Whilst all the world of Daneford was calculating the enormous fortune the Daneford Bank must be making for its owner, and was bemoaning the fact that Wat Grey had no child to leave his fine business and his vast savings to, there were two people the nature of whose anxiety about Mr. Grey's affairs did not take the same course.
These two people were the only beings possessing knowledge of the condition of Mr. Grey's private fortune and the bank.
For years he had kept the true state of affairs from his mother, but at length, as blow succeeded blow, he could no longer bear the burden of his secret, and he unfolded it to her. He did not trouble her with detail, but informed her briefly that he had backed the South in the American wars—that not only had he lost all his own private fortune, but of the depositors' money as well.
At first she was overwhelmed with surprise and horror to think the splendid business and reputation made for the Bank by her dead husband and his father before him should be ruined by her son, and that not only had the Bank been ruined and her son's fortune and position destroyed, but the moneys of the clients had also been included in the horrible disaster.
But, despite her seventy years, she was a brave old lady, full of honour and spirits and courage. Once the first shock was over, she set all her faculties at work to try and sustain the drooping energies of her only son.
She know he was not free from troubles at home; she knew he gave none of his business confidences to his wife. Though she deplored these facts, she felt there was no help for them; and if at first reluctant to assist him in councils which ought to be held between him and his wife, in the end she saw it would be the wisest course for her to listen, to encourage him to speak, and to aid him with any advice she might think it wise to give.
Apparently, however, the affairs of the Bank were beyond the aid of advice. At every interview between mother and son he assured her he saw no opening in the clouds; that, in fact, they got blacker and blacker as time wore on.
Towards the beginning of 1866 things had, the son told the mother, come to the worst.
"All is lost," he said; "all is lost. I have been staving off and staving off until everything has got into a hopeless tangle, out of which I can find but one thing—ruin!"
"Then, Henry, I suppose you must shut the door; and as you see nothing else for it, the sooner you stop up the better."
"Mother, the day I shut the Bank door I'll open another door."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll open the door into the other world with a charge of gunpowder."
"Don't say such a foolish, dreadful thing! You are not, I hope, such a coward as to fly from the consequences of your own act. If you have lost the money in fair trading you need not be ashamed to meet them all; others beside you lost by that unfortunate South. Your father would have stood his ground and faced the city," said the old woman, with spirit and pride.
"No doubt, mother, no doubt my father would have had the manliness to stand and face the break; but he was a man of great endurance and nerve; you know I am not. I would do anything rather than meet such a crash and live after it. You know I have been much more out in the world than my father. I am mixed up with such a number of things, am closely connected with such a number of institutions and men, that nothing, no consideration, could induce me to outlive bankruptcy. The people would not believe facts; they would not credit any statement, however plain, that I was insolvent. They would say that I had appropriated the money of the depositors, made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, and concealed the money for my own use. I know the world better than you, mother; I know the world, and what it would say. I may be popular now; but if I fell, the street-boys might kick me through the gutter and no one would take my part, or try to get me fair play."
He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.
The old woman looked at him with a sad sympathy, which was not wholly destitute of reproach.
"You know, Henry, thousands of men have had to face such things, and have come out of their difficulties without a stain or a hard word——"
"In my case that is impossible. I tell you, mother, they would have no more mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank is a private one, the property of one person, and on that one person all the wrath would fall. It is not like a joint stock, or a limited liability, where many are concerned as principals or shareholders or directors. It would be a case between an individual and his creditors. It would look as if I had borrowed money privately of all the people I knew, and spent it or gambled in dangerous foreign speculations, until I had dissipated their last pennies and left the people beggars. No, mother; the day I shut the Bank door I open the gate of Eternity with a bullet."
He was walking up and down his mother's drawing-room, with his hands clasped behind his coat, his eyes bent on the ground, and a look of concentrated thought upon his usually placid and beaming features.
"I will not hear you say that again, Henry," cried the mother, stamping her foot impatiently on the floor. "Listen to me. You know my two thousand a year is clear of the Bank——"
"Thank Heaven and my father for that!" cried Grey earnestly.
"Can't you shut up the Bank, and you and Bee"—Beatrice, his wife—"come and stay with me for a while? We could leave England and live on a thousand a year in the south of France, or anywhere you like, and save up a thousand a year to start you again——"
"I would die ten thousand deaths, dear mother, rather than touch your money," he cried fervently, catching her hand and holding it in both his, and opening his hands now and then to kiss the shrivelled hand which had once, when soft and full, joined his—then softer and fuller—in prayer, and now, when he was strong and she was weak, tried to shield and succour him as in the days when he was a little child.
"Don't be sentimental at such a crisis," cried his mother petulantly. "You shall do as I say; or if you like, when the Bank affair is settled, we can sell the annuity. I know I'm old, and it's not worth many years' purchase; but we should get a few thousand for it, and that would give you a fresh start in some other business. Now I tell you this is whatshallhappen. Do you hear me? I will not wait for your consent; this very day I will see about selling the annuity—what do you call it? capitalising it? Go, Henry, and no more nonsense about gunpowder and bullets. Such things are only fit for the stage or the Continent, and are quite beneath the notice of a sensible English man of business."
He rose to his feet and cried: "You shall not, you must not, mother. I have been making out things worse than they really are. I am depressed and ill. Believe me, there is no need for doing what you say. There is one venture of mine, in no way connected with the late war, the greatest of all my ventures; and although I do not look on it as a very safe or sound venture, it may come all right yet. I shall know in a fortnight. You must promise me to do nothing until then. Promise me, my dear mother!"
He spoke eagerly, passionately; and as he uttered the final words he caught both her hands in his, and looked beseechingly into her eyes.
"And in a fortnight you will tell me?" she asked, looking searchingly into his face.
"In a fortnight I will tell you."
"And between this and then you will not, in my presence or in your own secret mind, speak or think about such nonsense as daggers or poison-bowls, or gunpowder or bullets?" she asked scornfully.
"I promise I will not."
"Very well," she said; "I will do nothing till I hear from you at the end of a fortnight. Let us shake hands, Henry, and part friends."
"Friends!" he exclaimed, as tears of love and sorrow came into his eyes. "Mother, you are the only one on earth I love now."
"Hush, sir! How dare you say such a thing!"
"I swear it!" he cried vehemently. "I would do anything, dare anything, for you, mother——"
"And for your wife," she added, as if reminding him of an omission made in carelessness.
He paid no attention to her suggestion.
"You are the only one in the world who knows me really."
"And longest," she added, with a bright smile. "There—go now, Henry; this scene is growing theatrical or Continental, and unbecoming the drawing-room of an English mother. There—go."
And she hustled him to the door, opened the door, thrust him out, and closed the door upon him.
As soon as she was sure he had left the vicinity of the door she threw herself down on a couch and burst into tears, exclaiming softly to herself between the sobs:
"My Wat! my poor Wat! my darling child, is it come to this with you?"
Then after a while she dried her eyes and sat up. "Perhaps all may go well with him after all. Perhaps this venture of his may come right. It was lucky I got him out of the room so soon. Another moment and I should have broken down, and been more dramatic and Continental than he, and that would never do. No son respects or relies on a mother who weeps on his bosom, and causes him to remember she is not his earliest and strongest friend."
In the strong-room of the Daneford Bank all the money and securities held by the bank were kept. The last duty of Mr. Aldridge, manager of the Daneford Bank, each day, was to return the cash, bills, books, &c., to this strong-room. To this strong-room there were three keys in the possession of the staff of the bank, one held by the manager, one by the accountant, and one by the teller.
The door could not be opened save by the aid of the three keys. Thus no officer of the Bank could commit a larceny in the strong-room without the countenance of two others.
Mr. Grey had duplicates of the keys held by the accountant and teller. But the key held by the manager was unique, and even Mr. Grey himself could not enter the strong-room without the manager's key.
In this strong-room were kept not only the valuables of the bank, but cases and chests containing all kinds of highly portable and extremely precious substances and papers belonging to customers of the Bank. Here were iron plate-chests, iron deed-boxes, jewel-caskets in great numbers, left for safe keeping, not being part of the Bank's property, and against which there was no charge by the Bank but an almost nominal one for storage.
The evening after Mr. Grey had that interview with his mother, he called at the Bank, found the manager in, and having told Mr. Aldridge that a secret report had reached him to the disadvantage of a customer whose name he was not allowed to disclose, he wished to borrow the manager's key for half an hour, as he wanted to turn over the suspected man's account.
He got the key and a candle, and went down to the strong-room. In half an hour he returned, and handing back the key to Mr. Aldridge, said: "I am glad to say that the account I spoke of is quite satisfactory, and that it will not be necessary to make any alteration in our dealings with the customer I alluded to."
The next day Mr. Grey went to London, and returned the evening after. A few days later, among the letters was an advice from Mr. Grey's London correspondents to the effect that Messrs. Barrington, Ware, & Duncan had lodged twenty thousand pounds with them to Mr. Grey's credit.
That day Mr. Grey called upon his mother, and told her some of the expected good luck had come—not all, but still twenty thousand out of the fire.
"I told you, Henry, you had only to wait and face it, and you would win. If you did any of those romantic and foolish things with daggers and poison-bowls, they would say you were little better than a thief."
"Now they could not even say as much," he said softly to himself.
"Whatareyou dreaming about now!" his mother cried, in exasperation.
He looked up with one of his best and brightest smiles, and said: "Dreams, madam! nay, it is. I know not dreams;" and kissing his mother to punctuate his parody, he smiled again, and added: "I was only joking, just to enjoy the sight of your anger now that things are looking better. Good-bye."
And so he left her.
The city of Daneford, on the river Weeslade, is about eighteen miles from the small watering-town, Seacliff, which stands in a little bay at the mouth of the river. Between Daneford and Seacliff the width of the river varies, but is never less than a mile.
At a distance of less than four miles from the city the river widens considerably into a loop, and in the loop is the island of Warfinger. The island, which rarely is called by its particular name, but is spoken of as "The Island," measures a mile long by half a mile broad. It rises gradually from the shores to the centre, and on the highest point of it stands Island Castle, the seat of the Midharsts for generations. In the neighbourhood the title of Island Castle is cut down also, and no one at all familiar with the locality ever calls it anything but "The Castle."
In the early part of the year 1866 the tenant for life of Island Castle was old Sir Alexander Midharst, a widower, who lived in the Castle in great retirement and the meanest economy. His wife had then been dead twenty years. She had died in giving birth to her only child, Maud, now rapidly approaching her majority; a girl of such gentle beauty and simple childlike manners that all who met her spoke of her beauty and her grace with tender respect and ready enthusiasm.
Maud Midharst did not need any adventitious aid to make her beauty apparent and her presence acceptable, but her delicate complexion, her dark sweet eyes, her pleasant smile, all came out in strong contrast with her surroundings at the Castle.
In the building everything, including the structure itself, seemed hastening to decay. The walls, the floor, the furniture, the servants, the master, all were old. She formed the one exception to the general appearance of approaching dissolution. The outer walls of the pile were seamed and lined, the water had eaten into the stone, the frost had cracked the mortar, and unsightly yellow stains lay upon the masonry, like long skeleton fingers pointing to the earth into which the walls were hastening.
When castles were places of defence as well as of residence, Island Castle was well known. It had stood two sieges, and had been a famous place of meeting among the Jacobites. Its insular position, the wide prospect it commanded, the fact that it could not be invested on all sides at once except by a whole army, the facilities it afforded to approach and flight of friends, and the difficulty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of reaching it by surprise except under the favour of night or a fog, all added together made it a place of great importance once upon a time.
The Castle had not always been in the Midharst family. It had come to them early in the eighteenth century, upon the failure in heirs male of the great Fleurey family, by which failure the historic earldom of Stancroft was lost to the blood for ever. The Midharsts had some of the female Fleurey blood in their veins, but it was of distant origin; and title to the fine castle and property was declared to Sir John Midharst, the first of his name who laid claim to it, only after long and expensive litigation and much scandal.
Up to that time the Midharsts had been poor baronets. The property accompanying the Island in the year 1866 brought in a rental of more than twenty-two thousand pounds a year.
It was a very singular fact that from the first baronet who sat as master in Warfinger Island Castle down to old Sir Alexander, no son succeeded a father. It was always a grandson or a nephew, or a grand-nephew or some remote cousin. Now matters were worse than ever. Sir Alexander was upwards of seventy years of age, with an only child, a daughter, and the closest male was a direct descendant of the youngest son of the baronet, the lucky Sir John who came in for the property that had supported the extinct earldom of Stancroft.
No doubt this remote cousin was a Midharst in name and blood, but somehow it was hard for Sir Alexander to feel very cordial or friendly towards one so remote from him, one who was going to take the property and the title away from his immediate family.
At the time Lady Midharst died Sir Alexander was but a little over fifty years of age, and many thought he would marry again. But even then he was ailing, and doctors told him that between asthma and valvular derangement of the heart his chance of living even a few years was slight. Of course, they said, he might live fifty years, but he was heavily handicapped.
As long as his wife, who had been much younger than he, lived he continued to hope for an heir; but upon the death of Lady Midharst, having ascertained the precise nature and import of the diseases from which he suffered, he made up his mind to give up all thought of an heir, and devote himself wholly to making a suitable provision for his daughter Maud, who was healthy and well-grown, and promised to be strong and long-lived.
And now began with Sir Alexander Midharst the practices by which he disgraced his order, and made himself a byword for all who knew his habits and his name.
He shut up his London house and advertised it to be let. A rich distiller took it furnished at two hundred pounds a month during the season, and a manufacturing jeweller for eighty pounds a month during the unfashionable periods of the year.
He sold his horses and carriages, all save one old state coach, which he could not sell for two reasons; first, because its preservation and "maintenance" were provided for by his predecessors; and secondly, because no one would pay haulage for it from the Island to the city.
He dismissed all his servants but the housekeeper, one maid, and one man, allowing, however, a nurse and "governess" for the baby, who yet lacked of three months. He resigned the membership of his two London clubs, of the three county clubs he belonged to, and intimated to all institutions or bodies or guilds to which he was patron, chairman, subscriber, or member, that his connection in any way with them must cease.
He discharged his steward, and resolved upon collecting his own rents and superintending his own property.
Up to this anyone who chose might go over his fine old Castle. Anyone still might go over the Castle, but an entrance fee of one shilling was now demanded from each sightseer.
As time advanced, and he became more imbued with avarice, more expert in meanness, he cut and shaved and clipped here and there and everywhere, until he had reduced his expenditure to about a thousand a year.
But he did not rest content with cutting down his own expenses; he was fully as careful to increase his income by every means in his power.
When leases expired they were renewed only on payment of heavy fines. His care was not so much to inflate the rent-roll as to get in all the ready-money he could. He had, he calculated, only a few years, if so long, to live, and the rent-roll would then be the concern of that William Midharst whom he had never seen and whom he wished never to see.
He cut down and sold all the timber as far as his right to do so extended; and all the trimming and underwood, which had previously been allowed to go as perquisites to the men or as gleaning among the poor, he took possession of and sold.
He let the right of shooting over his land and the right of fishing in his streams and rivers. He sold off all he might of the more modern furniture at the Castle.
He sold all his personal plate and jewels, and all the pictures he had acquired in his lifetime. When he was young he had made a collection of coins; this, too, he converted into cash.
At one time he contemplated letting one wing of the Castle to a rich tallow-chandler of the city, and was absolutely in treaty with him, when with a shudder of shame he drew back and broke off the negotiations.
When he commenced his scheme of economy and exactions, he had said to himself that if he pursued it for one year, and sold off all the things he then contemplated, he should be able to leave his baby-girl close on forty thousand pounds. At the end of twelve months he found he had put more money together than he had anticipated. There was no new cause of anxiety with regard to his health, and he made up his mind to continue upon the track he had adopted. He might live a year, ay, two years yet; if he lasted two years more the leases of Garfield estate would fall in, and he should reap a harvest out of renewals. Give him two years more, that is, three from the beginning, and he should be able to leave his only child close upon one hundred thousand pounds.
At the end of the three years he found he had not come within several thousand pounds of his limit; so he resolved to complete the hundred thousand before he changed his manner of living or of dealing with the property.
When the end of the fourth year was reached he had saved more than the hundred thousand pounds. By this time he had become accustomed to the loss of all his old associations, had grown to love the new, and, above all, had become the slave of avarice, that most inflexible and enduring of all the passions. Therefore, he threw all idea of change to the winds, and resolved as long as he lived, whether for a week or twenty years, to save all the money he could, in order that the descendants of his side of the family might be able to hold up their heads hereafter.
At the death of his wife Sir Alexander Midharst closed his London banking account and transferred all his business to the Daneford Bank, where he had had an account when he came into the property, and where his predecessor in the title had also kept his account.
Now in money matters Sir Alexander may have been a good sergeant, or even on occasions a trustworthy captain; but he was no general, and he knew it. He accordingly resolved to consult with Mr. Grey, father of Wat. He explained the whole scheme to the banker, and the purpose for which the money was being saved, and said that in the first place he wanted to invest the money safely, and in the second of course he wanted some interest for it.
The banker suggested that for the present the money should be invested in the Three per Cent. Consols, which could be realised readily should any more desirable form of investment offer itself, and where it would be as safe as in land.
After some consideration Sir Alexander agreed to follow the banker's advice, on the condition that Mr. Grey would buy the stock, keep the account of it, with the heirloom jewels and plate of Island Castle, but that in this case Mr. Grey was to retain the key of the chest containing the valuables and transact all the business connected with the Consols, such as receiving dividends, crediting the amount, and buying in more Consols with the interest of the Consols themselves, and any money Sir Alexander should lodge to the Midharst (Consols) account.
"I shall save the money," said the baronet, "and you will take care of it."
And so it was arranged. Sir Alexander gave the banker power-of-attorney with regard to these Consols and all the money lodged to their account for the future; all communications from the Bank of England, of solicitors, or anyone else, were to be addressed to Sir Alexander Midharst, Daneford Bank, Daneford. These letters were to be opened and attended to by Mr. Grey, who was to make a reasonable charge for the trouble.
Things went on thus until the elder Mr. Grey's death, when the son succeeded to the banking business and a considerable private fortune in 1856.
Young Mr. Grey, as soon as he came into the business, at once waited upon Sir Alexander Midharst, and said he would advise that some new plan should be adopted with regard to the baronet's business and accounts.
The baronet, who knew young Grey very well, and liked him exceedingly, told him that his father had managed the business excellently, and that the son ought to be able to do as well.
Young Grey said the responsibility was very great, the sum being now more than two hundred thousand pounds over which Grey had complete power.
The baronet took him by the hand and said:
"You are a younger man than your father, and ought not to be more timid. Our family have known your bank before now; for my part, I am not able to take charge of these things. I prefer your guardianship to that of my lawyer's or of anybody else. If your father charged too little for the trouble, you may charge more. You know the money is for my little daughter: the estates go to a stranger after my death; and this money is the fortune of my child, that no man shall say she, a Midharst—the last of the direct line, I may say—was left penniless and portionless, though she may be left homeless, on the world."
"As you put it now I cannot refuse," answered young Grey.
"Look around you." They were in the gateway leading to the courtyard, with their faces turned towards the slope of the hill. "Look around you. I have shorn the land close for my child. I work night and day for her, as though her daily bread depended on my arms and my brain. I may die any time. I have no friend, no relative. I am alone with my child. Everyone seems against me. That greedy, rapacious young scoundrel who is to follow me is looking with hungry eyes upon Warfinger Island, and nightly praying for my death. All my old friends have given me up. I am not of them now, because I have striven to make provision for my child. They call me a sordid miser, a stain upon the order I share with them. Let them rave. I will do what I think right by my child. Let them do as they choose. I do not ask their help. I only ask them to let me alone. But you I ask to help me; and you will, for you are not ennobled by the accident of your birth, but by the generosity of your nature."
If any power of wavering had remained in young Grey, this appeal would have overcome it. So the matter was finally settled: the son was to act for the baronet precisely as the father had acted before.
During the year 1856 Mr. Grey the younger was a frequent visitor to Island Castle. He liked boating; and often in the fine evenings pulled down the river Weeslade to the Island, had a consultation with Sir Alexander, and then pulled back to Daneford in the sweet fresh twilight.
Often when it was growing dusk, and he was about to start from the Island for the city, he pushed off his boat into mid-stream, and rested on his oars, looking up at the mouldering Castle standing out clear against the darkening sky.
There was something desolate and forlorn about that vast pile, inhabited by that ageing man and that young girl.
In front, facing the wider water-passage, it stood high above him, its blind gateway looking down upon him, a lonely round tower at the right of the archway catching the strange gleams of light reflected from the Weeslade as the river glided silently towards the sea.
Winter and summer, when there was sunshine at sunset, the top of that tower caught the reflection of the last red streak that flickered on the polished surface of the river. This fact affected long ago the superstitious feelings of the people. There was a tradition in the neighbourhood that in times gone by the wicked mother of a Lord Stancroft used abominable witchcraft against her daughter-in-law, her son's bride, newly brought home from the kingdom of Spain, a country far away, and near the sun, and full of gallant men and fine ladies, whose eyes it were a marvellous fine feast to see, but who were—the ladies—treacherous and light of love.
The abominable and damnable exercises practised by the wicked dowager caused the dark-eyed Lady Stancroft, who had come among strangers out of the far-away kingdom of Spain, to wither up and grow old and loathsome in a year. So that the young lord turned away from her, and cared nothing for her any more. And the poor young lady, gap-toothed and wrinkled and foul-looking as she had been made by devilish witchcraft, was still young in her mind and her affections, and doated on the lord, who would not as much as come nigh the Castle while she was there, but took to wine and evil ways.
So at last the poor young wife, who looked eighty, was lost, and could be found nowhere. It was long after, and in the time of the next lord, that, in the topmost chamber of the round gate-tower, a chamber never used save in war-time, they discovered the skeleton of the young wife, and words written in a strange tongue, the language of Spain, saying how she had stolen up there to die, as she could not win back the love of her husband, the young lord. Ever after that the topmost chamber of the tower was red at sunset. Some thought this red gleam came from the fire where the wicked dowager Lady Stancroft suffered for her great sin; others thought this was the reflection from the wreath of glory worn by the poor young wife. But all agreed it had to do with the deed of the wicked Lady Stancroft; and so they called the tower the Witch's Tower, a name it bore until Walter Grey gave it another.
The year 1856 was one full of remarkable events in the life of Mr. Grey. In it his father died; he came into a considerable fortune; he purchased a house; and grew to be a frequent visitor at Island Castle. It often struck him as a peculiar coincidence that in the same year he should have become owner of the most remarkable house near Daneford, and caretaker to the fortune of the owner of the most remarkable house in the whole district.
About that time he read an account of a certain tree said to be in sympathy with a certain tower. The idea was fresh to him, and seemed to open up a new field of speculation, and he dwelt upon it a good deal.
One evening, as he was rowing from the Castle to his own home, a thought flashed into his mind. There was a striking coincidence in the fact of his being connected so closely with two such houses. Each was unpopular, each was weird, strange; there were queer stories about each, each had a tower. The tower of one had an unpleasant history connected with the skeleton of that poor Spanish lady; the tower on his house had that rusty framework of a tank that looked like a skeleton. "Might not," he thought, with a smile at the absurdity, "there be some sympathy between these two houses?"
He ceased to row, and looked at the vast pile that brooded over the dark waters of the Weeslade. He rested upon his oars.
"It looks, if like anything human, like a witch charming the river. My house, too, looks like a witch sitting at bay within her magic circle of grove. It wouldn't be bad to name them both The Weird Sisters. They are uglier than the crones in 'Macbeth.'"
He pulled a few strokes and mused again, resting on his oars.
"They don't use that tower. I don't use my tower. They found the skeleton of the Spanish Lady Stancroft in the top of that tower. There's the skeleton of that old tank on the top of mine. Towers and skeletons suggest Bombay and the Parsees. By Jove, the Towers of Silence would not be a bad name for those two."
Next day he told several people the names he had given the two houses and the two towers. All who heard of the new nomenclature smiled, and admired the cleverness; and from that time forth in Daneford the two houses were known as the Weird Sisters, and the two towers as the Towers of Silence.
Early in the year 1866 the Midharst (Consols) account-book with the Daneford Bank showed that, after deducting all charges and paying all expenses, the principal and interest reached the enormous sum of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds, enough to buy such a property as the old baronet enjoyed.
By this time Sir Alexander had passed out of middle life into age. He was now thin and bent to one side, and very weak, but still firm of purpose. He had defeated the doctors by living so long; he had defeated "that ungrateful whelp," as he called his heir-presumptive. Of this distant cousin he had no knowledge whatever; he declined to listen to anything about him. Why he called him ungrateful no one ever knew; he called him a whelp because he was young. It was believed that Sir Alexander had never in all his life set eyes upon him, or even got an account of the young man from one who knew him.
At the time of his wife's death, the baronet made outline enquiries through his solicitor as to the age and descent of the boy. In the year of Lady Midharst's death, the boy, whose father had been a poor naval officer, was aged eight, having been born in 1838. The boy's father had died at sea. There could not be the shadow of a doubt that this William Midharst was heir-presumptive, and, if he lived, would inherit the title and the property, should Sir Alexander die without leaving a son.
Little of the baronet's time was spent with his daughter; often a whole week went by, and he did not pass more than an hour of the whole time with her. She had a suite of rooms for herself, where she lived with Mrs. Grant, an officer's widow, who knew much of the world, and was now glad to accept the position of lady's companion to the baronet's only child.
Owing to the eccentric life led by Sir Alexander, the facts that he saw no company and had no intercourse with any of the county families, Maud never went into society, and was wholly dependent on good sympathetic little Mrs. Grant for any knowledge she might gain of the great outside world. Mrs. Grant, who was of a gay and pleasure-loving disposition, had no patience with the whims and meannesses of the old man.
"You know, my dear," she said to Maud, as they sat over their tea in Maud's little drawing-room, "it's all very well for Sir Alexander to go on saving up money for you, so that you may be a great heiress one of these days; but that isn't all. He treats you as if you were a girl of twelve yet. Why, my dear, I had been out three years before I was your age, and had refused three or four offers. I had, indeed. I know you don't want offers, my dear; but I did; for I was only a poor rector's daughter, and hadn't even beauty to help me."
"Indeed I am sure you must have been wonderfully pretty. You don't know now nice you look now," replied the girl softly.
"Ah, well, my dear, after a few seasons you get to know all about your good looks; and then, my dear, after a few seasons more you get to know what is of a great deal more consequence, all your defects, or at least a good many. I don't suppose any woman ever found out all the weak points in her appearance, and that's a mercy. But as I was saying—what was I saying?"
"I think," said Maud, with an expression of great innocence, "that you were blaming papa for never having given me an opportunity of finding out the weak points in my personal appearance."
"Yes, that's it. That is, not quite it. Maud, I won't have you twist things I say in that way. You know I am always for your good; indeed I am."
"I am quite sure of it, dear Mrs. Grant," returned the girl gratefully, and with a trace of moisture in her large soft eyes, as though she relented having taken advantage of the other's impetuosity.
The woman took her hand, and stroked it briskly, and said:
"There, there, Maud, don't be silly. Look at this very case in point. Why, you turn sentimental over a few words from an uninteresting middle-aged woman! Now is that a proper thing in an heiress of twenty? Why, my dear, you'd have no account to give of offers refused if onceyouwent out. You'd marry the first booby who asked you, rather than disoblige him or cause him pain."
"I shall never marry anyone I do not love," said Maud, with an air of quiet decision.
"Maud, be silent; you are only a school-girl, with a lot of sound rules in your head, and not the least idea of how they are applied, or where. I tell youIknow something of the world and girls and love and marriage. I tell you, you'd marry the first stupid lout who said to you: Maud, I love you!"
"Was the first who proposed to you a stupid lout?" asked the girl simply.
"No, he wasn't; at least I did think he was then, but I afterwards knew that he was the best of them all; and I was often sorry I did not take him."
"And did he marry?"
"Yes; he married a fool."
"Who had just come out—her first season?" asked Maud, with her hands folded serenely on her lap.
"Yes. But how did you guess?"
"Well, you see, you told me I should marry the first stupid lout who asked me, and I thought it likely a girl only just out did marry the stupid lout who proposed first to you."
"But, dear, I told you he wasn't a stupid lout; then I thought he was stupid, and was often sorry afterwards—of course I mean before I married—that I did not accept him."
"This gives me more hope for my own case. You see, the girl who had only just come out took the man you thought was a stupid lout, and was right in taking him."
Maud looked up and smiled.
For a moment Mrs. Grant tapped her foot impatiently on the carpet; looked hither and thither, rose a little hastily, and cried: "Well, Maud, if you don't think I have a very serious interest in what I say, I will say——" She paused, and looked at the sweet, half-frightened face of the girl. All at once her manner underwent a change. She drew near the girl, and putting her arm round her waist, "I will say," she continued, "that whoever gets you cannot help loving you. Men are often bad, Maud darling; but I don't think there is one such a villain and a fool as to be unkind to you."
As April of 1866 grew into May, the asthmatic affection from which the old baronet suffered abated; but the valvular defect of heart increased. He had fainted three or four times in the month of April, and in May his debility became so great that he was unable to leave his bed. Other symptoms now showed themselves, and complicated the case, and so embarrassed the action of the heart that the doctors declared he must expect a speedy termination. Towards the end of May the doctors declared he would never rise from his bed.
The old man, whose spirit was in arms against these doctors, would not believe them. Twenty years ago they had told him the same thing.
They said: No, the circumstances were different. They had then said hemightgo at any moment; things were worse than that now. There was no longer any chance of recovery, and the dread was things would grow worse.
The doctors found it necessary to be almost brutally candid with him, for they had learned he had not yet made his will.
Insecure as was the tenure upon which he had for the past twenty years held his life, he had gone on from day to day deferring the arrangement of his affairs on the grounds that he was too busy, and that if he made his will now he should have to add codicils according as his savings increased. His lawyer assured him no such thing was necessary, because, after all bequests had been mentioned, he could leave his daughter residuary legatee absolutely or with any provisions and restrictions he liked to impose.
As the lawyer had failed in the old time the doctors failed now. But they were resolved to leave no stone unturned in their attempt to get him to settle his affairs. The dying man's daughter was too young, and too timid, and too closely interested in the execution of the document to think of asking her aid; so they resolved to summon Mrs. Grant, and request her to press the matter home to the mind of the invalid.
In the great banqueting-room the three physicians in attendance sat when it was resolved to invoke Mrs. Grant.
The vast apartment had been allowed to fall almost into ruins. It was the finest room in the house, and few houses in either county that claimed the banks of the Weeslade at this point could boast so noble a chamber.
But twenty years of neglect had defiled and defaced the room. The curtains were faded and worn, the hair grinned through the torn covers of the fine old oak chairs. Damp had attacked the moulding of the picture frames, and here and there the moulding had fallen off, leaving the bones of the discoloured frames exposed to view. The ceiling, formed of oak cross-beams, with flowers and fruit pieces in the panels, had felt the corroding touch of wilful Time. Here and there the canvas bulged off the panel, and hung in loose flabby blisters from the roof. The fine oak floor had grown dull and woolly for want of use and care. Sir Alexander kept no servants to look after the apartments he did not make use of, and refused to allow even beeswax for the floors.
The dog-irons, which had stood watch over the home-fire of generations of his name and blood, were rusted. The tapestries hanging across the doors, here and there torn from their hooks, hung in neglected disorder from the rods. The hospitable greeting "Welcome," in blue enamel in the wreath of carved vine-leaves round the top of the huge sideboard, had lost some of its letters. The glasses of the lamps held by the bronze Nubian slaves at the doors were reduced to half their number. The leather thongs lacing the suits of armour that held the groups of candles at either end of the sideboard had rotted and parted, and the helmets and back and breast plates gaped at the sutures.
The chamber smelt like a vault just opened, and, although the weather was bright and fine, all the furniture, the walls, the floor, felt damp and slimy.
As soon as the doctors had finished luncheon, Mrs. Grant was sent for. She arrived in a state of great agitation; she feared that Sir Alexander was in the last extremity.
Dr. Hardy, the senior physician, a pale, soft-voiced, self-contained man of few words, was the spokesman. He said:
"You will be glad to hear, and you will be kind enough to inform Miss Midharst, that there is no cause for any alarm on account of the present condition of Sir Alexander."
Mrs. Grant looked infinitely relieved. Strange and unsympathetic a father as the invalid had been, she did not like the thought of having to tell anything dreadful about him to Maud.
"I am glad to hear it. Shall I go at once and tell Miss Midharst the good news?"
Dr. Hardy held up his hand with a gesture which said quite plainly: "If you will be so kind as to confine your attention to me, you may rest assured of knowing explicitly what I wish to have done in this matter." Having allowed the gesture a little while to sink into the mind of Mrs. Grant, he went on with his lips:
"But," he said, with strong emphasis on the conjunction, to show Mrs. Grant that she had interrupted him, and that he regarded the interruption as frivolous, "the case has now arrived at that state of progress when almost at any time the patient's head may be attacked. Should the head be attacked, Sir Alexander will lose the possession of those mental gifts and powers which he now possesses undiminished and unimpaired."
"Poor child!" cried the widow, thinking of the guileless daughter of the stricken man.
"And," continued Dr. Hardy, with the same resolute emphasis on the conjunction, "we consider that he should be at once induced to make his will, and we have resolved to request you will use your influence with him. We have tried and failed. May we count on you?"
Mrs. Grant looked up with a half-amused, half-astonished air. As soon as she had somewhat recovered from her surprise, she said very earnestly:
"There is nothing in this world I would not try to do for Miss Midharst; but there is no more chance of Sir Alexander listening to me on any business matter than of his asking advice of the wind. He believes women can and ought to know nothing about business. It would only vex him if I spoke of anything of the kind to him."
The poor little woman looked quite distressed and helpless.
The three men glanced from one to the other in despair. In a few seconds Dr. Hardy spoke again to the little widow.
"Is there no friend of the patient's whom you could suggest as likely to have influence on him? Do you think his lawyer would have weight? We know how he has secluded himself from the world and his own class, and that we are not to look among those who would naturally be his friends for the assistance we now want. Do you think his lawyer would be likely to succeed with him in this?"
"I am greatly afraid not. I have heard that—although he has a high opinion of Mr. Shaw, his lawyer—he would never in any way accept advice in his affairs beyond legal matters. I understand Sir Alexander has no personal liking for Mr. Shaw. And he won't speak to any clergyman."
Again the three men looked at one another in doubt and difficulty. Again Dr. Hardy spoke:
"This is a matter of the utmost importance to those who come after Sir Alexander, and we are most anxious it should be settled, and at once. If we thought it was a disinclination to make a will, or a determination not to make one, that kept him back, we should feel no responsibility in the matter. But he refuses to settle his worldly affairs solely upon the ground that we are deceived as to his condition of health. Now we are confident we are right. He will never rise from his bed again. Already dropsy has made its appearance; at any moment that may, directly or indirectly, affect the head; in his case it is almost sure to do so at some time."
Dr. Hardy paused a moment; then proceeded with more decision than heretofore:
"Perhaps you, Mrs. Grant, would be kind enough to ask Miss Midharst if she could give you the name of anyone on whose advice Sir Alexander would be likely to rely in an important business affair? You need not distress Miss Midharst with anything more explicit."
Mrs. Grant rose with prompt willingness, and hurried away in the sustaining hope that Maud might be able to solve the difficulty.
When Mrs. Grant had gone, the three men drew near one of the tall narrow windows that looked west along the Island and commanded the beautiful valley of the broad river, and the broad, blue, bright Weeslade itself.
An everlasting Sabbath filled that luxuriant valley with a peace which seemed too fine for earth. Because of the height on which the Castle stood, and its distance from the nearest shore beyond the western end of the Island, all detail was subdued and lost; nothing was left to trouble the eye or excite enquiry. The eye could see nothing but broad green pasturages and vast expanses of emerald grainshoots reaching down to the river's brink, and sloping softly inward towards the quiet hills that stood up apart, clad in purple and blue wood, and crowned with violet uplands lying secure against the azure sky.
The tide was full; the winds were still; from the trees around through the open window came the fragrant spices of the may. Above, the lark took up where all human voices end the praises of the spring. The glory of inextinguishable youth was in his song, the wild rapture of a regenerated soul. Below, the sad-throated thrush piped of the mellow melancholy of a ripe old world that had borne a thousand generations of men, who had moved all their days through the same narrow and unsatisfying avenues of desire and passion and final failure to the richly padded grave. The thrush sang to the earth of those who had died; the lark sang to the skies of those who shall live for ever.
Around the three men as they stood by the open window was the mouldering chamber of an ancient house. On one side lay the decayed old man of a noble race. On the other side the maiden daughter of that man, who had smothered up his affectionate visitings under piles of gold, scraped together for her, for the pride of his lineage.
Beyond there in the city was ruin. A great bank which had a branch in Daneford had stopped payment to-day. The three men by the window were talking of that while they awaited the return of the woman.
"Dreadful! I am told that the poor Mainwarings are completely ruined by it."
"Completely. Fancy old John Musgrave put four thousand pounds into it on deposit this day week. It will kill him. He had sold out Turks, and was going to buy United States."
"Poor old fellow! I do pity him."
"There was a rumour of one of the local banks being in a bad way. Did either of you hear it?"
"Not the Daneford?"
"No; Grey is safe. Bless me, his father left him a couple of hundred thousand clear of the business, and he's been making money ever since."
"Is it the Weeslade Valley?"
"I don't like to say. It is so dangerous to speak. But thereisa rumour of a local bank, and it'snot Grey's."
"No. I should think Grey could stand anything. They say it was always Grey's system to keep the money near home. It's a commercial and customers' bank, and not a gad-about among foreign speculations and bubble manufacturers."
At that moment Mrs. Grant re-entered the room.
The three men turned round and went to her.
"I have seen Miss Midharst, and she says she thinks the person most likely to have influence with Sir Alexander is Mr. Grey the banker."
"A most excellent man," said Dr. Hardy, turning to the other two. "What do you think?"
"Capital!"
"No one could be better."
Dr. Hardy spoke to Mrs. Grant for the last time on that occasion. "Send a note by express to Mr. Grey, requesting him to come immediately. Explain to him what our views are, and ask him to do his best to induce Sir Alexander to make his will."
In less than an hour and a half Mr. Grey received Mrs. Grant's letter. It merely said that his presence was urgently desired at the Castle at once, and that by hurrying he would greatly oblige Sarah Grant.
He was in his private room at the Bank when he read the letter. He opened his private black bag. Bank proprietors do not always carry firearms, in fact rarely, almost never. Clerks in charge of money often do. Grey always carried a revolver—now.
"He can't have heard of his Consols? In that case he would have written himself or come. What can this be?—so sudden, so urgent, and from Mrs. Grant! Perhaps the failure of the St. George's has frightened him. If he asks me to give up the money now! Ah, I can't face that! No, no! This first," and he took a revolver out of his bag.
Again he thought awhile, and ended with a question: "Shall I go to the Island or to——?" He poised the revolver.
As he did so there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," said the banker mechanically, and his mother entered.
With a start Mr. Grey's mother cried out "Henry!" then crossed the room hastily, and, putting her hand on his arm, looked up into his face with alarm.
With an amused smile he glanced down at her, and said simply, "Mother?" in a tone of badinage, as if paying her off in her own coin by replying to her with a single word.
"What was that you held in your hand and dropped into the bag as I came in?" she asked with reproachful earnestness, looking up fixedly into his eyes, as though she would pierce to his innermost thoughts.
He put his hand on her shoulder playfully, and smoothed one of the black silk strings of her black bonnet with his thumb and finger, returning her steady gaze with a steady eye and a free smile. "That, mother," he answered, "is the countersign for thieves."
"The countersign for thieves! What do you mean, Henry; you ought not to bandy words with your mother."
"Indeed, I am not playing with words. I am only describing the weapon and its use as briefly as possible. I was looking at my revolver, for I was just about to set out on a journey. You see, if a thief comes up to a man armed with a revolver, and demands the man's purse, the man produces that revolver, and the thief says, "Pass on, friend." If a thief who has stolen money meets the man he stole it from, or a policeman, and can pull out a revolver, then he can say to the man or the policeman, "Let me pass, or I will shoot you down;" or suppose the thief finds the odds are against him, he can put the barrel to his own temple, and pass the foe in spite of numbers. Now, mother, don't you think my explanation is very clever and very exhaustive?"
He placed his two hands on the widow's shoulders, and pushed her back arm's length, dropped his head roguishly over his shoulder, and laughed a soft laugh, which seemed to invite her to enjoy his cleverness and be amused at the humour of the explanation.
Mrs. Grey did not smile. For a moment her face grew puckered and perplexed. In her eyes shone the light of a mental conflict between anger and tears. The conflict ended in a few moments. She threw herself into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She neither stormed nor wept.
He hastened to her with compunctious solicitude. He knelt on one knee by her side, and put his powerful arm round her emaciated shoulders, and with the hand of his other arm gently drew down her hands from her face.
"Mother! mother!" he pleaded, in a tone of passionate tenderness. "I did not mean to annoy or trouble you. I was only a little wilfully following out a fancy, a conceit. It was a foolish vanity that made me seem to play with your questions. You know, my own mother, I would not give you any pain I could help, for all the world. Forgive me, and let us drop the nonsense. Forgive me, and let us speak of something else."
All the earnestness of this man's nature went into these words, and there was in them and the manner attending them a fervid pathos which stirred the heart of the woman so deeply it almost killed her to keep from crying out, and throwing her arms round her son, and weeping on his breast. But by a superhuman effort, an effort no created being could make but a mother for the salvation of a child, she held her passionate love within her own heart; for, according to her theory, so must all women who wish to rule their children; and she wanted to rule, not for the love of power, but for the love of love and the preservation of her son.
She gave one quick glance at him out of those sharp eyes, and then throwing down the eyes on the ground, said in a constrained voice:
"The St. George's Banking Company has failed. There is a run on the Daneford. You are unable to meet that run, and you were thinking of getting away from the run and the closing of the doors with——that." She shuddered, raised her hand, and pointed to the black bag into which he had dropped the revolver.
"No! no! no! mother!" he cried imploringly. "I pledge you my word—if you like I will prove to you—that we are able to meet any run that may come upon us in consequence of this failure. If you like I will call in Aldridge to corroborate my words."
"Corroborate your word, Henry!" she cried scornfully. "Do you think I could doubt my son's word, and believe the word of any other man alive! Never while I live, I hope, shall you fall so pitifully low as to need another man's word to help your word to my belief." She laid hold of the imputed question of her son's word as a point on which to rally her disordered feelings and overcome the tendency she felt to break down.
"Well, mother, rest assured this run threatens us with no danger whatever. On the contrary, as we are able to meet it without the least inconvenience, the position of the Bank ought to be very materially improved when all becomes quiet again." He rose and left her as he spoke, and locked the two doors of the room, observing: "We don't want anyone to come in and interrupt us now."
By the time he returned to his seat she had recovered her composure. "Then what do you mean by 'setting out on a journey?' Those words helped me into the fear."
As a reply to that question, he pushed the note he had just received from Mrs. Grant across the table to her, and said: "Read that, and you will understand."
She adjusted her tortoiseshell spectacles and read the note deliberately. When she had finished she looked up quickly.
He was standing at the window looking out. His back was towards her, and she could not see his face. It was wrinkled and drawn up like a yellow leaf.
"Do you know what you are wanted for at the Castle?" she asked briskly.
"No."
"What has happened to your voice?" she asked, in a tone of anxiety and surprise. He had spoken as though his windpipe was almost closed in a gripe.
"Nothing; or at least something has gone against my—breath. What am I wanted for at the Castle?" Still he spoke as if half suffocated. Still he kept his face to the window. Still his face was wrinkled and yellow and withered up.
"I met Dr. Hardy as I came in. He had just driven straight back from the Castle. There has been a consultation of doctors to-day, and they have little or no hope of Sir Alexander getting better. He has not yet made his will, and they all agreed you were the only person likely to have any influence with him. They could get him to do nothing about it."
Grey's face cleared as if by magic. He turned round suddenly, threw up both his hands, and burst into a loud and continuous shout of laughter.
His mother started to her feet, and looked at him aghast. "Henry!" she cried, in great alarm; "Henry, what is the matter?"
"Nothing, mother, nothing," he said between his laughter; "I thought it was something serious."
She regarded him in a stupor of amazement for a few seconds. "You thought it was something serious," she whispered, as if she questioned her hearing.
"Yes, something very serious."
"But it is very serious. He is in danger of death, and has not yet made his will. Surely that, Henry, is no subject for laughter."
He was composed now. His face was radiant, and he smiled apologetically as he said: "You must really forgive me, dear mother. The fact is, for the past quarter of an hour I have been on such a stretch in the interview between us that to hear of anything else but my own affairs relieved me, and I could not help laughing. I did not, indeed, laugh at the thought of poor Sir Alexander being ill; I pity him with all my heart. But what you said touched some spring of my mind, and I could no more have forborne to laugh than to breathe for an hour. Well, I think I had better start for the Island at once. You now feel all right about the Bank? You feel quite comfortable about it, mother, don't you?"
"Yes, but do not be so odd, Henry; you frighten me to death with your strange ways of late."
"I have a good deal of anxiety, and perhaps am too abrupt. More of my abruptness: I can't wait another moment. Good-bye, mother."
And in a few seconds he had gone.
When she found herself alone, she sat down to recover and to reflect. "Every day," she thought, "he becomes less like his old self, and more of a riddle."
Her eyes caught something on the table.
"When I came in he told me he was examining that dreadful thing because he was going on a journey, and now he's gone off and left it behind him in the bag on that table. Can it be he is losing his reason?"
When Mr. Grey found himself outside the Bank-door he hailed the nearest fly, jumped in, and cried cheerily to the driver:
"Island Ferry, and I lay you a half-crown to a whip-lash you don't do it under half an hour. Take the time and drive on."
With a chuckle of grave satisfaction, the banker threw himself back in the fly, and as they drove rapidly through the town he waved his hand or doffed his hat at every twenty yards. There was cordiality in every look that greeted him, and many who saw him go by turned and gazed with admiration and envy after the fine rich jovial banker.
No wonder he looked pleased. An hour ago, less than an hour ago, he had, upon reading that note, almost come to the conclusion Sir Alexander Midharst had discovered he, Grey, had "borrowed" every penny of the immense sum confided to his charge by the baronet. Such a discovery would have been to him simply and literally fatal.
Early in this year, when he disclosed the secret of the Bank to his mother, he and it were bankrupt, and all the depositors' money was gone. Pressure after pressure had come upon him after that, and all such demands had been met by "borrowing" the baronet's savings without the baronet's consent.
Three months ago he was a bankrupt, now he was a bankrupt and a thief. He had no more right to sell those Consols than to put his hand into any customer's pocket and take his purse. He had glided into the thing gradually, beginning by borrowing twenty thousand pounds, which he caused to be lodged to his own credit at his London agents in the name of Barrington, Ware, and Duncan, an imaginary firm of Boston merchants, who remitted the money through their London agent on account of supposititious dealings in hides on the western coast of the United States.
The twenty thousand had only stopped the gap for a few days. Then heavier and heavier bills came to maturity, and before there was any general uneasiness in the commercial world, one hundred thousand pounds of the baronet's savings had been "borrowed."
Then came ugly rumours of certain banking establishments; and although the Daneford Bank was always spoken of with the highest esteem in the district, the city, and in such quarters of London as it was known, the accommodation market had got very much straitened, and the Daneford Bank's London agents not only hinted they did not care to make any additional advances, but sounded Grey as to the possibility of their being able to get a little advance from him. Could he let them have fifty thousand for six weeks on Argentines they did not want to sell?
Here was a chance of showing the stability of his own concern and helping a friendly firm which might be of incalculable use to him another time. Now that he had dipped into the Midharst fund, why not go deeper? He could make something out of this transaction; and it was for the good of Sir Alexander as well as himself that he should try to pull back all the money he could, and keep the name of the Bank at the very highest level. He lent the money.
Then came other pressures because of those old speculations, a quarter of million at least; and last, more uneasy rumours in the financial world, and the possibility of a run on the Bank. At all risks the Bank must stand; for on its stability depended not only the life of Henry Walter Grey, but all chance of winning back any portion of the baronet's money.
When the moment of this decision arrived Grey put down his last stake; sold the last hundred thousand of Sir Alexander's half a million Consols, and bought the revolver. As he put the matter to himself in his figurative way, the situation now was a race between gold and lead. Would the gold, in the form of profits and deposits, come back to him in such quantities as to prevent the necessity for the outgoing of the lead?
It was on Wednesday, the 30th of May, 1866, he got that note from Mrs. Grant. He had just been calculating his chances of falling in for some of the business of the St. George's Bank. He had even put down a few figures to please and flatter his sight. It might be that if he could hold on and get—say, half the business of the Daneford branch of the St. George's Bank, the chance of the gold overtaking the lead would be enormously increased. All this was of course contingent upon Sir Alexander remaining in ignorance of the "borrowing." If that came to his ears in any way, nothing could prevent the lead overtaking the gold.
That note almost precipitated the crisis. In the usual way when he was wanted at the Castle Sir Alexander wrote a line himself, or called and asked the banker down for the evening. This note did not come from Sir Alexander, but from Miss Midharst's companion. At the moment when his mother entered a straw might have turned his resolution in favour of giving the lead a walk-over. But with the news brought by his mother all was changed, and the gold had taken a good lead.
As he sat back in the fly and reviewed his position he could hardly restrain his exultation within the bounds of mere facial joy. He would have liked to get out and run through the streets, and shout.
A few minutes ago he held all black cards to a red trump. Now the whole pack seemed to have been put before him face up, with liberty to select his own hand and turn a trump of his own choosing.
No run could injure the Daneford Bank; other banks might fail, but his was secure for the time; and by the aid of its good substantial name the Daneford would get strong while others were crumbling, and the future success of the Bank would be assured beyond the reach of his highest hope of years ago.
Only two possible chances were against him, and if neither of these chances turned up within twelve months he might laugh at fate.
The former was that in the will there should be introduced anything adverse to him. The latter was that the old man should die in less than twelve months, and leave it incumbent on the banker to render an account and deliver up the money before the end of twelve months.
Grey had fully made up his mind as to the necessity for a will. Without a will there would in all likelihood be Chancery proceedings; and while no one in Daneford would dream of suspecting Grey, or ask details of the account, much less verification of the items, the Chancery folk will go through the whole affair as a matter of routine, and not as a matter of precaution, or because of any suspicion.
Let there be a will, by all means.
It was fine to drive through the bright sunlight of that glorious May weather, and feel that the gold was overtaking the lead. It was better than recovering from a long illness; it was coming back, to life and green fields and the voices of birds and the pressure of hands we love, out of the dark, damp, noisome tomb.
When Mr. Grey arrived at Island Ferry he alighted, told the driver of the fly to wait for him, and took the boat to the Island.
As soon as he arrived at the Castle he was shown into the dreary deserted banquet-room.
Here he found irrepressible little Mrs. Grant waiting for him. After some time he gathered from her how matters stood, and sent up his name to the sick man.
Sir Alexander would see Mr. Grey.
When the banker reached the room where the baronet lay, he was greatly shocked at the change which had taken place in the latter since the last time they had met, although that was only a few days ago.
There had always been a bright bloom, the bloom of old age heightened and deepened by the malady which afflicted him chronically, on the old man's face. Now the cheeks were puffed and purple, and the eyes, once so keen and cold, were dull and restless and impatient.
The long thin sinewy hands lay outside the counterpane, and the voice of the sufferer when he spoke was tremulous, querulous, making a painful contrast to the firm, clear, thin, biting speech of other days.
After the usual greetings and Grey's expression of sorrow for his indisposition, the old man spoke quickly, and in an unsteady voice.
"These doctors have been worrying me to-day, Grey, and I am very glad you have come. I want to talk to you. Pull that curtain a little across the window; I hate the sunlight. Thank you, Grey. Sit down now, where I can see you. It's a comfort to look at a man like you after those false prophets and hoarse ravens. The doctors have been with me, Grey; and they tell me I should make my will. Now I'm not talking to you as a medical man, but as a man of business. What do you say?"
"Have you spoken to Mr. Shaw about the matter?" asked the banker softly.
"No; I have not spoken to Shaw about it. I hate lawyers," cried the old man pettishly.
"If I hated lawyers," returned Grey, with a shy smile, "I should not be without a will for four-and-twenty hours."
"Why?" demanded the old man, with a contraction of the brows and a glance of suspicion directed at an imaginary group of lawyers.
"You know, Sir Alexander, lawyers have a special prayer, asking for the management of intestate estates." He raised his eyebrows and smiled archly at the prostrate man.
"I don't understand you, Grey. These doctors, with their fears and their jargon, have confused me. What do you mean?"
For a moment the banker looked at the baronet uneasily. Could it be that already his mind was becoming clouded or torpid? After a moment's observation and thought, Grey decided that the old man was only dazed and tired.
"What I mean, Sir Alexander, is, that in cases where there is no will, the law-costs often consume the whole estate, andalwayseat up enormously more money than where there is a sound will."
The old man reflected awhile.
"Have you made your own will?" he asked.
"Certainly. I could not rest if I thought what little fortune I may have should, instead of going to my wife, be scattered about in this and that court, in this and that litigation. As I go home the ferry-boat may overturn and I may be drowned, the horse may run away and I may be killed. Making a will has with me no connection with good or bad health. It is a business thing which ought, on the principle of economy, to be done in time. In nothing more than in making a will is it true that a stitch in time saves nine?"
There was a long pause.