The letter of Frances Chenevix so troubled Alice Dalrymple that she showed it to Selina, confessing at the same time what a terrible nightmare the loss of the bracelet had been to her. Selina told her she was "silly;" that but for her weak health she would surely never have suspected either herself or Gerard of taking it. "Go back to London without delay," was her emphatic advice to Alice, "and sift it, if you can, to the bottom." And, as Mrs. Dalrymple was certainly out of danger, Alice went up at once.
She found Frances Chenevix had lost none of her eager excitement, whilst Lady Sarah had nearly determined not to move in the matter: the bracelet seen on Lady Livingstone's arm must have been one of the same pattern sold to that lady by Messrs. Garrard. To the colonel nothing had been said. Frances, however, would not let it drop.
The following morning, saying she wanted to do an errand or two, Frances got possession of Lady Sarah's carriage, and down she went to the Haymarket to see the Messrs. Garrard. Alice—more fragile than ever, her once lovely countenance so faded now that she looked to be dying, as Frances had said to Gerard Hope—waited her return in a pitiable state of anxiety. Frances came in, all excitement.
"Alice, itisthe bracelet. I am more certain of it than ever. Garrards' people say they have sold many articles of jewellery to Lady Livingstone, but not a diamond bracelet. Moreover, they say that they never had, of that precise pattern, but the one bracelet Colonel Hope bought."
"What is to be done?" exclaimed Alice.
"I know: I shall go to those Livingstones; Garrards' people gave me their address. Gerard shall not remain under this cloud if I can help him out of it. Sir Francis won't act in it; he laughs at me: Sarah won't act; and we dare not tell the colonel. He is so obstinate and wrongheaded, he would be for arresting Gerard, pending the investigation."
"Frances——"
"Now, don't preach, Alice. When I will a thing, Iwill. I am like my lady mother for that. Sarah says she scratched her initials on the gold inside the bracelet, and I shall demand to see it: if these Livingstones refuse, I'll put the detectives on the scent. I will; as sure as my name is Frances Chenevix."
"And if the investigation should bring the guilt home to—to—Gerard?" whispered Alice, in hollow tones.
"And if it should bring it home to you! and if it should bring it home to me!" spoke the exasperated Frances. "For shame, Alice! it cannot bring it home to Gerard, for he was never guilty."
Alice sighed; she saw there was no help for it, for Lady Frances was resolute. "I have a deeper stake in this than you," she said, after a pause of consideration: "let me go to the Livingstones. Yes, Frances, you must not refuse me; I have a very, very urgent motive for wishing it."
"You, you weak mite of a thing! you would faint before you were half-way through the interview," cried Frances, in tones between jest and vexation.
Alice persisted: and Frances at length conceded the point, though with much grumbling. The carriage was still at the door, for Frances had desired that it should wait, and Alice hastily dressed herself and went down to it, without speaking to Lady Sarah. The footman was closing the door upon her, when out flew Frances.
"Alice, I have made up my mind to go with you; I cannot keep my patience until you are back again. I can sit in the carriage whilst you go in, you know. Lady Livingstone will be two feet higher from today—that the world should have been gladdened with a spectacle of Lady Frances Chenevix waiting humbly at her door."
They drove off. Frances talked incessantly on the road, but Alice was silent: she was deliberating what she should say, and was nerving herself to the task. Lady Livingstone was at home; and Alice, sending in her card, was conducted to her presence, leaving Lady Frances in the carriage.
Frances had described her to be as thin as a whipping-post, with a red nose: and Alice found Lady Livingstone answer to it very well. Sir Jasper, who was also present, was much older than his wife, and short and stout; a good-natured looking man, with a wig on the top of his head.
Alice, refined and sensitive, scarcely knew how she opened her subject, but she was met in a different manner from what she had expected. The knight and his wife were really worthy people, as Mrs. Cadogan had said: but the latter had a mania for getting into "high life and high-lived company:" a feat she would never be able thoroughly to accomplish. They listened to Alice's tale with courtesy, and at length with interest.
"You will readily conceive the nightmare this has been to me," panted Alice, for her emotion was great. "The bracelet was under my charge, and it disappeared in this extraordinary way. All the trouble it has been productive of to me I am not at liberty to tell you, but it has certainly helped to shorten my life."
"You look very ill," observed Lady Livingstone, with sympathy.
"I am worse than I look. I am going into the grave rapidly. Others less sensitive, or with stronger health, might have battled successfully with the distress and annoyance; I could not. I shall die in greater peace if this unhappy affair can be cleared. Should it prove to be the same bracelet, we may be able to trace out how it was lost."
Lady Livingstone left the room and returned with the diamond bracelet. She held it out to Miss Dalrymple, and the colour rushed into Alice's poor wan face at the gleam of the diamonds: for she believed she recognized them.
"But, stay," she said, drawing back her hand as she was about to touch it: "do not give it me just yet. If it be the one we lost, the letters 'S. H.' are scratched irregularly on the back of the middle star. Perhaps you will first look if they are there, Lady Livingstone."
Lady Livingstone turned the bracelet, glanced at the spot indicated, and then silently handed it to Sir Jasper. The latter smiled.
"Sure enough here's something on the gold—I can't see distinctly without my glasses. What is it, Lady Livingstone?"
"The letters 'S. H.,' as Miss Dalrymple described: I cannot deny it."
"Deny it! no, my lady, why should we deny it? If we are in possession of another's bracelet, lost by fraud, and if the discovery will set this young lady's mind at ease, I don't think either you or I shall be the one to deny it. Examine it for yourself, ma'am," added he, giving it to Alice.
She turned it about, she put it on her arm, her eyes lighting with the eagerness of conviction. "It is certainly the same bracelet," she affirmed: "I could be sure of it, I think, without proof; but Lady Sarah's initials are there, scratched irregularly, just as she describes to have scratched them."
"It is not beyond the range of possibility that initials may have been scratched on this bracelet, without its being the same," observed Lady Livingstone.
"I think it must be the same," mused Sir Jasper. "It looks suspicious."
"Lady Frances Chenevix understood you to say you bought this of Messrs. Garrard," resumed Alice.
Lady Livingstone felt rather foolish. "What I said was, that Messrs. Garrard were my jewellers. The fact is, I do not know exactly where this was bought: but I did not consider myself called upon to proclaim that fact to a young lady who was a stranger to me, and in answer to questions which I thought verged on impertinence."
"Her anxiety, scarcely less than my own, may have rendered her abrupt," replied Alice, by way of apology for Frances. "Our hope is not so much to regain the bracelet, as to penetrate the mystery of its disappearance. Can you not let me know where you did buy it?"
"I can," interposed Sir Jasper: "there's no disgrace in having bought it where I did. I got it at a pawnbroker's."
Alice's heart beat violently. A pawnbroker's! Was her haunting fear growing into a dread reality?
"I was one day at the East-end of London, walking fast, when I saw a topaz-and-amethyst cross in a pawnbroker's window," said Sir Jasper. "The thought struck me that it would be a pretty ornament for my wife, and I went in to look at it. In talking about jewellery with the master, he reached out this diamond bracelet, and told methatwould be a present worth making. Now, I knew my lady's head had been running on a diamond bracelet; and I was tempted to ask what was the lowest figure he would put it at. He said it was the most valuable article of the sort he had had for a long while, the diamonds of the first water, worth four hundred guineas of anybody's money; but that, being second-hand, he could part with it for two hundred and fifty. And I bought it. There's where I got the bracelet, ma'am."
"That was just the money Colonel Hope gave for it new at Garrards'," said Alice. "Two hundred and fifty guineas."
Sir Jasper stared at her: and then broke forth with a comical attempt at rage, for he was one of the best-tempered men in the world.
"The old wretch of a cheat! Sold it to me at second-hand price, as he called it, for the identical sum it cost new! Why, he ought to be prosecuted for usury."
"It is just what I tell you, Sir Jasper," grumbled his lady. "You will go to these low second-hand dealers, who always cheat where they can, instead of to a regular jeweller; and nine times out of ten you get taken in."
"But your having bought it of this pawnbroker does not bring me any nearer to knowing how he procured it," observed Alice.
"I shall go to him this very day and ascertain," returned Sir Jasper. "Tradespeople may not sell stolen bracelets with impunity. You shall hear from me as soon as possible," he added to Alice, as he escorted her out to the carriage.
But Sir Jasper Livingstone found it easier to say a thing than to do it. The pawnbroker protested his ignorance and innocence. If the bracelet was a stolen bracelet, he knew nothing of that. He had bought it, he said, in the regular course of business, at one of the pawnbrokers' periodical sales: and of this he convinced Sir Jasper.
Frances Chenevix was in despair. She made a confidante of Lady Sarah, and got her to put the affair once more into the hands of the detectives; the same officer who had charge of it before, Mr. Pullet, taking it up again. He had something to work upon now.
Some weeks later, in an obscure room of a low and dilapidated lodging-house, in a low and dilapidated neighbourhood, there sat a man one evening in the coming twilight: a towering, gaunt skeleton, whose remarkably long arms and legs looked little more than skin and bone. The arms were fully exposed to view, since their owner, though he possessed and wore a waistcoat, dispensed with the use of a shirt. An article, once a coat, lay on the floor, to be donned at will—if it could be got into for the holes. The man sat on the floor in a corner, his head finding a resting-place against the wall, and he had dropped into a light sleep; but if ever famine was depicted in a face, it was in his. Unwashed, unshaven, with matted hair and feverish lips: the cheeks were hollow, the nostrils white and pinched. Some one tried, and shook the door; it aroused him, and he started up, but only to cower in a bending attitude, and listen.
"I hear you," cried a voice. "How are you tonight, Joe? Open the door."
The voice was not one he knew; consequently not one that might be responded to.
"Do you call this politeness, Joe Nicholls? If you don't open the door, I shall take the liberty of opening it for myself: which will put you to the trouble of mending the fastenings afterwards."
"Who are you?" cried Nicholls, reading determination in the voice. "I'm gone to bed, and I can't admit folks tonight."
"Gone to bed at eight o'clock?"
"Yes: I am ill."
"I give you one minute, and then I come in. You will open it, if you wish to save trouble."
Nicholls yielded to his fate: and opened the door.
The gentleman—he looked like one—cast his keen eyes round the room. There was not a vestige of furniture in it; nothing but the bare dirty walls, from which the mortar crumbled, and the bare dirty boards.
"What did you mean by saying you were gone to bed, eh?"
"So I was. I was asleep there," pointing to the corner, "and that's my bed. What do you want?" added Nicholls, peering at the stranger's face in the gloom of the evening, but seeing it imperfectly, for his hat was drawn low over it.
"A little talk with you. That last sweepstake you put into——"
The man lifted his face, and burst forth with such eagerness that the stranger could only arrest his own words and listen.
"It was a swindle from beginning to end. I had scraped together the ten shillings to put in it; and I drew the right horse, and was shuffled out of the gains, and I have never had my dues; not a farthing of 'em. Since then I've been ill, and I can't get about to better myself. Are you come, sir, to make it right?"
"Some"—the stranger coughed—"friends of mine were in it also," said he: "and they lost their money."
"Everybody lost it; the getters-up bolted with all they had drawn into their fingers. Have they been took, do you know?"
"All in good time; they have left their trail. So you have been ill, have you?"
"Ill! just take a sight at me! There's a arm for a big man."
He stretched out his naked arm for inspection: it appeared as if a touch would snap it. The stranger laid his hand upon its fingers, and his other hand appeared to be stealing furtively towards his own pocket.
"I should say this looks like starvation, Joe."
"Some'at akin to it."
A pause of unsuspicion, and the handcuffs were clapped on the astonished man. He started up with an oath.
"No need to make a noise, Nicholls," said the detective, with a careless air, as he lifted off his hat: "I have two men waiting outside. Do you know me?"
The prisoner gave a gasp. "Why, it's Mr. Pullet!"
"Yes; it's Mr. Pullet, Joe."
"I swear I wasn't in the plate robbery," passionately uttered the man. "I knew of it, but I didn't join 'em, and I never had the worth of as much as a saltspoon, after it was melted down. And they call me a coward, and they leave me here to starve and die! Sir, I swear I wasn't in it."
"We'll talk of the plate robbery another time," said the officer; "you have got these bracelets on, my man, for another sort of bracelet. A diamond one. Don't you remember it?"
The prisoner's mouth fell. "I thought that was over and done with, all this time—— I don't know what you mean," he added, correcting himself.
"No," said the officer, "it is just beginning. The bracelet is found, and has been traced to you. You were a clever fellow, Joe, and I had my doubts of you at the time, you know. I thought then you were too clever to go on long."
"I should be ashamed to play the sneak, and catch a fellow in this way," cried Joe, driven to exasperation. "Why couldn't you come openly, in your proper clothes—not playing the spy in the garb of a friendly civilian?"
"My men are in their proper clothes,'" was the equable answer, "and you will have the honour of their escort presently. I came in because they did not know you, and I did. You might have had a host of friends around you here."
"Three officers to take a single man, and he a skeleton!" retorted Nicholls, with a great show of indignation.
"Ay; but you were powerful once, and ferocious too. The skeleton aspect is a recent one."
"And to be took for nothing! I know naught of any bracelet."
"Don't trouble yourself with inventions, Nicholls. Your friend is safe in our hands, and has made a full confession."
"What friend?" asked Nicholls, too eagerly.
"The lady you got to dispose of it for you."
Nicholls was startled to incaution. "She hasn't split, has she?"
"Every particular she knew or guessed at. Split to save herself."
"Then there's no faith in woman."
"There never was yet," returned Mr. Pullet. "If they are not at the top and bottom of every mischief, Joe, they are sure to be in the middle. Is this your coat?" touching it gingerly.
"She's a disgrace to the female sex, she is!" raved Nicholls, disregarding the question as to his coat. "But it's a relief now I'm took: it's a weight off my mind. I was always expecting it: and I shall, at any rate, get food in the Old Bailey."
"Ah," said the officer, "you were in good service as a respectable servant, Nicholls: you had better have stuck to your duties."
"The temptation was so great," returned the man, who had evidently abandoned all idea of denial; and, now that he had done so, was ready to be voluble with remembrances and particulars.
"Don't say anything to me. It will be used against you."
"It all came of my long legs," cried Nicholls, ignoring the friendly injunction, and proceeding to enlarge on the feat he had performed. And it may as well be observed that legs so long as his are rarely seen. "I have never had a happy hour since; it's true, sir. I was second footman there, and a good place I had: and I have wished, thousands of times, that the bracelet had been at the bottom of the sea. Our folks had took a house in the neighbourhood of Ascot for the race-week; they had left me at home to take care of the kitchen-maid and another inferior or two, carrying the rest of the servants with them. I had to clean the winders before they returned, and I had druv it off till the Thursday evening, when out I got on the balqueny, intending to begin with the back drawing-room——"
"What do you say you got out on?"
"The balqueny. The thing with the green rails round it, that encloses the winder. While I was leaning over the rails sorting my wash-leathers, I heard something like click, click, click, going on in the fellow-room next door—which was Colonel Hope's—just as if light articles of some sort were being laid sharp on a table. Presently two voices began to talk, a lady's and a gentleman's, and I listened——"
"No good ever comes of listening, Joe," interrupted the officer.
"I didn't listen for the sake of listening; but it was awful hot, standing outside there in the sun, and listening was better than working. I didn't want to hear, neither, for I was thinking of my own concerns, and what a fool I was to have idled away my time all day till the sun come on the back winders. Bit by bit, I heard what they were talking of—that it was jewels they had got there, and that one of 'em was worth two hundred guineas. Thinks I, if that was mine, I'd do no more work. After a while, I heard them go out of the room, and I thought I'd have a look at the rich things, so I stepped over slant-ways on to the little ledge running along the houses, holding on by our balqueny, and then I passed my hands along the wall till I got hold of their balqueny—but one with ordinary legs and arms couldn't have done it. You couldn't, sir."
"Perhaps not," remarked the officer.
"There wasn't fur to fall, if I had fell, only on to the kitchen leads underneath: leastways not fur enough to kill one, and the leads was flat. But I didn't fall, and I raised myself on to their balqueny, and looked in. My! what a show it was! stunning jewels, all laid out there: so close, that if I had put my hand inside, it must have struck all among 'em: and the fiend prompted me to take one. I didn't stop to look, I didn't stop to think: the one that twinkled the brightest and had the most stones in it was the nearest to me, and I clutched it, and slipped it into my footman's undress jacket, and stepped back again."
"And got safe into your balcony?"
"Yes, and inside the room. I didn't clean the winder that night. I was upset like, by what I had done; and, if I could have put it back again, I think I should; but there was no opportunity. I wrapped it in my winder-leather, and then in a sheet of brown paper, and then I put it up the chimbley in one of the spare bedrooms. I was up the next morning afore five, and I cleaned my winders: I'd no trouble to awake myself, for I had never slept. The same day, towards evening—or the next was it? I forget—you called, sir, and asked me some questions—whether we had seen any one on the leads at the back, and such like. I said that master was just come home from Ascot, and would you be pleased to speak to him."
"Ah!" again remarked the officer, "you were a clever fellow that day. But if my suspicions had not been strongly directed to another quarter, I might have looked you up more sharply."
"I kep' it by me for a month or two, and then I gave warning to leave. I thought I'd have my fling, and I had made acquaintance with her—that lady you've just spoke of—and somehow she wormed out of me that I had got it, and I let her dispose of it for me, for she said she knew how to do it without danger."
"What did you get for it?"
The skeleton shook his head. "Thirty-four pounds, and I had counted on a hundred and fifty. She took her oath she had not helped herself to a sixpence."
"Oaths are plentiful with some ladies," remarked Mr. Pullet.
"She stood to it she hadn't kep' a farthing, and she stopped and helped me to spend the change. After that was done she went over to stop with somebody else who was in luck. And I have tried to go on, and I can't: honestly or dishonestly, it seems all one: nothing prospers, and I'm naked and famishing. I wish I was dying."
"Evil courses rarely do prosper, Nicholls," said the officer, as he called in the policemen and consigned the gentleman to their care.
So Gerard Hope was innocent!
"But how was it you skilful detectives could not be on this man's scent?" asked Colonel Hope of Mr. Pullet, when he heard the tale.
"Colonel, I was thrown off it. Your positive belief in your nephew's guilt infected me; appearances were certainly very strong against him. Neither was his own manner altogether satisfactory to my mind. He treated the obvious suspicion of him more as a jest than in earnest; never, so far as I heard, giving a downright hearty denial to it."
"He was a fool," interjected the colonel.
"Also," continued Mr. Pullet, "Miss Dalrymple's evidence served to throw me off other suspicion. She said, if you remember, sir, that she did not leave the room; but it now appears that she did leave it when your nephew did, though only for a few moments. Those few moments sufficed to do the job."
"It is strange she could not tell the exact truth," growled the colonel.
"She probably thought she was exact enough, since she remained outside the door, and could answer for it that no one entered by it. She forgot the window. I thought of the window the instant the loss was mentioned to me; but Miss Dalrymple's assertion, that she never had the window out of her view, prevented my dwelling on it. I did go to the next door, and saw this very fellow who committed the robbery, but his manner was sufficiently satisfactory. He talked too freely; I did not like that; but I found he had been in the same service fifteen months; and, as I must repeat, in my mind the guilt lay with another."
"It is a confoundedly unpleasant affair for me," cried the colonel. "I have published my nephew's disgrace all over London."
"It is more unpleasant for him, colonel," was the rejoinder of Mr. Pullet.
"And I have kept him short of money, and suffered him to be sued for debt; and I have let him go and live among the runaway scamps over the water; and now he is working as a merchant's clerk! In short, I have played the very deuce with him."
"But reparation lies, doubtless, in your own heart and hands, colonel."
"I don't know that, sir," testily concluded the colonel.
Once more Gerard Hope entered his uncle's house; not as an interloper, stealing into it in secret; but as an honoured guest, to whom reparation was due, and must be made. Alice Dalrymple chanced to be alone. She was leaning back in her invalid-chair, a joyous flush on her wasted cheek, a joyous happiness in her eye. Still the shadow of coming death was there, and Mr. Hope was shocked to see her—more shocked and startled than he had expected, or chose to express.
"Oh, Alice! what has done this?"
"That has helped it on," she answered, pointing to the bracelet; which, returned to its true owner, lay on the table. "I should not have lived very many years; of that I am convinced: but I think this has taken a little from my life. The bracelet has been the cause of misery to many of us. Lady Sarah says she shall never regard it but as an ill-starred trinket, or wear it with any pleasure."
"But, Alice, why should you have suffered it thus to affect you?" he remonstrated. "You knew your own innocence, and you say you believed and trusted in mine: what did you fear?
"I will tell you, Gerard," she whispered, a deeper hectic rising to her cheeks. "I could not have confessed my fear, even in dying; it was too distressing, too terrible; but now that it is all clear, I will tell it.I believed my sister had taken the bracelet."
"Ah," said Gerard, carelessly.
"Selina called to see me that evening, as you saw, and she was for a minute or two in the room alone with the trinkets: I went upstairs to get a letter. She wanted money badly at the time, as you cannot fail to remember, and I feared she had been tempted to take the bracelet—just as this unfortunate man was tempted. Oh, Gerard! the dread of it has been upon me night and day, preying upon my fears, weighing down my spirits, wearing away my health and my life. Now hope would be in the ascendant, now fear. And I had to bear it all in silence. It is that enforced, dreadful silence that has so tried me."
"Why did you not question Selina?"
"I did. She denied it. As good as laughed at me. But you know how light-headed and careless her nature is; and the fear remained with me."
"It must have been a morbid fear, Alice."
"Not so—if you knew all. But it is at an end, and I am very thankful. I have only one hope now," she added, looking up at him with a sunny smile. "Ah, Gerard, can you not guess it?"
"No," he answered, in a stifled voice. "I can only guess that you are lost to me."
"Lost to all here. Have you forgotten our brief conversation, the night you went into exile? I told you then there was one far more worthy of you than I could have ever been."
"None will ever be half so worthy; or—I will say it, Alice, in spite of your warning hand—half so loved."
"Gerard," sinking her voice, "she has waited for you."
"Nonsense," he rejoined.
"She has. When she shall be your wife, you may tell her that I saw it and said it. She might have had John Cust."
"My darling——"
"Stay, Gerard," she gravely interrupted; "those words of endearment are not for me. Can you deny that you love her?"
"Perhaps I do—in a degree. Next to yourself——"
"Put me out of your thoughts whilst we speak. If I were—where I may perhaps soon be, would she not be dearer to you than any one on earth? Would you not be well pleased to make her your wife?"
"Yes, I might be."
"That is enough, Gerard. Frances——"
"Wait a bit," interrupted Gerard. "Don't you think, Alice, that you have the morbid feeling on you yet? With this dread removed—which, as you truly express it, must have been to you a very nightmare—you may, nay, I think you will, regain health and strength, and be a comfort to us all for years."
"I may regain it in a measure. It is simply impossible that in any case my life will be a long one. Let me—dear Gerard!—let me make some one happy while I may! Hark! that's the door—and this is her light step on the stairs!"
Frances Chenevix came in. "Good gracious, is it you, Gerard!" she exclaimed. "You and Alice look as if you had been talking secrets."
"So we have been," said Alice. "Frances, what can we do to keep him amongst us? Do you know what Colonel Hope has told him?"
"No. What?"
"That though he shall be reinstated in favour as to money matters, he shall not be in his affection or his home, unless he prove sorry for that past rebellion of his."
"When did the colonel tell him? When did he see him?"
"This morning: before Gerard came here. I think Gerardissorry for it: you must help him to be more so."
"Fanny," said Gerard, while a damask flush mantled in her cheeks, deeper than the hectic making havoc with those of Alice, "willyou help me?"
"As if I could make head or tail of what you two are rambling about!" cried she, as she attempted to turn away; but Gerard caught her to his side.
"Fanny—will you drive me again from the house?"
She lifted her eyes, twinkling with a little spice of mischief. "I did not drive you before."
"In a manner, yes. Do you know what did drive me?" She had known it at the time; and Gerard read it in her face.
"I see it all," he murmured; "you have been far kinder to me than I deserved. Fanny, let me try and repay you for it."
"Are you sure you would not rather have Alice?" she asked, in her clear-sighted independence.
He shook his head sorrowfully. Alice caught their hands together, and held them between her own, with a mental aspiration for their life's future happiness. Some time back she could not have breathed it in so fervent a spirit: but—as she had said—the present world and its hopes were closing to her.
"But you know, Gerard," cried Lady Frances, in a saucy tone, "if you ever do help yourself to somebody's bracelet in reality, you must not expect me to go to prison with you."
"Yes, I shall," he answered promptly. "A wife must share the fortunes of her husband. She takes him for better—or for worse."
He sealed the compact with a kiss. And there was much rejoicing that day in the house of Colonel Hope.
Autumn weather lay on the world and on Netherleigh.
Things were coming to a revolt. Never were poor tenant-farmers so ground down and oppressed as those on the estate of Moat Grange. Rents were raised, fines imposed, expenses, properly belonging to landlords, refused to be paid or allowed for. Oscar Dalrymple was ruling with a hand of iron, hard and cruel.
At least, Oscar had the credit of it. In point of fact, he was perhaps a little ashamed of the existing state of things, and would have somewhat altered it if he could. A year ago Oscar had let the whole estate to a sort of agent, a man named Pinnett, and Pinnett was playing Old Gooseberry with everything.
That was the expressive phrase, whatever it might mean, the indignant people used. They refused to lay the blame on Pinnett, utterly refused to recognize him in the matter; arguing, perhaps rightly, that unless he had Mr. Dalrymple's sanction to harsh measures, he could not exercise them, and that Mr. Dalrymple was, therefore, alone to blame. Most likely Oscar had no resource but to sanction it all, tacitly at any rate.
As to the Grange itself, the mansion, it was now the dreariest of the dreary. It had not been let with the estate, and Oscar and his wife still lived in it. Two maids were kept, and a man for outdoor work—the garden and the poultry. Most of the rooms were locked up. Selina would unlock the doors sometimes and open the shutters; and pace about the lonely floors, and wish she had not been guilty of the folly which had led to these wretched retrenchments. Things indoors and out were growing worse day by day.
One morning John Lee called at the Grange: a respectable man, whose name you cannot have forgotten. He had rented all his life, and his father before him, under the Dalrymples.
"Sir," he began to Oscar, without circumlocution, "I have come up about that paper which has been sent to me by Jones, your lawyer. It's a notice that next Michaelmas, when my lease will expire, the rent is to be raised."
"Well?" said Mr. Dalrymple.
"A pound an acre.A pound an acre," repeated the farmer, with increased emphasis. "Jones must have made a mistake, sir."
"I fancy not. But Jones is not my lawyer, you know; he is Mr. Pinnett's."
"We don't want to have anything to do with Mr. Pinnett, or to hear his name, sir. I have always rented under the Dalrymples; and I hope to do it still, sir, with your leave."
"You know, Lee, that Pinnett has a lease of the whole estate. What he proposes is no doubt fair. Your farm will well bear the increased rent he means to put on it."
"Increased by a pound an acre!" cried the farmer, in his excitement. "No, sir; it won't bear it, for I'll never pay it."
"I am sorry for that, Mr. Lee, because it will leave Pinnett only one alternative: to substitute in its place a notice to quit."
"To quit! to quit the farm!" reiterated Lee, in his astonishment. "Why, it has been my home all my life, sir, and it was my father's before me. I was born on that farm, Mr. Dalrymple, years and years before you ever came into the world, and I mean to die on it. I have spared neither money nor labour to bring it to its present flourishing condition."
"My good sir, I say as you do, that the land is flourishing: sufficiently so to justify the advanced rent Pinnett proposes. Two of you were here yesterday on this same errand—Watkins and Rumford."
"They have spent money on their farms, too, expecting to reap future benefit. You see, we never thought of Mr. Dalrymple's dying young, and——"
"Are you speaking of young Robert Dalrymple?"
"No, no, poor fellow: of his father. Mr. Dalrymple did die young, so to say; you can't call a man under fifty old. His death, and his son's close upon it, brought you, sir, to rule over us, and I am sorry to say your rule's a very hard one."
"It will not be made easier," curtly replied Oscar Dalrymple, who was getting angry. "And I will not detain you longer, Mr. Lee," he added, rising. "Your time is valuable."
"And what is to be my answer, sir?"
"It no longer lies with me to give an answer, Lee, and I must request that you do not refer to me again. Pinnett's answer will no doubt be that you must renew the lease at the additional rent demanded, or else give up the farm."
Farmer Lee swung away in a passion. In turning out of the first field he met two ladies: one young and very pretty, the other getting to look old; her thin features were white and her hair was grey. They were Mrs. Dalrymple and Mary Lynn. Close upon Mrs. Dalrymple's recovery from her accident, which turned out to have been not at all formidable, she caught a violent cold; it laid her up longer than a cold had ever laid her up before, and seemed to have tried her greatly. Mary Lynn had now just come again to Netherleigh to stay a week or two with her.
"Is it you, ma'am!" cried the farmer, touching his hat. "I'm glad to see you out again."
"At one time I thought I never should be out again," she answered; "I am very weak still. And how are you, Mr. Lee?"
"Middling, ma'am. Anything but well just now, in temper." And the farmer touched upon his grievances, spoke of the interview he had just held at the Grange, and of its master's harshness.
"Isit right to us, ma'am?" he wound up with. "Isit just, Miss Lynn?" turning to that young lady. "Ah, if poor young Mr. Robert had but lived! We should have had no oppression then."
Mary turned away her face, blushing almost to tears with unhappy remembrances. Robert! Robert!
"I do believe it will come to a revolt!" said the farmer to Mrs. Dalrymple. "Not with us tenants; you know better than to think that likely, ma'am; but with those people at the cottages. They are getting ripe for it."
"Ay," she answered, in a low, grieved tone. "And the worst of it, Mr. Lee, the worst to me is, that I am powerless for help or remedy."
"We cannot quite think—it is impossible to think or believe, that Mr. Oscar Dalrymple should have put all control out of his power. Therefore, his refusing to interfere with Pinnett seems all the more harsh. You must see that, ma'am."
"I have no comfort, no advice to give," she whispered, putting her hand into Mr. Lee's as she turned away. For Mrs. Dalrymple could not bear to speak of the existing state of things, the trouble that had come of Selina's folly and Oscar's rule.
Yet Oscar was kind to her. Continuously so. In no way would he allow her income, that which he allowed her, to be in the slightest degree diminished. He pinched himself, but he would not pinch poor Mrs. Dalrymple. Over and over again had she wished Reuben to leave her, but Oscar would not hear of it. Neither, for the matter of that, would Reuben. He did not want wages, he said, but he would not desert his mistress in her premature old age, her sickness, and her sorrow. A small maid only was kept in addition to Reuben; and the man had degenerated (as he might have called it but for his loyalty) to little better than a man-of-all-work. He stood behind the ladies now at a respectful distance, having stopped when they stopped.
The grievance alluded to by Mr. Lee, ready to ripen into open revolt, had nothing to do with the tenant-farmers. It was this. In a very favourable position on the estate, as regarded situation, stood a cluster of small dwellings. They were for the most part very poor, some of them little better than huts, but they commanded a lovely view. They were inhabited by labourers employed on the land, and were called the Mill Cottages: a mill, done away with now, having formerly stood close by.
One fine day it had struck the new man, Pinnett—looking about here and there to discover some means of adding to the profits he meant to make off the land—that if these cottages were taken down and handsome dwellings erected in their place, it would be a great improvement, pecuniarily and artistically, for such houses would let directly in this picturesque locality. No sooner thought of than resolved upon. Miles Pinnett was not a man to linger over his plans, and he gave these small tenants notice to quit.
It was rebelled against. Some of the men had been in the cottages as long as Farmer Lee had been in his farm, and to be ordered to leave seemed a terrible hardship. It no doubt increased the difficulty that there were no other small dwellings on the estate the men could go into: all others were already occupied: and, if they left these, they must go to a distance whence they would have a two or three miles' walk to their day's work. And so, encouraged perhaps by the feeling pervading the neighbourhood, of sympathy with them and opposition to Pinnett, the men, one and all, refused to go out. The next step would be ejectment; and it was looked for day by day.
For all this, Oscar Dalrymple suffered in opinion. Pinnett could not go to such lengths, oppress them as he was oppressing, against the will of the owner, Mr. Dalrymple, argued the community, rich and poor. Perhaps he could not. But how it really was, no one knew, or what power Mr. Dalrymple had put out of his own hands, and into Pinnett's, when he leased him the demesne.
Farmer Lee's visit to Moat Grange was paid in the morning. In the afternoon the Grange had another visitor—Lady Adela Netherleigh.
Adela had not lingered long at her mother's in London. After a few weeks' sojourn she came down to Netherleigh Rectory, invited by the Rector and his wife, her sister Mary. They had gone to London for a day, had been struck with compassion at Adela's evident state of mental suffering, and they asked her to return with them for a little change.
"It is not change I want," she had answered, speaking to Lady Mary. "What I want is peace. Perhaps I shall find it with you, Mary, at the Rectory."
Lady Mary Cleveland hesitated. Peace? The word posed her.
"Adela," she said, "we should be very glad to have you, and there is plenty of room for you and Darvy. But, as to peace—I don't know about that. The Rectory is full of children great and small, and I'm afraid it is noisy and bustling from morning till night."
Adela smiled faintly. The peace her heart craved for was not that imparted by the absence of noise. She might feel all the better for having the bustle of children about her; it might draw her at moments out of her own sorrow. But another thought struck her.
"My——" husband, she had been about to say, but changed the words. "Sir Francis is not staying at Court Netherleigh? Is he?"
"No. It is said he means to take up his abode there later; he is not there yet."
"Then I will come to you, Mary. And I will stay with you for months and months if I like it—and you must allow me to contribute towards your housekeeping as Sir Sandy and Harriet did."
Lady Mary winced a little at that, but she did not say no. With all those children—she had two of her own now—and the Rector's moderate income, they could not be rich.
So Adela and Darvy went down with them to Netherleigh. That was in summer, now it was autumn: and, so far as could be seen or judged, the change had not as yet effected much for her. Adela seemed just as before; wan, weary, sick, and sorry.
And yet, there was a change in a certain degree. The bitter rebellion at her fate had partly passed from her mind, and therefore its traces had left her face. The active repining in which her days had been spent was giving place to a sort of hopeless resignation. She strove to accept her punishment, strove to bear it, to be patient and gentle always, hardly ever ceasing day or night to beseech God to blot out the past from the book of the Recording Angel. The sense of shame, entailed by her conduct of long years, had not lifted itself in the least degree; nay, it seemed to grow of a deeper scarlet as time went on. Sometimes she would think if she could trample upon herself and annihilate all power of remembrance, she would do it gladly; but that would not stamp it out of her ever-living soul. Adela had erred; wilfully, cruelly, persistently; and if ever retribution came home to a woman, it surely had come to her.
On this same day, when the sky was blue and the afternoon sun lay on the green fields at Netherleigh, Lady Adela went out, and turned her languid steps towards Moat Grange. Selina had called to see her at the Rectory several times; each time Adela had promised to pay return visits, and had not yet done so. The direct road lay, as the reader may perhaps remember, through the village and past Court Netherleigh. Lingeringly would her eyes look on the house whenever this happened, lingeringly they rested on it now. The home, in which she had spent so many happy days with Aunt Margery, was closed to her for ever. Of all people in the living world, she was the only one debarred from entering it. Very rarely indeed was Sir Francis at Netherleigh. It had been supposed that he meant to take up his abode in it for the autumn months; but this appeared to be a mistake; when he did come it was but for a flying visit of a few hours. Mr. Cleveland privately told his wife that he believed Sir Francis stayed away from the place because Adela was in it.
Selina was in the larger of the two drawing-rooms when Adela reached the Grange. Selina rarely used it now, her husband never, but she had gone into it this afternoon. Opening the shutters and the window, she sat there making herself a lace collar. The time had gone by when she could order these articles of a Madame Damereau, and pay a fabulous price for them.
Adela untied her bonnet strings and took off her gloves as she sat down opposite Selina. Not strong now, the walk had greatly tired her. Selina could but notice how fragile and delicate she looked, as the light from the window fell upon her face. The once rounded cheeks were wasted, their bright colour had faded to the faintest tinge of pink; from the once lustrous eyes shone only sadness.
"Let me get you something, Adela," cried Selina, impulsively. "A cup of tea—I will make it for you directly. Of wine—well, I am not sure, really, that we possess any. I can ask Oscar."
"Not anything, not anything," returned Adela, "I could not take it. Thank you all the same. As to my looks—I look as I always do."
"Ah me," sighed Selina, "it is a weary life. A weary life, Adela, for you and for me."
"If that were all—its weariness—it might be better borne," murmured Adela. "And yet I do try to bear," she added, pushing her pretty brown hair from her aching brow, and for once induced to speak of her troubles to this friend, who had suffered too—though not as she had. "But there is the remorse as well, you see. Oh, how wrong, how foolish, howwickedwe were!—at leastIwas. Do you ever think of our past folly, Selina?—of the ease and happiness we then held in our hands, and flung away?"
"We have paid for it," said Selina. "Yes, I do sometimes think of the past, Adela; and then I wonder at the folly of women. See to what folly has reduced me!—to drag out a dead-alive existence in a semi-prison, for the Grange is no better now, with never a friend to stay with me, or a shilling to spend. And all for the sake of a few fine bonnets and gowns! Would you believe it," she added, laughing, "that the costly things have not half come to an end yet?"
"Just forthat?" dissented Adela, in her pain, and losing sight of Selina's trouble in her own. "If it had been for nothing more than that!"
"Well, well, we have paid for it, I say. Bitterly and cruelly."
"Ihave. You have not."
"No?" somewhat indifferently returned Selina, her attention partly given to her lace again, for she was never serious long together. "How do you make that out?"
"You have your husband still. Poverty with him, with one we love, must carry little sting with it. But for me—my whole life is one of never-ending loneliness, without a future, without hope. Do you know what fanciful thought came to me the other night?" she went on, after a pause. "I have all sorts of fanciful ideas when I sit alone in the twilight. I thought that life might be so much happier if God gave us a chance once of beginning it all over again from the first. Just once, when we found out what dreadful mistakes we had been making."
"And we should make the same again, though we began it fifty times over, Adela. Unless we could carry back with us our dearly-bought experience."
Adela sighed. "Yes, I suppose so. God would have so ordered it had it been well for us. He knows best. But there are some women who seem never to make mistakes, who go on their way smoothly and happily."
"Placing themselves under God's guidance, I imagine," returned Selina. "That's what my mother says to me, when she lectures me on the past."
Adela's eyes filled with tears. "Yes, yes," she murmured, meekly, recalling that it was what she had been striving to do for some little time now—to hold on her way, under submission to God.
The conversation turned into other channels, and by-and-by, when Adela was rested, she rose to leave. Selina accompanied her into the hall.
"Won't you just say 'How d'you do' to my husband?" she cried, opening the door of their common sitting-room. "He is here."
Adela made no objection, and followed Selina. Oscar was standing in the bay window, facing the door. And some one else, towering nearly a head above him, was standing at his side.
Sir Francis Netherleigh.
They stood, the husband and wife, face to face. With a faint cry, Adela put up her hands, as if to ward off the sight—as if to bespeak pardon in all humility for herself, for her intrusion—and disappeared again, whiter than death. It was rather an awkward moment for them all. Selina disappeared after her, and shut the door.
"Is Lady Adela ill?" asked Sir Francis of Oscar, the question breaking from him involuntarily in the moment's impulse—for she did, indeed, look fearfully so.
"Ay," replied Oscar, "ill with remembrance. Repentance has made her sick unto death. Remorse has told upon her."
But Sir Francis said no more.
Adela had departed across the fields with the best speed she could command. About half-way home she came upon Mr. Cleveland, seated on a stile and whistling softly.
"Those two young rascals of mine"—alluding to two of his little sons—"seduced me from my study to help fly their kites," he began to Adela. "Here I follow them, to the appointed field, and find them nowhere, little light-headed monkeys! But, my dear, what's the matter with you?" he added, with fatherly kindness, as he remarked her pale, troubled face. "You look alarmed."
"I have just seen my husband," she panted, her breath painfully short. All the old pain that she had been striving to subdue had come back again; the sight of him, whom she now passionately loved, had stirred distressing emotion within her.
"Well?" said Mr. Cleveland.
"Did you know he was at Netherleigh?"
"He came down today."
"He was in the bay-parlour with Oscar, and I went into it. It has agitated me."
"But why should it agitate you?" rejoined the old Rector, who was very matter-of-fact. "It seems to me that you ought to accustom yourself to bear these chance meetings with equanimity, child. You can scarcely expect to go through life without seeing him now and then."
Adela bent her head to the stile and broke into sobs. Mr. Cleveland laid his protecting hand upon her shoulder.
"My dear! my dear! Strive to be calm. Surely a momentary sight of him ought not to put you into this state. Is it that you still dislike him so much?"
"Dislike him!" she exclaimed, the contrast between the word and the truth striking her painfully, and causing her to say more than she would have said. "I am dying for his forgiveness; dying to show him how true is my remorse; dying because I lost him."
The Rector did not quite see what answer to make to this. He held his tongue, and Adela resumed.
"I wish I was a Roman Catholic!"
The good man, evangelical Protestant, felt as if his gray hair were standing on end with surprise. "Oh, hush!" said he. "You don't know what you are saying."
"I do wish it," she sobbed. "I could then go into a convent, and find peace."
"Peace!" echoed Mr. Cleveland. "No, child, don't let your imagination run away with that idea. It is a false one. No woman, entering a convent in the frame of mind you seem to be entertaining, could expect peace, or find it."
"Any way, I should feel more at rest: I shouldhaveto bear life then, you know. And, oh, I was trying to do so: I was indeed trying!"
Thoroughly put out, the Rector made no comment. Perhaps would not trust himself to make any.
"I suppose there are no such things as Protestant convents, or sisterhoods," she went on, "that receive poor creatures who have no longer any place in this world?"
"Not to my knowledge," sharply spoke Mr. Cleveland, as he jumped off the stile. "It is time we went home, Adela."
They walked away side by side. Gaining the Rectory—a large, straggling, red-brick building, its old walls covered with time-honoured ivy—Adela ascended to her chamber, and shut herself in with her grief.
How scornfully her husband must despise her!—despise her for her past shame and sin; despise her in her present contemptible humiliation, she reflected, a low moan escaping her—he so pure and upright in all his ways, so good and generous and noble! Oh that she could hide to the end from him and from the world!
Lifting her trembling hands, her despairing face, Adela breathed a faint petition that the Most High would be pleased to vouchsafe to her somewhat of His heavenly comfort, or take her out of the tribulation that she could so hardly battle with.