Several actual
encounters took place between the two men, and many more were
threatened and avoided. At last Wykham Delandre settled down to a
morose, vengeful acceptance of the situation. Neither Margaret nor Geoffrey was of a pacific temperament, and it was
not long before there began to be quarrels between them. One thing
would lead to another, and wine flowed freely at Brent’s Rock. Now and
again the quarrels would assume a bitter aspect, and threats would be
exchanged in uncompromising language that fairly awed the listening
servants. But such quarrels generally ended where domestic altercations
do, in reconciliation, and in a mutual respect for the fighting
qualities proportionate to their manifestation. Fighting for its own
sake is found by a certain class of persons, all the world over, to be
a matter of absorbing interest, and there is no reason to believe that
domestic conditions minimise its potency. Geoffrey and Margaret made
occasional absences from Brent’s Rock, and on each of these occasions
Wykham Delandre also absented himself; but as he generally heard of the
absence too late to be of any service, he returned home each time in a
more bitter and discontented frame of mind than before. At last there came a time when the absence from Brent’s Rock became
longer than before. Only a few days earlier there had been a quarrel,
exceeding in bitterness anything which had gone before; but this, too,
had been made up, and a trip on the Continent had been mentioned before
the servants. After a few days Wykham Delandre also went away, and it
was some weeks before he returned. It was noticed that he was full of
some new importance—satisfaction, exaltation—they hardly knew how to
call it. He went straightway to Brent’s Rock, and demanded to see
Geoffrey Brent, and on being told that he had not yet returned, said,
with a grim decision which the servants noted:

“I shall come again. My news is solid—it can wait!” and turned away. Week after week went by, and month after month; and then there came a
rumour, certified later on, that an accident had occurred in the
Zermatt valley. Whilst crossing a dangerous pass the carriage
containing an English lady and the driver had fallen over a precipice,
the gentleman of the party, Mr. Geoffrey Brent, having been fortunately
saved as he had been walking up the hill to ease the horses. He gave
information, and search was made. The broken rail, the excoriated
roadway, the marks where the horses had struggled on the decline before
finally pitching over into the torrent—all told the sad tale. It was a
wet season, and there had been much snow in the winter, so that the
river was swollen beyond its usual volume, and the eddies of the stream
were packed with ice. All search was made, and finally the wreck of the
carriage and the body of one horse were found in an eddy of the river. Later on the body of the driver was found on the sandy, torrent-swept
waste near Täsch; but the body of the lady, like that of the other
horse, had quite disappeared, and was—what was left of it by that
time—whirling amongst the eddies of the Rhone on its way down to the
Lake of Geneva. Wykham Delandre made all the enquiries possible, but could not find any
trace of the missing woman. He found, however, in the books of the
various hotels the name of “Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Brent”. And he had a
stone erected at Zermatt to his sister’s memory, under her married
name, and a tablet put up in the church at Bretten, the parish in which
both Brent’s Rock and Dander’s Croft were situated. There was a lapse of nearly a year, after the excitement of the matter
had worn away, and the whole neighbourhood had gone on its accustomed
way. Brent was still absent, and Delandre more drunken, more morose,
and more revengeful than before. Then there was a new excitement. Brent’s Rock was being made ready for
a new mistress. It was officially announced by Geoffrey himself in a
letter to the Vicar, that he had been married some months before to an
Italian lady, and that they were then on their way home. Then a small
army of workmen invaded the house; and hammer and plane sounded, and a
general air of size and paint pervaded the atmosphere. One wing of the
old house, the south, was entirely re-done; and then the great body of
the workmen departed, leaving only materials for the doing of the old
hall when Geoffrey Brent should have returned, for he had directed that
the decoration was only to be done under his own eyes. He had brought
with him accurate drawings of a hall in the house of his bride’s
father, for he wished to reproduce for her the place to which she had
been accustomed. As the moulding had all to be re-done, some
scaffolding poles and boards were brought in and laid on one side of
the great hall, and also a great wooden tank or box for mixing the
lime, which was laid in bags beside it. When the new mistress of Brent’s Rock arrived the bells of the church
rang out, and there was a general jubilation. She was a beautiful
creature, full of the poetry and fire and passion of the South; and the
few English words which she had learned were spoken in such a sweet and
pretty broken way that she won the hearts of the people almost as much
by the music of her voice as by the melting beauty of her dark eyes. Geoffrey Brent seemed more happy than he had ever before appeared; but
there was a dark, anxious look on his face that was new to those who
knew him of old, and he started at times as though at some noise that
was unheard by others. And so months passed and the whisper grew that at last Brent’s Rock was
to have an heir. Geoffrey was very tender to his wife, and the new bond
between them seemed to soften him. He took more interest in his tenants
and their needs than he had ever done; and works of charity on his part
as well as on his sweet young wife’s were not lacking. He seemed to
have set all his hopes on the child that was coming, and as he looked
deeper into the future the dark shadow that had come over his face
seemed to die gradually away. All the time Wykham Delandre nursed his revenge. Deep in his heart had
grown up a purpose of vengeance which only waited an opportunity to
crystallise and take a definite shape. His vague idea was somehow
centred in the wife of Brent, for he knew that he could strike him best
through those he loved, and the coming time seemed to hold in its womb
the opportunity for which he longed. One night he sat alone in the
living-room of his house. It had once been a handsome room in its way,
but time and neglect had done their work and it was now little better
than a ruin, without dignity or picturesqueness of any kind. He had
been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half stupefied. He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and looked up. Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no response. With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations.