grey held his own, though he made no move, and did not venture to speak. Nerved by his courage, I summoned up all my own. This man must not escape, nor must Mr. Grey suffer. The pistol directed against him must be diverted to myself. ”

“ Grey’s thoughts must have been peculiar as he crouched over the stern, hardly knowing what to expect or whether this sudden launch into darkness was for the purpose of flight or pursuit. But enlightenment came soon. The sound of a man’s tread in the building above was every moment becoming more perceptible, and while wondering, possibly, at his position, Mr. Grey naturally turned his head as nearly as he could in the direction of these sounds, and was staring with blank eyes into the darkness, when Sweetwater, leaning toward him, whispered:
“Look up! There’s a trap. ”

“ I have not learned to go cap in hand to cringe for patronage to the great ones of the earth." But, as Grey saw a slight smile flicker in the old man's eyes, he added rather hastily, "And then I desire not to be known and recognized by those whom I did know ha my former life. There is scarce an antechamber in those fine houses where patrons dwell where I might not meet the curious and impertinent regard of those who would know me again. ”

“ Mrs. Fairbrother’s name! and the man—
XXII.
GUILT
Was he Wellgood? Sears? Who? A lover of the woman certainly; that was borne in on us by the passion of his cry:
“Grizel! Grizel!”
But how here? and why such fury in Mr. Grey’s face and such amazement in that of the inspector?
This question was not to be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing, laid a finger on the man’s shoulder. “Come,” said he, “we will have our conversation in another room.” ”

“ With a smile the great man slowly shook his head. Although a love for money amounting to greed was his own besetting sin, he could admire disinterestedness and honourable pride in others. He knew that had Grey played his cards well, seeking only personal advancement and place, he might by this time have risen, through the influence of the Duchess, into some position which would have secured him ease and affluence. ”

“ An unsteady, flickering shadow crossed the blind once or twice, and Grey's features broke into a grim smile.
"Friend Swift has broken out again," he murmured. "What a pity so clever a man should be the victim of a curse like this! Still, his misfortune is my opportunity, and if there is anything he can tell me, now is the time to learn it."
Without further hesitation, Grey pushed his way into the office, which was flooded with half a dozen powerful electric lights. The large slate-topped table had been cleared of all kinds of electric appliances. ”

“ Grey’s, a blessing to those about her.
It had never occurred to her that the man whom she reverenced above all things human or divine, and whose exalted ideal of feminine perfection soared as far above her as the angels in Lebrun’s “Stoning of St. Stephen” soared above the sinning multitude below them—that the man whose fastidiousness concerning womanly character and deportment seemed exaggerated and almost morbid, could admire or defend, much less love that gray-haired widow, whom the world pronounced either a lunatic, or a scoffing, misanthropic infidel. ”

“ Grey, is the shattered idol of my girlish adoration,—such the divinity of dust upon which I spent the treasures of my love and trust. Gray-haired, gray-hearted, mocked, and maddened in the dawn of my confiding womanhood, nominally a wife, but in reality a nameless waif, shut out from happiness, and pitied as a maniac,—such, is that most desolate and isolated woman, whom, as Agla Gerome, you have known as the mistress of this lonely place. ”

“ Grey was slow in answering. Finally he said:
“The man may suspect our intention. You can never tell anything about such fellows as he. He may have caught some unexpected glimpse of me or simply heard that I was in town. If he’s the man I think him, he has reasons for avoiding me which I can very well understand. Let us go back,—not to the hotel, I must see this adventure through tonight,—but far enough for him to think we have given up all idea of routing him out to-night. ”

“ Men shall sing your praise. The world shall lie at your feet. And I shall see it—I, who have found and taught you, who have discerned your powers with pen and tongue. I shall be content. I ask nothing better of fortune. Ah, my son, it was indeed a providence which made our paths to cross!"
Grey smiled, and was silent. The life of an actor was not the life of his ambition, and he doubted if it would enthrall him as it had enthralled the Old Lion. ”

“ And now listen, friend, brother—man who should have been my lover—I hurry to my abasement. I kill the she-thing in me and go on to my atonement. I fight the instincts of a woman. I sacrifice a possible paradise, for I am young and life is sweet.”
She circled his head with her arm and drew it against her heaving breast. The throbs of that tortured heart beat, beat, beat all through Adam’s blood, to the core of his body.
“My daughter Ruth was not Virey’s child,” she went on, her voice low, yet clear as a bell. ”