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Dawn

by H. Rider Haggard · English · Gutenberg #10892 · 1,046,216 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dawn

Author: H. Rider Haggard


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10892]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10892

Credits: John Bickers, Dagny and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAWN ***

Dawn

by H. Rider Haggard

1884


Contents

 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
 CHAPTER XIX.
 CHAPTER XX.
 CHAPTER XXI.
 CHAPTER XXII.
 CHAPTER XXIII.
 CHAPTER XXIV.
 CHAPTER XXV.
 CHAPTER XXVI.
 CHAPTER XXVII.
 CHAPTER XXVIII.
 CHAPTER XXIX.
 CHAPTER XXX.
 CHAPTER XXXI.
 CHAPTER XXXII.
 CHAPTER XXXIII.
 CHAPTER XXXIV.
 CHAPTER XXXV.
 CHAPTER XXXVI.
 CHAPTER XXXVII.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII.
 CHAPTER XXXIX.
 CHAPTER XL.
 CHAPTER XLI.
 CHAPTER XLII.
 CHAPTER XLIII.
 CHAPTER XLIV.
 CHAPTER XLV.
 CHAPTER XLVI.
 CHAPTER XLVII.
 CHAPTER XLVIII.
 CHAPTER XLIX.
 CHAPTER L.
 CHAPTER LI.
 CHAPTER LII.
 CHAPTER LIII.
 CHAPTER LIV.
 CHAPTER LV.
 CHAPTER LVI.
 CHAPTER LVII.
 CHAPTER LVIII.
 CHAPTER LIX.
 CHAPTER LX.
 CHAPTER LXI.
 CHAPTER LXII.
 CHAPTER LXIII.
 CHAPTER LXIV.
 CHAPTER LXV.
 CHAPTER LXVI.
 CHAPTER LXVII.
 CHAPTER LXVIII.
 CHAPTER LXIX.
 CHAPTER LXX.
 CHAPTER LXXI.
 CHAPTER LXXII.
 CHAPTER LXXIII.
 CHAPTER LXXIV.
 CHAPTER LXXV.
 CHAPTER LXXVI.




“Our natures languish incomplete;
Something obtuse in this our star
Shackles the spirit’s winged feet;
But a glory moves us from afar,
And we know that we are strong and fleet.”
Edmund Ollier.




“Once more I behold the face of her
Whose actions all had the character
Of an inexpressible charm, expressed;
Whose movements flowed from a centre of rest,
And whose rest was that of a swallow, rife
With the instinct of reposing life;
Whose mirth had a sadness all the while
It sparkled and laughed, and whose sadness lay
In the heaven of such a crystal smile
That you longed to travel the self-same way
To the brightness of sorrow. For round her breathed
A grace like that of the general air,
Which softens the sharp extremes of things,
And connects by its subtle, invisible stair
The lowest and the highest. She interwreathed
Her mortal obscureness with so much light
Of the world unrisen, that angel’s wings
Could hardly have given her greater right
To float in the winds of the Infinite.”
Edmund Ollier.




DAWN




CHAPTER I.


“You lie; you always were a liar, and you always will be a liar. You
told my father how I spent the money.”

“Well, and what if I did? I had to look after myself, I suppose. You
forget that I am only here on sufferance, whilst you are the son of the
house. It does not matter to you, but he would have turned me out of
doors,” whined George.

“Oh! curse your fine words; it’s you who forget, you swab. Ay, it’s you
who forget that you asked me to take the money to the gambling- tent,
and made me promise that you should have half of what we won, but that
I should play for both. What, are you beginning to remember now—is it
coming back to you after a whole month? I am going to quicken your
memory up presently, I can tell you; I have got a good deal to pay off,
I’m thinking. I know what you are at; you want to play cuckoo, to turn
‘Cousin Philip’ out that ‘Cousin George’ may fill the nest. You know
the old man’s soft points, and you keep working him up against me. You
think that you would like the old place when he’s gone—ay, and I
daresay that you will get it before you have done, but I mean to have
my penn’orth out of you now, at any rate,” and, brushing the tears of
anger that stood in his brown eyes away with the back of his hand, the
speaker proceeded to square up to George in a most determined way.

Now Philip, with his broad shoulders and his firm-knit frame, would,
even at eighteen, have been no mean antagonist for a full-grown man;
much more then did he look formidable to the lankly, overgrown
stripling crouching against the corner of the wall that prevented his
further retreat.

“Philip, you’re not going to strike me, are you, when you know you are
so much stronger?”

“Yes, I am, though; if I can’t match you with my tongue, at any rate I
will use my fists. Look out.”

“Oh, Philip, don’t! I’ll tell your father.”

“Tell him! why, of course you will, I know that; but you shall have
something to lie about this time,” and he advanced to the attack with a
grim determination not pleasant for his cousin to behold.

Finding that there was no escape, George turned upon him with so shrill
a curse that it even frightened from his leafy perch in the oak above
the tame turtle-dove, intensely preoccupied as he was in cooing to a
new-found mate. He did more than curse; he fought like a cornered rat,
and with as much chance as the rat with a trained fox-terrier. In a few
seconds his head was as snugly tucked away in the chancery of his
cousin’s arm as ever any property was in the court of that name, and,
to speak truth, it seemed quite possible that, when it emerged from its
retreat, it would, like the property, be much dilapidated and
extensively bled.

Let us not dwell upon the scene; for George it was a very painful one,
so painful that he never quite forgot it. His nose, too, was never so
straight again. It was soon over, though to one of the parties time
went with unnatural slowness.

“Well, I think you’ve had about enough for once,” soliloquized Philip,
as he critically surveyed the writhing mass on the ground before him;
and he looked a very handsome lad as he said it.

His curly black hair hung in waving confusion over his forehead, and
flung changing lights and shadows into the depths of his brown eyes,
whilst his massive and somewhat heavy features were touched into a more
active life by the light of that pleasing excitement which animates
nine men out of every ten of the Anglo-Saxon race when they are engaged
on killing or hurting some other living creature. The face, too, had a
certain dignity about it, a little of the dignity of justice; it was
the face of one who feels that if his action has been precipitate and
severe, it has at any rate been virtuous. The full but clear-cut lips
also had their own expression on them, half serious, half comical;
humour, contempt, and even pity were blended in it. Altogether Philip
Caresfoot’s appearance in the moment of boyish vengeance was pleasing
and not uninteresting.

Presently, however, something of the same change passed over his face
that we see in the sky when a cloud passes over the sun; the light
faded out of it. It was astonishing to note how dull and heavy—ay,
more, how bad it made him look all in a breath.

“There will be a pretty business about this,” he murmured, and then,
administering a sharp kick to the prostrate and groaning form on the
ground before him, he said, “Now, then, get up; I’m not going to touch
you again. Perhaps, though, you won’t be in quite such a hurry to tell
lies about me another time, though I suppose that one must always
expect a certain amount of lying from a half-bred beggar like you. Like
mother, like son, you know.”

This last sentence was accompanied by a bitter laugh, and produced a
decided effect on the grovelling George, who slowly raised himself upon
his hands, and, lifting his head, looked his cousin full in the face.

It was not the ghastly appearance of his mangled and blood-soaked
countenance that made Philip recoil so sharply from the sight of his
own handiwork—he had fought too often at school to be chicken-hearted
about a little bloodshed; and, besides, he knew that his cousin was
only knocked about, not really injured—but rather the intense and
almost devilish malignity of the expression that hovered on the blurred
features and in the half-closed eyes. But no attempt was made by George
to translate the look into words, and indeed Philip felt that it was
untranslatable. He also felt dimly that the hate and malice with which
he was regarded by the individual at his feet was of a more
concentrated and enduring character than most men have the power to
originate. In the lurid light of that one glance he was able, though he
was not very clever, to pierce the darkest recesses of his cousin’s
heart, and to see his inmost thought, no longer through a veil, but
face to face. And what he saw was sufficient to make the blood leave
his ruddy cheek, and to fix his eyes into an expression of fear.

Next second George dropped his head on to the ground again, and began
to moan in an ostentatious manner, possibly in order to attract some
one whose footsteps could be plainly heard proceeding slowly down a
shrubbery-path on the other side of the yard wall. At any rate, that
was the effect produced; for next moment, before Philip could think of
escape, had he wished to escape, a door in the wall was opened, and a
gentleman, pausing on the threshold, surveyed the whole scene, with the
assistance of a gold-mounted eye-glass, with some evident surprise and
little apparent satisfaction.

The old gentleman, for he was old, made so pretty a picture, framed as
he was in the arched doorway, and set off by a natural background of
varying shades of green, that his general appearance is worth sketching
as he stood. To begin with, he was dressed in the fashion of the
commencement of this century, and, as has been said, old, though it was
difficult to say how old. Indeed, so vigorous and comparatively
youthful was his bearing that he was generally taken to be considerably
under seventy, but, as a matter of fact, he was but a few years short
of eighty. He was extremely tall, over six feet, and stood upright as a
lifeguardsman; indeed, his height and stately carriage would alone have
made him a remarkable-looking man, had there been nothing else unusual
about him; but, as it happened, his features were as uncommon as his
person. They were clear-cut and cast in a noble mould. The nose was
large and aquiline, the chin, like his son Philip’s, square and
determined; but it was his eyes that gave a painful fascination to his
countenance. They were steely blue, and glittered under the pent-house
of his thick eyebrows, that, in striking contrast to the snow-white of
his hair, were black in hue, as tempered steel glitters in a curtained
room. It was those eyes, in conjunction with sundry little
peculiarities of temper, that had earned for the old man the title of
“Devil Caresfoot,” a sobriquet in which he took peculiar pride. So
pleased was he with it, indeed, that he caused it to be engraved in
solid oak letters an inch long upon the form of a life-sized and
life-like portrait of himself that hung over the staircase in the
house.

“I am determined,” he would say to his son, “to be known to my
posterity as I was known to my contemporaries. The picture represents
my person not inaccurately; from the nickname my descendants will be
able to gather what the knaves and fools with whom I lived thought of
my character. Ah! boy, I am wearing out; people will soon be staring at
that portrait and wondering if it was like me. In a very few years I
shall no longer be ‘devil,’ but ‘devilled,’” and he would chuckle at
his grim and ill-omened joke.

Philip felt his father’s eyes playing upon him, and shrunk from them.
His face had, at the mere thought of the consequences of his
chastisement of his cousin, lost the beauty and animation that had
clothed it a minute before; now it grew leaden and hard, the good died
away from it altogether, and, instead of a young god bright with
vengeance, there was nothing but a sullen youth with dull and
frightened eyes. To his son, as to most people who came under his
influence, “Devil” Caresfoot was a grave reality.

Presently the picture in the doorway opened its mouth and spoke in a
singularly measured, gentle voice.

“You will forgive me, Philip, for interrupting your _tête-à-tête_, but
may I ask what is the meaning of this?”

Philip returned no answer.

“Since your cousin is not in a communicative mood, George, perhaps you
will inform me why you are lying on your face and groaning in that
unpleasant and aggressive manner?”

George lifted his blood-stained face from the stones, and, looking at
his uncle, groaned louder than ever.

“May I ask you, Philip, if George has fallen down and hurt himself, or
if there has been an—an—altercation between you?”

Here George himself got up and, before Philip could make any reply,
addressed himself to his uncle.

“Sir,” he said, “I will answer for Philip; there _has_ been an
altercation, and he in the scuffle knocked me down, and I confess,”
here he put his hand up to his battered face, “that I am suffering a
good deal, but what I want to say is, that I beg you will not blame
Philip. He thought that I had wronged him, and, though I am quite
innocent, and could easily have cleared myself had he given me a
chance, I must admit that appearances are to a certain extent against
me——”

“He lies!” broke in Philip, sullenly.

“You will wonder, sir,” went on the blood-stained George, “how I
allowed myself to be drawn into such a brutal affair, and one so
discreditable to your house. I can only say that I am very sorry,”—
which indeed he was—“and that I should never have taken any notice of
his words—knowing that he would regret them on reflection—had he not in
an unguarded moment allowed himself to taunt me with my birth. Uncle,
you know the misfortune of my father’s marriage, and that she was not
his equal in birth, but you know too that she was my mother and I love
her memory though I never saw her, and I could not bear to hear her
spoken of like that, and I struck him. I hope that both you and he will
forgive me; I cannot say any more.”

“He lies again, he cannot speak the truth.”

“Philip, will you allow me to point out,” remarked his father in his
blandest voice, “that the continued repetition of the very ugly word
‘lie’ is neither narrative nor argument. Perhaps you will be so kind as
to tell me your side of the story; you know I always wish to be
perfectly impartial.”

“He lied to you this morning about the money. It’s true enough that I
gambled away the ten pounds at Roxham fair, instead of paying it into
the bank as you told me, but he persuaded me to it, and he was to have
shared the profits if we won. I was a blackguard, but he was a bigger
blackguard; why should I have all the blame and have that fellow
continually shoved down my throat as a saint? And so I thrashed him,
and that is all about it.”

“Sir, I am sorry to contradict Philip, but indeed he is in error; the
recollection of what took place has escaped him. I could, if necessary,
bring forward evidence—Mr. Bellamy——”

“There is no need, George, for you to continue,” and then, fixing his
glittering eye on Philip: “it is very melancholy for me, having only
one son, to know him to be such a brute, such a bearer of false
witness, such an impostor as you are. Do you know that I have just seen
Mr. Bellamy, the head clerk at the bank, and inquired if he knew
anything of what happened about that ten pounds, and do you know what
he told me?”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t want to.”

“But I really must beg your attention: he told me that the day
following the fair your cousin George came to the bank with ten pounds,
and told him how you had spent the ten pounds I gave you to pay in, and
that he brought the money, his own savings, to replace what you had
gambled away; and Bellamy added that, under all the circumstances, he
did not feel justified in placing it to my credit. What have you to say
to that?”

“What have I to say? I have to say that I don’t believe a word of it.
If George had meant to do me a good turn he would have paid the money
in and said nothing to Bellamy about it. Why won’t you trust me a
little more, father? I tell you that you are turning me into a
scoundrel. I am being twisted up into a net of lies till I am obliged
to lie myself to keep clear of ruin. I know what this sneak is at; he
wants to work you into cutting me out of the property which should be
mine by right. He knows your weaknesses——”

“My weaknesses, sir—my weaknesses!” thundered his father, striking his
gold-headed cane on to the stones; “what do you mean by that?”

“Hush, uncle, he meant nothing,” broke in George.

“Meant nothing! Then for an idle speech it is one that may cost him
dear. Look you here, Philip Caresfoot, I know very well that our family
has been quite as remarkable for its vices as its virtues, but for the
last two hundred and fifty years we have been gentlemen, and you are
not a gentleman; we have not been thieves, and you have proved yourself
a thief; we have spoken the truth, and you are, what you are so fond of
calling your cousin, who is worth two of you, a liar. Now listen.
However imperious I may have grown in my old age, I can still respect
the man who thwarts me even though I hate him; but I despise the man
who deceives me, as I despise you, my dear son Philip—and I tell you
this, and I beg you to lay it to heart, that if ever again I find that
you have deceived me, by Heaven I will disinherit you in favour of—_oh,
oh!_” and the old man fell back against the grey wall, pressing his
hands to his breast and with the cold perspiration starting on to his
pallid countenance.

Both the lads sprang forward, but before they reached him he had
recovered himself.

“It is nothing,” he said, in his ordinary gentle voice, “a trifling
indisposition. I wish you both good morning, and beg you to bear my
words in mind.”

When he was fairly gone, George came up to his cousin and laid his hand
upon his arm.

“Why do you insist upon quarrelling with me, Philip? it always ends
like this, you always get the worst of it.”

But Philip’s only reply was to shake him roughly off, and to vanish
through the door towards the lake. George regarded his departing form
with a peculiar smile, which was rendered even more peculiar by the
distortion of his swollen features.




CHAPTER II.


It is difficult to imagine any study that would prove more fascinating
in itself or more instructive in its issues, than the examination of
the leading characteristics of individual families as displayed through
a series of generations. But it is a subject that from its very nature
is more or less unapproachable, since it is but little that we know
even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancing at the
cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but
which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, the joys and
griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals of those
hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that about six
generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon our
shoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. In the same way, too,
partly through tradition and partly by other means, we are sometimes
able to trace in ourselves and in our children the strong development
of characteristics that distinguished the race centuries ago.

If local tradition and such records of their individual lives as
remained are worthy of any faith, it is beyond a doubt that the
Caresfoots of Bratham Abbey had handed down their own hard and peculiar
cast of character from father to son unaffected in the main by the
continual introduction of alien blood on the side of the mother.

The history of the Caresfoot family had nothing remarkable about it.
They had been yeomen at Bratham from time immemorial, perhaps ever
since the village had become a geographical fact; but it was on the
dissolution of the monasteries that they first became of any importance
in the county. Bratham Abbey, which had shared the common fate, was
granted by Henry VIII. to a certain courtier, Sir Charles Varry by
name. For two years the owner never came near his new possession, but
one day he appeared in the village, and riding to the house of Farmer
Caresfoot, which was its most respectable tenement, he begged him to
show him the Abbey house and the lands attached. It was a dark November
afternoon, and by the time the farmer and his wearied guest had crossed
the soaked lands and reached the great grey house, the damps and
shadows of the night had begun to curtain it and to render its
appearance, forsaken as it was, inexpressibly dreary and lonesome.

“Damp here, my friend, is it not?” said Sir Charles with a shudder,
looking towards the lake, into which the rain was splashing.

“You are right, it be.”

“And lonely too, now that the old monks have gone.”

“Ay, but they do say that the house be mostly full of the spirits of
the dead,” and the yeoman sank his voice to an awed whisper.

Sir Charles crossed himself and muttered, “I can well believe it,” and
then, addressing his companion—

“You do not know of any man who would buy an abbey with all its rights
and franchises, do you, friend?”

“Not rightly, sir; the land be so poor it hath no heart in it; it doth
scarce repay the tillage, and what the house is you may see. The curse
of the monks is on it. But still, sir, if you have a mind to be rid of
the place, I have a little laid by and a natural love for the land,
having been bred on it, and taken the colour of my mind and my stubby
growth therefrom, and I will give you—” and this astutest of all the
Caresfoots whispered a very small sum into Sir Charles’ ear.

“Your price is very small, good friend, it doth almost vanish into
nothing; and methinks the land that reared you cannot be so unkind as
you would have me think. The monks did not love bad land, but yet, if
thou hast it in the gold, I will take it; it will pay off a debt or
two, and I care not for the burden of the land.”

And so Farmer Caresfoot became the lawful owner of Bratham Abbey with
its two advowsons, its royal franchises of treasure-trove and deodand,
and more than a thousand acres of the best land in Marlshire.

The same astuteness that had enabled this wise progenitor to acquire
the estate enabled his descendants to stick tightly to it, and though,
like other families, they had at times met with reverses, they never
lost their grip of the Abbey property. During the course of the first
half of the nineteenth century the land increased largely in value, and
its acreage was considerably added to by the father of the present
owner, a man of frugal mind, but with the family mania for the
collection of all sorts of plate strongly developed. But it was
Philip’s father, “Devil Caresfoot,” who had, during his fifty years’
tenure of the property, raised the family to its present opulent
condition, firstly, by a strict attention to business and the large
accumulations resulting from his practice of always living upon half
his income, and secondly, by his marriage late in middle life with Miss
Bland, the heiress of the neighbouring Isleworth estates, that
stretched over some two thousand acres of land.

This lady, who was Philip’s mother, did not live long to enjoy her
wealth and station. Her husband never spoke a rough word to her, and
yet it is no exaggeration to say that she died of fear of him. The
marriage had been one of convenience, not of affection; indeed poor
Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr.
Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to
feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a
rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr.
Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite
and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had
made to him in the course of their married life. Having satisfactorily
eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, her husband gave up all
idea of further matrimonial ventures, and set himself to heap up
riches. But a little before his wife’s death, and just after his son’s
birth, an event had occurred in the family that had disturbed him not a
little.

His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years his
junior. Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affection
for him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered any
the less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that its
object was little better than half-witted. It is therefore easy to
imagine his distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had till
shortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living
in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his
brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation only
brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been
entrapped into a glaring _mésalliance_.

But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion. So soon as his
“sister-in-law,” as it pleased him to call her sardonically, had
sufficiently recovered, he called upon her. What took place at the
visit never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her native
place never to return, the child remaining with the father, or rather
with the uncle. That boy was George. At the time when this story opens
both his parents were dead: his father from illness resulting from
entire failure of brain power, the mother from drink.

Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad’s birth
entitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to him
the affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew was
quite as dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son.
Not, however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save in
the negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he was
sufficiently quick to note in Philip. To observers this partiality
seemed the more strange when they thought upon Philip’s bonny face and
form, and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-blooded
mother had left their mark in George’s thick lips, small, restless
eyes, pallid complexion, and loose-jointed form.

When Philip shook off his cousin’s grasp and vanished towards the lake,
he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he saw but too
clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father’s estimation,
and, what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunk his side of the
balance, by so much he had raised up that of George. He was inculpated;
a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and, what was worse, an
untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George the meek in spirit
with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It was intolerable; he
hated his father, he hated George. There was no justice in the world,
and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his cousin.
Appearances were always against him; he hated everybody.

And then he began to think that there was in the very next parish
somebody whom he did not hate, but who, on the contrary, interested
him, and was always ready to listen to his troubles, and he also became
aware of the fact that whilst his mind had been thinking his legs had
been walking, and that he was very near the abode of that person—almost
at its gates, in short. He paused and looked at his watch; it had
stopped at half-past eleven, the one blow that George had succeeded in
planting upon him having landed on it, to the great detriment of both
the watch and the striker’s knuckles; but the sun told him that it was
about half-past twelve, not too early to call. So he opened the gate,
and, advancing up an avenue of old beeches to a square, red-brick house
of the time of Queen Anne, boldly rang the bell.

Was Miss Lee at home? Yes, Miss Lee was in the greenhouse; perhaps Mr.
Philip would step into the garden, which Mr. Philip did accordingly.

“How do you do, Philip? I’m delighted to see you; you’ve just come in
time to help in the slaughter.”

“Slaughter, slaughter of what—a pig?”

“No, green fly. I’m going to kill thousands.”

“You cruel girl.”

“I daresay it is cruel, but I don’t care. Grumps always said that I had
no heart, and, so far as green fly are concerned, Grumps was certainly
right. Now, just look at this lily. It is an auratum. I gave
three-and-six (out of my own money) for that bulb last autumn, and now
the bloom is not worth twopence, all through green fly. If I were a man
I declare I should swear. Please swear for me, Philip. Go outside and
do it, so that I mayn’t have it on my conscience. But now for
vengeance. Oh, I say, I forgot, you know, I suppose. I ought to be
looking very sorry——”

“Why, what’s the matter? Any one dead?”

“Oh, no, so much better than that. _It’s got Grumps._”

“Got her, what has got her? What is ‘it’?”

“Why, Chancery, of course. I always call Chancery ‘it.’ I wouldn’t take
its name in vain for worlds. I am too much afraid. I might be made to
‘show a cause why,’ and then be locked up for contempt, which
frequently happens after you have tried to ‘show a cause.’ That is what
has happened to Grumps. She is now showing a cause; shortly she will be
locked up. When she comes out, if she ever does come out, I think that
she will avoid wards in Chancery in future; she will have too much
sympathy with them, and too much practical experience of their
position.”

“But what on earth do you mean, Maria? What has happened to Miss
Gregson?” (_anglice_ Grumps).

“Well, you remember one of my guardians, or rather his wife, got ‘it’
to appoint her my chaperon, but my other guardian wanted to appoint
somebody else, and after taking eighteen months to do it, he has moved
the court to show that Grumps is not a ‘fit and proper person.’ The
idea of calling Grumps improper. She nearly fainted at it, and swore
that, whether she lived through it or whether she didn’t, she would
never come within a mile of me or any other ward if she could help it,
not even the ward of an hospital. I told her to be careful, or she
would be ‘committing contempt,’ which frightened her so that she hardly
spoke again till she left yesterday. Poor Grumps! I expect she is on
bread and water now; but if she makes herself half as disagreeable to
the Vice-Chancellor as she did to me, I don’t believe that they will
keep her long. She’ll wear the gaolers out; she will wear the walls
out; she will wear ‘it’ down to the bone; and then they will let her
loose upon the world again. Why, there is the bell for lunch, and not a
single green fly the less! Never mind, I will do for them to-morrow.
How it would add to her sufferings in her lonely cell if she could see
us going to a _tête-à-tête_ lunch. Come on, Philip, come quick, or the
cutlets will get cold, and I hate cold cutlets.” And off she tripped,
followed by the laughing Philip, who, by the way, was now looking quite
handsome again.

Maria Lee was not very pretty at her then age—just eighteen—but she was
a perfect specimen of a young English country girl; fresh as a rose,
and sound as a bell, and endowed besides with a quick wit and a ready
sympathy. She was essentially one of that class of Englishwomen who
make the English upper middle class what it is—one of the finest and
soundest in the world. Philip, following her into the house, thought
that she was charming; nor, being a Caresfoot, and therefore having a
considerable eye to the main chance, did the fact of her being the
heiress to fifteen hundred a year in land detract from her charms.

The cutlets were excellent, and Maria ate three, and was very comical
about the departed Grumps; indeed, anybody not acquainted with the
circumstances would have gathered that that excellent lady was to be
shortly put to the question. Philip was not quite so merry; he was
oppressed both by recollections of what had happened and apprehensions
of what might happen.

“What is the matter, Philip?” she asked, when they had left the table
to sit under the trees on the lawn. “I can see that something is the
matter. Tell me all about it, Philip.”

And Philip told her what had happened that morning, laying bare all his
heart-aches, and not even concealing his evil deeds. When he had done,
she pondered awhile, tapping her little foot upon the turf.

“Philip,” she said at last, in quite a changed voice, “I do not think
that you are being well treated. I do not think that your cousin means
kindly by you, but—but I do not think that you have behaved rightly
either. I don’t like that about the ten pounds; and I think that you
should not have touched George; he is not so strong as you. Please try
to do as your father—dear me, I am sure I don’t wonder that you are
afraid of him; I am—tells you, and regain his affection, and make it up
with George; and, if you get into any more troubles, come and tell me
about them before you do anything foolish; for though, according to
Grumps, I am silly enough, two heads are better than one.”

The tears stood in the lad’s brown eyes as he listened to her. He
gulped them down, however, and said—

“You are awfully kind to me; you are the only friend I have. Sometimes
I think that you are an angel.”

“Nonsense, Philip. If ‘it’ heard you talk like that, you would join
Grumps. Don’t let me hear any more such stuff,” but, though she spoke
sharply, somehow she did not look displeased.

“I must be off,” he said at length. “I promised to go with my father to
see a new building on Reynold’s farm. I have only twenty minutes to get
home;” and rising they went into the house through a French window
opening on to the lawn.

In the dining-room he turned, and, after a moment’s hesitation,
stuttered out—

“Maria, don’t be angry with me, but may I give you a kiss?”

She blushed vividly.

“How dare you suggest such a thing?—but—but as Grumps has gone, and
there is no new Grumps to refer to, and therefore I can only consult my
own wishes, perhaps if you really wish to, Philip, why, Philip, you
may.”

And he did.

When he was gone she leant her head against the cold marble
mantelpiece.

“I do love him,” she murmured, “yes, that I do.”




CHAPTER III.


Philip was not very fond of taking walks with his father, since he
found that in nine cases out of ten they afforded opportunities for
inculcation of facts of the driest description with reference to estate
management, or to the narration by his parent of little histories of
which his conduct upon some recent occasion would adorn the moral. On
this particular occasion the prospect was particularly unpleasant, for
his father would, he was well aware, overflow with awful politeness,
indeed, after the scene of the morning, it could not be otherwise. Oh,
how much rather would he have spent that lovely afternoon with Maria
Lee! Dear Maria, he would go and see her again the very next day.

When he arrived, some ten minutes after time in the antler-hung hall of
the Abbey House, he found his father standing, watch in hand, exactly
under the big clock, as though he was determined to make a note by
double entry of every passing second.

“When I asked you to walk with me this afternoon, Philip, I, if my
memory does not deceive me, was careful to say that I had no wish to
interfere with any prior engagement. I was aware how little interest,
compared to your cousin George, you take in the estate, and I had no
wish to impose an uncongenial task. But, as you kindly volunteered to
accompany me, I regret that you did not find it convenient to be
punctual to the time you fixed. I have now waited for you for seventeen
minutes, and let me tell you that at my time of life I cannot afford to
lose seventeen minutes. May I ask what has delayed you?”

This long speech had given Philip the opportunity of recovering the
breath that he had lost in running home. He replied promptly—

“I have been lunching with Miss Lee.”

“Oh, indeed, then I no longer wonder that you kept me waiting, and I
must say that in this particular I commend your taste. Miss Lee is a
young lady of good family, good manners, and good means. If her estate
went with this property it would complete as pretty a five thousand
acres of mixed soil as there is in the county. Those are beautiful old
meadows of hers, beautiful. Perhaps——” but here the old man checked
himself.

On leaving the house they had passed together down a walk called the
tunnel walk, on account of the arching boughs of the lime-trees that
interlaced themselves overhead. At the end of this avenue, and on the
borders of the lake, there stood an enormous but still growing oak,
known as Caresfoot’s Staff. It was the old squire’s favourite tree, and
the best topped piece of timber for many miles round.

“I wonder,” said Philip, by way of making a little pleasant
conversation, “why that tree was called Caresfoot’s Staff.”

“Your ignorance astonishes me, Philip, but I suppose that there are
some people who can live for years in a place and yet imbibe nothing of
its traditions. Perhaps you know that the monks were driven out of
these ruins by Henry VIII. Well, on the spot where that tree now stands
there grew a still greater oak, a giant tree, its trunk measured
sixteen loads of timber; which had, as tradition said, been planted by
the first prior of the Abbey when England was still Saxon. The night
the monks left a great gale raged over England. It was in October, when
the trees were full of leaf, and its fiercest gust tore the great oak
from its roothold, and flung it into the lake. Look! do you see that
rise in the sand, there, by the edge of the deep pool, in the eight
foot water? That is there it is supposed to lie. Well, the whole
country-side said that it was a sign that the monks had gone for ever
from Bratham Abbey, and the country-side was right. But when your
ancestor, old yeoman Caresfoot, bought this place and came to live
here, in a year when there was a great black frost that set the waters
of the lake like one of the new-fangled roads, he asked his neighbours,
ay, and his labouring folk, to come and dine with him and drink to the
success of his purchase. It was a proud day for him, and when dinner
was done and they were all mellow with strong ale, he bade them step
down to the borders of the lake, as he would have them be witness to a
ceremony. When they reached the spot they saw a curious sight, for
there on a strong dray, and dragged by Farmer Caresfoot’s six best
horses, was an oak of fifty years’ growth coming across the ice, earth,
roots and all.

“On that spot where it now stands there had been a great hole, ten feet
deep by fourteen feet square, dug to receive it, and into that hole
Caresfoot Staff was tilted and levered off the dray. And when it had
been planted, and the frozen earth well trodden in, your grandfather in
the ninth degree brought his guests back to the old banqueting-hall,
and made a speech which, as it was the first and last he ever made, was
long remembered in the country-side. It was, put into modern English,
something like this:

“‘Neighbours,—Prior’s Oak has gone into the water, and folks said that
it was for a sign that the monks would never come back to Bratham, and
that it was the Lord’s wind that put it there. And, neighbours, as ye
know, the broad Bratham lands and the fat marshes down by the brook
passed by king’s grant to a man that knew not clay from loam, or layer
from pasturage, and from him they passed by the Lord’s will to me, as I
have asked you here to-day to celebrate. And now, neighbours, I have a
mind, and though it seem to you but a childish thing, yet I have a
mind, and have set myself to fulfil it. When I was yet a little lad,
and drove the swine out to feed on the hill yonder, when the acorns had
fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton’s father had gracious leave from the
feoffees to put up the fence that doth now so sorely vex us, I found
one day a great acorn, as big as a dow’s egg, and of a rich and
wondrous brown, and this acorn I bore home and planted in kind earth in
the corner of my dad’s garden, thinking that it would grow, and that
one day I would hew its growth and use it for a staff. Now that was
fifty long years ago, lads, and there where grew Prior’s Oak, there,
neighbours, I have set my Staff to-day. The monks have told us how in
Israel every man planted his fig and his vine. For the fig I know not
rightly what that is; but for the vine, I will plant no creeping,
clinging vine, but a hearty English oak, that, if they do but give it
good room to breathe in, and save their heirloom from the axe, shall
cast shade and grow acorns, and burst into leaf in the spring and grow
naked in the winter, when ten generations of our children, and our
children’s children, shall have mixed their dust with ours yonder in
the graveyard. And now, neighbours, I have talked too long, though I am
better at doing than talking; but ye will even forgive me, for I will
not talk to you again, though on this the great day of my life I was
minded to speak. But I will bid you every man pledge a health to the
Caresfoot’s Staff, and ask a prayer that, so long as it shall push its
leaves, so long may the race of my loins be here to sit beneath its
shade, and even mayhap when the corn is ripe and the moon is up, and
their hearts grow soft towards the past, to talk with kinsman or with
sweetheart of the old man who struck it in this kindly soil.’”

The old squire’s face grew tender as he told this legend of the
forgotten dead, and Philip’s young imagination summoned up the strange
old-world scene of the crowd of rustics gathered in the snow and frost
round this very tree.

“Philip,” said his father, suddenly, “you will hold the yeoman’s Staff
one day; be like it of an oaken English heart, and you will defy wind
and weather as it has done, and as your forbears have done. Come, we
must go on.”

“By the way, Philip,” he continued, after a while, “you will remember
what I said to you this morning—I hope that you will remember it,
though I spoke in anger—never try to deceive me again, or you will
regret it. And now I have something to say to you. I wish you to go to
college and receive an education that will fit you to hold the position
you must in the course of Nature one day fill in the county. The Oxford
term begins in a few days, and you have for some years been entered at
Magdalen College. I do not expect you to be a scholar, but I do expect
you to brush off your rough ways and your local ideas, and to learn to
become such a person both in your conduct and your mind as a gentleman
of your station should be.”

“Is George to go to college too?”

“No; I have spoken to him on the subject, and he does not wish it. He
says very wisely that, with his small prospects, he would rather spend
the time in learning how to earn his living. So he is going to be
articled to the Roxham lawyers, Foster and Son, or rather Foster and
Bellamy, for young Bellamy, who is a lawyer by profession, came here
this morning, not to speak about you, but on a message from the firm to
say that he is now a junior partner, and that they will be very happy
to take George as an articled clerk. He is a hard-working, shrewd young
man, and it will be a great advantage to George to have his advice and
example before him.”

Philip assented, and went on in silence, reflecting on the curious
change in his immediate prospects that this walk had brought to light.
He was much rejoiced at the prospect of losing sight of George for a
while, and was sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the advantages,
social and mental, that the University would offer him; but it struck
him that there were two things which he did not like about the scheme.
The first of these was, that whilst he was pursuing his academical
studies, George would practically be left on the spot—for Roxham was
only six miles off—to put in motion any schemes he might have devised;
and Philip was sure that he had devised schemes. And the second, that
Oxford was a long way from Maria Lee. However, he kept his objections
to himself. In due course they reached the buildings they had set out
to examine, and the old squire, having settled what was to be done, and
what was to be left undone, with characteristic promptitude and
shrewdness, they turned homewards.

In passing through the shrubberies, on their way back to the house,
they suddenly came upon a stolid-looking lad of about fifteen, emerging
from a side-walk with a nest full of young blackbirds in his hand. Now,
if there was one thing in this world more calculated than another to
rouse the most objectionable traits of the old squire’s character into
rapid action, it was the discovery of boys, and more especially
bird-nesting boys, in his plantations. In the first place, he hated
trespassers; and in the second, it was one of his simple pleasures to
walk in the early morning and listen to the singing of the birds that
swarmed around. Accordingly, at the obnoxious sight he stopped
suddenly, and, drawing himself up to his full height, addressed the
trembling youth in his sweetest voice.

“Your name is, I believe—Brady—Jim Brady—correct me if I am wrong— and
you have come here, you—you—young—villain—to steal my birds.”

The frightened boy walked slowly backwards, followed by the old man
with his fiery eyes fixed upon his face, till at last concussion
against the trunk of a great tree prevented further retreat. Here he
stood for about thirty seconds, writhing under the glance that seemed
to pierce him through and through, till at last he could stand it no
longer, but flung himself on the ground, roaring:

“Oh! don’t ee, squire; don’t ee now look at me with that ‘ere eye. Take
and thrash me, squire, but don’t ee fix me so! I hayn’t had no more nor
twenty this year, and a nest of spinxes, and Tom Smith he’s had
fifty-two and a young owl. Oh! oh!”

Enraged beyond measure at this last piece of information, Mr. Caresfoot
took his victim at his word, and, ceasing his ocular experiments, laid
into the less honourable portion of his form with the gold-headed
malacca cane in a way that astonished the prostrate Jim, though he was
afterwards heard to declare that the squire’s cane “warn’t not nothing
compared with the squire’s eye, which wore a hot coal, it wore, and
frizzled your innards as sich.”

When Jim Brady had departed, never to return again, and the old man had
recovered his usual suavity of manner, he remarked to his son:

“There is some curious property in the human eye; a property that is, I
believe, very much developed in my own. Did you observe the effect of
my glance upon that boy? I was trying an experiment on him. I remember
it was always the same with your poor mother. She could never bear me
to look at her.”

Philip made no reply, but he thought that, if she had been the object
of experiments of that nature, it was not very wonderful.

Shortly after their return home he received a note from Miss Lee. It
ran thus:

“My dear Philip,
“What _do_ you think? Just after you had gone away, I got by the
mid-day post, which Jones (the butcher) brought from Roxham, several
letters, amongst them one from Grumps and one from Uncle Tom. Grumps
has shown a cause. Why? ‘It’ said she was not an improper person; but,
for all that, she is so angry with Uncle Tom that she will not come
back, but has accepted an offer to go to Canada as companion to a lady;
so farewell Grumps.

“Now for Uncle Tom. ‘It’ suggested that I should live with some of my
relations till I came of age, and pay them four hundred a year, which I
think a good deal. I am sure it can’t cost four hundred a year to feed
me, though I have such an appetite. I had no idea they were all so fond
of me before; they all want me to come and live with them, except Aunt
Chambers, who, you know, lives in Jersey. Uncle Tom says in his letter
that he shall be glad if his daughters can have the advantage of my
example, and of studying my polished manners (just fancy _my_ polished
manners; and I know, because little Tom, who is a brick, told me, that
only last year he heard his father tell Emily—that’s the eldest—that I
was a dowdy, snub-nosed, ill-mannered miss, but that she must keep in
with me and flatter me up). No, I will not live with Uncle Tom, and I
will tell ‘it’ so. If I must leave my home, I will go to Aunt Chambers
at Jersey. Jersey is a beautiful place for flowers, and one learns
French there without the trouble of learning it; and I like Aunt
Chambers, and she has no children, and nothing but the memory of a dear
departed. But I don’t like leaving home, and feel very much inclined to
cry. _Hang_ the Court of Chancery, and Uncle Tom and his interference
too!—_there_. I suppose you can’t find time to come over to-morrow
morning to see me off? Good-bye, dear Philip,
    “Your affectionate friend, “Maria Lee.”


Philip did manage to find time next morning, and came back looking very
disconsolate.




CHAPTER IV.


Philip went to college in due course, and George departed to learn his
business as a lawyer in Roxham, but it will not be necessary for us to
enter into the details of their respective careers during this period
of their lives.

At college Philip did fairly well, and, being a Caresfoot, did not run
into debt. He was, as his great bodily strength gave promise of, a
first-class athlete, and for two years stroked the Magdalen boat. Nor
did he altogether neglect his books, but his reading was of a desultory
and out-of-the-way order, and much directed towards the investigation
of mystical subjects. Fairly well liked amongst the men with whom he
mixed, he could hardly be called popular; his temperament was too
uncertain for that. At times he was the gayest of the gay, and then
when the fit took him he would be plunged into a state of gloomy
depression that might last for days. His companions, to whom his
mystical studies were a favourite jest, were wont to assert that on
these occasions he was preparing for a visit from his familiar, but the
joke was one that he never could be prevailed upon to appreciate. The
fact of the matter was that these fits of gloom were constitutional
with him, and very possibly had their origin in the state of his
mother’s mind before his birth, when her whole thoughts were coloured
by her morbid and fanciful terror of her husband, and her frantic
anxiety to conciliate him.

During the three years that he spent at college, Philip saw but little
of George, since, when he happened to be down at Bratham, which was not
often, for he spent most of his vacations abroad, George avoided coming
there as much as possible. Indeed, there was a tacit agreement between
the two young men that they would see as little of each other as might
be convenient. But, though he did not see much of him himself, Philip
was none the less aware that George’s influence over his father was, if
anything, on the increase. The old squire’s letters were full of him
and of the admirable way in which he managed the estate, for it was now
practically in his hands. Indeed, to his surprise and somewhat to his
disgust, he found that George began to be spoken of indifferently with
himself as the “young squire.” Long before his college days had come to
an end Philip had determined that he would do his best, as soon as
opportunity offered, to reduce his cousin to his proper place, not by
the violent means to which he had resorted in other days, but rather by
showing himself to be equally capable, equally assiduous, and equally
respectful and affectionate.

At last the day came when he was to bid farewell to Oxford for good,
and in due course he found himself in a second-class railway carriage
—thinking it useless to waste money, he always went second—and bound
for Roxham.

Just before the train left the platform at Paddington, Philip was
agreeably surprised out of his meditations by the entry into his
carriage of an extremely elegant and stately young lady, a foreigner as
he judged from her strong accent when she addressed the porter. With
the innate gallantry of twenty-one, he immediately laid himself out to
make the acquaintance of one possessed of such proud, yet melting blue
eyes, such lovely hair, and a figure that would not have disgraced
Diana; and, with this view, set himself to render her such little
services as one fellow-traveller can offer to another. They were
accepted reservedly at first, then gratefully, and before long the
reserve broke down entirely, and this very handsome pair dropped into a
conversation as animated as the lady’s broken English would allow. The
lady told him that her name was Hilda von Holtzhausen, that she was of
a German family, and had come to England to enter a family as
companion, in order to obtain a perfect knowledge of the English
language. She had already been to France and acquired French; when she
knew English, then she had been promised a place as school-mistress
under government in her own country. Her father and mother were dead,
and she had no brothers or sisters, and very few friends.

Where was she going to? She was going to a place called Roxham; here it
was written on the ticket. She was going to be companion to a dear
young lady, very rich, like all the English, whom she had met when she
had travelled with her French family to Jersey, a Miss Lee.

“You don’t say so!” said Philip. “Has she come back to Rewtham?”

“What, do you, then, know her?”

“Yes—that is, I used to three years ago. I live in the next parish.”

“Ah! then perhaps you are the gentleman of whom I have heard her to
speak, Mr. Car-es-foot, whom she did seem to appear to love; is not
that the word?—to be very fond, you know.”

Philip laughed, blushed, and acknowledged his identity with the
gentleman whom Miss Lee “did seem to appear to love.”

“Oh! I am glad; then we shall be friends, and see each other often—
shall we not?”

He declared unreservedly that she should see him very often.

From Fräulein von Holtzhausen Philip gathered in the course of their
journey a good many particulars about Miss Lee. It appeared that,
having attained her majority, she was coming back to live at her old
home at Rewtham, whither she had tried to persuade her Aunt Chambers to
accompany her, but without success, that lady being too much attached
to Jersey to leave it. During the course of a long stay on the island,
the two girls had become fast friends, and the friendship had
culminated in an offer being made by Maria Lee to Fräulein von
Holtzhausen to come and live with her as a companion, a proposal that
exactly suited the latter.

The mention of Miss Lee’s name had awakened pleasant recollections in
Philip’s mind, recollections that, at any other time, might have tended
towards the sentimental; but, when under fire from the blue eyes of
this stately foreigner, it was impossible for him to feel sentimental
about anybody save herself. “The journey is over all too soon,” was the
secret thought of each as they stepped on to the Roxham platform.
Before they had finally said good-bye, however, a young lady with a
dainty figure, in a shady hat and pink and white dress, came running
along the platform.

“Hilda, Hilda, here I am! How do you do, dear? Welcome home,” and she
was about to seal her welcome with a kiss, when her eye fell upon
Philip standing by.

“Oh, Philip!” she cried with a blush, “don’t you know me? Have I
changed much? I should have known you anywhere; and I am glad to see
you, awfully glad (excuse the slang, but it is such a relief to be able
to say ‘awful’ without being pulled up by Aunt Chambers). Just think,
it is three years since we met. Do you remember Grumps? How do I look?
Do you think you will like me as much as you used to?”

“I think that you are looking the same dear girl that you always used
to look, only you have grown very pretty, and it is not possible that I
shall like you more than I used to.”

“I think they must teach you to pay compliments at Oxford, Philip,” she
answered, flushing with pleasure, “but it is all rubbish for you to say
that I am pretty, because I know I am not”—and then, confidentially,
glancing round to see that there was nobody within hearing (Hilda was
engaged with a porter in looking after her things): “Just look at my
nose, and you will soon change your mind. It’s broader, and flatter,
and snubbier than ever. I consider that I have got a bone to pick with
Providence about that nose. Ah! here comes Hilda. Isn’t she lovely!
There’s beauty for you if you like. She hasn’t got a nose. Come and
show us to the carriage. You will come and lunch with us to-morrow,
won’t you? I am so glad to get back to the old house again; and I mean
to have such a garden! ‘Life is short, and joys are fleeting,’ as Aunt
Chambers always says, so I mean to make the best of it whilst it lasts.
I saw your father yesterday. He is a dear old man, though he has such
awful eyes. I never felt so happy in my life as I do now. Good-bye. One
o’clock.” And she was gone, leaving Philip with something to think
about.

Philip’s reception at home was cordial and reassuring. He found his
father considerably aged in appearance, but as handsome and upright as
ever, and to all appearance heartily glad to see him.

“I am glad to see you back, my boy,” he said. “You come to take your
proper place. If you look at me, you will see that you won’t have long
to wait before you take mine. I can’t last much longer, Philip, I feel
that. Eighty-two is a good age to have reached. I have had my time, and
put the property in order, and now I suppose I must make room. I went
with the clerk, old Jakes, and marked out my grave yesterday. There’s a
nice little spot the other side of the stone that they say marks where
old yeoman Caresfoot, who planted Caresfoot’s Staff, laid his bones,
and that’s where I wish to be put, in his good company. Don’t forget
that when the time comes, Philip. There’s room for another if you care
to keep it for yourself, but perhaps you will prefer the vault.”

“You must not talk of dying yet, father. You will live many years yet.”

“No, Philip; perhaps one, perhaps two, not more than two, perhaps a
month, perhaps not a day. My life hangs on a thread now.” And he
pointed to his heart. “It may snap any day, if it gets a strain. By the
way, Philip, you see that cupboard? Open it! Now, you see that
stoppered bottle with the red label? Good. Well now, if ever you see me
taken with an attack of the heart (I have had one since you were away,
you know, and it nearly carried me off), you run for that as hard as
you can go, and give it me to drink, half at a time. It is a tremendous
restorative of some sort, and old Caley says that, if I do not take it
when the next attack comes, there’ll be an end of ‘Devil Caresfoot’;”
and he rapped his cane energetically on the oak floor.

“And so, Philip, I want you to go about and make yourself thoroughly
acquainted with the property, so that you may be able to take things
over when I die without any hitch. I hope that you will be careful and
do well by the land. Remember that a big property like this is a sacred
trust.

“And now there are two more things that I will take this opportunity to
say a word to you about. First, I see that you and your cousin George
don’t get on well, and it grieves me. You have always had a false idea
of George, always, and thought that he was underhand. Nothing could be
more mistaken than such a notion. George is a most estimable young man,
and my dear brother’s only son. I wish you would try to remember that,
Philip—blood is thicker than water, you know— and you will be the only
two Caresfoots left when I am gone. Now, perhaps you may think that I
intend enriching George at your expense, but that is not so. Take this
key and open the top drawer of that secretaire, and give me that
bundle. This is my will. If you care to look over it, and can
understand it—which is more than I can—you will see that everything is
left to you, with the exception of that outlying farm at Holston, those
three Essex farms that I bought two years ago, and twelve thousand
pounds in cash. Of course, as you know, the Abbey House, and the lands
immediately round, are entailed—it has always been the custom to entail
them for many generations. There, put it back. And now the last thing
is, I want you to get married, Philip. I should like to see a
grandchild in the house before I die. I want you to marry Maria Lee. I
like the girl. She comes of a good old Marlshire stock—our family
married into hers in the year 1703. Besides, her property would put
yours into a ring-fence. She is a sharp girl too, and quite pretty
enough for a wife. I hope you will think it over, Philip.”

“Yes, father; but perhaps she will not have me. I am going to lunch
there to-morrow.”

“I don’t think you need be afraid, Philip; but I won’t keep you any
longer. Shake hands, my boy. You’ll perhaps think of your old father
kindly when you come to stand in his shoes. I hope you will, Philip. We
have had many a quarrel, and sometimes I have been wrong, but I have
always wished to do my duty by you, my boy. Don’t forget to make the
best of your time at lunch to-morrow.”

Philip went out of his father’s study considerably touched by the
kindness and consideration with which he had been treated, and not a
little relieved to find his position with reference to his succession
to the estate so much better than he had anticipated, and his cousin
George’s so much worse.

“That red-haired fox has plotted in vain,” he thought, with secret
exultation. And then he set himself to consider the desirability of
falling in with his father’s wishes as regards marriage. Of Maria he
was, as the reader is aware, very fond; indeed, a few years before he
had been in love with her, or something very like it; he knew too that
she would make him a very good wife, and the match was one that in
every way commended itself to his common sense and his interests. Yes,
he would certainly take his father’s advice. But every time he said
this to himself—and he said it pretty often that evening—there would
arise before his mind’s eye a vision of the sweet blue eyes of Miss
Lee’s stately companion. What eyes they were, to be sure! It made
Philip’s blood run warm and quick merely to think of them; indeed, he
could almost find it in his heart to wish that Hilda was Maria and
Maria was in Hilda’s shoes.

What between thoughts of the young lady he had set himself to marry,
and of the young lady he did not mean to marry, but whose eyes he
admired, Philip did not sleep so well as usual that night.




CHAPTER V.


Philip did not neglect to go to luncheon at Rewtham house, and a very
pleasant luncheon it was; indeed, it would have been difficult for him
to have said which he found the pleasantest: Maria’s cheerful chatter
and flattering preference, or Hilda’s sweet and gracious presence.

After luncheon, at Maria’s invitation he gave Fräulein von Holtzhausen
her first lesson in writing in English character; and to speak truth he
found the task of guiding her fair hand through the mysteries of the
English alphabet a by no means uncongenial occupation. When he came
away his admiration of Hilda’s blue eyes was more pronounced than ever;
but, on the other hand, so was his conviction that he would be very
foolish if he allowed it to interfere with his intention of making
Maria Lee his wife.

He who would drive two women thus in double harness must needs have a
light hand and a ready lash, and it is certainly to the credit of
Philip’s cleverness that he managed so well as he did. For as time went
on he discovered his position to be this. Both Hilda and Maria were in
love with him, the former deeply and silently, the latter openly and
ostensibly. Now, however gratifying this fact might be to his pride, it
was in some ways a thorny discovery, since he dared not visibly pay his
attentions to either. For his part he returned Hilda von Holtzhausen’s
devotion to a degree that surprised himself; his passion for her burnt
him like a fire, utterly searing away the traces of his former
affection for Maria Lee. Under these circumstances, most young men of
twenty-one would have thrown prudence to the winds and acknowledged,
either by acts or words, the object of their love; but not so Philip,
who even at that age was by no means deficient in the characteristic
caution of the Caresfoot family. He saw clearly that his father would
never consent to his marriage with Hilda, nor, to speak truth, did he
himself at all like the idea of losing Miss Lee and her estates.

On the other hand, he knew Hilda’s proud and jealous mind. She was no
melting beauty who would sigh and submit to an affront, but, for all
her gracious ways, at heart a haughty woman, who, if she reigned at
all, would reign like Alexander, unrivalled and alone. That she was
well aware of her friend’s tendresse for Philip the latter very shortly
guessed; indeed, as he suspected, Maria was in the habit of confiding
to her all her hopes and fears connected with himself, a suspicion that
made him very careful in his remarks to that young lady.

The early summer passed away whilst Philip was still thinking over his
position, and the face of the country was blushing with all the glory
of July, when one afternoon he found himself, as he did pretty
frequently, in the shady drawing-room at Miss Lee’s. As he entered, the
sound of voices told him that there were other visitors beside himself,
and, as soon as his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he saw his
cousin George, together with his partner Mr. Bellamy, and a lady with
whom he was not acquainted.

George had improved in appearance somewhat since we last saw him
meeting with severe treatment at his cousin’s hands. The face had
filled up a little, with the result that the nose did not look so
hooked, nor the thick lips so coarse and sensual. The hair, however,
was as red as ever, and as for the small, light-blue eyes, they
twinkled with the added sharpness and lustre that four years of such
experience of the shady side of humanity as can be gathered in a
lawyer’s office, is able to give to the student of men and manners.

So soon as Philip had said how-do-you-do to Maria and Hilda, giving to
each a gentle pressure of the hand, George greeted him with warmth.

“How are you, Philip? delighted to see you; how is my uncle? Bellamy
saw him this morning, and thought that he did not look well.”

“I certainly did think, Mr. Philip,” said the gentleman alluded to, a
very young-looking, apple-faced little man, with a timid manner, who
stood in the background nervously rubbing his dry hands together—“I
certainly did think that the squire looked aged when I saw him this
morning.”

“Well, you see, Mr. Bellamy, eighty-two is a good age, is it not?” said
Philip, cheerfully.

“Yes, Mr. Philip, a good age, a very good age, for the _next heir_,”
and Mr. Bellamy chuckled softly somewhere down in his throat, and
retreated a little.

“He is getting facetious,” broke in George, “that marriage has done
that for him. By the way, Philip, do you know Mrs. Bellamy? she has
only been down here a fortnight, you know. What, no! Then you have a
pleasure to come” (raising his voice so that it might be heard at the
other end of the room), “a very clever woman, and as handsome as she is
clever.”

“Indeed! I must ask you to introduce me presently, Mr. Bellamy. I only
recently heard that you were married.”

Mr. Bellamy blushed and twisted and was about to speak, when George cut
in again.

“No, I dare say you didn’t; sly dog, Bellamy; do you know what he did?
I introduced him to the lady when we were up in town together last
Christmas. I was dreadfully hard hit myself, I can assure you, and as
soon as my back was turned he went and cut me out of the water—and
turned my adored into Mrs. Bellamy.”

“What are you taking my name in vain about, Mr. Caresfoot?” said a
rich, low voice behind them.

“Bless me, Anne, how softly you move, you quite startled me,” said
little Mr. Bellamy, putting on his spectacles in an agitated manner.

“My dear, a wife, like an embodied conscience, should always be at her
husband’s shoulder, especially when he does not know it.”

Bellamy made no reply, but looked as though the sentiment was one of
which he did not approve; meantime the lady repeated her question to
George, and the two fell into a bantering conversation. Philip, having
dropped back a little, had an opportunity of carefully observing Mrs.
Bellamy, an occupation not without interest, for she was certainly
worthy of notice.

About twenty years of age, and of medium height, her figure was so
finely proportioned and so roomily made that it gave her the appearance
of being taller than she really was. The head was set squarely on the
shoulders, the hair was cut short, and clustered in ringlets over the
low, broad brow; whilst the clearly carved Egyptian features and square
chin gave the whole face a curious expression of resoluteness and
power. The eyes were heavily-lidded and greyish-green in hue, with
enormously large dark pupils that had a strange habit of expanding and
contracting without apparent reason.

Gazing at her, Philip was at a loss to know whether this woman so
bizarrely beautiful fascinated or repelled him; indeed, neither then
nor at any future time did he succeed in deciding the question. Whilst
he was still contemplating, and wondering how Bellamy of all people in
the world had managed to marry such a woman, and what previous
acquaintance George had had with her, he saw the lady whisper something
to his cousin, who at once turned and introduced him.

“Philip,” he said, “let me introduce you to the most charming lady of
my acquaintance, Mrs. Bellamy.”

Philip bowed and expressed himself delighted, whilst the lady curtsied
with a mixture of grace and dignity that became her infinitely well.

“Your cousin has often spoken to me of you, Mr. Caresfoot, but he never
told me——” here she hesitated, and broke off.

“What did he never tell you, Mrs. Bellamy? Nothing to my disadvantage,
I hope.”

“On the contrary, if you wish to know,” she said, in that tone of
flattering frankness which is sometimes so charming in a woman’s mouth,
“he never told me that you were young and handsome. I fancied you forty
at least.”

“I should dearly like to tell you, Mrs. Bellamy, what my cousin George
never told _me_; but I won’t, for fear I should make Bellamy jealous.”

“Jealousy, Mr. Caresfoot, is a luxury that _my_ husband is not allowed
to indulge in; it is very well for lovers, but what is a compliment in
a lover becomes an impertinence in a husband. But if I keep you here
much longer, I shall be drawing the enmity of Miss Lee, and—yes, of
Fräulein von Holtzhausen, too, on to my devoted head, and, as that is
the only sort of jealousy I have any fear of, or indeed any respect
for, being as it is the expression of the natural abhorrence of one
woman for another, I had rather avoid it.”

Philip followed the direction of her sleepy eyes, and saw that both
Miss Lee and Hilda appeared to be put out. The former was talking
absently to Mr. Bellamy, and glancing continually in the direction of
that gentleman’s wife. The latter, too, whilst appearing to listen to
some compliment from George, was gazing at Mrs. Bellamy with a curious
look of dislike and apprehension in her face.

“You see what I mean; Fräulein von Holtzhausen actually looks as though
she were afraid of me. Can you fancy any one being afraid of me, except
my husband, of course?—for as you know, when a woman is talking of men,
her husband is _always_ excepted. Come, we must be going; but, Mr.
Caresfoot, bend a little nearer; if you will accept it from such a
stranger, I want to give you a bit of advice—make your choice pretty
soon, or you will lose them both.”

“What do you mean—how do you know——”

“I mean nothing at all, or just as much as you like, and for the rest I
use my eyes. Come, let us join the others.”

A few minutes later Hilda put down her work, and, declaring that she
felt hot, threw open the French window and went out into the garden,
whither, on some pretext or other, Philip followed her.

“What a lovely woman that is,” said Mrs. Bellamy, with enthusiasm, to
Miss Lee, as soon as Philip was out of earshot. “Her _tout ensemble_
positively kills one. I feel plain and dowdy as a milkmaid alongside of
a Court-beauty when I am in the room with her. Don’t you, Miss Lee?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I never thought about it, but of course she is
lovely and I’m plain, so there is no possibility of comparison between
us.”

“Well, I think you rate yourself rather low, if you will allow me to
say so; but most women would but ‘poorly satisfy the sight’ of a man
when she was present. I know that I should not care to trust my admirer
(if I had one), however devoted he might be, for a single day in her
company; would you?”

“I really don’t know; what _do_ you mean?”

“Mean, Miss Lee, why I mean nothing at all; what should I mean, except
that beauty is a magnet which attracts all men; it serves them for a
standard of morality and a test of right and wrong. Men are different
from women. If a man is faithful to one of us, it is only because no
other woman of sufficient charm has become between him and us. You can
never trust a man.”

“What dreadful ideas you have.”

“Do you think so? I hope not. I only speak what I have observed. Take
the case of Fräulein von Holtzhausen, for instance. Did you not notice
that whilst she was in the room the eyes of the three gentlemen were
all fixed upon her, and as soon as she leaves it one of them follows
her, as the others would have done had they not been forestalled? One
cannot blame them; they are simply following a natural law. Any other
man would do the same where such a charming person is concerned.”

“I certainly did not notice it; indeed, to speak the truth, I thought
that they were more occupied with you——”

“With me! why, my dear Miss Lee, _I_ don’t set up for being good-
looking. What a strange idea. But I dare say you are right, it is only
one of my theories based upon my own casual observations, and, after
all, men are not a very interesting subject, are they? Let’s talk of
something more exciting—dresses, for instance.”

But poor Maria was too uncomfortable and disturbed to talk of anything
else, so she collapsed into silence, and shortly after Mr. and Mrs.
Bellamy and George made their adieux.

Meanwhile Philip and Hilda had been walking leisurely down the
shrubberies adjoining the house.

“Why have you come out?” she asked in German, a language he understood
well.

“To walk with you. Why do you speak to me in German?”

“Because it is my pleasure to do so, and I never asked you to walk with
me. You are wanted in the drawing-room, you had better go back.”

“No, I won’t go, Hilda; that is, not until you have promised me
something.”

“Do not call me Hilda, if you please. I am the Fräulein von
Holtzhausen. What is it you want me to promise?”

“I want you to meet me this evening at nine o’clock in the summer-
house.”

“I think, Mr. Caresfoot, that you are forgetting a little what is due
to me, to yourself, and—to Miss Lee?”

“What do you mean by due to Miss Lee?”

“Simply that she is in love with you, and that you have encouraged her
in her affection; you need not contradict me, she tells me all about
it.”

“Nonsense, Hilda; if you will meet me to-night, I will explain
everything; there is no need for you to be jealous.”

She swept round upon him, tossing her head, and stamping her dainty
foot upon the gravel.

“Mr. Caresfoot,” she said, “once and for all I am not jealous, and I
will not meet you; I have too much respect for myself, and too little
for you,” and she was gone.

Philip’s face, as he stood looking after her, was not pleasant to see;
it was very hard and angry.

“Jealous, is she? I will give her something to be jealous for, the
proud minx;” and in his vexation he knocked off the head of a carnation
with his stick.

“Philip, what _are_ you doing? Those are my pet Australian carnations;
at least, I think they are Australian. How can you destroy them like
that?”

“All right, Maria; I was only plucking one for you. Won’t you put it in
your dress? Where are the others?”

“They have all gone. Come in, it is so hot out there; and tell me what
you think of Mrs. Bellamy.”

“I think that she is very handsome and very clever. I wonder where
Bellamy picked her up.”

“I don’t know; I wish he hadn’t picked her up at all. I don’t like her,
she says unpleasant things; and, though I have only seen her three
times, she seems to know all about me and everybody else. I am not very
quick; but do you know just now I thought that she was insinuating that
you were in love with Hilda; that’s not true, is it, Philip? Don’t
think me forward if I ask you if that is true, and if I say that, if it
is, it is better that I should know it. I sha’n’t be angry, Philip;”
and the girl stood before him to await his answer, one hand pressed
against her bosom to still the beating of her heart, whilst with the
other she screened her blushing brow.

And Philip too stood face to face with her sweet self, with conscience,
and with opportunity. “Now,” whispered conscience, “is the time, before
very much harm is done; now is the acceptable time to tell her all
about it, and, whilst forbidding her love, to enlist her sympathy and
friendship. It will be wrong to encourage her affection; when you
ardently love another woman, you cannot palter any more.” “Now,”
whispered opportunity, shouldering conscience aside, “is the time to
secure her, her love, and her possessions, and to reward Hilda for her
pride. Do not sacrifice yourself to an infatuation; do not tell her
about Hilda—it would only breed jealousies; you can settle with her
afterwards. Take the goods the gods provide you.”

All this and more passed through his mind; and he had made his choice
long before the rich blood that mantled in the lady’s cheek had sunk
back to the true breast from whence it came.

Oh, instant of time born to colour all eternity to thine own hue, for
this man thou hast come and gone! Oh, fleeting moment, bearing
desolation or healing on thy wings, how the angels, in whose charge lie
the souls of men, must tremble and turn pale, as they mark thy flight
through the circumstances of a man’s existence, and thence taking thy
secrets with thee away to add thy fateful store to the records of his
past!

He took her hand, the hand that was pressed upon her bosom.

“Maria,” he said, “you should not get such ideas into your head. I
admire Hilda very much, and that is all. Why, dear, I have always
looked upon myself as half engaged to you—that is, so far as I am
concerned; and I have only been waiting till circumstances would allow
me to do so, to ask you if you think me worth marrying.”

For a while she made no reply, but only blushed the more; at last she
looked up a little.

“You have made me very happy, Philip.” That was all she said.

“I am very glad, dear, that you can find anything in me to like; but if
you do care for me, and think me worth waiting for, I am going to ask
something of your affection: I am going to ask you to trust me as well
as to love me. I do not, for reasons that I will not enter into, but
which I beg you to believe are perfectly straightforward, wish anything
to be said of our engagement at present, not even to your friend Hilda.
Do you trust me sufficiently to agree to that?”

“Philip, I trust you as much as I love you, and for years I have loved
you with all my heart. And now, dear, please go; I want to think.”

In the hall a servant gave him a note; it was from Hilda, and ran thus—

“I have changed my mind. I will meet you in the summer-house this
evening. I have something to say to you.”

Philip whistled as he read it.

“Devilish awkward,” he thought to himself; “if I am going to marry
Maria, she must leave this. But I cannot bear to part with her. I love
her! I love her!”




CHAPTER VI.


It was some time before Philip could make up his mind whether or no he
would attend his tryst with Hilda. In the first place, he felt that it
was an unsafe proceeding generally, inasmuch as moonlight meetings with
so lovely a person might, should they come to the knowledge of Miss
Lee, be open to misconstruction; and particularly because, should she
show the least tenderness towards him, he knew in his heart that he
could not trust himself, however much he might be engaged in another
direction. At twenty-one the affections cannot be outraged with
impunity, but have an awkward way of asserting themselves, ties of
honour notwithstanding.

But as a rule, when in our hearts we wish to do anything, that thing
must be bad indeed if we cannot find a satisfactory excuse for doing
it; and so it was with Philip. Now, thought he to himself, would be his
opportunity to inform Hilda of his relations with Maria Lee, and to put
an end to his flirtation with her; for, ostensibly at any rate, it was
nothing more than a very serious flirtation—that is to say, though
there had been words of love, and even on her part a passionate avowal
of affection, wrung in an unguarded moment from the depths of her proud
heart, there had been no formal engagement. It was a thing that must be
done, and now was the time to do it. And so he made up his mind to go.

But when, that night, he found himself sitting in the appointed place,
and waiting for the coming of the woman he was about to discard, but
whom he loved with all the intensity of his fierce nature, he began to
view the matter in other lights, and to feel his resolution oozing from
him. Whether it was the silence of the place that told upon his nerves,
strained as they were with expectation—for silence, and more especially
silence by night, is a great unveiler of realities,—or the dread of
bitter words, or the prescience of the sharp pang of parting —for he
knew enough of Hilda to know that, what he had to say once said, she
would trouble him no more—whether it was these things, or whatever it
was that affected him, he grew most unaccountably anxious and
depressed. Moreover, in this congenial condition of the atmosphere of
his mind, all its darker and hidden characteristics sprang into a
vigorous growth. Superstitions and presentiments crowded in upon him.
He peopled his surroundings with the shades of intangible deeds that
yet awaited doing, and grew afraid of his own thoughts. He would have
fled from the spot, but he could not fly; he could only watch the
flicker of the moonlight upon the peaceful pool beside him, and—wait.

At last she came with quick and anxious steps, and, though but a few
minutes before he had dreaded her coming, he now welcomed it eagerly.
For our feelings, of whatever sort, when directed towards each other,
are so superficial as compared with the intensity of our fears when we
are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the
unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a
mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man
welcomes a spar.

“At last,” he said, with a sigh of relief. “How late you are!”

“I could not get away. There were some people to dinner;” and then, in
a softened voice, “How pale you look! Are you ill?”

“No, only a little tired.”

After this there was silence, and the pair stood facing one another,
each occupied with their own thoughts, and each dreading to put them
into words. Once Philip made a beginning of speech, but his voice
failed him; the beating of his heart seemed to choke his utterance.

At length she leaned, as though for support, against the trunk of a
pine-tree, in the boughs of which the night breeze was whispering, and
spoke in a cold clear voice.

“You asked me to meet you here to-night. Have you anything to say to
me? No, do not speak; perhaps I had better speak first. I have
something to say to you, and what I have to say may influence whatever
is in your mind. Listen; you remember what passed between us nearly a
month ago, when I was so weak as to let you see how much I loved you?”

Philip bowed his head in assent.

“Very good. I have come here to-night, not to give you any lover’s
meeting, but to tell you that no such words must be spoken again, and
that I am about to make it impossible that they should be spoken either
by you or by me. I am going away from here, _never_, I hope, to
return.”

“Going away!” he gasped. “When?”

Here was the very thing he hoped for coming to pass, and yet the words
that should have been so full of comfort fell upon him cold as ice, and
struck him into misery.

“When! why, to-morrow morning. A relation of mine is ill in Germany,
the only one I have. I never saw him, and care nothing for him, but it
will give me a pretext; and, once gone, I shall not return. I have told
Maria that I must go. She cried about it, poor girl.”

At these words, all recollection of his purpose passed out of Philip’s
mind; all he realized was that, unless he could alter her
determination, he was about to lose the woman he so passionately
adored, and whose haughty pride was to him in itself more charming than
all poor Maria’s gentle love.

“Hilda, do not go,” he said, seizing her hand, which she immediately
withdrew; “do not leave me. You know how I love you.”

“And why should I not leave you, even supposing it to be true that you
do love me? To my cost I love you, and am I any longer to endure the
daily humiliation of seeing myself, the poor German companion, who has
nothing but her beauty, put aside in favour of another whom I also
love. You say you love me, and bid me stay; now, tell me what is your
purpose towards me? Do you intend to try to take advantage of my
infatuation to make me your mistress? It is, I am told, a common thing
for such proposals to be made to women in my position, whom it would be
folly for wealthy gentlemen to marry. If so, abandon that idea; for I
tell you, Philip, that I would rather die than so disgrace my ancient
name to gratify myself. I know you money-loving English do not think
very much of race unless the bearers of the name are rich; but we do;
and, although you would think it a _mésalliance_ to marry me, I, on the
other hand, should not be proud of an alliance with you. Why, Philip,
my ancestors were princes of royal blood when yours still herded the
swine in these woods. I can show more than thirty quarterings upon my
shield, each the mark of a noble house, and I will not be the first to
put a bar sinister across them. Now, I have spoken plainly,
indelicately perhaps, and there is only one more word to be said
between us, and that word is _good-bye_,” and she held out her hand.

He did not seem to see it; indeed, he had scarcely heard the latter
part of what she said. Presently he lifted his face, and it bore traces
of a dreadful inward struggle. It was deadly pale, and great black
rings had painted themselves beneath the troubled eyes.

“Hilda,” he said, hoarsely, “don’t go; I cannot bear to let you go. I
will marry you.”

“Think of what you are saying, Philip, and do not be rash. I do not
wish to entrap you into marriage. You love money. Remember that Maria,
with all her possessions, asks nothing better than to become your wife,
and that I have absolutely nothing but my name and my good looks. Look
at me,” and she stepped out into a patch of moonlight that found its
way between the trees, and, drawing the filmy shawl she wore from her
head and bare neck and bosom, stood before him in all the brightness of
her beauty, shaded as it was, and made more lovely by the shadows of
the night.

“Examine me very carefully,” she went on, with bitter sarcasm, “look
into my features and study my form and carriage, or you may be
disappointed with your bargain, and complain that you have not got your
money’s worth. Remember, too, that an accident, an illness, and at the
best the passage of a few years, may quite spoil my value as a
beautiful woman, and reflect, before I take you at your word.”

Philip had sat or rather crouched himself down upon the log of a tree
that lay outside the summer-house, and covered his face with his hand,
as though her loveliness was more than he could bear to look upon. Now,
however, he raised his eyes and let them dwell upon her scornful
features.

“I had rather,” he said slowly—“I had rather lose my life than lose
you; I love you so that I would buy you at the price even of my honour.
When will you marry me?”

“What, have you made up your mind so quickly? Are you sure? Then,”— and
here she changed her whole tone and bearing, and passionately stretched
out her arms towards him,—“my dearest Philip, my life, my love, I will
marry you when you will.”

“To-morrow?”

“To-morrow, if you like!”

“You must promise me something first.”

“What is it?”

“That you will keep the marriage a complete secret, and bear another
name until my father’s death. If you do not, he will most probably
disinherit me.”

“I do not like your terms, Philip. I do not like secret marriages; but
you are giving up much to marry me, so I suppose I must give up
something to marry you.”

“You solemnly promise that nothing shall induce you to reveal that you
are my wife until I give you permission to do so?”

“I promise—that is, provided you do not force me to in self-defence.”

Philip laughed.

“You need not fear that,” he said. “But how shall we arrange about
getting married?”

“I can meet you in London.”

“Very well. I will go up early to-morrow, and get a licence, and then
on Wednesday I can meet you, and we can be married.”

“As you will, Philip; where shall I meet you?”

He gave her an address which she carefully noted down.

“Now,” she said, “you must go, it is late. Yes, you may kiss me now.
There, that will do, now go.” In another minute he was gone.

“I have won the game,” she mused; “poor Maria. I am sorry for her, but
perhaps hers is the better part. She will get over it, but mine is a
sad fate; I love passionately, madly, but I do not trust the man I
love. Why should our marriage be so secret? He cannot be entangled with
Maria, or she would have told me.” And she stretched out her arms
towards the path by which he had left her, and cried aloud, in the
native tongue that sounded so soft upon her lips, “Oh, my heart’s
darling! if I could only trust you as well as I love you, it is a happy
woman that I should be to-night.”




CHAPTER VII.


Nothing occurred to interfere with the plan of action decided on by
Hilda and Philip; no misadventure came to mock them, dashing the
Tantalus cup of joy to earth before their eyes. On the contrary, within
forty-eight hours of the conversation recorded in the last chapter,
they were as completely and irrevocably man and wife, as a special
licence and the curate of a city church, assisted by the clerk and the
pew-opener, could make them.

Then followed a brief period of such delirium as turned the London
lodgings, dingy and stuffy as they were in the height of the hot
summer, into an earthly paradise, a garden of Eden, into which, alas!
the serpent had no need to seek an entrance. But, as was natural, when
the first glory of realized happiness was beginning to grow faint on
their horizon, the young couple turned themselves to consider their
position, and found in it, mutually and severally, many things that did
not please them. For Philip, indeed, it was full of anxieties, for he
had many complications to deal with. First there was his secret
engagement to Maria Lee, of which, be it remembered, his wife was
totally ignorant, and which was in itself a sufficiently awkward affair
for a married man to have on his hands. Then there was the paramount
need of keeping his marriage with Hilda as secret as the dead, to say
nothing of the necessity of his living, for the most part, away from
his wife. Indeed, his only consolation was that he had plenty of money
on which to support her, inasmuch as his father had, from the date of
his leaving Oxford, made him an allowance of one thousand a year.

Hilda had begun to discover that she was not without her troubles. For
one thing, her husband’s fits of moodiness and fretful anxiety troubled
her, and led her, possessed as she was with a more than ordinary share
of womanly shrewdness, to suspect that he was hiding something from
her. But what chiefly vexed her proud nature was the necessity of
concealment, and all its attendant petty falsehoods and subterfuges. It
was not pleasant for Hilda Caresfoot to have to pass as Mrs. Roberts,
and to be careful not to show herself in public places in the daytime,
where there was a possibility of her being seen by any one who might
recognize in her striking figure the lady who had lived with Miss Lee
in Marlshire. It was not pleasant to her to be obliged to reply to
Maria Lee’s affectionate letters, full as they were of entreaty for her
return, by epistles that had to be forwarded to a country town in a
remote district of Germany to be posted, and which were in themselves
full of lies that, however white they might have seemed under all the
circumstances, she felt in her conscience to be very black indeed. In
short, there was in their union none of that sense of finality and of
security that is, under ordinary circumstances, the distinguishing mark
of marriage in this country; it partook rather of the nature of an
illicit connection.

At the end of a fortnight of wedded bliss all these little things had
begun to make themselves felt, and in truth they were but the
commencement of evils. For, one afternoon, Philip, for the first time
since his wedding, tore himself away from his wife’s side, and paid a
visit to a club to which he had been recently elected. Here he found no
less than three letters from his father, the first requesting his
return, the second commanding it in exceptionally polite language, and
the third—which, written in mingled anxiety and anger, had just
arrived—coolly announcing his parent’s intention, should he not hear of
him by return, of setting detective officers to work to discover his
whereabouts. From this letter it appeared, indeed, that his cousin
George had already been despatched to London to look for him, and on
reference to the hall porter he discovered that a gentleman answering
to his description had already inquired for him several times.

Cursing his own folly in not having kept up some communication with his
father, he made the best of his way back to his lodgings, to find Hilda
waiting for him somewhat disconsolately.

“I am glad you have come back, love,” she said, drawing him towards her
till his dark curls mingled with her own fair locks, and kissing him
upon the forehead. “I have missed you dreadfully. I don’t understand
how I can have lived all these years without you.”

“I am afraid, dear, you will have to live without me for a while now;
listen,” and he read her the letters he had just received.

She listened attentively till he had finished.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, with some anxiety in her voice.

“Do? why of course I must go home at once.”

“And what am I to do?”

“Well, I don’t know; I suppose that you must stop here.”

“That will be pleasant for me, will it not?”

“No, dear, it will be pleasant neither for you nor me; but what can I
do? You know the man my father is to deal with; if I stop here in
defiance to his wishes, especially as he has been anxious about me,
there is no knowing what might not happen. Remember, Hilda, that we
have to deal with George, whose whole life is devoted to secret
endeavours to supplant me. If I were to give him such an opportunity as
I should by stopping away now, I should deserve all I got, or rather
all I did not get.”

Hilda sighed and acquiesced; had she been a softer-minded woman she
would have wept and relieved her feelings, but she was not soft-
minded. And so, before the post went out, he wrote an affectionate
letter to his father, expressing his sorrow at the latter’s anxiety at
his own negligence in not having written to him, the fact of the matter
being, he said, that he had been taken up with visiting some of his
Oxford friends, and had not till that afternoon been near his club to
look for letters. He would, however, he added, return on the morrow,
and make his apologies in person.

This letter he handed to his wife to read.

“Do you think that will do?” he asked, when she had finished.

“Oh, yes!” she replied, with a touch of her old sarcasm, “it is a
masterpiece of falsehood.”

Philip looked very angry, and fumed and fretted; but he made no reply,
and on the following morning he departed to Bratham Abbey.

“Ah, Philip, Philip!” said his father, under the mellow influence of
his fourth glass of port, on the night of his arrival. “I know well
enough what kept you up in town. Well, well, I don’t complain, young
men will be young men; but don’t let these affairs interfere with the
business of life. Remember Maria Lee, my boy; you have serious
interests in that direction, interests that must not be trifled with,
interests that I have a right to expect you will _not_ trifle with.”

His son made no reply, but sipped his wine in silence, aching at his
heart for his absent bride, and wondering what his father would say did
he really know what had “kept him in town.”

After this, matters went on smoothly enough for a month or more; since,
fortunately for Philip, the great Maria Lee question, a question that
the more he considered it the more thorny did it appear, was for the
moment shelved by the absence of that young lady on a visit to her aunt
in the Isle of Wight. Twice during that month he managed, on different
pretexts, to get up to London and visit his wife, whom he found as
patient as was possible under the circumstances, but anything but
happy. Indeed, on the second occasion, she urged on him strongly the
ignominy of her position, and even begged him to make a clean breast of
it to his father, offering to undertake the task herself. He refused
equally warmly, and some sharp words ensued to be, however, quickly
followed by a reconciliation.

On his return from this second visit, Philip found a note signed
“affectionately yours, Maria Lee,” waiting for him, which announced
that young lady’s return, and begged him to come over to lunch on the
following day.

He went—indeed, he had no alternative but to go; and again fortune
favoured him in the person of a diffident young lady who was stopping
with Maria, and who never left her side all that afternoon, much to the
disgust of the latter and the relief of Philip. One thing, however, he
was not spared, and that was the perusal of Hilda’s last letter to her
friend, written apparently from Germany, and giving a lively
description of the writer’s daily life and the state of her uncle’s
health, which, she said, precluded all possibility of her return. Alas!
he already knew its every line too well; for, as Hilda refused to
undertake the task, he had but a week before drafted it himself. But
Philip was growing hardened to deception, and found it possible to read
it from end to end, and speculate upon its contents with Maria without
blush or hesitation.

But he could not always expect to find Miss Lee in the custody of such
an obtuse friend; and, needless to say, it became a matter of very
serious importance to him to know how he should treat her. It occurred
to him that his safest course might be to throw himself upon her
generosity and make a clean breast of it; but when it came to the point
he was too weak to thus expose his shameful conduct to the woman whose
heart he had won, and to whom he was bound by every tie of honour that
a gentleman holds sacred.

He thought of the scornful wonder with which she would listen to his
tale, and preferred to take the risk of greater disaster in the future
to the certainty of present shame. In the end, he contrived to
establish a species of confidential intimacy with Maria, which, whilst
it somewhat mystified the poor girl, was not without its charm,
inasmuch as it tended to transform the every-day Philip into a hero of
romance.

But in the main Maria was ill-suited to play heroine to her wooer’s
hero. Herself as open as the daylight, it was quite incomprehensible to
her why their relationship should be kept such a dark and mysterious
secret, or why, if her lover gave her a kiss, it should be done with as
many precautions as though he were about to commit a murder.

She was a very modest maiden, and in her heart believed it a wonderful
thing that Philip should have fallen in love with her—a thing to be
very proud of; and she felt it hard that she should be denied the
gratification of openly acknowledging her lover, and showing him off to
her friends, after the fashion that is so delightful to the female
mind.

But, though this consciousness of the deprivation of a lawful joy set
up a certain feeling of irritation in her mind, she did not allow it to
override her entire trust in and love for Philip. Whatever he did was
no doubt wise and right; but, for all that, on several occasions she
took an opportunity to make him acquainted with her views of the
matter, and to ask him questions that he found it increasingly
difficult to answer.

In this way, by the exercise of ceaseless diplomacy, and with the
assistance of a great deal of falsehood of the most artistic nature,
Philip managed to tide over the next six months; but at the end of that
time the position was very far from improved. Hilda was chafing more
and more at the ignominy of her position; Maria was daily growing more
and more impatient to have their engagement made public; and last, but
by no means least, his father was almost daily at him on the subject of
Miss Lee, till at length he succeeded in wringing from him the
confession that there existed some sort of understanding between Maria
and himself.

Now, the old squire was a shrewd man of the world, and was not
therefore slow to guess that what prevented this understanding from
being openly acknowledged as an engagement was some entanglement on his
son’s part. Indeed, it had recently become clear to him that London had
developed strange attractions for Philip. That this entanglement could
be marriage was, however, an idea that never entered into his head; he
had too good an opinion of his son’s common- sense to believe it
possible that he would deliberately jeopardize his inheritance by
marrying without his permission. But Philip’s reluctance and obstinacy
annoyed him excessively. “Devil” Caresfoot was not a man accustomed to
be thwarted; indeed, he had never been thwarted in his life, and he did
not mean to be now. He had set his heart upon this marriage, and it
would have to be a good reason that could turn him from his purpose.

Accordingly, having extracted the above information, he said no more to
Philip, but proceeded to lay his own plans.

That very afternoon he commenced to put them into action. At three
o’clock he ordered the carriage and pair, a vehicle that was rarely
used, giving special directions that the coachman should see that his
wig was properly curled. An ill-curled wig had before now been known to
produce a very bad effect upon Mr. Caresfoot’s nerves, and also upon
its wearer’s future prospects in life.

At three precisely the heavy open carriage, swung upon C-springs and
drawn by two huge greys, drew up in front of the hall-door, and the
squire, who was as usual dressed in the old-fashioned knee-breeches,
and carried in his hand his gold-headed cane, stepped solemnly into it,
and seated himself exactly in the middle of the back seat, not leaning
back, as is the fashion of our degenerate days, but holding himself
bolt upright. Any more imposing sight than this old gentleman presented
thus seated, and moving at a stately pace through the village street,
it is impossible to conceive; but it so oppressed the very children
that fear at the spectacle (which was an unwonted one, for the squire
had not thus driven abroad in state for some years) overcame their
curiosity, and at his approach they incontinently fled.

So soon as the carriage had passed through the drive-gates of the
Abbey, the squire ordered the coachman to drive to Rewtham House,
whither in due course he safely arrived.

He was ushered into the drawing-room, whilst a servant went in search
of Miss Lee, whom she found walking in the garden.

“A gentleman to see you, miss.”

“I am not at home. Who is it?”

“Mr. Caresfoot, miss!”

“Oh, why didn’t you say so before?” and taking it for granted that
Philip had paid her an unexpected visit, she started off for the house
at a run.

“Why, Philip,” she exclaimed, as she swung open the door, “this _is_
good of you, o—oh!” for at that moment Mr. Caresfoot senior appeared
from behind the back of the door where he had been standing by the
fireplace, and made his most imposing bow.

“That, my dear Maria, was the first time that I have heard myself
called Philip for many a long year, and I fear that that was by
accident; neither the name nor the blush were meant for me; now, were
they?”

“I thought,” replied Maria, who was still overwhelmed with confusion,
“I thought that it was Philip, your son, you know; he has not been here
for so long.”

“With such a welcome waiting him, it is indeed wonderful that he can
keep away;” and the old squire bowing again with such courtly grace as
to drive what little self-possession remained to poor Maria after her
flying entry entirely out of her head.

“And now, my dear,” went on her visitor, fixing his piercing eyes upon
her face, “with your permission, we will sit down and have a little
talk together. Won’t you take off your hat?”

Maria took off her hat as suggested, and sat down meekly, full under
fire of the glowing eyes that had produced such curious effects upon
subjects so dissimilar as the late Mrs. Caresfoot and Jim Brady. She
could, however, think of nothing appropriate to say.

“My dear,” the old gentleman continued presently, “the subject upon
which I have taken upon myself to speak to you is one very nearly
affecting your happiness and also of a delicate nature. My excuse for
alluding to it must be that you are the child of my old friend—ah! we
were great friends fifty years ago, my dear—and that I have myself a
near interest in the matter. Do you understand me?”

“No, not quite.”

“Well then, forgive an old man, who has no time to waste, if he comes
to the point. I mean I have come to ask you, Maria, if any
understanding or engagement exists between Philip and yourself?”

The eyes were full upon her now, and she felt that they were drawing
her secret from her as a corkscrew does a cork. At last it came out
with a pop.

“Yes, we are engaged.”

“Thank you, my dear. How long have you been engaged?”

“About eight months.”

“And why has the affair been kept so secret?”

“I don’t know; Philip wished it. He told me not to tell any one. I
suppose that I should not by rights have told you.”

“Make yourself easy, my dear. Philip has already told me that there was
an understanding between you; I only wanted to hear the confirmation of
such good news from your own lips. Young men are great coxcombs, my
dear, and apt to fancy things where ladies are concerned. I am rejoiced
to hear that there is no mistake on his part.”

“I am so glad that you are pleased,” she said shyly.

“Pleased, my dear!” said the old gentleman, rising and walking up and
down the room in his excitement, “pleased is not the word for it. I am
more rejoiced than if some one had left me another estate. Look here,
Maria, I had set my heart upon this thing coming to pass; I have
thought of it for years. I loved your father, and you are like your
father, girl; ay, I love you too, because you are a generous, honest
woman, and will bring a good strain of blood into a family that wants
generosity—ay, and I sometimes think wants honesty too. And then your
land runs into ours, and, as I can’t buy it, I am glad that it should
come in by marriage. I have always wanted to see the Abbey, Isleworth,
and Rewtham estates in a ring fence before I died. Come and give me a
kiss, my dear.”

Maria did as she was bid.

“I will try to be a good daughter to you,” she said, “if I marry
Philip; but,” and here her voice trembled a little, “I want to make you
understand that, though this engagement exists, I have sometimes
thought of late that perhaps he wanted to break it off, and——”

“Break it off?” almost shouted the old man, his eyes flashing. “Break
it off; by God, the day he plays fast and loose with you, that day I
leave the property to his cousin, George;—there, there, I frightened
you, I beg your pardon, but in his own interest, Maria, I advise you to
hold him fast to his word. To change the subject, your news has
freshened me up so much that I mean to have a little company; will you
come and dine with me next Thursday?”

“I shall be very glad, Mr. Caresfoot.”

“Thank you; and perhaps till then you will not, unless he happens to
ask you, mention the subject of our conversation to Philip. I want to
have a talk with him first.”

Maria assented, and the squire took his leave with the same
magnificence of mien that had marked his arrival.




CHAPTER VIII.


That evening his father astonished Philip by telling him that he
intended to give a dinner-party on that day week.

“You see, Philip,” he said, with a grim smile, “I have only got a year
or so at the most before me, and I wish to see a little of my
neighbours before I go. I have not had much society of late years. I
mean to do the thing well while I am about it, and ask everybody in the
neighbourhood. How many can dine with comfort in the old
banqueting-hall, do you suppose?”

“About five-and-forty, I should think.”

“Five-and-forty! I remember that we sat down sixty to dinner when I
came of age, but then we were a little crowded; so we will limit the
number to fifty.”

“Are you going to have fifty people to dinner?” asked Philip aghast.

“Certainly; I shall ask you to come and help me to write the
invitations presently. I have prepared a list; and will you kindly send
over to Bell at Roxham. I wish to speak to him, he must bring his men
over to do up the old hall a bit; and, by the way, write to Gunter’s
and order a man-cook to be here on Tuesday, and to bring with him
materials for the best dinner for fifty people that he can supply. I
will see after the wine myself; we will finish off that wonderful port
my grandfather laid down. Now, bustle about, my lad, we have no time to
lose; we must get all the notes out to-day.”

Philip started to execute his orders, pretty well convinced in his own
mind that his father was taking leave of his senses. Who ever heard of
a dinner being given to fifty people before, especially in a house
where such rare entertainments had always been of a traditionally
select and solemn nature? The expense, too, reflected Philip, would be
large; a man of his father’s age had, in his opinion, no right to make
such ducks-and-drakes of money that was so near to belonging to
somebody else. But one thing was clear: his father had set his mind
upon it, and when once that was the case to try to thwart him was more
than Philip dared.

When the notes of invitation arrived at their respective destinations,
great was the excitement in the neighbourhood of Bratham Abbey.
Curiosity was rampant on the point, and the refusals were few and far
between.

At length the eventful evening arrived, and with it the expected
guests, among whom the old squire, in his dress of a past generation—
resplendent in diamond buckles, frilled shirt-front, and silk
stockings—was, with his snow-white hair and stately bearing, himself by
far the most striking figure.

Standing near the door of the large drawing-room, he received his
guests as they arrived with an air that would have done credit to an
ambassador; but when Miss Lee entered, Philip noticed with a prophetic
shudder that, in lieu of the accustomed bow, he gave her a kiss. He
also noticed, for he was an observant man, that the gathered company
was pervaded by a curious air of expectation. They were nearly all of
them people who had been neighbours of the Caresfoot family for years
—in many instances for generations—and as intimate with its members as
the high-stomached stiffness of English country-life will allow. They
therefore were well acquainted with the family history and
peculiarities; but it was clear from their faces that their knowledge
was of no help to them now, and that they were totally in the dark as
to why they were all gathered together in this unwonted fashion.

At length, to the relief of all, the last of the chosen fifty guests
put in an appearance, and dinner was announced. Everybody made his way
to his allotted partner, and awaited the signal to move forward, when a
fresh piquancy was added to the proceedings by an unexpected
incident—in which Maria Lee played a principal part. Maria was sitting
in a corner of the drawing-room, wondering if Philip was going to take
her in to dinner, and why he had not been to see her lately, when
suddenly she became aware that all the room was looking at her, and on
raising her eyes she perceived the cause. For there, close upon her,
and advancing with majestic step and outstretched arm, was old Mr.
Caresfoot, possessed by the evident intention of taking her down in the
full face of all the married ladies and people of title present. She
prayed that the floor might open and swallow her; indeed, of the two,
she would have preferred that way of going down to dinner. But it did
not, so there was no alternative left to her but to accept the
proffered arm, and to pass, with as much dignity as she could muster in
such a trying moment, in front of the intensely interested company—from
which she could hear an involuntary murmur of surprise— through the
wide-flung doors, down the great oak staircase loaded with exotics,
thence along a passage carpeted with crimson cloth, and through double
doors of oak that were flung open at their approach, into the
banqueting-hall. On its threshold not only she, but almost every member
of the company who passed in behind them, uttered an exclamation of
surprise; and indeed the sight before them amply justified it.

The hall was a chamber of noble proportions, sixty feet in length by
thirty wide. It was very lofty, and the dark chestnut beams of the
beautiful arched roof were thrown into strong relief by the light of
many candles. The walls were panelled to the roof with oak that had
become almost black in the course of centuries, here and there relieved
by portraits and shining suits of armour.

Down the centre of the room ran a long wide table, whereon, and on a
huge sideboard, was spread the whole of the Caresfoot plate, which,
catching the light of the suspended candles, threw it back in dazzling
gleams till the beholder was positively bewildered with the brilliancy
of the sight.

“Oh, how beautiful!” said Maria, in astonishment.

“Yes,” answered the old gentleman as he took his seat at the head of
the table, placing Maria on his right, “the plate is very fine, it has
taken two hundred years to get together; but my father did more in that
way than all of us put together, he spent ten thousand pounds on plate
during his lifetime; that gold service on the sideboard belonged to
him. I have only spent two. Mind, my love,” he added in a low voice,
“when it comes into your keeping that it is preserved intact; but I
don’t recommend you to add to it, there is too much already for a
simple country gentleman’s family.”

Maria blushed and was silent.

The dinner, which was served on a most magnificent scale, wore itself
away, as all big county-dinners do, in bursts of sedate but not
profoundly interesting conversation. Indeed, had it not been for the
novelty of the sight, Maria would have been rather bored, the squire’s
stately compliments notwithstanding. As it was, she felt inclined to
envy the party at the other end, amongst whom, looking down the long
vista of sparkling glass and silver, she could now and again catch
sight of Philip’s face beaming with animation, and even in the pauses
of conversation hear the echo of his distant laughter.

“What good spirits he is in!” she thought to herself.

And, indeed, Philip was, or appeared to be, in excellent spirits. His
handsome face, that of late had been so gloomy, was lit up with
laughter, and he contrived by his witty talk to keep those round him in
continual merriment.

“Philip seems very happy, doesn’t he,” said George, _sotto voce_ to
Mrs. Bellamy, who was sitting next to him.

“You must be a very bad judge of the face as an index to the mind if
you think that he is happy. I have been watching him all dinner, and I
draw a very different conclusion.”

“Why, look how he is laughing.”

“Have you never seen a man laugh to hide his misery; never mind his
lips, watch his eyes: they are dilated with fear, see how he keeps
glancing towards his father and Miss Lee. There, did you see him start?
Believe me he is not happy, and unless I am mistaken he will be even
less so before the night is over. We are not all asked here for
nothing.”

“I hope not, I hope not; if so we shall have to act upon our
information, eh! But, to change the subject, you look lovely to-night.”

“Of course I do, I _am_ lovely; I wish I could return the compliment,
but conscientiously I can’t. Did you ever see such plate? look at that
centre-piece.”

“It is wonderful,” said George. “I never saw it at all out before. I
wonder,” he added, with a sigh, “if I shall ever have the fingering of
it.”

“Yes,” she said, with a strange look of her large eyes, “if you
continue to be guided by me, you shall. I tell you so, and I _never_
make mistakes. Hush, something is going to happen. What is it?”

The dinner had come to an end, and in accordance with the old-
fashioned custom the cloth had been removed, leaving bare an ancient
table of polished oak nearly forty feet in length, and composed of
slabs of timber a good two inches thick.

When the wine had been handed round, the old squire motioned to the
servants to leave the room, and then, having first whispered something
in the ear of Miss Lee that caused her to turn very red, he slowly rose
to his feet in the midst of a dead silence.

“Look at your cousin’s face,” whispered Mrs. Bellamy. George looked; it
was ghastly pale, and the black eyes were gleaming like polished jet
against white paper.

“Friends and neighbours, amongst whom or amongst whose fathers I have
lived for so many years,” began the speaker, whose voice, soft as it
was, filled the great hall with ease, “it was, if tradition does not
lie, in this very room and at this very table that the only Caresfoot
who ever made an after-dinner speech of his own accord, delivered
himself of his burden. That man was my ancestor in the eighth degree,
old yeoman Caresfoot, and the occasion of his speech was to him a very
important one, being the day on which he planted Caresfoot’s Staff, the
great oak by the water yonder, to mark the founding of a house of
country gentry. Some centuries have elapsed since my forefather stood
where I stand, most like with his hand upon this board as mine is now,
and addressed a company not so fine or so well dressed, but perhaps—I
mean no disrespect—on the whole, as good at heart as that before me
now. Yes, the sapling oak has grown into the biggest tree in the
country-side ‘twixt then and now. It seems, therefore, to be fit that
on what is to me as great a day as the planting of that oak was to my
yeoman forefather, that I, like him, should gather my ancient friends
and neighbours round me under the same ancient roof that I may, like
him, make them the partakers of my joy.

“None of you sitting at this board to-day can look upon the old man who
now asks your attention, without realizing what he himself has already
learned: namely, that his day is over. Now, life is hard to quit. When
a man grows old, the terrors of the unknown land loom just as large and
terrible as they did to his youthful imagination, larger perhaps. But
it is a fact that must be faced, a hard, inevitable fact. And age,
realizing this, looks round it for consolations, and finds only two:
first, that as its interests and affections _here_ fade and fall away,
in just that same proportion do they grow and gather _there_ upon the
further shore; and secondly that, after Nature’s eternal fashion, the
youth and vigour of a new generation is waiting to replace the worn-out
decrepitude of that which sinks into oblivion. My life is done, it
cannot be long before the churchyard claims its own, but I live again
in my son; and take such cold comfort as I may from that idea of
family, and of long-continued and assured succession, that has so
largely helped to make this country what she is.

“But you will wonder what can be the particular purpose for which I
have bidden you here to-night. Be assured that it was not to ask you to
listen to gloomy sermons on the, to others, not very interesting fact
of my approaching end, but rather for a joyful and a definite reason.
One wish I have long had, it is—that before I go, I may see my son’s
child, the little Caresfoot that is to fill my place in future years,
prattling about my knees. But this I shall never see. What I have to
announce to you, however, is the first step towards it, my son’s
engagement to Miss Lee, the young lady on my right.”

“Look at his face,” whispered Mrs. Bellamy to her neighbour, during the
murmur of applause that followed this announcement. “Look quick.”

Philip had put his hands down upon his chair as though to raise himself
up, and an expression of such mingled rage and terror swept across his
features as, once seen, could not easily be forgotten. But so quickly
did it pass that perhaps Mrs. Bellamy, who was watching, was the only
one in all that company to observe it. In another moment he was smiling
and bowing his acknowledgements to whispered and telegraphed
congratulations.

“You all know Miss Lee,” went on the old squire, “as you knew her
father and mother before her; she is a sound shoot from an honest
stock, a girl after my own heart, a girl that I love, and that all who
come under her influence will love, and this engagement is to me the
most joyful news that I have heard for many a year. May God, ay, and
man too, so deal with my son as he deals with Maria Lee!

“And now I have done; I have already kept you too long. With your
consent, we will have no more speeches, no returning of thanks; we will
spare Philip his blushes. But before I sit down I will bid you all
farewell, for I am in my eighty-third year, and I feel that I shall
never see very many of your faces again. I wish that I had been a
better neighbour to you all, as there are many other things I wish, now
that it is too late to fulfil them; but I still hope that some of you
will now and again find a kind thought for the old man whom among
yourselves you talk of as ‘Devil Caresfoot.’ Believe me, my friends,
there is truth in the old proverb: the devil is not always as black as
he is painted. I give you my toast, my son Philip and his affianced
wife, Maria Lee.”

The whole company rose, actuated by a common impulse, and drank the
health standing; and such was the pathos of the old squire’s speech,
that there were eyes among those present that were not free from tears.
Then the ladies retired, amongst them poor Maria, who was naturally
upset at the unexpected, and, in some ways, unwelcome notoriety thus
given to herself.

In the drawing-room, she was so overwhelmed with congratulations, that
at last, feeling that she could not face a fresh edition from the male
portion of the gathering, she ordered her carriage, and quietly slipped
away home, to think over matters at her leisure.

Philip, too, came in for his share of honours down below, and
acknowledged them as best he might, for he had not the moral courage to
repudiate the position. He felt that his father had forced his hand
completely, and that there was nothing to be done, and sank into the
outward calmness of despair. But if his companions could have seen the
whirlpool of hatred, terror, and fury that raged within his breast as
he sat and chatted, and sipped his great-grandfather’s port, they would
have been justifiably astonished.

At length the banquet, for it was nothing less, came to an end, and,
having bowed their farewell to the last departing guest, the old man
and his son were left alone together in the deserted drawing-room.
Philip was seated by a table, his face buried in his hand, whilst his
father was standing by the dying fire, tapping his eye-glass nervously
on the mantelpiece. It was he who broke the somewhat ominous silence.

“Well, Philip, how did you like my speech?”

Thus addressed, the son lifted his face from his hand; it was white as
a sheet.

“By what authority,” he asked in a harsh whisper, “did you announce me
as engaged to Miss Lee?”

“By my own, Philip. I had it from both your lips that you were engaged.
I did not choose that it should remain a secret any longer.”

“You had no right to make that speech. I will not marry Miss Lee;
understand once and for all, I will _not_ marry her.”

In speaking thus, Philip had nerved himself to bear one of those
dreadful outbursts of fury that had earned his father his title; but,
to his astonishment, none such came. The steely eyes glinted a little
as he answered in his most polite manner, and that was all.

“Your position, Philip, then is that you are engaged, very publicly
engaged, to a girl whom you have no intention of marrying—a very
disgraceful position; mine is that I have, with every possible
solemnity, announced a marriage that will not come off—a very
ridiculous position. Very good, my dear Philip; please yourself. I
cannot force you into a disgraceful marriage. But you must not suppose
that you can thus thwart me with impunity. Allow me to show you the
alternative. I see you are tired, but I shall not detain you long. Take
that easy-chair. This house and the land round it, also the plate,
which is very valuable, but cannot be sold—by the way, see that it is
safely locked up before you go to bed—are strictly entailed, and must,
of course belong to you. The value of the entailed land is about 1000
pounds a year, or a little less in bad times; of the unentailed, a
clear 4000 pounds; of my personal property about 900 pounds. Should you
persist in your refusal to marry Miss Lee, or should the marriage in
any way fall through, except from circumstances entirely beyond your
control, I must, to use your own admirably emphatic language, ask you
to ‘understand, once and for all,’ that, where your name appears in my
will with reference to the unentailed and personal property, it will be
erased, and that of your cousin George substituted. Please yourself,
Philip, please yourself; it is a matter of entire indifference to me. I
am very fond of George, and shall be glad to do him a good turn if you
force me to it, though it is a pity to split up the property. But
probably you will like to take a week to consider whether you prefer to
stick to the girl you have got hold of up in town there—oh, yes! I know
there is some one—and abandon the property, or marry Miss Lee and
retain the property—a very pretty problem for an amorous young man to
consider. There, I won’t keep you up any longer. Good night, Philip,
good night. Just see to the plate, will you? Remember, you have a
personal interest in that; I can’t leave it away.”

Philip rose without a word and left the room, but when he was gone it
was his father’s turn to hide his face in his hands.

“Oh, God!” he groaned aloud, “to think that all my plans should come to
such an end as this; to think that I am as powerless to prevent their
collapse as a child is to support a falling tree; that the only power
left me is the power of vengeance—vengeance on my own son. I have lived
too long, and the dregs of life are bitter.”




CHAPTER IX.


Poor Hilda found life in her London lodging anything but cheerful, and
frequently begged Philip to allow her to settle somewhere in the
country. This, however, he refused to do on two grounds: in the first
place, because few country villages would be so convenient for him to
get at as London; and in the second, because he declared that the great
city was the safest hiding-place in the world.

And so Hilda continued perforce to live her lonesome existence, that
was only cheered by her husband’s short and uncertain visits. Friends
she had none, nor did she dare to make any. The only person whose
conversation she could rely on to relieve the tedium of the long weeks
was her landlady, Mrs. Jacobs, the widow of a cheesemonger, who had
ruined a fine business by his drinking and other vicious propensities,
and out of a good property had only left his wife the leasehold of a
house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which, fortunately for her, had been
settled upon her at her marriage. Like most people who have seen better
days—not but what she was now very comfortably off—she delighted in
talking of her misfortunes, and of the perfidiousness of man; and in
Hilda, who had, poor girl, nothing else to listen to, she found a most
attentive audience. As was only natural where such a charming person
and such a good listener were concerned, honest Mrs. Jacobs soon grew
fond of her interesting lodger, about whose husband’s circumstances and
history she soon wove many an imaginary tale; for, needless to say, her
most pertinent inquiries failed to extract much information from Hilda.
One of her favourite fictions was that her lodger was the victim of her
handsome husband, who had in some way beguiled her from her home beyond
the seas, in order to keep her in solitary confinement and out of the
reach of a hated rival. Another, that he kept her thus that he might
have greater liberty for his own actions.

In course of time these ideas took such possession of her mind that she
grew to believe in them, and, when speaking of Hilda to any of her
other lodgers, would shake her head and talk of her mysteriously as a
“lamb” and a “victim.”

As for that lady herself, whilst far from suspecting her good
landlady’s gloomy surmises, she certainly fell more and more a prey to
depression and anxieties, and occasionally even to suspicion, to all of
which evils she grew increasingly liable as she drew nearer to an event
that was no longer very distant. She could not but notice a change in
Philip’s manner on the rare occasions when he was able to visit her, of
which the most marked developments were fits of silence and
irritability. A certain reticence also, that became more and more
noticeable as time went on, led her to feel that there was an invisible
something growing up between them—a something that the pride she
possessed in such a striking degree forbade her to attempt to pierce,
but which was none the less galling to her on that account. Very
shortly before the events narrated in the last chapter she had taken
the occasion of a visit from Philip to complain somewhat bitterly of
her position, begging him to tell her when there was any prospect of
her being allowed to take her rightful place—a question her husband was
quite unable to answer satisfactorily. Seeing that there was nothing to
be got out of him, with womanly tact she changed the subject, and asked
after Maria Lee (for whom she entertained a genuine affection)—when he
last saw her, how she was looking, if there was any prospect of her
getting married, and other questions of the same sort—the result of
which was to evoke a most violent, and to her inexplicable, fit of
irritability on the part of her husband. Something of a scene ensued,
which was finally terminated about five o’clock in the afternoon by
Philip’s abrupt departure to catch his train.

Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jacobs, coming up to bring some tea, found
Hilda indulging in tears that she had been too proud to shed before her
husband; and, having had an extended personal experience of such
matters, rightly guessed that there had been a conjugal tiff, the blame
of which, needless to say, she fixed upon the departed Philip.

“Lor, Mrs. Roberts” (as Hilda was called), she said, “don’t take on
like that; they’re all brutes, that’s what they are; if only you could
have seen my Samuel, who’s dead and gone these ten years and buried in
a private grave at Kensal Cemetery—though he didn’t leave anything to
pay for it except three dozen and five of brandy—he was a beauty, poor
dear, he was; your husband ain’t nothing to him.”

“My husband, let me tell you, Mrs. Jacobs, is not a brute at all,”
sobbed Hilda, with dignity.

“Ah, Mrs. Roberts, that is just what I used to say of Samuel, but he
was the biggest brute in the three kingdoms, for all that; but if you
ask me, meaning no offence, I call a man a brute as only comes to see
his lawful wife about twice a month, let alone making an angel cry.”

“Mr. Roberts has his reasons, Mrs. Jacobs; you must not talk of him
like that.”

“Ah, so my Samuel used to say when he stopped away from home for three
nights at a time, till I followed him and found out his ‘Reason,’ and a
mighty pretty ‘Reason’ she was too, all paint and feathers, the hussy,
and eyes as big as a teacup. They all have their reasons, but they
never tell ‘em. But come and put on your things and go out a bit,
there’s a dear; it is a beautiful warm evening. You feel tired—oh,
never mind that; it is necessary for people as is in an interested way
to take exercise. I well remembers——”

Here Hilda, however, cut the subject short, and deprived herself of
Mrs. Jacobs’ reminiscences by going to put on her things.

It was a bright warm evening, and she found the air so pleasant that,
after strolling round Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she thought she would
extend her walk a little, and struck past Lincoln’s Inn Hall into New
Square, and then made her way to the archway opposite to where the New
Law Courts now stand. Under this archway a legal bookseller has built
his nest, and behind windows of broad plate-glass were ranged specimens
of his seductive wares, baits on which to catch students avaricious of
legal knowledge as they pass on their way to chambers or Hall. Now, at
this window a young man was standing at the moment that Hilda entered
the archway, his eyes fixed upon a pamphlet on the laws of succession.
That young man was George Caresfoot, who was considering whether it
would be worth his while to buy the pamphlet in order to see if he
would be entitled to anything if his uncle should happen to die
intestate, as he sometimes feared might be the case. He had come up to
town on business connected with his firm, and was now waiting till it
was time to begin an evening of what he understood as pleasure; for
George was a very gay young man.

He was, however, also a very sharp one, so sharp that he even noticed
shadows, especially when, as in this case, the shadow was clearly
defined and flung, life-sized, on the dark background of the books
before him. He watched it for a moment, and as its owner, with an
absent air, slowly passed from the bright sunlight into the shade of
the arch, it struck the astute George that there was something familiar
about this particular and by no means unpleasing shadow. Waiting till
it had vanished and the footsteps gone past him, he turned round and at
a glance recognized Hilda von Holtzhausen, Miss Lee’s beautiful
companion, who was supposed to have departed into the more distant
parts of Germany. George’s eyes twinkled, and a whole host of ideas
rushed into his really able mind.

“Caught at last, for a sovereign,” he muttered.

Meanwhile Hilda walked slowly on into Chancery Lane, then turned to the
left till she came into Holborn, and thence made her way round by
another route back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Needless to say, George
followed at a respectful distance. His first impulse had been to go up
and speak to her, but he resisted the inclination.

On the doorstep of the house where Hilda lodged, stood her landlady
giving a piece of her mind to a butcher-boy both as regarded his
master’s meat and his personal qualities. She paused for breath just as
Hilda passed up the steps, and, turning, said something that made the
latter laugh. The butcher-boy took the opportunity of beating a rapid
retreat, leaving Mrs. Jacobs crowing after him from her own doorstep.
As soon as Hilda had gone into the house, George saw his opportunity.
Advancing politely towards Mrs. Jacobs, he asked her if she was the
landlady of the house, and, when she had answered in the affirmative,
he made inquiries about apartments.

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Jacobs, “but I do not let rooms to single
gentlemen.”

“You take too much for granted, ma’am. I am married.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “I suppose, sir, you would have no
objection to giving a reference.”

“A dozen, if you like, ma’am; but shall we look at the rooms?”

Mrs. Jacobs assented, and they made their way upstairs, George keeping
in front. On the first-floor he saw a pair of lady’s shoes on a mat
outside the door, and guessed to whom they belonged.

“Are these the rooms?” he said, laying his hand upon the door-handle.

“No, sir, no, they are Mrs. Roberts’; next floor, please, sir.”

“Mrs. Roberts?—I suppose the very handsome young lady I saw come into
the house. No offence, ma’am; but a man’s bound to be careful where he
brings his wife. I suppose she’s all right.”

“Lord, yes, poor dear!” answered Mrs. Jacobs, in indignation; “why,
they came here straight from St. Jude’s, Battersea, the day they were
married; a runaway match, I fancy.”

“That’s all right; she looked charming. I hope her husband is worthy of
her,” remarked George, as he gazed round Mrs. Jacobs’ rooms.

“Well, as to that, he’s handsome enough, for them as likes those black
men; but I don’t like people as only comes to visit their lawful wives
about twice a month. But,” suddenly checking herself, “it isn’t any
affair of mine.”

“No, indeed, very reprehensible: I am, as a married man, entirely of
your mind. These are charming rooms, ma’am, charming. I shall certainly
take them if my wife approves; I will let you know by to-morrow’s
post—Jacobs, yes, I have it down. Good evening, ma’am,” and he was
gone.

Instead of going out that evening as he had intended, George sat in the
smoking-room of his hotel and thought. He also wrote a letter which he
addressed to Mrs. Bellamy.

Next morning, taking a cab, he drove to St. Jude’s, Battersea, and
inspected the register.

Presently he asked for a certified copy of the following entry: “August
1, 1856. Philip Caresfoot, bachelor, gentleman, to Hilda von
Holtzhausen, spinster (by license). Signed J. Few, curate; as witness,
Fred. Natt, Eliza Chambers.”

That evening Hilda received an anonymous letter, written in a round
clerk’s hand, that had been posted in the City. It was addressed to
Mrs. Roberts, and its contents ran thus:

“A sincere friend warns Mrs. Philip Caresfoot that her husband is
deceiving her, and has become entangled with a young lady of her
acquaintance. _Burn this; wait and watch!_”

The letter fell from her hands as though it had stung her.

“Mrs. Jacobs was right,” she said aloud, with a bitter laugh, “men
always have a ‘reason.’ Oh, let him beware!” And she threw back her
beautiful head and the great blue eyes sparkled like those of a snake
about to strike. The sword of jealousy, that she had hitherto repelled
with the shield of a woman’s trust in the man she loves, had entered
into her soul, and, could Philip have seen her under these new
circumstances, he would have realized that he had indeed good reason to
“beware.” “No wonder,” she went on, “no wonder that he finds her name
irritating upon my lips; no doubt to him it is a desecration. Oh, oh!”
And she flung herself on her face, and wept tears of jealous rage.

“Well,” said George to Mrs. Bellamy, as they drove home together after
the great dinner party (do not be shocked, my reader, Bellamy was _on
the bow_), “well, how shall we strike? Shall I go to the old man
to-morrow, and show him my certified copy? There is no time to lose. He
might die any day.”

“No; we must act through Mrs. Philip.”

“Why?”

“It is more scientific, and it will be more amusing.”

“Poor thing! it will be a blow to her. Don’t you like her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she did not trust me, and because she eclipses me. Therefore I
am glad of an opportunity of destroying her.”

“You are a very ruthless woman.”

“When I have an end in view, I march straight to it; I do not
vacillate—that is all. But never mind me; here we are near home. Go to
town by the first train to-morrow morning and post another letter
announcing what has happened here. Then come back and wait.”

“Ay,” reflected George, “that is a wonderful woman—a woman it is good
to have some hold over.”

We left Hilda stretched on her face sobbing. But the fit did not last
long. She rose, and flung open the window; she seemed stifled for want
of air. Then she sat down to think what she should do. Vanish and leave
no trace? No; not yet. Appear and claim her place? No; not yet. The
time was not ripe for choice between these two extremes. Upbraid Philip
with his faithlessness? No; not without proofs. What did that hateful
letter say? “Wait and watch;” yes, that was what she would do. But she
could not wait here; she felt as though she must go somewhere, get some
change of scene, or she should break down. She had heard Mrs. Jacobs
speak of a village not more than two hours from London that a
convalescent lodger of hers had visited and found charming. She would
go there for a week, and watch the spring cast her mantle over the
earth, and listen to the laughter of the brooks, and try to forget her
burning love and jealousy, and just for that one week be happy as she
was when, as a little girl, she roamed all day through the woods of her
native Germany. Alas! she forgot that it is the heart and not the scene
that makes happiness.

That evening she wrote a note to her husband, saying that she felt that
change of air was necessary for her, and that she was going out of
London for a few days, to some quiet place, from whence she would write
to him. He must not, however, expect many letters, as she wanted
complete rest.

On the following morning she went; and, if the sweet spring air did not
bring peace to her mind, at any rate, it to a very great extent set her
up in strength. She wrote but one letter during her absence, and that
was to say that she should be back in London by midday on the first of
May. This letter reached Philip on the morning of the great
dinner-party, and was either accidentally or on purpose sent without
the writer’s address. On the morning of the first of May—that is, two
days after the dinner-party, which was given on the twenty-ninth of
April—Hilda rose early, and commenced to pack her things with the
assistance of a stout servant girl, who did all the odd jobs and a
great deal of the work in the old-fashioned farmhouse in which she was
staying. Presently the cowboy came whistling up the little garden,
bright with crocuses and tulips, that lay in front of the house, and
knocked at the front door.

“Lawks!” said the stout girl, in accents of deep surprise, as she drew
her head in from the open lattice; “Jim’s got a letter.”

“Perhaps it is for me,” suggested Hilda, a little nervously; she had
grown nervous about the post of late. “Will you go and see?”

The letter was for her, in the handwriting of Mrs. Jacobs. She opened
it; it contained another addressed in the character the sight of which
made her feel sick and faint. She could not trust herself to read it in
the presence of the girl.

“Sally,” she said, “I feel rather faint; I shall lie down a little. I
will ring for you presently.”

Sally retired, and she opened her letter.

Fifteen minutes after the girl received her summons. She found Hilda
very pale, and with a curious look upon her face.

“I hope you’re better, mum,” she said, for she was a kind-hearted girl.

“Better—ah, yes! thank you, Sally; I am cured, quite cured; but please
be quick with the things, for I shall leave by the nine o’clock train.”




CHAPTER X.


The night of the dinner-party was a nearly sleepless one for Philip,
although his father had so considerately regretted his wearied
appearance, he could do nothing but walk, walk, walk, like some unquiet
ghost, up and down his great, oak-panelled bedroom, till, about dawn,
his legs gave way beneath him; and think, think, think, till his mind
recoiled, confused and helpless, from the dead wall of its objects.
And, out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged, after an hour
of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep, two fixed
results. The first of these was that he hated his father as a lost soul
must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently hated him;
and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his wife into his
confidence. Then he remembered the letter he had received from her on
the previous morning. He got it, and saw that it bore no address,
merely stating that she would be in London by midday on the first of
May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he must wait, and
he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a pleasant story for a
husband to have to tell.

Fortunately for Philip, there was an engagement of long standing for
this day, the thirtieth of April, to go, in conjunction with other
persons, to effect a valuation of the fallows, &c., of a large tenant
who was going out at Michaelmas. This prevented any call being made
upon him to go and see Maria Lee, as, after the events of the previous
evening, it might have been expected he would. He started early on this
business, and did not return till late, so he saw nothing of his father
that day.

On the morning of the first of May he breakfasted about half-past
eight, and then, without seeing his father, drove to Roxham to catch a
train that got him up to London about twenty minutes to twelve. As he
steamed slowly into Paddington Station, another train steamed out, and
had he been careful to examine the occupants of the first-class
carriages as they passed him in a slow procession, he might have seen
something that would have interested him; but he was, not unnaturally,
too much occupied with his own thoughts to allow of the indulgence of
an idle curiosity. On the arrival of his train, he took a cab and drove
without delay to the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and asked for Mrs.
Roberts.

“She isn’t back yet, sir,” was Mrs. Jacobs’ reply. “I got this note
from her this morning to say that she would be here by twelve, but it’s
twenty past now, so I suppose that she has missed the train or changed
her mind; but there will be another in at three, so perhaps you had
best wait for that, sir.”

Philip was put out by this contretemps, but at the same time he was
relieved to find that he had a space to breathe in before the
inevitable and dreadful moment of exposure and infamy, for he had grown
afraid of his wife.

Three o’clock came in due course, but no Hilda. Philip was seriously
disturbed; but there was now no train by which she could arrive that
day, so he was forced to the conclusion that she had postponed her
departure. There were now two things to be done, one to follow her down
to where she was staying—for he had ascertained her address from Mrs.
Jacobs; the other, to return home and come back on the morrow. For
reasons which appeared to him imperative, but which need not be entered
into here, he decided on the latter course; so leaving a note for his
wife, he drove, in a very bad temper, back to Paddington in time to
catch the five o’clock train to Roxham.

Let us now return to the Abbey House, where, whilst Philip was cooling
his heels in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a rather curious scene was in
progress.

At one o’clock, old Mr. Caresfoot, as was his rule, sat down to lunch,
which, frugal as it was, so far as he was concerned, was yet served
with some old-fashioned ceremony by a butler and a footman. Just as the
meal was coming to an end, a fly, with some luggage on it, drove up to
the hall-door. The footman went to open it.

“Simmons,” said the squire, to the old butler, “look out and tell me
who that is.”

Simmons did as he was bid, and replied:

“I don’t rightly know, squire; but it’s a lady, and she be wonderful
tall.”

Just then the footman returned, and said that a lady, who would not
give her name, wished to speak to him in private.

“Are you sure the lady did not mean Mr. Philip?”

“No, sir; she asked for Mr. Philip first, and when I told her that he
was out, she asked for you, sir. I have shown her into the study.”

“Humph! at any rate, she has come off a journey, and must be hungry.
Set another place and ask her in here.”

In another moment there was a rustle of a silk dress, and a lady,
arrayed in a long cloak and with a thick veil on, was shown into the
room. Mr. Caresfoot, rising with that courteous air for which he was
remarkable, bowed and begged her to be seated, and then motioned to the
servants to leave the room.

“Madam, I am told that you wish to speak to me; might I ask whom I have
the honour of addressing?”

She, with a rapid motion, removed her hat and veil, and exposed her
sternly beautiful face to his inquiring gaze.

“Do you not know me, Mr. Caresfoot?” she said, in her foreign accent.

“Surely, yes, you are the young lady who lived with Maria, Miss von
Holtzhausen.”

“That _was_ my name; it is now Hilda Caresfoot. I am your son Philip’s
wife.”

As this astounding news broke upon his ears, her hearer’s face became a
shifting study. Incredulity, wonder, fury, all swept across it, and
then in a single second it seemed to freeze. Next moment he spoke with
overpowering politeness.

“So, madam; then I have to congratulate myself on the possession of a
very lovely daughter-in-law.”

A silence ensued that they were both too moved to break; at last, the
old man said, in an altered tone:

“We have much to talk of, and you must be tired. Take off your cloak,
and eat whilst I think.”

She obeyed him, and he saw that not only was she his son’s wife, but
that she must before long present the world with an heir to the name of
Caresfoot. This made him think the more; but meanwhile he continued to
attend to her wants. She ate little, but calmly.

“That woman has nerve,” said he to himself.

Then he rang the bell, and bade Simmons wait till he had written a
note.

“Send James to Roxham at once with this. Take this lady’s things off
the fly, and put them in the red bedroom. By the way, I am at home to
nobody except Mr. Bellamy;” and then, turning to Hilda, “Now, if you
will come into my study, we will continue our chat,” and he offered her
his arm. “Here we are secure from interruption,” he said, with a ghost
of a smile. “Take this chair. Now, forgive my impertinence, but I must
ask you if I am to understand that you are my son’s _legal_ wife?”

She flushed a little as she answered:

“Sir, I am. I have been careful to bring the proof; here it is;” and
she took from a little hand-bag a certified copy of the register of her
marriage, and gave it to him. He examined it carefully through his gold
eye-glass, and handed it back.

“Perfectly in order. Hum! some eight months since, I see. May I ask why
I am now for the first time favoured with a sight of this interesting
document—in short, why you come down, like an angel from the clouds,
and reveal yourself at the present moment?”

“I have come,” she answered, “because of these.” And she handed him two
letters. “I have come to ascertain if they are true; if my husband is a
doubly perjured or a basely slandered man.”

He read the two anonymous letters. With the contents of the first we
are acquainted; the second merely told of the public announcement of
Philip’s engagement.

“Speak,” she said, with desperate energy, the calm of her face breaking
up like ice before a rush of waters. “You must know everything; tell me
my fate!”

“Girl, these villanous letters are in every particular true. You have
married in my son the biggest scoundrel in the county. I can only say
that I grieve for you.”

She listened in silence; then rising from her chair, said, with a
gesture infinitely tragic in its simplicity:

“Then it is finished; before God and man I renounce him. Listen,” she
went on, turning to her father-in-law, “I loved your son, he won my
heart; but, though he said he loved me, I suspected him of playing fast
and loose with me, on the one hand, and with my friend, Maria Lee, on
the other. So I determined to go away, and told him so. Then it was
that he offered to marry me at once, if I would change my purpose. I
loved him, and I consented—yes, because I loved him so, I consented to
even more. I agreed to keep the marriage secret from you. You see what
it has led to. I, a Von Holtzhausen, and the last of my name, stand
here a byword and a scorn; my story will be found amusing at every
dinner-table in the country-side, and my shame will even cling to my
unborn child. This is the return he has made me for my sacrifice of
self-respect, and for consenting to marry him at all; to outrage my
love and make me a public mockery.”

“We have been accustomed,” broke in the old squire, his pride somewhat
nettled, “to consider our own a good family to marry into. You do not
seem to share that view.”

“Good; yes, there is plenty of your money for those who care for it;
but, sir, as I told your son, it is not a _family_. He did me no honour
in marrying me, though I was nothing but a German companion, with no
dower but her beauty. I,”—and here she flung her head back with an air
of ineffable pride—“did him the honour. My ancestors, sir, were
princes, when his were plough-boys.”

“Well, well,” answered the old man, testily, “ten generations of
country gentry, and the Lord only knows how many more of stout yeomen
before them, is a good enough descent for us; but I like your pride,
and I am glad that you spring from an ancient race. You have been
shamefully treated, Hilda—is not your name Hilda?—but there are others,
more free from blame than you are, who have been treated worse.”

“Ah, Maria! then she knows nothing?”

“Yes, there is Maria and myself. But never mind that. Philip will, I
suppose, be back in a few hours—oh, yes! he will be back,” and his eyes
glinted unpleasantly, “and what shall you do then? what course do you
intend to take?”

“I intend to claim my rights, to force him to acknowledge me here where
he suffered his engagement to another woman to be proclaimed, and then
I intend to leave him. He has killed my respect; I will not live with
him again. I can earn my living in Germany. I have done with him; but,
sir, do not you be hard upon him. It is a matter between me and him.
Let him not suffer on my account.”

“My dear, pray confine yourself to your own affairs, and leave me to
settle mine. There shall be no harshness; nobody shall suffer more than
they deserve. There, don’t break down, go and rest, for there are
painful scenes before you.”

He rang the bell, and sent for the housekeeper. She came presently, a
pleasant-looking woman of about thirty years of age, with a comely face
and honest eyes.

“This lady, Pigott,” said the old squire, addressing her, “is Mrs.
Philip Caresfoot, and you will be so kind as to treat her with all
respect. Don’t open your eyes, but attend to me. For the present, you
had best put her in the red room, and attend to her yourself. Do you
understand?”

“Oh, yes, sir! I understand,” Pigott replied, curtseying. “Will you be
pleased to come along with me, ma’am?”

Hilda rose and took Pigott’s arm. Excitement and fatigue had worn her
out. Before she went, however, she turned, and with tears in her eyes
thanked the old man for his kindness to a friendless woman.

The hard eyes grew kindly as he stooped and kissed the broad, white
brow, and said in his stately way—

“My dear, as yet I have shown you nothing but the courtesy due to a
lady. Should I live, I hope to bestow on you the affection I owe to a
much-wronged daughter. Good-by.”

And thus they parted, little knowing where they should meet again.

“A woman I respect—well, English or German, the blood will tell”—he
said as soon as the door had closed. “Poor thing—poor Maria too. The
scoundrel!—ah! there it is again;” and he pressed his hand to his
heart. “This business has upset me, and no wonder.”

The pang passed, and sitting down he wrote a letter that evidently
embarrassed him considerably, and addressed it to Miss Lee. This he put
in the post-box, and then, going to a secretaire, he unlocked it, and
taking out a document he began to puzzle over it attentively.

Presently Simmons announced that Mr. Bellamy was waiting.

“Show him in at once,” said the old man briskly.




CHAPTER XI.


It was some minutes past seven that evening when the lawyer left, and
he had not been gone a quarter of an hour before a hired gig drove up
to the door containing Philip, who had got back from town in the worst
of bad tempers, and, as no conveyance was waiting for him, had been
forced to post over from Roxham. Apparently his father had been
expecting his arrival, for the moment the servant opened the door he
appeared from his study, and addressed him in a tone that was as near
to being jovial as he ever went.

“Hallo, Philip, back again, are you? Been up to town, I suppose, and
driven over in the ‘George’ gig? That’s lucky; I wanted to speak to
you. Come in here, there’s a good fellow, I want to speak to you.”

“Why is he so infernally genial?” reflected Philip. “Timeo Danaos et
dona ferentes;” then aloud, “All right, father; but if it is all the
same to you, I should like to get some dinner first.”

“Dinner! why, I have had none yet; I have been too busy. I shall not
keep you long; we will dine together presently.”

Philip was surprised, and glanced at him suspiciously. His habits were
extremely regular; why had he had no dinner?

Meanwhile his father led the way into the study, muttering below his
breath—

“One more chance—his last chance.”

A wood fire was burning brightly on the hearth, for the evening was
chilly, and some sherry and glasses stood upon the table.

“Take a glass of wine, Philip; I am going to have one; it is a good
thing to begin a conversation on. What says the Psalmist: ‘Wine that
maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheerful
countenance’—a cheerful countenance! Ho, ho! my old limbs are tired; I
am going to sit down—going to sit down.”

He seated himself in a well-worn leather arm-chair by the side of the
fire so that his back was towards the dying daylight. But the
brightness of the flames threw the clear-cut features into strong
relief against the gloom, and by it Philip could see that the withered
cheeks were flushed. Somehow the whole strongly defined scene made him
feel uncanny and restless.

“Cold for the first of May, isn’t it, lad? The world is very cold at
eighty-two. Eighty-two, a great age, yet it seems but the other day
that I used to sit in this very chair and dandle you upon my knee, and
make this repeater strike for you. And yet that is twenty years since,
and I have lived through four twenties and two years. A great age, a
cold world!”

“Ain’t you well?” asked his son, brusquely, but not unkindly.

“Well; ah, yes! thank you, Philip, I never felt better, my memory is so
good, I can see things I have forgotten seventy years or more. Dear,
dear, it was behind that bookcase in a hole in the board that I used to
hide my flint and steel which I used for making little fires at the
foot of Caresfoot’s Staff. There is a mark on the bark now. I was
mischievous as a little lad, and thought that the old tree would make a
fine blaze. I was audacious, too, and delighted to hide the things in
my father’s study under the very nose of authority. Ay, and other
memories come upon me as I think. It was here upon this very table that
they stood my mother’s coffin. I was standing where you are now when I
wrenched open the half-fastened shell to kiss her once more before they
screwed her down for ever. I wonder would you do as much for me? I
loved my mother, and that was fifty years ago. I wonder shall we meet
again? That was on the first of May, a long-gone first of May. They
threw branches of blackthorn bloom upon her coffin. Odd, very odd! But
business, lad, business—what was it? Ah! I know,” and his manner
changed in a second and became hard and stern. “About Maria, have you
come to a decision?”

Philip moved restlessly on his chair, poked the logs to a brighter
blaze, and threw on a handful of pine chips from a basket by his side
before he answered. Then he said—

“No, I have not.”

“Your reluctance is very strange, Philip, I cannot understand it. I
suppose that you are not already married, are you, Philip?”

There was a lurid calm about the old man’s face as he asked this
question that was very dreadful in its intensity. Under the shadow of
his thick black eyebrows, gleams of light glinted and flickered in the
expanded pupils, as before the outburst of a tempest the forked
lightning flickers in the belly of the cloud. His voice too was
constrained and harsh.

Owing to the position of his father’s head, Philip could not see this
play of feature, but he heard the voice and thought that it meant
mischief. He had but a second to decide between confession and the lie
that leaped to his lips. An inward conviction told him that his father
was not long for this world, was it worth while to face his anger when
matters might yet be kept dark till the end? The tone of the voice— ah!
how he mistook its meaning—deceived him. It was not, he thought,
possible that his father could know anything. Had he possessed a little
more knowledge of the world, he might have judged differently.

“Married, no, indeed; what put that idea into your head?” And he
laughed outright.

Presently he became aware that his father had risen and was approaching
towards him. Another moment and a hand of iron was laid upon his
shoulder, the awful eyes blazed into his face and seemed to pierce him
through and through, and a voice that he could not have recognized
hissed into his ear—

“You unutterable liar, you everlasting hound, your wife is at this
moment in this house.”

Philip sprang up with an exclamation of rage and cursed Hilda aloud.

“No,” went on his father, standing before him, his tall frame swaying
backwards and forwards with excitement; “no, do not curse her, she,
like your other poor dupe, is an honest woman; on yourself be the
damnation, you living fraud, you outcast from all honour, who have
brought shame and reproach upon our honest name, on you be it; may
every curse attend _you_, and may remorse torture _you_. Listen: you
lied to me, you lied to your wife, trebly did you lie to the
unfortunate girl you have deceived; but, if you will not speak it, for
once hear the truth, and remember that you have to deal with one so
relentless, that fools, mistaking justice for oppression, call him
‘devil.’ I, ‘Devil Caresfoot,’ tell you that I will disinherit you of
every stick, stone, and stiver that the law allows me, and start you in
the enjoyment of the rest with my bitterest curse. This I will do now
whilst I am alive; when I am dead, by Heaven, I will haunt you if I
can.”

Here he stopped for want of breath, and stood for a moment in the full
light of the cheery blaze, one hand raised above his head as though to
strike, and, presenting with his glittering eyes and working features,
so terrible a spectacle of rage that his son recoiled involuntarily
before him.

But fury begets fury as love begets love, and in another second Philip
felt his own wicked temper boil up within him. He clenched his teeth
and stood firm.

“Do your worst,” he said; “I hate you; I wish to God that you were
dead.”

Hardly had these dreadful words left his lips when a change came over
the old man’s face; it seemed to stiffen, and putting one hand to his
heart he staggered back into his chair, pointing and making signs as he
fell towards a little cupboard in the angle of the wall. His son at
once guessed what had happened; his father had got one of the attacks
of the heart to which he was subject, and was motioning to him to bring
the medicine which he had before shown him, and which alone could save
him in these seizures. Actuated by a common impulse of humanity, Philip
for the moment forgot their quarrel, and stepped with all speed to
fetch it. As it happened, there stood beneath this cupboard a table,
and on this table lay the document which his father had been reading
that afternoon before the arrival of Mr. Bellamy. It was his will, and,
as is usual in the case of such deeds, the date was endorsed upon the
back. All this Philip saw at a single glance, and he also saw that the
will was dated some years back, and therefore one under which he would
inherit, doubtless the same that his father had some months before
offered to show him.

It flashed through his mind that his father had got it out in order to
burn it; and this idea was followed by another that for a moment
stilled his heart.

“_If he should die now he cannot destroy it!_ If he does not take the
medicine he _will_ die.”

Thought flies fast in moments of emergency. Philip, too, was a man of
determined mind where his own interests were concerned, and his blood
was heated and his reason blinded by fury and terror. He was not long
in settling on his course of action. Taking the bottle from the
cupboard, he poured out its contents into one of the wine-glasses that
stood upon the table, and coming up to his father with it addressed
him. He knew that these attacks, although they were of a nature to
cause intense pain, did not rob the sufferer of his senses. The old
man, though he lay before him gasping with agony, was quite in a
condition to understand him.

“Listen to me,” he said, in a slow, distinct voice. “Just now you said
that you would disinherit me. This medicine will save your life, and if
I let it fall you will die, and there is no more in the house. Swear
before God that you will not carry out your threat, and I will give it
to you. Lift up your hand to show me that you swear.”

Silence followed, only broken by the gasps of the dying man.

“If you will not swear, I will pour it out before your eyes.”

Again there was silence; but this time the old man made an effort to
rise and ring the bell.

His son threw him roughly back.

“For the last time,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “will you swear?”

A struggle passed over his father’s face, now nearly black with pain;
and presently from the distended lips, that did not seem to move, there
burst a single word—destined to echo for ever in his son’s ears—

“_Murderer!_”

It was his last. He sank back, groaned, and died; and at the same
moment the flame from the pine-chips flickered itself away, and of a
sudden the room grew nearly dark. Philip stood for awhile aghast at his
own handiwork, and watched the dull light glance on the dead white of
his father’s brow. He was benumbed by terror at what he had done, and
in that awful second of realization would have given his own life to
have it undone.

Presently, however, the instinct of self-preservation came to his aid.
He lit a candle, and taking some of the medicine in the glass, smeared
it over the dead man’s chin and coat, and then broke the glass on the
floor by his side—thus making it appear that he had died whilst
attempting to swallow the medicine.

Next he raised a loud outcry, and violently rang the bell. In a minute
the room was full of startled servants, one of whom was instantly
despatched for Mr. Caley, the doctor. Meanwhile, after a vain attempt
to restore animation, the study-table was cleared and the corpse laid
on it, as its mother’s had been on that day fifty years before.

Then came a dreadful hush, and the shadow of death came down upon the
house and brooded over it. The men-servants moved to and fro with
muffled feet, and the women wept, for in a way they had all loved the
imperious old man, and the last change had come very suddenly. Philip’s
brain burned; he was consumed by the desire of action. Suddenly he
bethought him of his wife upstairs: after what he had just passed
through, no scene with her could disturb him—it would, he even felt, be
welcome. He went up to the room where she was, and entered. It was
evident that she had been told of what had happened, as both she and
Pigott, who was undressing her—for she was wearied out—were weeping.
She did not appear surprised at his appearance; the shock of the old
man’s death extinguished all surprise. It was he who broke the silence.

“He is dead,” he said.

“Yes, I have heard.”

“If you are at liberty for a few minutes, I wish to talk to you,” he
said savagely.

“I, too,” she answered, “have something to say, but I am too weary and
upset to say it now. I will see you to-morrow.”

He turned and went without answering, and Pigott noticed that no kiss
or word of endearment passed between them, and that the tone of their
words was cold.

Soon after Philip got downstairs the doctor came. Philip met him in the
hall and accompanied him into the study, where the body was. He made a
rapid examination, more as a matter of form than anything else, for his
first glance had told him that life was extinct.

“Quite dead,” he said sorrowfully; “my old friend gone at last. One of
a fine sort too; a just man for all his temper. They called him
‘devil,’ and he was fierce when he was younger, but if I never meet a
worse devil than he was I shall do well. He was very kind to me once—
very. How did he go?—in pain, I fear.”

“We were talking together, when suddenly he was seized with the attack.
I got the medicine as quick as I could and tried to get it down his
throat, but he could not swallow, and in the hurry the glass was
knocked by a jerk of his head right out of my hands. Next second he was
dead.”

“Very quick—quicker than I should have expected. Did he say anything?”

“No.”

Now, just as Philip delivered himself of this last lie, a curious
incident happened, or rather an incident that is apt to seem curious to
a person who has just told a lie. The corpse distinctly moved its right
hand—the same that had been clasped over the old man’s head as he
denounced his son.

“Good God!” said Philip, turning pale as death, “what’s that?” and even
the doctor started a little, and cast a keen look at the dead face.

“Nothing,” he said. “I have seen that happen before where there has
been considerable tension of the muscles before death; it is only their
final slackening, that is all. Come, will you ring the bell? They had
better come and take it upstairs.”

This sad task had just been performed, and Mr. Caley was about to take
his leave, when Pigott came down and whispered something into his ear
that evidently caused him the most lively astonishment. Drawing Philip
aside, he said—

“The housekeeper asks me to come up and see ‘Mrs. Philip Caresfoot,’
whom she thinks is going to be confined. Does she mean your wife?”

“Yes,” answered Philip sullenly, “she does. It is a long story, and I
am too upset to tell it you now. It will soon be all over the country I
suppose.”

The old doctor whistled, but judged it advisable not to put any more
questions, when suddenly an idea seemed to strike him.

“You said you were talking to your father when the fit took him; was it
about your marriage?”

“Yes.”

“When did he first know of it?”

“To-day, I believe.”

“Ah, thank you;” and he followed Pigott upstairs.

That night, exactly at twelve o’clock, another little lamp floated out
on the waters of life: Angela was born.




CHAPTER XII.


When the doctor had gone upstairs, Philip went into the dining-room to
eat something, only to find that food was repugnant to him; he could
scarcely swallow a mouthful. To some extent, however, he supplied its
place by wine, of which he drank several glasses. Then, drawn by a
strange fascination, he went back into the little study, and,
remembering the will, bethought himself that it might be as well to
secure it. In taking it off the table, however, a folded and much
erased sheet of manuscript was disclosed. Recognizing Bellamy’s
writing, he took it up and commenced to read the draft, for it was
nothing else. Its substance was as follows.

The document began by stating that the testator’s former will was
declared null and void on account of the “treacherous and dishonourable
conduct of his son Philip.” It then, in brief but sweeping terms,
bequeathed and devised to trustees, of whom Philip was not one, the
unentailed property and personalty to be held by them: firstly, for the
benefit of any _son_ that might be born to the said disinherited Philip
by _his wife Hilda_—the question of daughters being, probably by
accident, passed over in silence—and failing such issue, then to the
testator’s nephew, George Caresfoot, absolutely, subject, however, to
the following curious condition: Should the said George Caresfoot,
_either by deed of gift or will_, attempt to convey the estate to his
cousin Philip, or to descendants of the said Philip, then the gift over
to the said George was to be of none effect, and the whole was to pass
to some distant cousins of the testator’s who lived in Scotland. Then
followed several legacies and one charge on the estate to the extent of
1000 pounds a year payable to the _separate_ use of the aforesaid Hilda
Caresfoot for life, and reverting at death to the holder of the estate.

In plain English, Philip was, under this draft, totally disinherited,
first in favour of his own male issue, by his wife Hilda, all mention
of daughters being omitted, and failing such issue, in favour of his
hated cousin George, who, as though to add insult to injury, was
prohibited from willing the property back either to himself or his
descendants, by whom the testator had probably understood the children
of a second marriage.

Philip read the document over twice carefully.

“Phew!” he said, “that was touch and go. Thank heavens he had no time
to carry out his kind intentions.”

But presently a terrible thought struck him. He rang the bell hastily.
It was answered by the footman, who, since he had an hour before helped
to carry his poor master upstairs, had become quite demoralized. It was
some time before Philip could get an answer to his question as to
whether or no any one had been with his father that day whilst he was
out. At last he succeeded in extracting a reply from the man that
nobody had been except the young lady—“leastways, he begged pardon,
Mrs. Caresfoot, as he was told she was.”

“Never mind her,” said Philip, feeling as though a load had been taken
from his breast, “you are sure nobody else has been?”

“No, sir, nobody, leastways he begged pardon, nobody except lawyer
Bellamy and his clerk, who had been there all the afternoon writing,
with a black bag, and had sent for Simmons to be witnessed.”

“You can go,” said Philip, in a quiet voice. He saw it all now, he had
let the old man die _after_ he had executed the fresh will
disinheriting him. He had let him die; he had effectually and beyond
redemption cut his own throat. Doubtless, too, Bellamy had taken the
new will with him; there was no chance of his being able to destroy it.

By degrees, however, his fit of brooding gave way to one of sullen fury
against his wife, himself, but most of all against his dead father.
Drunk with excitement, rage, and baffled avarice, he seized a candle
and staggered up to the room where the corpse had been laid, launching
imprecations as he went at his dead father’s head. But when he came
face to face with that dread Presence his passion died, and a cold
sense of the awful quiet and omnipotence of death came upon him and
chilled him into fear. In some indistinct way he realized how impotent
is the chafing of the waters of Mortality against the iron- bound
coasts of Death. To what purpose did he rail against that solemn quiet
thing, that husk and mask of life which lay in unmoved mockery of his
reviling?

His father was dead, and he, even he, had killed his father. He was his
father’s murderer. And then a terror of the reckoning that must one day
be struck between that dead man’s spirit and his own took possession of
him, and a foreknowledge of the awful shadow under which he must
henceforth live crept into his mind and froze the very marrow in his
bones. He looked again at the face, and, to his excited imagination, it
appeared to have assumed a sardonic smile. The curse of Cain fell upon
him as he looked, and weighed him down; his hair rose, and the cold
sweat poured from his forehead. At length he could bear it no longer,
but, turning, fled out of the room and out of the house, far into the
night.

When, haggard with mental and bodily exhaustion, he at length returned,
it was after midnight. He found Dr. Caley waiting for him; he had just
come from the sick-room and wore an anxious look upon his face.

“Your wife has been delivered of a fine girl,” he said; “but I am bound
to tell you that her condition is far from satisfactory. The case is a
most complicated and dangerous one.”

“A girl!” groaned Philip, mindful of the will. “Are you sure that it is
a girl?”

“Of course I am sure,” answered the doctor, testily.

“And Hilda ill—I don’t understand.”

“Look here, my good fellow, you are upset; take a glass of brandy and
go to bed. Your wife does not wish to see you now, but, if necessary, I
will send for you. Now, do as I tell you, or you will be down next.
Your nerves are seriously shaken.”

Philip did as he was bid, and, as soon as he had seen him off to his
room, the doctor returned upstairs.

In the early morning he sent for two of his brother-practitioners, and
they held a consultation, the upshot of which was that they had come to
the conclusion nothing short of a miracle could save Hilda’s life— a
conclusion that she herself had arrived at some hours before.

“Doctor,” she said, “I trust to you to let me know when the end is
near. I wish my husband to be present when I die, but not before.”

“Hush, my child—never talk of dying yet. Please God, you have many
years of life before you.”

She shook her golden head a little sadly.

“No, doctor, my sand has run out, and perhaps it as as well. Give me
the child—why do you keep the child away from me? It is the messenger
sent to call me to a happier world. Yes, she is an angel messenger.
When I am gone, see that you call her ‘Angela,’ so that I may know by
what name to greet her when the time comes.”

During the course of the morning, she expressed a strong desire to see
Maria Lee, who was accordingly sent for.

It will be remembered that old Mr. Caresfoot had on the previous day,
immediately after Hilda had left him, sat down and written to Maria
Lee. In this note he told her the whole shameful truth, ending it with
a few words of bitter humiliation and self-reproach that such a thing
should have befallen her at the hands of one bearing his name. Over the
agony of shame and grief thus let loose upon this unfortunate girl we
will draw a veil. It is fortunate for the endurance of human reason
that life does not hold many such hours as that through which she
passed after the receipt of this letter. As was but natural,
notwithstanding old Mr. Caresfoot’s brief vindication of Hilda’s
conduct in his letter, Maria was filled with indignation at what to
herself she called her treachery and deceit.

While she was yet full of these thoughts, a messenger came galloping
over from Bratham Abbey, bringing a note from Dr. Caley that told her
of her old friend’s sudden death, and of Hilda’s dangerous condition,
and her desire to see her. The receipt of this news plunged her into a
fresh access of grief, for she had grown fond of the old man; nor had
the warm affection for Hilda that had found a place in her gentle heart
been altogether wrenched away; and, now that she heard that her rival
was face to face with that King of Terrors before whom all earthly
love, hate, hope, and ambition must fall down and cease their
troubling, it revived in all its force; nor did any thought of her own
wrongs come to chill it.

Within half an hour she was at the door of the Abbey House, where the
doctor met her, and, in answer to her eager question, told her that,
humanly speaking, it was impossible her friend could live through
another twenty-four hours, adding an injunction that she must not stay
with her long.

She entered the sick-room with a heavy heart, and there from Hilda’s
dying lips she heard the story of her marriage and of Philip’s perfidy.
Their reconciliation was as complete as her friend’s failing voice and
strength would allow. At length she tore herself away, and, turning at
the door, took her last look at Hilda, who had raised herself upon her
elbow, and was gazing at her retreating form with an earnestness that
was very touching. The eyes, Maria felt, were taking their fill of what
they looked upon for the last time in this world. Catching her tearful
gaze, the dying woman smiled, and, lifting her hand, pointed upwards.
Thus they parted.

But Maria could control herself no longer: her own blasted prospects,
the loss of the man she loved, and the affecting scene through which
she had just passed, all helped to break her down. Running downstairs
into the dining-room, she threw herself on a sofa, and gave full
passage to her grief. Presently she became aware that she was not
alone. Philip stood before her, or, rather, the wreck of him whom she
knew as Philip. Indeed, it was hard to recognize in this scared man,
with dishevelled hair, white and trembling lips, and eyes ringed round
with black, the bold, handsome youth whom she had loved. The sight of
him stayed her sorrow, and a sense of her bitter injuries rushed in
upon her.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“Want! I want forgiveness. I am crushed, Maria, crushed—quite crushed,”
and he put his hands to his face and sobbed.

She answered him with the quiet dignity that good women can command in
moments of emergency—dignity of a very different stamp from Hilda’s
haughty pride, but perhaps as impressive in its way.

“You ask forgiveness of me, and say that you are crushed. Has it
occurred to you that, without fault of my own, except the fault of
trusting you as entirely as I loved you, I too am crushed? Do you know
that you have wantonly, or to gain selfish ends, broken my heart,
blighted my name, and driven me from my home, for I can live here no
more? Do you understand that you have done me one of the greatest
injuries one person can do to another? I say, do you know all this,
Philip Caresfoot, and, knowing it, do you still ask me to forgive you?
Do you think it possible that I _can_ forgive?”

He had never heard her speak like this before, and did not remember
that intense feeling is the mother of eloquence. He gazed at her for a
moment in astonishment; then he dropped his face into his hands again
and groaned, making no other answer. After waiting awhile, she went on—

“I am an insignificant creature, I know, and perhaps the mite of my
happiness or misery makes little difference in the scale of things; but
to me the gift of all my love was everything. I gave it to you,
Philip—gave it without a doubt or murmur, gave it with both hands. I
can never have it back to give again! How you have treated it you best
know.” Here she broke down a little, and then continued: “It may seem
curious, but though my love has been so mistakenly given; though you to
whom it was given have dealt so ill with it; yet I am anxious that on
my side there should be no bitter memory, that, in looking back at all
this in after years, you should never be able to dwell upon any harsh
or unkind word of mine. It is on that account, and also because I feel
that it is not for me to judge you, and that you have already much to
bear, that I do as you ask me, and say, ‘Philip, from my heart I
forgive you, as I trust that the Almighty may forgive me.’”

He flung himself upon his knees before her, and tried to take her hand.
“You do not know how you have humbled me,” he groaned.

She gazed at him with pity.

“I am sorry,” she said; “I did not wish to humble you. I have one word
more to say, and then I must go. I have just bid my last earthly
farewell to—your wife. My farewell to you must be as complete as that,
as complete as though the grave had already swallowed one of us. We
have done with each other for ever. I do not think that I shall come
back here. In my waking moments your name shall never willingly pass my
lips again. I will say it for the last time now. _Philip, Philip,
Philip_, whom I chose to love out of all the world, I pray God that He
will take me, or deaden the edge of what I suffer, and that He may
never let my feet cross your path or my eyes fall upon your face
again.”

In another second she had passed out of the room and out of his life.

That night, or rather just before dawn on the following morning, Hilda,
knowing that her end was very near, sent for her husband.

“Go quickly, doctor,” she said. “I shall die at dawn.”

The doctor found him seated in the same spot where Maria Lee had left
him.

“What, more misery!” he said, when he had told his errand. “I cannot
bear it. There is a curse upon me—death and wickedness, misery and
death!”

“You must come if you wish to see your wife alive.”

“I will come;” and he rose and followed him.

A sad sight awaited him. The moment of the grey dawn was drawing near,
and, by his wife’s request, a window had been unshuttered, that her
dimmed eyes might once more look upon the light. On the great bed in
the centre of the room lay Hilda, whose life was now quickly draining
from her, and by her side was placed the sleeping infant. She was
raised and supported on either side by pillows, and her unbound golden
hair fell around her shoulders, enclosing her face as in a frame. Her
pallid countenance seemed touched with an awful beauty that had not
belonged to it in life, whilst in her eyes was that dread and prescient
gaze which sometimes come to those who are about to solve death’s
mystery.

By the side of the bed knelt Mr. Fraser, the clergyman of the parish,
repeating in an earnest tone the prayers for the dying, whilst the
sad-faced attendants moved with muffled tread backwards and forwards
from the ring of light around the bed into the dark shadows that lay
beyond.

When Philip came, the clergyman ceased praying, and drew back into the
further part of the room, as did Pigott and the nurse, the former
taking the baby with her.

Hilda motioned to him to come close to her. He came, and bent over and
kissed her, and she, with an effort, threw one ivory arm around his
neck, and smiled sweetly. After about a minute, during which she was
apparently collecting her thoughts, she spoke in a low voice, and in
her native tongue.

“I have not sent for you before, Philip, for two reasons—first, because
I wished to spare you pain; and next, in order that I might have time
to rid my mind of angry thoughts against you. They are all gone
now—gone with every other earthly interest; but I _was_ angry with you,
Philip. And now listen to me—for I have not much time—and do not forget
my words in future years, when the story of my life will seem but as a
shadow that once fell upon your path. Change your ways, Philip dear,
abandon deceit, atone for the past; if you can, make your peace with
Maria Lee, and marry her—ah! it is a pity that you did not do that at
first, and leave me to go my ways—and, above all, humble your heart
before the Power that I am about to face. I love you, dear, and,
notwithstanding all, I am thankful to have been your wife. Please God,
we shall meet again.”

She paused awhile, and then spoke in English. To the astonishment of
all, her voice was strong and clear, and she uttered her words with an
energy that, under the circumstances, seemed almost awful.

“Tell her to bring the child.”

There was no need for Philip to repeat what she said, for Pigott heard
her, and at once came forward with the baby, which she laid beside her.

The dying woman placed her hand upon its tiny head, and, turning her
eyes upwards with the rapt expression of one who sees a vision, said—

“May the power of God be about you to protect you, my motherless babe,
may angels guard you, and make you as they are; and may the heavy curse
and everlasting doom of the Almighty fall upon those who would bring
evil upon you.”

She paused, and then addressed her husband.

“Philip, you have heard my words; in your charge I leave the child, see
that you never betray my trust.”

Then, turning to Pigott, she said, in a fainter voice—

“Thank you for your kindness to me. You have a good face; if you can,
stop with my child, and give her your love and care. And now, may God
have mercy on my soul!”

Then came a minute’s silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of those
who stood around, till a ray of light from the rising sun struggled
through the grey mist of the morning, and, touching the heads of mother
and child, illumined them as with a glory. It passed as quickly as it
came, drawing away with it the mother’s life. Suddenly, as it faded,
she spread out her arms, sighed, and smiled. When the doctor reached
the bed, her story was told: she had fallen asleep.

Death had been very gentle with her.




CHAPTER XIII.


Go, my reader, if the day is dull, and you feel inclined to moralize—
for whatever may be said to the contrary, there are less useful
occupations—and look at your village churchyard. What do you see before
you? A plot of enclosed ground backed by a grey old church, a number of
tombstones more or less decrepit, and a great quantity of little oblong
mounds covered with rank grass. If you have any imagination, any power
of thought, you will see more than that. First, with the instinctive
selfishness of human nature, you will recognize your own future
habitation; perhaps your eye will mark the identical spot where the
body you love must lie through all seasons and weathers, through the
slow centuries that will flit so fast for you, till the crash of doom.
It is good that you should think of that, although it makes you
shudder. The English churchyard takes the place of the Egyptian mummy
at the feast, or the slave in the Roman conqueror’s car—it mocks your
vigour, and whispers of the end of beauty and strength.

Probably you need some such reminder. But if, giving to the inevitable
the sigh that is its due, you pursue the vein of thought, it may
further occur to you that the plot before you is in a sense a summary
of the aspirations of humanity. It marks the realization of human
hopes, it is the crown of human ambitions, the grave of human failures.
Here, too, is the end of the man, and here the birthplace of the angel
or the demon. It is his sure inheritance, one that he never solicits
and never squanders; and, last, it is the only certain resting-place of
sleepless, tired mortality.

Here it was that they brought Hilda, and the old squire, and laid them
side by side against the coffin of yeoman Caresfoot, whose fancy it had
been to be buried in stone, and then, piling primroses and blackthorn
blooms upon their graves, left them to their chilly sleep. Farewell to
them, they have passed to where as yet we may not follow. Violent old
man and proud and lovely woman, rest in peace, if peace be the portion
of you both!

To return to the living. The news of the sudden decease of old Mr.
Caresfoot; of the discovery of Philip’s secret marriage and the death
of his wife; of the terms of the old man’s will, under which, Hilda
being dead, and having only left a daughter behind her, George
inherited all the unentailed portion of the property, with the curious
provision that he was never to leave it back to Philip or his children;
of the sudden departure of Miss Lee, and of many other things, that
were some of them true and some of them false, following as they did
upon the heels of the great dinner-party, and the announcement made
thereat, threw the country-side into a state of indescribable ferment.
When this settled down, it left a strong and permanent residuum of
public indignation and contempt directed against Philip, the more
cordially, perhaps, because he was no longer a rich man. People very
rarely express contempt or indignation against a rich man who happens
to be their neighbour in the country, whatever he may have done. They
keep their virtue for those who are impoverished, or for their
unfortunate relations. But for Philip it was felt that there was no
excuse and no forgiveness; he had lost both his character and his
money, and must therefore be cut, and from that day forward he was cut
accordingly.

As for Philip himself, he was fortunately, as yet, ignorant of the kind
intentions of his friends and neighbours, who had been so fond of him a
week ago. He had enough upon his shoulders without that—for he had
spoken no lie when he told Maria Lee that he was crushed by the
dreadful and repeated blows that had fallen upon him, blows that had
robbed him of everything that made life worth living, and given him in
return nothing but an infant who could not inherit, and who was
therefore only an incumbrance.

Who is it that says, “After all, let a bad man take what pains he may
to push it down, a human soul is an awful, ghostly, unique possession
for a bad man to have?” During the time that had elapsed between the
death and burial of his father and wife, Philip had become thoroughly
acquainted with the truth of this remark.

Do what he would, he could never for a single hour shake himself free
from the recollection of his father’s death; whenever he shut his eyes,
his uneasy mind continually conjured up the whole scene with uncanny
distinctness; the gloomy room, the contorted face of the dying man, the
red flicker of the firelight on the wall—all these things were burnt
deep into the tablets of his memory. More and more did he recognize the
fact that, even should he live long enough to bury the events of that
hour beneath the debris of many years, the lapse of time would be
insufficient to bring forgetfulness, and the recognition brought with
it moral helplessness. He had, too, sufficient religious feeling to
make him uneasy as to his future fate, and possessed a certain amount
of imagination, which was at this time all directed towards that awful
day when he and his dead father must settle their final accounts.
Already, in the quiet nights, he would wake with a start, thinking that
the inevitable time had come. Superstitious fears also would seize him
with their clammy fingers, and he would shake and tremble at the
fancied step of ghostly feet, and his blood would curdle in his veins
as his mind hearkened to voices that were for ever still.

And, worst of all, what had been done, and could never be undone, had
been done in vain. These deadly torments must be endured, whilst the
object for which they had been incurred had utterly escaped him. He had
sold himself to the powers of evil for a price, and that price had not
been paid. But the bond was good for all that.

And so he would brood, hour after hour, till he felt himself drawing
near to madness. Sometimes by a strong effort he would succeed in
tearing his mind away from the subject, but then its place was
instantly filled by a proud form with reproachful eyes, and he would
feel that there, too, death had put it out of his power to make
atonement. Of those whom he had wronged Maria Lee alone survived, and
she had left him in sorrow, more bitter than any anger. Truly, Philip
Caresfoot was in melancholy case. Somewhere he had read that the wages
of sin is death, but surely what he felt surpassed the bitterness of
death. His evil-doing had not prospered with him. The snare he had set
for his father had fallen back upon himself, and he was a crushed and
ruined man.

It affords a curious insight into his character to reflect that all
these piled-up calamities, all this wreck and sudden death, did not
bring him penitent on his knees before the Maker he had outraged. The
crimes he had committed, especially if unsuccessful, or the sorrows
that had fallen upon him, would have sufficed to reduce nine-tenths of
ordinary men to a condition of humble supplication. For, generally
speaking, irreligion, or rather forgetfulness of God, is a plant of no
deep growth in the human heart, since its roots are turned by the rock
of that innate knowledge of a higher Power that forms the foundation of
every soul, and on which we are glad enough to set our feet when the
storms of trouble and emergency threaten to destroy us. But with Philip
this was not so. He never thought of repentance. His was not the nature
to fall down and say, “Lord, I have sinned, take Thou my burden from
me.” Indeed, he was not so much sorry for the past as fearful for the
future. It was not grief for wrong-doing that wrung his heart and broke
his spirit, but rather his natural sorrow at losing the only creature
he had ever deeply loved, chagrin at the shame of his position and the
failure of his hopes, and the icy fingers of superstitious fears.

The crisis had come and passed: he had sinned against his Father in
heaven and his father on earth, and he did not sorrow for his sin; his
wife had left him, murmuring with her dying lips exhortations to
repentance, and he did not soften; shame and loss had fallen upon him,
and he did not turn to God. But his pride was broken, all that remained
to him of strength was his wickedness; the flood that had swept over
him had purged away not the evil but the good, from the evil it only
took its courage. Henceforth, if he sins at all, his will be no bold
and hazardous villany which, whilst it excites horror, can almost
compel respect, but rather the low and sordid crime, the safe and
treacherous iniquity.

Ajax no longer defies the lightning—he mutters curses on it beneath his
breath.

On the evening of the double funeral—which Philip did not feel equal to
attending, and at which George, in a most egregious hatband and with
many sobs and tears, officiated as chief mourner—Mr. Fraser thought it
would be a kind act on his part to go and offer such consolation to the
bereaved man as lay within his power, if indeed he would accept it.
Somewhat contrary to his expectation, he was, on arrival at the Abbey
House, asked in without delay.

“I am glad to see a human face,” said Philip to the clergyman, as he
entered the room; “this loneliness is intolerable. I am as much alone
as though I lay stark in the churchyard like my poor wife.”

Mr. Fraser did not answer him immediately, so taken up was he in
noticing the wonderful changes a week had wrought in his appearance.
Not only did his countenance bear traces of the illness and exhaustion
that might not unnaturally be expected in such a case of bereavement,
but it faithfully reflected the change that had taken place in his
mental attitude. His eyes had lost the frank boldness that had made
them very pleasing to some people, they looked scared; the mouth too
was rendered conspicuous by the absence of the firm lines that once
gave it character; indeed the man’s whole appearance was pitiful and
almost abject.

“I am afraid,” he said at length, in a tone of gentle compassion, “that
you must have suffered a great deal, Caresfoot.”

“Suffered! I have suffered the tortures of the damned! I still suffer
them, I shall always suffer them.”

“I do not wish,” said the clergyman, with a little hesitation, “to
appear officious or to make a mockery of your grief by telling you that
it is for your good; but I should fail in my duty if I did not point
out to you that He who strikes the blow

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