Mrs. Clifford returned from Chetwood Court that clay in by no means such high spirits as when she went there. In the first place, she hadn’t succeeded in throwing Elma and Granville Kelmscott into one another’s company at all, and in the second place Elma had talked much under her very nose, for half-an-hour at a stretch, with the unknown young painter fellow. When Elma was asked out anywhere else in the country for the next six weeks or so, Mrs. Clifford made up her mind strictly to inquire in private, before committing herself to an acceptance, whether that dangerous young man was likely or not to be included in the party.
For Mrs. Clifford admitted frankly to herself that Cyril was dangerous; as dangerous as they make them. He was just the right age; he was handsome, he was clever, his tawny brown beard had the faintest little touch of artistic redness, and was trimmed and dressed with provoking nicety. He was an artist too; and girls nowadays, you know, have such an unaccountable way of falling in love with men who can paint, or write verses, or play the violin, or do something foolish of that sort, instead of sticking fast to the solid attractions of the London Stock Exchange or of ancestral acres.
Mrs. Clifford confided her fears that very night to the sympathetic ear of the Companion of the Militant and Guardian Saints of the British Empire.
“Reginald,” she said solemnly, “I told you the other day, when you asked about it, Elma wasn’t in love. And at the time I was right, or very near it. But this afternoon I’ve had an opportunity of watching them both together, and I’ve half changed my mind. Elma thinks a great deal too much altogether, I’m afraid, about this young Mr. Waring.”
“How do you know?” Mr. Clifford asked, staring her hard in the face, and nodding solemnly.
The British matron hesitated. “How do I know anything?” she answered at last, driven to bay by the question. “I never know how. I only know I know it. But whatever we do we must be careful not to let Elma and the young man get thrown together again. I should say myself it wouldn’t be a bad plan if we were to send her away somewhere for the rest of the summer, but I can tell you better about all this to-morrow.”
Elma, for her part, had come home from Chetwood Court more full than ever of Cyril Waring. He looked so handsome and so manly that afternoon at the Holkers’. Elma hoped she’d be asked out where he was going to be again.
She sat long in her own bedroom, thinking it over with herself, while the candle burnt down in its socket very low, and the house was still, and the rain pattered hard on the roof overhead, and her father and mother were discussing her by themselves downstairs in the drawing-room.
She sat long on her chair without caring to begin undressing. She sat and mused with her hands crossed on her lap. She sat and thought, and her thoughts were all about Cyril Waring.
For more than an hour she sat there dreamily, and told herself over, one by one, in long order, the afternoon’s events from beginning to the end of them. She repeated every word Cyril had spoken in her ear. She remembered every glance, every look he had darted at her. She thought of that faint pressure of his hand as he said farewell. The tender blush came back to her brown cheek once more with maidenly shame as she told it all over. He was so handsome and so nice, and so very, very kind, and, perhaps, after this, she might never again meet him. Her bosom heaved. She was conscious of a new sense just aroused within her.
Presently her heart began to beat more violently. She didn’t know why. It had never beaten in her life like that before—not even in the tunnel, nor yet when Cyril came up to-day and spoke first to her. Slowly, slowly, she rose from her seat. The fit was upon her. Could this be a dream? Some strange impulse made her glide forward and stand for a minute or two irresolute, in the middle of the room. Then she turned round, once, twice, thrice, half unconsciously. She turned round, wondering to herself all the while what this strange thing could mean; faster, faster, faster, her heart within her beating at each turn with more frantic haste and speed than ever. For some minutes she turned, glowing with red shame, yet unable to stop, and still more unable to say to herself why or wherefore.
At first that was all. She merely turned and panted. But as she whirled and whirled, new moods and figures seemed to force themselves upon her. She lifted her hands and swayed them about above her head gracefully. She was posturing she knew, but why she had no idea. It all came upon her as suddenly and as uncontrollably as a blush. She was whirling around the room, now slow, now fast, but always with her arms held out lissom, like a dancing-girl’s. Sometimes her body bent this way, and sometimes that, her hands keeping time to her movements meanwhile in long graceful curves, but all as if compelled by some extrinsic necessity.
It was an instinct within her over which she had no control. Surely, surely, she must be possessed. A spirit that was not her seemed to be catching her round the waist, and twisting her about, and making her spin headlong over the floor through this wild fierce dance. It was terrible, terrible. Yet she could not prevent it. A force not her own seemed to sustain and impel her.
And all the time, as she whirled, she was conscious also of some strange dim need. A sense of discomfort oppressed her arms. She hadn’t everything she required for this solitary orgy. Something more was lacking her. Something essential, vital. But what on earth it could be she knew not; she knew not.
By-and-by she paused, and, as she glanced right and left, the sense of discomfort grew clearer and more vivid. It was her hands that were wrong. Her hands were empty. She must have something to fill them. Something alive, lithe, curling, sinuous. These wavings and swayings, to this side and to that, seemed so meaningless and void—without some life to guide them. There was nothing for her to hold; nothing to tame and subdue; nothing to cling and writhe and give point to her movements. Oh! heavens, how horrible!
She drew herself up suddenly, and by dint of a fierce brief effort of will repressed for awhile the mad dance that overmastered her. The spirit within her, if spirit it were, kept quiet for a moment, awed and subdued by her proud determination. Then it began once more and led her resistlessly forward. She moved over to the chest of drawers still rhythmically and with set steps, but to the phantom strain of some unheard low music. The music was running vaguely through her head all the time—wild Aeolian music—it sounded like a rude tune on a harp or zither. And surely the cymbals clashed now and again overhead; and the timbrel rang clear; and the castanets tinkled, keeping time with the measure. She stood still and listened. No, no, not a sound save the rain on the roof. It was the music of her own heart, beating irregularly and fiercely to an intermittent lilt, like a Hungarian waltz or a Roumanian tarantella.
By this time, Elina was thoroughly frightened. Was she going mad? she asked herself, or had some evil spirit taken up his abode within her? What made her spin and twirl about like this—irresponsibly, unintentionally, irrepressibly, meaninglessly? Oh, what would her mother say, if only she knew all? And what on earth would Cyril Waring think of her?
Cyril Waring! Cyril Waring! It was all Cyril Waring. And yet, if he knew—oh, mercy, mercy!
Still, in spite of these doubts, misgivings, fears, she walked over towards the chest of drawers with a firm and rhythmical tread, to the bars of the internal music that rang loud through her brain, and began opening one drawer after another in an aimless fashion. She was looking for something—she didn’t know what; and she never could rest now until she’d found it.
Drawer upon drawer she opened and shut wearily, but nothing that her eyes fell upon seemed to suit her mood. Dresses and jackets and underlinen were there; she glanced at them all with a deep sense of profound contempt; none of these gewgaws of civilized life could be of any use to supply the vague want her soul felt so dimly and yet so acutely. They were dead, dead, dead, so close and clinging! Go further! Go further! At last she opened the bottom drawer of all, and her eye fell askance upon a feather boa, curled up at the bottom—soft, smooth, and long; a winding, coiling, serpentine boa. In a second, she had fallen upon it bodily with greedy hands, and was twisting it round her waist, and holding it high and low, and fighting fiercely at times, and figuring with it like a posturant. Some dormant impulse of her race seemed to stir in her blood, with frantic leaps and bounds, at its first conscious awakening. She gave herself up to it wildly now. She was mad. She was mad. She was glad. She was happy.
Then she began to turn round again, slowly, slowly, slowly. As she turned, she raised the boa now high above her head; now held it low on one side, now stooped down and caressed it. At times, as she played with it, the lifeless thing seemed to glide from her grasp in curling folds and elude her; at others, she caught it round the neck like a snake, and twisted it about her arm, or let it twine and encircle her writhing body. Like a snake! like a snake! That idea ran like wildfire through her burning veins. It was a snake, indeed, she wanted; a real live snake; what would she not have given, if it were only Sardanapalus!
Sardanapalus, so glossy, so beautiful, so supple, that glorious green serpent, with his large smooth coils, and his silvery scales, and his darting red tongue, and his long lithe movements. Sardanapalus, Sardanapalus, Sardanapalus! The very name seemed to link itself with the music in her head. It coursed with her blood. It rang through her brain. And another as well. Cyril Waring, Cyril Waring, Cyril Waring, Cyril Waring! Oh! great heavens, what would Cyril Waring say now, if only he could see her in her mad mood that moment!
And yet it was not she, not she, not she, but some spirit, some weird, some unseen power within her. It was no more she than that boa there was a snake. A real live snake. Oh, for a real live snake! And then she could dance—tarantel, tarantella—as the spirit within her prompted her to dance it.
“Faster, faster,” said the spirit; and she answered him back, “Faster!”
Faster, faster, faster, faster she whirled round the room; the boa grew alive; it coiled about her; it strangled her. Her candle failed; the wick in the socket flickered and died; but Elma danced on, unheeding, in the darkness. Dance, dance, dance, dance; never mind for the light! Oh! what madness was this? What insanity had come over her? Would her feet never stop? Must she go on till she dropped? Must she go on for ever?
Ashamed and terrified with her maidenly sense, overawed and obscured by this hateful charm, yet unable to stay herself, unable to resist it, in a transport of fear and remorse, she danced on irresponsibly. Check herself she couldn’t, let her do what she would. Her whole being seemed to go forth into that weird, wild dance. She trembled and shook. She stood aghast at her own shame. She had hard work to restrain herself from crying aloud in her horror.
At last, a lull, a stillness, a recess. Her limbs seemed to yield and give way beneath her. She half fainted with fatigue. She staggered and fell. Too weary to undress, she flung herself upon the bed, just as she was, clothes and all. Her overwrought nerves lost consciousness at once. In three minutes she was asleep, breathing fast but peacefully.
When Elma woke up next morning, it was broad daylight. She woke with a start, to find herself lying upon the bed where she had flung herself. For a minute or two she couldn’t recollect or recall to herself how it had all come about. It was too remote from anything in her previous waking thought, too dream-like, too impossible. Then an unspeakable horror flashed over her unawares. Her face flushed hot. Shame and terror overcame her. She buried her head in her hands in an agony of awe. Her own self-respect was literally outraged. It wasn’t exactly remorse; it wasn’t exactly fear; it was a strange creeping feeling of ineffable disgust and incredulous astonishment.
There could be but one explanation of this impossible episode. She must have gone mad all at once! She must be a frantic lunatic!
A single thought usurped her whole soul. If she was going mad—if this was really mania—she could never, never, never—marry Cyril Waring.
For in a flash of intuition she knew that now. She knew she was in love. She knew he loved her.
In that wild moment of awakening all the rest mattered nothing. The solitary idea that ran now through her head, as the impulse to dance had run through it last night, was the idea that she could never marry Cyril Waring. And if Cyril Waring could have seen her just then! her cheeks burned yet a brighter scarlet at that thought than even before. One virginal blush suffused her face from chin to forehead. The maidenly sense of shame consumed and devoured her.
Was she mad? Was she mad? And was this a lucid interval?
Presently, as she lay still on her bed all dressed, and with her face in her hands, trembling for very shame, a little knock sounded tentatively at the door of her bedroom. It was a timid, small knock, very low and soft, and, as it were, inquiring. It seemed to say in an apologetic sort of undertone, “I don’t know whether you’re awake or not just yet; and if you’re still asleep, pray don’t let me for a moment disturb or arouse you.”
“Who’s there?” Elma mustered up courage to ask, in a hushed voice of terror, hiding her head under the bed-clothes.
“It’s me, darling,” Mrs. Clifford answered, very softly and sweetly. Elma had never heard her mother speak in so tender and gentle a tone before, though they loved one another well, and were far more sympathetic than most mothers and daughters. And besides, that knock was so unlike mamma’s. Why so soft and low?
Had mamma discovered her? With a despairing sense of being caught she looked down at her tell-tale clothes and the unslept-in bed.
“Oh, what shall I ever do?” she thought to herself, confusedly. “I can’t let mamma come in and catch me like this. She’ll ask why on earth I didn’t undress last night. And then what could I ever say? How could I ever explain to her?”
The awful sense of shame-facedness grew upon her still more deeply than ever. She jumped up and whispered through the door, in a very penitent voice, “Oh, mother, I can’t let you in just yet. Do you mind waiting five minutes? Come again by-and-by. I—I—I’m so awfully tired and queer this morning somehow.”
Mrs. Clifford’s voice had an answering little ring of terror in it, as she replied at once, in the same soft tone—
“Very well, darling. That’s all right. Stay as long as you like. Don’t trouble to get up if you’d rather have your breakfast in bed. And don’t hurry yourself at all. I’ll come back by-and-by and see what’s the matter.”
Elma didn’t know why, but by the very tone of her mother’s voice she felt dimly conscious something strange had happened. Mrs. Clifford spoke with unusual gentleness, yet with an unwonted tremor.
“Thank you, dear,” Elma answered through the door, going back to the bedside and beginning to undress in a tumult of shame. “Come again by-and-by. In just five minutes.” It would do her good, she knew, in spite of her shyness, to talk with her mother. Then she folded her clothes neatly, one by one, on a chair; hid the peccant boa away in its own lower drawer; buttoned her neat little embroidered nightdress tightly round her throat; arranged her front hair into a careless disorder; and tried to cool down her fiery red cheeks with copious bathing in cold water. When Mrs. Clifford came back five minutes later, everything looked to the outer eye of a mere casual observer exactly as if Elma had laid in bed all night, curled up between the sheets, in the most orthodox fashion.
But all these elaborate preparations didn’t for one moment deceive the mother’s watchful glance, or the keen intuition shared by all the women of the Clifford family. She looked tenderly at Elma—Elma with her face half buried in the pillows, and the tell-tale flush still crimsoning her cheek in a single round spot; then she turned for a second to the clothes, too neatly folded on the chair by the bedside, as she murmured low—
“You’re not well this morning, my child. You’d better not get up. I’ll bring you a cup of tea and some toast myself. You don’t feel hungry, of course. Ah, no, I thought not. Just a slice of dry toast—yes, yes. I have been there. Some eau de Cologne on your forehead, dear? There, there, don’t cry, Elma. You’ll be better by-and-by. Stop in bed till lunch-time. I won’t let Lucy come up with the tea, of course. You’d rather be alone. You were tired last night. Don’t be afraid, my darling. It’ll soon pass off. There’s nothing on earth, nothing at all to be alarmed at.”
She laid her hand nervously on Elma’s arm. Half dead with shame as she was, Elma noticed it trembled. She noticed, too, that mamma seemed almost afraid to catch her eye. When their glance met for an instant the mother’s eyelids fell, and her cheek, too, burned bright red, almost as red, Elma felt, as her own that nestled hot so deep in the pillow. Neither said a word to the other of what she thought or felt. But their mute sympathy itself made them more shame-faced than ever. In some dim, indefinite, instinctive fashion, Elma knew her mother was vaguely aware what she had done last night. Her gaze fell half unconsciously on the bottom drawer. With quick insight, Mrs. Clifford’s eye followed her daughter’s. Then it fell as before. Elma looked up at her terrified, and burst into a sudden flood of tears. Her mother stooped down and caught her wildly in her arms. “Cry, cry, my darling,” ahe murmured, clasping her hard to her breast. “Cry, cry; it’ll do you good; there’s safety in crying. Nobody but I shall come near you to-day. Nobody else shall know! Don’t be afraid of me! Have not I been there, too? It’s nothing, nothing.”
With a burst of despair, Elma laid her face in her mother’s bosom. Some minutes later, Mrs. Clifford went down to meet her husband in the breakfast-room.
“Well?” the father asked, shortly, looking hard at his wife’s face, which told its own tale at once, for it was white and pallid.
“Well!” Mrs. Clifford answered, with a pre-occupied air. “Elma’s not herself this morning at all. Had a nervous turn after she went to her room last night. I know what it is. I suffered from them myself when I was about her age.” Her eyes fell quickly and she shrank from her husband’s searching glance. She was a plump-faced and well-favoured British matron now, but once, many years before, as a slim young girl, she had been in love with somebody—somebody whom by superior parental wisdom she was never allowed to marry, being put off instead with a well-connected match, young Mr. Clifford of the Colonial Office. That was all. No more romance than that. The common romance of every woman’s heart. A forgotten love. Yet she tingled to remember it.
“And you think?” Mr. Clifford asked, laying down his newspaper and looking very grave.
“I don’t think. I know,” his wife answered hastily. “I was wrong the other day, and Elma’s in love with that young man, Cyril Waring. I know more than that, Reginald; I know you may crush her; I know you may kill her; but if you don’t want to do that, I know she must marry him. Whether we wish it, or whether we don’t, there’s nothing else to be done. As things stand now, it’s inevitable, unavoidable. She’ll never be happy with anybody else—she must have HIM—and I, for one, won’t try to prevent her.”
Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., sometime Administrator of the island of St. Kitts, gazed at his wife in blank astonishment. She spoke decidedly; he had never heard her speak with such firmness in his life before. It fairly took his breath away. He gazed at his wife blankly as he repeated to himself in very slow and solemn tones, each word distinct, “You, for one, won’t try to prevent her!”
“No, I won’t,” Mrs. Clifford retorted defiantly, assured in her own mind she was acting right. “Elma’s really in love with him; and I won’t let Elma’s life be wrecked—as some lives have been wrecked, and as some mothers would wreck it.”
Mr. Clifford leaned back in his chair, one mass of astonishment, and let the Japanese paper-knife he was holding in his right hand drop clattering from his fingers. “If I hadn’t heard you say it yourself, Louisa,” he answered, with a gasp, “I could never have believed it. I could—never—have—believed it. I don’t believe it even now. It’s impossible, incredible.”
“But it’s true,” Mrs. Clifford repeated. “Elma must marry the man she’s in love with.”
Meanwhile poor Elma lay alone in her bedroom upstairs, that awful sense of remorse and shame still making her cheeks tingle with unspeakable horror. Mrs. Clifford brought up her cup of tea herself. Elma took it with gratitude, but still never dared to look her mother in the face. Mrs. Clifford, too, kept her own eyes averted. It made Elma’s self-abasement even profounder than before to feel that her mother instinctively knew everything.
The poor child lay there long, with a burning face and tingling ears, too ashamed to get up and dress herself and face the outer world, too ashamed to go down before her father’s eyes, till long after lunchtime. Then there came a noise at the door once more; the rustling of a dress; a retreating footstep. Somebody pushed an envelope stealthily under the door. Elma picked it up and examined it curiously. It bore a penny stamp, and the local postmark. It must have come then by the two o’clock delivery, without a doubt; but the address, why, the address was written in some unknown hand, and in printing capitals. Elma tore it open with a beating heart, and read the one line of manuscript it contained, which was also written in the same print-like letters.
“Don’t be afraid,” the letter said, “It will do you no harm. Resist it when it comes. If you do, you will get the better of it.”
Elma looked at the letter over and over again in a fever of dismay. She was certain it was her mother had written that note. But she read it with tears, only half-reassured—and then burnt it to ashes, and proceeded to dress herself.
When she went down to the drawing-room, Mrs. Clifford rose from her seat, and took her hand in her own, and kissed her on one cheek as if nothing out of the common had happened in any way. The talk between them was obtrusively commonplace. But all that day long, Elma noticed her mother was far tenderer to her than usual; and when she went up to bed Mrs. Clifford held her fingers for a moment with a gentle pressure, and kissed her twice upon her eyes, and stifled a sigh, and then broke from the room as if afraid to speak to her.
Elma Clifford wasn’t the only person who passed a terrible night and suffered a painful awakening on the morning after the Holkers’ garden-party. Colonel Kelmscott, too, had his bad half-hour or so before he finally fell asleep; and he woke up next day to a sense of shame and remorse far more definite, and, therefore, more poignant and more real than Elma’s.
Hour after hour, indeed, he lay there on his bed, afraid to toss or turn lest he should wake Lady Emily, but with his limbs all fevered and his throat all parched, thinking over the strange chance that had thus brought him face to face, on the threshold of his honoured age, with the two lads he had wronged so long and so cruelly.
The shock of meeting them had been a sudden and a painful one. To be sure, the Colonel had always felt the time might come when his two eldest sons would cross his path in the intricate maze of London society. He had steeled himself, as he thought, to meet them there with dignity and with stoical reserve. He had made up his mind that if ever the names he had imposed upon them were to fall upon his startled ears, no human being that stood by and looked on should note for one second a single tremor of his lips, a faint shudder of surprise, an almost imperceptible flush or pallor on his impassive countenance. And when the shock came, indeed, he had borne it, as he meant to bear it, with military calmness. Not even Mrs. Clifford, he thought, could have discovered from any undertone of his voice or manner that the two lads he received with such well-bred unconcern were his own twin sons, the true heirs and inheritors of the Tilgate Park property.
And yet, the actual crisis had taken him quite by surprise, and shaken him far more than he could ever have conceived possible. For one thing, though he quite expected that some day he would run up unawares against Guy and Cyril, he did NOT expect it would be down in the country, and still less within a few miles’ drive of Tilgate. In London, of course, all things are possible. Sooner or later, there, everybody hustles and clashes against everybody. For that reason, he had tried to suggest, by indirect means, when he launched them on the world, that the twins should tempt their fortune in India or the colonies. He would have liked to think they were well out of his way, and out of Granville’s, too. But, against his advice, they had stayed on in England. So he expected to meet them some day, at the Academy private view, perhaps, or in Mrs. Bouverie Barton’s literary saloon, but certainly NOT on the close sward of the Holkers’ lawn, within a few short miles of his own home at Tilgate.
And now he had met them, his conscience, that had lain asleep so long, woke up of a sudden with a terrible start, and began to prick him fiercely.
If only they had been ugly, misshapen, vulgar; if only they had spoken with coarse, rough voices, or irritated him by their inferior social tone, or shown themselves unworthy to be the heirs of Tilgate—why then, the Colonel might possibly have forgiven himself! But to see his own two sons, the sons he had never set eyes on for twenty-five years or more, grown up into such handsome, well-set, noble-looking fellows—so clever, so bright, so able, so charming—to feel they were in every way as much gentlemen born as Granville himself, and to know he had done all three an irreparable wrong, oh, THAT was too much for him. For he had kept two of his sons out of their own all these years, only in order to make the position and prospects of the third, at last, certainly doubtful, and perhaps wretched.
There was much to excuse him to himself, no doubt, he cried to his own soul piteously in the night watches. Proud man as he was, he could not so wholly abase himself even to his inmost self as to admit he had sinned without deep provocation. He thought it all over in his heart, just there, exactly as it all happened, that simple and natural tale of a common wrong, that terrible secret of a lifetime that he was still to repent in sackcloth and ashes.
It was so long before—all those twenty-six years, or was it twenty-eight?—since his regiment had been quartered away down in Devonshire. He was a handsome subaltern then, with a frank open face—Harry Kelmscott, of the Greys—just such another man, he said to himself in his remorse, as his son Granville now—or rather, perhaps, as Guy and Cyril Waring. For he couldn’t conceal from himself any longer the patent fact that Lucy Waring’s sons were like his own old self, and sturdier, handsomer young fellows into the bargain than Lady Emily Kelmscott’s boy Granville, whom he had made into the heir of the Tilgate manors. The moor, where the Greys were quartered that summer, was as dull as ditch-water. No society, no dances, no hunting, no sport; what wonder a man of his tastes, spoiling for want of a drawing-room to conquer, should have kept his hand in with pretty Lucy Waring?
But he married her—he married her. He did her no wrong in the end. He hadn’t that sin at least to lay to his conscience.
Ah, well, poor Lucy! he had really been fond of her; as fond as a Kelmscott of Tilgate could reasonably be expected ever to prove towards the daughter of a simple Dartmoor farmer. It began in flirtation, of course, as such things will begin; and it ended, as they will end, too, in love, at least on poor Lucy’s side, for what can you expect from a Kelmscott of Tilgate? And, indeed, indeed, he said to himself earnestly, he meant her no harm, though he seemed at times to be cruel to her. As soon as he gathered how deeply she was entangled—how seriously she took it all—how much she was in love with him—he tried hard to break it off, he tried hard to put matters to her in their proper light; he tried to show her that an officer and a gentleman, a Kelmscott of Tilgate, could never really have dreamed of marrying the half-educated, half-peasant daughter of a Devonshire farmer. Though, to be sure, she was a lady in her way, too, poor Lucy; as much of a lady in manner and in heart as Emily herself, whose father was an earl, and whose mother was a marquis’s eldest daughter.
So much a lady in her way, in deed, in thought, and all that—one of nature’s gentlewomen—that when Lucy cried and broke her heart at his halting explanations, he was unmanned by her sobs, and did a thing no Kelmscott of Tilgate should ever have stooped to do—yes, promised to marry her. Of course, he didn’t attempt in his own heart to justify that initial folly, as lie thought it, to himself. He didn’t pretend to condone it. He only allowed he had acted like a fool. A Kelmscott of Tilgate should have drawn back long before, or else, having gone so far, should have told the girl plainly—at whatever cost, to her—he could go no further and have no more to say to her.
To be sure, that would have killed the poor thing outright. But a Kelmscott, you know, should respect his order, and shouldn’t shrink for a moment from these trifling sacrifices!
However, his own heart was better, in those days, than his class philosophy. He couldn’t trample on poor Lucy Waring. So he made a fool of himself in the end—and married Lucy. Ah, well! ah, well! every man makes a fool of himself once or twice in his life; and though the Colonel was ashamed now of having so far bemeaned his order as to marry the girl, why, if the truth must out, he would have been more ashamed still, in his heart of hearts, even then, if he hadn’t married her. He was better than his creed. He could never have crushed her.
Married her, yes; but not publicly, of course. At least, he respected public decency. He married her under his own name, to be sure, but by special licence, and at a remote little village on the far side of the moor, where nobody knew either himself or Lucy. In those days, he hadn’t yet come into possession of the Tilgate estates; and if his father had known of it—well, the Admiral was such a despotic old man that he’d have insisted on his son’s selling out at once, and going off to Australia or heaven knows where, on a journey round the world, and breaking poor Lucy’s heart by his absence. Partly for her sake, the Colonel said to himself now in the silent night, and partly for his own, he had concealed the marriage—for the time being—from the Admiral.
And then came that horrible embroilment—oh, how well he remembered it. Ah me, ah me, it seemed but yesterday—when his father insisted he was to marry Lady Emily Croke, Lord Aldeburgh’s daughter; and he dared not marry her, of course, having a wife already, and he dared not tell his father, on the other hand, why he couldn’t marry her. It was a hateful time. He shrank from recalling it. He was keeping Lucy, then his own wedded wife, as Mrs. Waring, in small rooms in Plymouth; and yet he was running up to town now and again, on leave, as the gay young bachelor, the heir of Tilgate Park—and meeting Emily Croke at every party he went to in London—and braving the Admiral’s wrath by refusing to propose to her. What he would ever have done if Lucy had lived, he couldn’t imagine. But, there! Lucy DIDN’T live; so he was saved that bother. Poor child, it brought tears to his eyes even now to think of her. He brushed them furtively away, lest he should waken Lady Emily.
And yet it was a shock to him, the night Lucy died. Just then, he could hardly realize how lucky was the accident. He sat there by her side, the day the twins were born, to see her safely through her trouble; for he had always done his duty, after a fashion, by Lucy. When a girl of that class marries a gentleman, don’t you see, and consents, too, mind you, to marry him privately, she can’t expect to share much of her husband’s company. She can’t expect he should stultify himself by acknowledging her publicly before his own class. And, indeed, he always meant to acknowledge her in the end—after his father’s death, when there was no fear of the Admiral’s cutting off his allowance.
But how curiously events often turn out of themselves. The twins were born on a Friday morning, and by the Saturday night, poor Lucy was lying dead, a pale, sweet corpse, in her own little room, near the Hoe, at Plymouth. It was a happy release for him though he really loved her. But still, when a man’s fool enough to love a girl below his own station in life—the Colonel paused and broke off. It was twenty-seven years ago now, yet he really loved her. He couldn’t find it in his heart even then to indorse to the full the common philosophy of his own order.
So there he was left with the two boys on his hands, but free, if he liked, to marry Lady Emily. No reason on earth, of course, why he shouldn’t marry her now. So, naturally, he married her—after a fortnight’s interval. The Admiral was all smiles and paternal blessings at this sudden change of front on his son’s part. Why the dickens Harry hadn’t wanted to marry the girl before, to be sure he couldn’t conceive; hankering after some missy in the country, he supposed, that silly rot about what they call love, no doubt; but now that Harry had come to his senses at last, and taken the Earl’s lass, why, the Admiral was indulgence and munificence itself; the young people should have an ample allowance, and my daughter-in-law, Lady Emily, should live on the best that Tilgate and Chetwood could possibly afford her.
What would you have? the Colonel asked piteously, in the dead of night, of his own conscience. How else could he have acted? He said nothing. That was all, mind you, he declared to himself more than once in his own soul. He told no lies. He made no complications. While the Admiral lived, he brought up Lucy’s sons, quite privately, at Plymouth. And as soon as ever the Admiral died, he really and truly meant to acknowledge them.
But fathers never die—in entailed estates. The Admiral lived so long—quite, quite too long for Guy and Cyril. Granville was born, and grew to be a big boy, and was treated by everybody as the heir to Tilgate. And now the Colonel’s difficulties gathered thicker around him. At last, in the fulness of time, the Admiral died, and slept with his fathers, whose Elizabethan ruff’s were the honour and glory of the chancel at Tilgate; and then the day of reckoning was fairly upon him. How well he remembered that awful hour. He couldn’t, he couldn’t. He knew it was his duty to acknowledge his rightful sons and heirs, but he hadn’t the courage. Things had all altered so much.
Meanwhile, Guy and Cyril had gone to Charterhouse as nobody’s wards, and been brought up in the expectation of earning their own livelihood, so no wrong, he said casuistically, had been done to THEM, at any rate. And Granville had been brought up as the heir of Tilgate. Lady Emily naturally expected her son to succeed his father. He had gone too far to turn back at last. And yet—
And yet, in his own heart, disguise it as he might, he knew he was keeping his lawful sons out of their own in the end, and it was his duty to acknowledge them as the heirs of Tilgate.
Hour after hour the unhappy man lay still as death on his bed and reasoned in vain with his accusing conscience. To be sure, he said to himself, no man was bound by the law of England to name his heir. It is for the eldest son himself to come forward and make his claim. If Guy and Cyril could prove their title to the Tilgate estates when he himself was dead, that was their private business. He wasn’t bound to do anything special to make the way easy for them beforehand.
But still, when he saw them, his heart arose and smote him. His very class prejudices fought hard on their behalf. These men were gentlemen, the eldest sons of a Kelmscott of Tilgate—true Kelmscotts to the core—handsome, courtly, erect of bearing. Guy was the very image of the Kelmscott of Tilgate Park who bled for King Charles at Marston Moor; Cyril had the exact mien of Sir Rupert Kelmscott, Knight of Chetwood, the ablest of their race, whose portrait, by Kneller, hung in the great hall between his father; the Admiral, and his uncle, Sir Frederick. They had all the qualities the Colonel himself associated with the Kelmscott name. They were strong, brave, vigorous, able to hold their own against all comers. To leave them out in the cold was not only wrong—it was also, he felt in his heart of hearts, a treason to his order.
At last, after long watching, he fell asleep. But he slept uneasily. When he woke, it was with a start. He found himself murmuring to himself in his troubled sleep, “Break the entail, and settle a sum on the two that will quiet them.”
It was the only way left to prevent public scandal, and to save Lady Emily and his son Granville from a painful disclosure: while, at the same time, it would to some extent satisfy the claims of his conscience.
Compromise, compromise; there’s nothing like compromise. Colonel Kelmscott had always had by temperament a truly British love of compromise.
To carry out his plan, indeed, it would be necessary to break the entail twice; once formally, and once again really. He must begin by getting Granville’s consent to the proposed arrangement, so as to raise ready money with which to bribe the young men; and as soon as Granville’s consent was obtained, he must put it plainly to Guy and Cyril, as an anonymous benefactor, that if they would consent to accept a fixed sum in lieu of all contingencies, then the secret of their birth would be revealed to them at last, and they would be asked to break the entail on the estates as eldest sons of a gentleman of property.
It was a hard bargain; a very hard bargain; but then these boys would jump at it, no doubt; expecting nothing as they did, they’d certainly jump at it. It’s a great point, you see, to come in suddenly, when you expect nothing, to a nice lump sum of five or six thousand!
So much so, indeed, that the real difficulty, he thought, would rather lie in approaching Granville.
After breakfast that morning, however, he tapped his son on the shoulder as he was leaving the table, and said to him, in his distinctly business tone, “Granville, will you step with me into the library for ten minutes’ talk? There’s a small matter of the estate I desire to discuss with you.”
Granville looked back at him with a curiously amused air.
“Why, yes,” he said shortly. “It’s a very odd coincidence. But do you know, I was going this morning myself to ask for a chance of ten minutes’ talk with you.”
He rose, and followed his father into the oak-panelled library. The Colonel sat down on one of the uncomfortable library chairs, especially designed, with their knobs and excrescences, to prevent the bare possibility of serious study. Granville took a seat opposite him, across the formal oak table. Colonel Kelmscott paused; and cleared his throat nervously. Then, with military promptitude, he darted straight into the very thick of the fray.
“Granville,” he said abruptly, “I want to speak with you about a rather big affair. The fact of it is, I’m going to break the entail. I want to raise some money.”
The son gave a little start of surprise and amusement. “Why, this is very odd,” he exclaimed once more, in an astonished tone. “That’s just the precise thing I wanted to talk about with you.”
Colonel Kelmscott eyed him with an answering start.
“Not debts!” he said slowly. “My boy, my boy, this is bad. Not debts surely, Granville; I never suspected it.”
“Oh, dear no,” Granville answered frankly. “No debts, you may be sure. But I wanted to feel myself on a satisfactory basis—as to income and so forth: and I was prepared to pay for my freedom well. To tell you the truth outright, I want to marry.”
Colonel Kelmscott eyed him close with a very puzzled look. “Not Elma Clifford, my boy,” he said again quickly. “For of course, if it is her, Granville, I need hardly say—”
The young man cut him short with a hasty little laugh. “Elma Clifford,” he repeated, with some scorn in his musical voice, “Oh, dear no, not HER. If it had been her you may be sure there’d be no reason of any sort for breaking the entail. But the fact is this: I dislike allowances one way or the other. I want to feel once for all I’m my own master. I want to marry—not this girl or that, but whom ever I will. I don’t care to come to you with my hat in my hand, asking how much you’ll be kind enough to allow me if I venture to take Miss So-and-so or Miss What-you-may-call-it. And as I know you want money yourself for this new wing you’re thinking of, why, I’m prepared to break the entail at once, and sell whatever building land you think right and proper.”
The father held his breath. What on earth could this mean? “And who is the girl, Granville?” he asked, with unconcealed interest.
“You won’t care to hear,” his son answered carelessly.
Colonel Kelmscott looked across at him with a very red face. “Not some girl who’ll bring disgrace upon your mother, I hope?” he said, with a half-pang of remorse, remembering Lucy. “Not some young woman beneath your own station in life. For to that, you may be sure, I’ll never consent under any circumstances.”
Granville drew himself up proudly, with a haughty smile. He was a Kelmscott, too, as arrogant as the best of them.
“No, that’s not the difficulty,” he answered, looking rather amused than annoyed or frightened. “My tastes are NOT low. I hope I know better than to disgrace my family. The lady I want to marry, and for whose sake I wish you to make some arrangement beforehand is—don’t be surprised—well, Gwendoline Gildersleeve.”
“Gwendoline Gildersleeve,” his father echoed, astonished; for there was feud between the families, “That rascally, land-grabbing barrister’s daughter! Why, how on earth do you come to know anything of her, Granville? Nobody in Surrey ever had the impertinence yet to ask me or mine to meet the Gildersleeves anywhere, since that disgraceful behaviour of his about the boundary fences. And I didn’t suppose you’d ever even seen her.”
“Nobody in Surrey ever did ask me to meet her,” Granville answered somewhat curtly. “But you can’t expect every one in London society to keep watch over the quarrels of every country parish in provincial England! It wouldn’t be reasonable. I met Gwendoline, if you want to know, at the Bertrams’, in Berkeley Square, and she and I got on so well together that we’ve—well, we’ve met from time to time in the Park, since our return from town, and we think by this time we may consider ourselves informally engaged to one another.”
Colonel Kelmscott gazed at his son in a perfect access of indignant amazement. Gilbert Gildersleeve’s daughter! That rascally Q.C.‘s! At any other moment such a proposal would have driven him forthwith into open hostilities. If Granville chose to marry a girl like that, why, Granville might have lived on what his father would allow him.
Just now, however, with this keen fit of remorse quite fresh upon his soul about poor Lucy’s sons, Colonel Kelmscott was almost disposed to accept the opening thus laid before him by Granville’s proposal.
So he temporized for awhile, nursing his chin with his hand, and then, after much discussion, yielded at last a conditional consent—conditional upon their mutual agreement as to the terms on which the entail was to be finally broken.
“And what sort of arrangement do you propose I should make for your personal maintenance, and this Gildersleeve girl’s household?” the Colonel asked at length, with a very red face, descending to details.
His son, without appearing to notice the implied slight to Gwendoline, named the terms that he thought would satisfy him.
“That’s a very stiff sum,” the master of Tilgate retorted; “but perhaps I could manage it; per—haps I could manage it. We must sell the Dowlands farm at once, that’s certain, and I must take the twelve thousand or so the land will fetch for my own use, absolutely and without restriction.”
“To build the new wing with?” the son put in, with a gesture of assent.
“To build the new wing with? Why, certainly not,” his father answered angrily. “Am I to bargain with my son what use I’m to make of my own property? Mark my words, I won’t submit to interference. To do precisely as I choose with, sir. To roll in if I like! To fling into the sea, if the fancy takes me!”
Granville Kelmscott stared hard at him. Twelve thousand pounds! What on earth could his father mean by this whim? he wondered. “Twelve thousand pounds is a very big sum to fling away from the estate without a question asked,” he retorted, growing hot “It seems to me, you too closely resemble our ancestors who came over from Holland. In matters of business, you know, the fault of the Dutch is giving too little and asking too much.”
His father glared at him. That’s the worst of this huckstering and higgling with your own flesh and blood. You have to put up with such intolerable insults. But he controlled himself, and continued. The longer he talked, however, the hotter and angrier he became by degrees. And what made him the hottest and angriest of all was the knowledge meanwhile that he was doing it every bit for Granville’s own sake; nay, more, that consideration for Granville alone had brought him originally into this peck of trouble.
At last he could contain himself with indignation no longer. His temper broke down. He flared up and out with it. “Take care what you do!” he cried. “Take care what you say, Granville! I’m not going to be bearded with impunity in my den. If you press me too hard, remember, I’ll ruin all. I can cut you off with a shilling, sir, if I choose—cut you off with a shilling. Yes, and do justice to others I’ve wronged for your sake. Don’t provoke me too far, I say, If you do, you’ll repent it.”
“Cut me off with a shilling, sir!” his son answered angrily, rising and staring hard at him. “Why, what do you mean by that? You know you can’t do it, My interest in the estate’s as good as your own. I’m the eldest son—”
He broke off suddenly; for at those fatal words, Colonel Kelmscott’s face, fiery red till then, grew instantly blanched and white with terror. “Oh, what have I done?” the unhappy man cried, seeing his son’s eyes read some glimpse of the truth too clearly in his look. “Oh, what have I said? Forget it, Granny, forget it! I didn’t mean to go so far as I did in my anger. I was a fool—a fool! I gave way too much. For Heaven’s sake, my boy, forget it, forget it!”
The young man looked across at him with a dazed and puzzled look, yet very full of meaning. “I shall never forget it,” he said slowly. “I shall learn what it means. I don’t know how things stand; but I see you meant it. Do as you like about the entail. It’s no business of mine. Take your pound of flesh, your twelve thousand down, and pay your hush-money! I don’t know whom you bribe, and I have nothing to say to it. I never dragged the honour of the Kelmscotts in the dust. I won’t drag it now. I wash my hands clean from it. I ask no questions. I demand no explanations. I only say this. Until I know what you mean—know whether I’m lawful heir to Tilgate Park or not, I won’t marry the girl I meant to marry. I have too much regard for her, and for the honour of our house, to take her on what may prove to be false expectations. Break the entail, I say! Raise your twelve thousand. Pay off your bloodhounds. But never expect me to touch a penny of your money, henceforth and for ever, till I know whether it was yours and mine at all to deal with.”
Colonel Kelmscott bent down his proud head meekly. “As you will, Granville,” he answered, quite broken with remorse, and silenced by shame. “My boy, my boy, I only wanted to save you!”