p46"He gave her the addressof his wife's uncle."
Miss Baynard at once took the letter to her uncle. His sallow face became still sallower as he read the account of his son's death, but a frown deeper than the girl had ever seen on them before darkened his features by the time he had come to the end of the letter.
"Had Dick not been idiot enough to wed that play-acting huzzy," he said, "the lad would have been alive today. I owe his loss to her. Neither her nor her brat will I ever countenance or acknowledge. Tell her so from me. Stay, though; you may send her this ten-pound note, with the assurance that it is the last money she will ever receive at my hands."
A few days later the note was returned to the Squire through the post, accompanied by a few unsigned lines to the effect that the widow of Richard Cortelyon would accept no help at the hands of the man who had treated her husband with such inhuman cruelty.
Not long after this Miss Baynard wrote to the widow, to the address furnished by her in her letter, mentioning how attached she had been to Dick, and hinting delicately at the happiness it would afford her to send Mrs. Cortelyon a little monetary help now and again. But at the end of a fortnight her letter came back marked, "Gone away--present address not known," and enclosed in an official envelope. It had been opened and resealed by the post-office authorities. As it happened, the letter fell into the Squire's hands, who, noticing only the official envelope, opened it without perceiving that it was addressed to his niece. As a consequence he at once sent for her.
After explaining how it happened that he had opened the letter, he continued: "I am astonished and annoyed, Nell--very seriously annoyed--that, after what thou heard me say two or three weeks ago, thou should have chosen of thy own accord to communicate with this play-acting creature, and even to offer to help her out of thy own scanty means. Fortunately, the woman has disappeared. No doubt she has gone back to the life and the companions that are most congenial to her--curses on her for a vile baggage! To her I owe it that my boy lies mouldering in the grave. Never again, Nell, on pain of offending me past forgiveness, do thou attempt to have aught to do with her. 'Tis beneath thee to notice such creatures in any way--and she above all others."
It was an injunction which Nell--who had listened to his tirade with a sort of proud disdain and without a word of reply--determined to obey or disobey as circumstances might determine. For the present she was helpless to do more than she had done. Unfortunately, she had mislaid the address given her by Dick at parting, otherwise she might perhaps have been able to obtain tidings of Mrs. Cortelyon through the latter's uncle, the London tobacconist.
Four years passed away without bringing any further tidings of the widow and her child, during all which time their names were not once mentioned between uncle and niece. By the latter their existence was by no means forgotten; she often thought about them, often longed to see them. Whether it ever entered the mind of Squire Cortelyon that he had a living grandson was known to himself alone. He grew old and made no sign.
Meanwhile Miss Baynard had shot up from a lanky slip of a girl into a very beautiful young woman.
When she first went to live at Stanbrook, the Squire, having no female element in his house of a higher status than that of housekeeper, engaged the services of Mrs. Budd--widow of the Rev. Onesimus Budd--for the dual positions ofgouvernanteand companion to his orphan niece. Mrs. Budd's duties as governess had long ago come to an end, but therewith she had assumed what to many people would have seemed the much more responsible and onerous post of chaperon. But, although a clever little woman in her way, Mrs. Budd was nothing if not easy-going. For her the wheels of existence were always well oiled. Nothing disturbed her much. Responsibility slid off her like water off a duck's back. Life for her meant little more than a sufficiency of sofas fitted with the softest cushions. She was excessively good-natured, and, hating to be worried herself, was careful never to worry others. She and her charge got on capitally together, chiefly because she was too wise ever to offer any very strenuous opposition to the whims and vagaries of that self-willed young woman. A mild protest, by way of easement to her conscience, she did now and then venture upon, which, however, Miss Baynard would brush aside with as little effort or compunction as she would a cobweb.
To some of Squire Cortelyon's neighbors it seemed an inconsistency on his part that he, who had packed off his son to school at the earliest possible age, should have taken to his hearth, and have kept her there, an orphan niece of no fortune, when he might so easily have rid himself of her in the same way that he had rid himself of Dick. And certainly, as has been remarked, the Squire was no lover of children, and was generally credited with not having an ounce of sentiment in his composition. For all that, Miss Baynard stayed on at Stanbrook, knowing no other house, her great-uncle so far relaxing his ingrained parsimony on her account as to pay Mrs. Budd's salary without a murmur, and allow his niece a few--a very few--guineas a year by way of pocket-money.
Perhaps it might be said of Ambrose Cortelyon that he had never really cared but for one person, and that one his sister Agatha, who had been the solitary ray of sunshine that had brightened the home-life of his youth--a youth repressed and stunted, and thrown back upon itself, but in all higher respects uncared for, under the rule of a tyrannical and passionate father, who was accustomed to flog him unmercifully for the most trivial offences, and of an indifferent, cold-hearted mother, who left her children to vegetate in the country for three parts of the year, while she led the life of a woman of fashion in town.
But Agatha Cortelyon, in the course of time, had grown tired and sick of her life at home, and had ended by running away with, and becoming the wife of, an impecunious young lieutenant in a marching regiment. Thereafter brother and sister had never met. The young wife had died three years later, leaving one daughter, who in her turn had grown up and married, but who had never been acknowledged or recognized in any way by her mother's family. She also had died young, her husband having pre-deceased her, leaving one child, the Miss Elinor Baynard with whom we have now to do.
Not till then did Ambrose Cortelyon become aware of the existence of his grand-niece. He had heard at the time of his sister's death, but no further news having reference to her husband or child had reached him, nor had he ever felt the least inclination to seek for any. Thus, to find himself with a girl of twelve, of whom he had never heard, thrown on his hands was for him anything but an agreeable surprise. Immediately after her mother's funeral the child had been packed off to Stanbrook by some half-cousins of her dead father--who had neither the means nor the will to keep her--with almost as little ceremony as if she had been a Christmas hamper.
The Squire happened to be out riding when Nell was put down by the coach at the gate of Stanbrook, and it fell to Mrs. Dace, the housekeeper, to break the news to him on his return and hand him a letter from one of the half-cousins which the girl had brought with her. When, an hour later, the Squire, in response to Nell's timid knock at the library door, gruffly bade her enter, he was quite prepared to dislike her at first sight, and had already determined in his mind to at once pack her off to some cheap country school, and so rid himself, at any rate for some time to come, of her unwelcome presence under his roof.
Yet somehow he did neither one nor the other. Was it because he was struck by a vague, elusive something in the girl's eyes, her air, her manner, and the way she carried her head, which brought vividly to mind the half-forgotten image of the dead-and-gone sister of his youth, that his determination to send her away presently melted into thin air and never again took shape in his thoughts? In any case, from that day forward Stanbrook was Nell's home; but that its being so was due not so much to the mere tie of relationship, by which her uncle set no great store, as to a sentimental recollection on his part, was what she had no knowledge of and would have found hard to credit. She had grown up self-willed and high-spirited, and with no small share of that determination of character--some people, chiefly such as had come into contact with it, stigmatized it as sheer obstinacy--for which the Cortelyons had always been noted. But above and beyond that, she had an intense scorn for all that was mean, base, sordid, or double-faced, and she was never slow to give expression to it.
For many of the small conventions and grandmotherly restrictions with which society at that period (leaving the present out of question) saw fit to hedge round its fledglings, she betrayed a fine indifference, going her own way without let or hindrance, and without deigning a thought to what others might say or think about her. That she should be regarded with favorable eyes by mothers with daughters about the same age as herself could hardly be expected. They averred that she set their darlings "a dangerous example"; but many of the darlings in question secretly envied her, and wished that a kind fate had allowed of their following her example.
Her uncle must be credited with allowing her to do pretty much as she liked. There was nothing strait-laced about the Squire. He was a strenuous hater of shams in others, while not being without a few little weaknesses of his own; and his niece's somewhat wilful independence of character secretly delighted him, even when, as sometimes happened, it opposed itself to his own flinty will, and sparks resulted from the collision.
Between two people so constituted there could be and was no question of sentiment. From the first it had seemed to Nell that her uncle simply tolerated her presence under his roof. He had taken her in because no other door was open to her, and because it would never have done for Squire Cortelyon's niece to have sought the shelter of the workhouse. His kindness, if kindness it could be called, had in it, or so she fancied, a certain grudging element which deprived it of whatever grace it might otherwise have had.
She knew nothing of a certain strange, haunting likeness on her own part, nor how often, when her uncle's eyes seemed to be watching her every movement, it was not her he saw at all, but some one known to her only by hearsay, who had been in her grave these forty years or more.
When Dick Cortelyon had been a little more than four years in his grave, the Squire, acting on his doctor's advice, went up to London for the purpose of undergoing a certain operation. It was an operation which is not usually supposed to be attended with any particular risk, and Mr. Cortelyon was quite cheerful about it; but of course in such a case, although he did not seem to think so, the question of age becomes an important factor. At this time he was within a month or so of his seventy-second birthday, but, barring his permanent lameness, the result of an accident a score years before, he avouched himself to be--and he fully believed it--as brisk and robust as when he was only half that age.
So up to town, accompanied by his niece, he travelled by easy stages in the roomy and comfortable, if somewhat lumbering, family chariot, which dated from his grandfather's time; while, perched in the rumble, Tatham, his body-servant, made platonic love to Miss Baynard's elderly maid, who had not known what it was to feel a man's arm round her waist for more years than she cared to remember.
Comfortable lodgings in Bloomsbury had been secured beforehand, and there the operation was presently performed by one of the most eminent surgeons of the day.
Everything went well with the Squire, as he had felt sure from the first it would do, and at the end of six weeks he was back at Stanbrook thoroughly cured.
But Miss Baynard, when she found herself in London, set herself a task she had hitherto had no opportunity of undertaking. This was nothing less than the hunting-up of her dead cousin's widow and child.
As already stated, she had lost the address given her by Dick, and had never afterwards found it. She remembered that the name on the slip of paper, that of Dick's wife's uncle, was McManus, and that the man was a tobacconist in a small way of business in one of the many turnings off Holborn, but the name of the street itself she had clean forgotten.
Fortunately for her purpose, there was a sharp youth connected with the lodgings who, besides making himself generally useful indoors, was willing to run on errands of any and every kind for anybody disposed to pay for his services. Him Miss Baynard engaged to discover for her what she wanted to know; nor had she long to wait. Within a very few hours he placed in her hands the address of Mr. McManus.
To the address thus obtained by her--her uncle being now well on the road to recovery--Miss Baynard went next afternoon in a hackney-coach, accompanied by her maid.
Mr. McManus, a little, old, and very snuffy man, with a shrewd but kindly expression, readily furnished her with the information asked for, after Nell had introduced herself and told him for what purpose she wanted it.
"Ah, poor lass! I'm sadly afraid she's not long for this world," remarked the old fellow with a melancholy shake of the head, in allusion to Dick's widow.
"Is she so ill as that?" queried Nell, thoroughly shocked.
"Aye, that is she. Long afore next year at this time the daisies'll be growin' over her grave. She caught a chill last Christmas, and it settled on her chest, which was always delicate, and now--why now, as I say, all the doctors in the world couldn't set her on her feet again."
"I cannot tell you how grieved I am to hear this. And the boy--her child--what of him?"
"Oh, he's as right as a trivet. A famous young shaver, and no mistake. There's nothing the matter with him."
Miss Baynard drove direct from Holborn to the address given her, which was Lawn Cottage, Chelsea. There Marjory Cortelyon rented a couple of rooms, a middle-aged widow, Mrs. Mardin by name, being at once her landlady and her nurse.
Nell, having sent in her name, was presently admitted to the invalid's little sitting-room, with its pleasant outlook across a wide sweep of sunny meadows, long ago covered with bricks and mortar.
The ex-actress lay on a couch near the window, a frail figure, wasted by illness to little more than skin and bone. That she had been very pretty once on a time was still plainly evident, and in her large, lustrous eyes, sunken though they were, Nell read something which went direct to her heart. There had never been anything meretricious or tawdry about her, otherwise Dick Cortelyon would not have made her his wife. She had been good and pure, and, in her way, a lady.
Nell, after pausing on the threshold for a couple of seconds while she took in the scene, went quickly forward and, dropping on one knee by the couch, bent over and kissed the dying woman. Tears dimmed her eyes, and a few moments passed before a word would come. Indeed, Marjory was the first to speak. At the touch of Nell's lips her ivory cheeks flushed, and a lovely smile played for a few seconds round her mouth. "My Dick loved you very dearly, and no wonder," she said softly. "I have often longed to see you, and I'm sure I shall die happier now that I have done so."
Nell's visit lasted upwards of an hour. She explained to Marjory how it happened that she had been unable either to communicate with her or to visit her before. Greatly to her disappointment, young Evan was from home, he having been taken into the country to spend a few days with a married sister of Marjory's, but Nell was told that if she chose to come again in a week's time he would then be back, and this she promised herself that she certainly would do.
By and by Nell said: "And now, Marjory dear, you must allow me to renew the offer made by me in the letter which failed to find you. Although you do not see your way to accept pecuniary help from Mr. Cortelyon, there is no reason in the world why you should not accept it from me, and I am quite sure that if poor dear Dick could speak to you from the grave he would agree with all I say. That he left you very poorly off, although through no fault of his own, I know full well. Therefore, I say again, why not----"
The sick woman held up one of her transparent hands. "You are kindness itself, Miss Baynard," she said, "and were I in want of help, you would be the first person to whom I would appeal; but I am not in want of anything. I have everything I need, and more, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Geoffrey Dare."
"Of Mr. Geoffrey Dare?" echoed Nell.
"Did Dick never speak of him to you?"
"Not to my knowledge; but you must remember that when Dick first came to London I was hardly out of the schoolroom, and that we saw very little of him at Stanbrook afterwards, before that last visit of all, with its unhappy ending."
"Well, my husband and Geoff Dare--we always used to call him and speak of him as 'Geoff'--were like brothers (not that all brothers hit it off together by any means), and of all Dick's many fine friends he was the only that was in the secret of our wedding. It was a secret he told to nobody, and when Dick's father cast him off and hard times came, he remained just the same Geoff that he had always been; not the least bit of change did we ever find in him. Then, when my child was born, nothing would suit him but that he must stand godfather to it. All through Dick's illness, which lasted a matter of four months, he would leave his gayeties and engagements at the other end of the town--we were living at that time in a couple of rooms in Clerkenwell--and come two or three times a week to sit with him and cheer him up. And when all was over, it was his money that helped to bury my husband, and it was on his arm that I leaned as I stood by the grave-side--he and I by our two selves. Is there any one like him in the world, I wonder?"
She sank back exhausted; but a little wine and water which Miss Baynard proceeded to administer speedily revived her.
Then said Nell: "Judging from what you tell me, Mr. Dare must indeed be a friend among a thousand, and for what he has done for you and yours I honor and respect him. Now, however, that you and I have found each other, there is no reason why you should any longer burden his generosity. You and I, my dear Marjory, are cousins; Dick and I, as you know, loved each other like brother and sister; consequently, it is to me, and to me only, that you and Evan ought to look in time to come."
A faint smile, it might almost be termed a smile of amusement, lighted up the sick woman's face. "'Tis very evident that you don't know Geoff Dare, or you would not talk like that," she said. "Why, merely for me to hint at such a thing would turn him into a thundercloud, and then there would be an explosion fit to bring the roof off. Oh, he has a fine temper of his own, I can tell you! And besides and worse than all, it would cut him to the quick, and that is what I would never be a party to doing. Then again, dear Miss Baynard, it isn't as if he was a poor man. In that case what you urge would bear twice thinking about. But Geoff is anything but poor, although--so Dick used to say--far over-fond of the gaming table and the race-course, like most young bucks of the day."
Nell sat silent, if not convinced. The ground, so to speak, had been cut from under her, and she was at a loss what to say next.
Presently Mrs. Cortelyon spoke again. "While we are talking about Mr. Dare, there is something else with which he is concerned that I may as well tell you about, as my doing so may perhaps prevent any misunderstanding in time to come."
She closed her eyes for a few seconds while she inhaled her smelling-salts. Then she went on:
"Although both the doctor and Mrs. Mardin try to keep the truth from me, I am not deceived. That my days are numbered, that a very few weeks will bring the end, I know full well--and Mr. Dare knows it too. The last time he was here I challenged him with the truth, and he could not deny it. It was the uncertainty about my child's future, which lay like a dead weight at my heart, that impelled me to do so. But he--God bless him for it!--at once put my mind at rest on that score. He gave me his solemn promise that when I am gone he will act a father's part by his dead friend's child. He will bring up Evan as if he were his own son. That the boy is his godson I have already told you."
"But what if Evan's grandfather should some day change his mind and want to claim him?" The question sprang to Nell's lips almost before she knew that it had formed itself in her mind.
An angry light leapt into the young widow's eyes; a spot of vivid red flamed out in either cheek. For a moment or two she bit her nether lip hard, as if thereby to control her emotion. Then she said: "If I thought there was any likelihood of my darling ever falling into the hands of that cruel and wicked old man, I am quite sure that I should never rest in my grave. Oh, if only, when I am dead, I may be allowed to haunt him! But you do not think, do you, dear Miss Baynard, that he is ever likely to want to claim Evan?"
"One never can tell what may happen. Even the most self-willed people sometimes see reason to change their mind. My uncle is an old man, and Evan is his lineal heir. He has neither child nor grandchild but him. What more natural than that he should some day turn round, hold out his arms, and say: 'The past is dead and buried. Come to me. You belong to me and to me only. I am rich, and all that I have is yours?' What is to hinder such a thing from coming to pass?"
Mrs. Cortelyon remained silent for a few moments as if considering the picture thus presented to her. Then she said: "When Geoff comes next I must talk to him about it. You have frightened me. Neither he nor I have dreamt of such a possibility. When I am dead the child must disappear, he must be hidden away by Geoff where the Squire, should he ever want to do so, could not find him. Rather, I truly believe, could I bear to see Evan stark in his coffin than walking hand in hand with that flinty-hearted old man. I never hated any one in my life as I hate him, and I shall keep on hating him after I am dead."
Miss Baynard paid two more visits to Lawn Cottage before the time came for her and her uncle to go back to Stanbrook. Evan was at home on both occasions, and on both occasions they went together for a long walk. The boy took to her from the first. He was a handsome, healthy child, and--or so it seemed to Nell--wonderfully like what his father must have been at the same age. She would have liked dearly to take him and set him down suddenly in front of the Squire, and leave the rest to Nature's prompting, but such a course was out of the question. All she could do was to extort a promise from Mrs. Cortelyon that if that should come to pass which she herself asserted to be inevitable, and the boy before long be left motherless, then should she, Nell, be informed, either by Mr. Dare or Mr. McManus, where he could at any time be found, and should be allowed to have access to him as often as she might feel disposed to claim the privilege.
When the time came for the two women to say goodbye, both knew that the parting was a final one, but not a word was said by either to that effect. Both feigned a cheerfulness which was the last thing in the heart of either, and it was a relief to both when the ordeal was over and the door shut between them. Then came the time for tears.
Before leaving town Nell paid a second visit to Mr. McManus, and got him to promise to write to her as soon as all was over. It was a promise the old tobacconist faithfully kept, and Nell had only been six weeks back at home when the fatal tidings reached her.
After a little time given to tears in the solitude of her room, she dried her eyes and went in search of her uncle. She found him in the library, dusting and gloating over one of his cases of coins. He looked up sourly as the door opened. When so engaged he did not like being interrupted, but for that Nell cared not at all.
Walking directly up to the table, she said without preface: "Uncle, news has just reached me of the death of poor Dick's widow. She died of consumption three days ago."
The Squire dropped his duster, and, leaning back in his chair, grasped an arm of it with either hand, and turned his cold eyes full upon her.
"And pray, Miss Baynard, may I ask in what way the news concerns me?"
He had not called her "Miss Baynard" since her last mention of her cousin's name more than four years before, and Nell did not forget it. But she was in no wise daunted.
"If you choose to consider that the death of your son's wife is no concern of yours, so be it. That is a matter between yourself and your conscience. But, in case the fact should have escaped your memory, I may be allowed to remind you that Dick left a child behind him--a son--who is now both fatherless and motherless."
"And what have I to do with that?"
"Everything. He is your grandson, your sole descendant, your natural heir. He is flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, and ought to be dearer to you than all the world beside. Poor Dick died years ago. Why avenge his fault, if fault it was, on his innocent child? Think, uncle, think and----"
He brought down his fist heavily on the table. "Think, girl, say'st thou? Zounds! there's no need for me to think. My mind was made up long ago, and nothing thou can'st urge will move me from it. I tell thee, my grandson is no more to me than the veriest beggar's brat that crawls in a London gutter. Never will I acknowledge him, or have aught to do with him in any way. And if thou hast any regard left for me, or any care for my displeasure, thou wilt never speak of him in my presence again. As thou ought to have found out by now, I am a man who never forgives."
From that day forward Ambrose Cortelyon seemed to regard his niece with a certain amount of suspicion and distrust, but it was a distrust that found no expression in words, and although Nell was conscious of an undefinable change in her uncle's manner towards her, she was wholly at a loss to what cause to attribute it.
The Squire was a man who expected those of his household, and all who were in any way dependent on him, not merely to believe as he believed, but to share his conviction that whatever decision he might come to in any given set of circumstances was the right one, and that all who differed from him were, theoretically, either fools or worse. In short, he was one of that numerous class who have a firm belief in their own infallibility in all the concerns of life; and as he was an autocrat in his own domain, with nobody to contradict him, it was not to be expected that his opinion of himself would become less confirmed with advancing years. When, therefore, his niece chose to impugn his action in a certain affair--and he now called to mind that it was not the first time she had done so--and even to imply, not by her words but by her manner, that his treatment of his grandson, or, to speak correctly, his absolute neglect of him, was both cruel and unjust, he was not, at any rate at first, so much angered as amazed at her audacity in daring to set up her feeble girl's will in opposition to his own, and, indeed, at her presumption in venturing to question his decision in any way.
Nor, when he came to think the matter over at his leisure, did his surprise, not unleavened with resentment, diminish. He told himself that he could not have believed it of her; she had hurt him in a tender place, and he felt as if she could never be quite the same to him again as she had been in the past: and she never was.
It is just possible that the Squire's little smoulder of resentment against his niece would gradually have died out had he not been beset by a certain underlying consciousness, of which he vainly strove to rid himself, that all through Nell had been undeniably in the right and he indisputably in the wrong. Had he but seen his way to overlook his son'smésalliance, and have brought him and his wife to Stanbrook, in all probability Dick would still have been living. And then, with regard to this grandson of his, this child of a play-acting mother---- But when he got as far as that in his musings his passion seemed to choke him. No, he had done right, quite right; no other course was open to him. Come what might, he would never acknowledge the brat. His blood was tainted; he was no true Cortelyon. But all his arguing with himself did not suffice to pluck out the hidden thorn; it was still there, rankling in his flesh. But if he could not get rid of it, no one save himself should know of its existence, and he swore a great oath that in the matter of his grandson he would not go back from his word.
A day or two after her interview with her uncle Nell replied to Mr. McManus's letter. What she wished him to do was to inform Mr. Dare that he need be under no apprehension that Mr. Cortelyon would claim his grandson or interfere in any way with the boy's future. She further asked to be informed of the latter's address when Mr. Dare should have settled upon a home for him.
To this the old tobacconist replied in the course of a week or two. What he had to tell her was that for the present Mr. Dare had decided to let Evan remain at Lawn Cottage in the care of Mrs. Mardin; but that should he later think well to remove the child, Miss Baynard should be duly advised of the change.
And there for the present the matter rested.
When Squire Cortelyon found himself once more at home, he went back to his old mode of life with an added relish. He knew now that he had just escaped a great danger. He had been led to believe that the operation he was advised to undergo was of a very simple nature, but a casual remark of the great London doctor, which he chanced to overhear, had served to open his eyes after a very uncomfortable fashion. In reality, the operation was anything but a simple one, in view of possible consequences in the case of a man of threescore years and ten. However, all is well that ends well. The dreaded consequences had not developed themselves. He had come back home feeling a new man, with every prospect of a renewed lease of life, and he smiled grimly to himself to think how "that scoundrel of a Banks"--his local medico--had succeeded in thoroughly hoodwinking him.
So he went back to the old familiar routine as if there had never been a break in it, save that life seemed to have taken on an added sweetness now that he knew what he had escaped. He trembled when he thought of the risk he had run, not merely in one way, but in another, for had the operation had a fatal termination he would have died intestate (he had torn up his will after his quarrel with Dick and had never made another), in which case his detested grandson would have been his heir-at-law and have inherited everything. It was enough to put him in a cold sweat when he thought of it. Of course, the day would come when he could no longer defer asking himself the question, "To whom or to what shall I leave my property?" But it was an uncomfortable question to face, and a difficult one to answer; so, as there seemed no immediate need for answering it, he shelved it till what he chose to term "a more convenient time."
Pleasant to him were those long forenoons in the library, with no company save that of Andry Luce, who kept his accounts, looked after his rents, and to whom he dictated his correspondence. Pleasant it was, with the help of Andry's sturdy arm, to stroll slowly about the grounds, watching the gardeners and laborers at their work, chatting with his bailiff, and giving his orders about this or the other.
Not less pleasant was it, when the fit took him, to have himself driven in his old shandrydan to one or other of his outlying properties, some of which lay many miles away, and satisfy himself that everything was going on as it should do, which meant so far as the interests of his own pocket were concerned.
But when the weather was bad, and he could not get out of doors, he had other occupations wherewith to engage his time. He was an ardent numismatist, and was very proud of his collection of coins and medals, to which he kept adding from time to time as opportunity served. He was also something of a bibliophile, and possessed a small but rather choice collection of rare books and illuminated MSS. He would gloat over these treasures as a miser gloats over his gold, and he derived the most intense satisfaction from the belief (which on no account would he have had disturbed) that his collections contained two or three absolutely unique specimens in the way of coins such as no other cabinet could match.
And so some months passed away, and no such person as young Evan Cortelyon might have been in existence for any mention of him between uncle and niece.
Then, as the winter crept springward, the Squire became unpleasantly conscious that his physical powers were slowly, almost imperceptibly, declining. For some little time he succeeded in persuading himself that it was a mere temporaryfaiblessefrom which he was suffering, due probably, in a great measure, to the moist oppressiveness of an unhealthy season, which was carrying off numbers of younger people than he. But when, at length, the weather vane on the stables veered from southwest to northeast, and stuck there day after day, as if it would never move again, bringing with it dry, sunny morns, and crisp, bracing nights, he was obliged to seek for some other excuse for his growing weakness. Not yet, however, would he give in and summon Dr. Banks. Although the son on whom he had at one time built such hopes was dead and gone, not for years had existence been sweeter to him than it was just then, and yet, to all seeming, it was gradually but surely slipping away from him. He felt as if a great wrong were being done him. What was Providence about?
At length his weakness so far increased that he reluctantly authorized Andry to summon Dr. Banks, who had attended him, off and on, from the date of his accident, and in the course of years had extracted more guineas from his purse than the Squire cared to reckon up.
"You have been very remiss, Mr. Cortelyon, very remiss indeed," said the fussy little rural practitioner when he had completed his brief examination, and had listened to the Squire's recital of his symptoms. "You ought to have sent for me six weeks ago, if not earlier than that. There has been a serious lowering of the vital forces, and, at your time of life----"
"At my time of life! Damme! what d'ye mean? You don't mean to call me an old man, and I not seventy-three till next birthday! Zounds! I'm only just in my prime. Banks, you're an ass! It will be time enough for you to begin to hint at my age--only to hint at it, mind you--a dozen years hence."
Dr. Banks did his best, but his best in this instance proved of no avail. The diminution of strength still went slowly on. At length the Squire became too weak to go out of doors, even for a drive, and then after a time the day came when he was unable to leave his bedroom.
At Dr. Banks's request, that well-known physician, Dr. Mills, of Lanchester, was called into consultation, but all he could do, after making one or two minor suggestions, was to accord his full approval to the treatment already adopted by his colleague.
"I won't pay you your fee, doctor--hang me if I will, sir--till you tell me what you think of me," said the Squire in his masterful way when Dr. Mills was ready to go.
"Well, Squire, to be frank with you, I think your condition a somewhat grave one. But while there's life there's hope, you know. Yes, yes, we mustn't give up hope on any account; and you could not be in better hands than those of my friend Dr. Banks."
"You would advise me to make my will, eh?" The cunning smile with which he leered up into the physician's face hid a terrible anxiety at the back of it.
The doctor pursed out his lips. "In such matters it is always advisable to be prepared, to take time by the forelock, as one may say. And in your case, Mr. Cortelyon, I am inclined to think--um--well, yes, that any testamentary arrangements you may have to make should not----"
"I understand," broke in the Squire with a wave of his hand. "Not a word more is needed. Here is your fee. I am obliged to you for your frankness; and so good-day to ye." He felt as if sentence of death had just been pronounced on him.
Yes, it was no longer possible to cheat himself with vain hopes of recovery. The dread fact that for him life's business was nearly over could no longer be ignored, and the sooner he clasped it to him and made himself familiar with its grim visage, the better it would be for him during the little time he could call his own. He had lately had private information from Piljoy that a certain property, on which for years he had set longing eyes, would be in the market before another twelvemonth was over, and yet he, Ambrose Cortelyon, would not be there to bid for it! Again he asked himself what Providence was about.
Still, however much he might rail and rebel in secret at the dark prospect before him, knowing all the while how childish and futile it was to do so, his hard face in nowise softened to those about him, and he betrayed no slackness of interest in any of the little everyday affairs that went on around him.
But another spectre, besides that grisly one which Dr. Mills's words had called up, began to haunt him, hovering round his pillow by night, and never being far from his elbow between daybreak and dark. There was only one way of exorcising it, as he knew full well, and that was by making his will. The entail had been cut off in his grandfather's time, sixty years before. How hateful soever the necessity might be, it was one which could not with safety be much longer delayed, unless he wished that all he might die worth should go to his disowned and unknown grandson. Beyond him and Nell, so far as he knew, he had not a single living relative. Whom, then, should he make his heir? For him it was fast becoming the question of questions.
Oh, it was hard, hard, while he was still in what, rightly considered, ought to be looked upon as the prime of life, to have to part from the earthly possessions he loved so well, and which had cost him such long and painful scraping to accumulate! But there was no help for it; leave them he must; the fatal fiat had gone forth. At times, it may be, his heart sent forth an anguished cry for his dead son; but if such were the case, it in nowise served to mitigate the rancor, almost inhuman in its bitterness, with which he regarded the dead man's child. He had spoken no more than the truth when he said that he never forgave.
It was just about this time that the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant, having heard of his illness, drove over from Uplands to see him. The Squire had never been very popular among those of his own class, and even now, when he was reported to be in failing health, there were not many callers at Stanbrook. Such as there were got no farther than the entrance hall, for in each case the Squire, on the plea of illness, excused himself from seeing them, and probably the majority of them were as well pleased that he did so. But of the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant a special exception was made. She was shown up into his bedroom, where the Squire lay in his huge four-poster, propped up with pillows, and there she stayed for upwards of an hour. For this, however, there was a reason.
Mrs. Bullivant, when known to the world as Miss Onoria Flood, the only daughter and heiress of a wealthy brewer, was the lady chosen by Mr. Cortelyon for his son's prospective wife. He and Mr. Flood were neighbors, so to speak, for only a short half-dozen miles divided Uplands from Stanbrook, and when once the subject was broached--by the Squire in the first instance--they were not long in coming to a quiet understanding between themselves. Then Mr. Flood dropped a hint of what was in the wind to Onoria, who was a dutiful daughter, and at once fell in with her father's views. After that, all the Squire had to do was to recall his son from London and break the news to him. To Mr. Cortelyon the match seemed an eminently desirable one. Although the brewer did not come of a county family, he was most respectably connected, having one brother an archdeacon, and another high up in the service of John Company. But the great attraction of all lay in the fact that on coming of age Onoria would be entitled to a legacy of twenty thousand pounds bequeathed her by her grandfather. Further, she would be her father's sole heiress (he had Flood's word for that); and as the brewer was of a gouty habit and somewhat plethoric withal, it seemed not unlikely that---- Yes, in every way a most desirable match.
But we know what happened when Dick was told his father's goodwill and pleasure in the matter. However willing under other circumstances he might have been to fall in with the old man's views, he was precluded from doing so by the simple fact that he was already a married man. Thereupon followed the quarrel, and all that sad succession of events with which we are already acquainted.
But Onoria did not go long unwedded. Before six months had gone by she became the wife of the Hon. Hector Bullivant, the second son of Lord Cossington, an impecunious peer, whose estates were mortgaged up to the hilt. Neither affection nor sentiment had anything to do with the union. Onoria married for position, the Hon. Hector for money. Everybody who knew the young couple said that what followed was only what they had prophesied all along, so easy is it to be wise after the event.
The Hon. Hector was a notorious gambler androué, and within a couple of years of his marriage he had contrived to dissipate his wife's fortune to the last guinea. A few months later he came by his end in a drunken brawl, greatly to the relief of everybody connected with him, leaving behind him one child, a boy a little over twelve months old. Then the widow went back home to her father, taking her son with her. Not long afterwards Mr. Flood was carried off in a fit of apoplexy.
When his will was read it was a terrible disappointment to Onoria to find that, instead of coming in for everything, as she had all along been led to expect she would, she was merely left an income of six hundred a year, together with the Uplands estate, and that everything else was left in trust for her son. She had known that her father was not likely to be a long liver, and, backed up by his wealth, she had looked forward to a brilliantrentréeinto London society at no very distant date, with, it may be, a second and more brilliant marriage in the background. It was, indeed, a terrible disappointment.
Mrs. Bullivant at this period of her life was what is generally understood by the term "a fine woman," that is to say, she was built on ample lines, and was of generous proportions. Later on she would tend to obesity. She was black-eyed and black-haired, with regular features of a cold, statuesque type, which, as she was essentially unemotional and a thorough specimen of ingrained selfishness, formed a fair enough index to her disposition.
Such was the woman who came one day to see Squire Cortelyon on what she had been given to understand was likely to be his death-bed. As a matter of course, she knew of the quarrel between father and son, of Dick's untimely death, and of his having left a widow and a child whom the old man refused to acknowledge or to recognize in any way. She and the Squire had not met since a little while before her marriage; still, it seemed only what was due to good feeling and neighborly sympathy, more especially in view of what had happened in the past, that she should be desirous of seeing him once again before it was too late. If there was any other motive, or half-motive, at work below the surface, she would hardly have confessed its existence even to herself.
As already stated, the interview between her and the Squire lasted over an hour. By the time it came to an end the sick man was pretty well exhausted; still, he was glad, he was very glad, that he had seen her. Her visit had supplied him with a ray of light where all had been darkness before. She was a woman after his own heart--energetic, capable, a man as regarded business ability, of a like saving disposition and with an ambition similar to his own; that is to say, to become a great landed proprietor, or rather, that her son should become one when he grew up and came into his inheritance. He did not think that Flood had treated her as handsomely as he ought to have done. Still, Uplands was hers--a fine property, and one which could not have come into more capable hands.
Had the fates proved propitious, Onoria would have been his daughter-in-law; it was owing to no fault of hers that she was not; consequently she might, in a sense, be said to have a claim upon him. Why should he not leave her a life-interest in his landed property, the same, at her decease, to devolve upon her son, on condition of his adding the name of Cortelyon to his present one? But it was a project not to be hastily decided upon. He would think it over. And he did.