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Title: The Prodigals and Their Inheritance; vol. 1

Author: Mrs. Oliphant

Release date: June 24, 2020 [eBook #62464]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRODIGALS AND THEIR INHERITANCE; VOL. 1 ***

                             THE PRODIGALS

                MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.




                             THE PRODIGALS

                        _AND THEIR INHERITANCE_

                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT

                               AUTHOR OF
            “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD” “THE WIZARD’S SON”
                               ETC. ETC.


                            IN TWO VOLUMES

                                VOL. I


                             Methuen & Co.
                     36 ESSEX STREET, LONDON, W.C.
                                 1894




                             THE PRODIGALS




CHAPTER I


“Is it to-night he is coming, Winnie?”

“Yes, father. I have sent the dog-cart to the station.”

“It was unnecessary, quite unnecessary. What has he to do with dog-carts
or any luxury? He should have been left to find his way as best he
could. It is not many dog-carts he will find waiting at his beck and
call. That sort of indulgence, it is only putting nonsense in his head,
and making him think I don’t mean what I say.”

“But, father”--

“Don’t father me. Why don’t you speak like other girls in your
position? You have always been brought up to be a lady; you ought to use
the same words that ladies use. And mind you, Winifred, don’t make any
mistake, I mean what I say. Tom can talk, none better, but he will not
get over me; I have washed my hands of him. So long as I thought these
boys were going to do me credit I spared nothing on them; but now that I
know better--Don’t let him try to get over me, for it is no use.”

“Oh, papa, he is still so young; he has done nothing very bad, only
foolishness, only what you used to say all young men did.”

“Things are come to a pretty pass,” said the father, “when girls like
you, who call themselves modest girls, take up the defence of a
blackguard like Tom.”

“He is not a blackguard,” cried the girl colouring to her hair.

“You are an authority on the subject, I suppose? But perhaps I know a
little better. He and his brother have taken me in--me, a man that never
was taken in in my life before! but now I wash my hands of them both.
There’s the money for his journey and the letter to Stafford. No--on
second thoughts I’ll not give him the money for his journey; he’d stay
in London and spend it, and then think there was more where that came
from. Write down the office of the Cable Line in Liverpool--he’ll get
his ticket there.”

“But you’ll see him, papa?”

“Why should I see him? I know what would happen--you and he together
would fling yourselves at my feet, or some of that nonsense. Yes, you’re
right--on the whole, I think I will see him, and then you’ll know once
for all how little is to be looked for from me.”

“Oh, papa! you do yourself injustice; your heart is kinder than you
think,” cried Winifred, with tears.

Mr. Chester got up and walked from one end to the other of the long
room. It was lighted up as if for a great entertainment, though the
father and daughter were alone in it. He drew aside the curtains at the
farther end and looked out into the night.

“Raining,” he said. “He would have liked a fly from the station much
better than the dog-cart. These puppies with their spoiled
constitutions, they can’t support a shower. I am kinder than I think, am
I? Don’t let Tom presume on that. If I’m better than I think myself, I’m
a deal worse than you think me. And he’s cut me to the heart, he’s cut
me to the heart!” This was said with a little vehemence which looked
like feeling. He resumed, a few minutes after: “What a fine thing it
seemed for a man like me, that began in a small way, to have two sons to
be educated with the best, just as good as dukes, that would know how to
make a figure in the world and do me credit. Credit! two broken-down
young profligates, two cads that have never held up their heads, never
made friends, never done anything but spend money all their lives! What
have I done that this should happen to me? Your mother was but a poor
creature, and her family no great things; but that my boys, my sons,
should take after the Robinsons and not after me! Hold your tongue and
let me speak. It should be a warning to you whom you marry; for, mind
you, it’s not only your husband he’ll be, but the father of your
children, taking after him, perhaps, to wring your heart.” He had been
walking about the room all this time, growing more and more vehement.
Now he flung himself heavily into his chair. “Yes,” he said, “it will be
better that I should see him. He’ll know then, once for all, how much he
has to expect from me.”

“Papa,” cried Winifred, drying her eyes, “if my mother had lived”--

“If she had lived!” he said, with a tone in which it was difficult to
distinguish whether regret or contempt most predominated. Perhaps it was
because he was taken by surprise that there was any conflict of feeling.
“We should have had some fine scenes in that case,” he added, with a
laugh. “She would have stuck to the boys through thick and thin; and
perhaps you would have been more on my side, Winnie; they say the girls
go with their father. True enough, you are the only one that takes after
me.”

“Oh, papa! George is the image of you.”

He got up again from his chair as if stung by some intolerable touch.

“Hold your tongue, child!” he said hoarsely; then, seating himself with
a forced laugh, “Kin in face, sworn enemies in everything else,” he
said.

The room in which this conversation went on was large but not lofty,
occupying the whole width of the house, which was an old country house
of the composite character, so usual in England, where generation after
generation adds and remodels to its fancy. It had been two rooms
according to the natural construction of the house, and the separation
between the two was marked by two pillars, one at either side, of
marble, which had been brought from some ruinous Italian palace, and
were as much out of place as could be conceived in their present
situation. The room, in general, bore the same contradictory character;
florid ornament and gilt work of the most _baroque_ character
alternating with articles of the latest fashion, and with pieces of
antiquity such as have become the test of taste in recent years. Mr.
Chester preferred cost above all other qualifications in the decoration
of his house, and his magnificence was bought dearly at the expense not
only of much money, but of every rule of harmony. He did not himself
mind this. It need scarcely be added that he was not the natural
proprietor of the manor-house which he had thus made gorgeous. He was a
man of great ambition who had made his fortune in trade, and whom the
desire, so universal and often so tragically foolish, though so natural,
of founding a family, had seized in a somewhat unusual way. His two sons
had received “the best education”; that is, they had been sent to a
public school and afterwards to Oxford in the most approved way. They
had not been used to much literature nor to a very refined atmosphere
at home, and it is possible that the very ordinary blood of the
Robinsons, their mother’s family, had more influence in their
constitutions than that fluid which their father thought of so much more
excellent quality, which came to them from the Chester fountain.

The Chesters had been pushing men for at least two generations. From the
fact that their name was the same as that of their native place, it was
uncharitably reported that Mr. Chester’s grandfather had been a
foundling picked up in the streets. But as he figured in the pedigree
which hung in the hall as George Chester, Esq., of the Cloisters,
Chester, strangers at least had no right to lend an ear to any such
tale, nor to inquire whether, as report said, it was as a lay clerk that
he had found a place in that venerable locality. William Chester, the
link between this mythical personage and Mr. Chester of Bedloe Manor,
had begun the family fortunes in Liverpool half a century before, and
his son, whose education was that of a choir boy in Chester Cathedral,
as his father’s had been, established upon that foundation a solid and,
indeed, large fortune, which he had fondly hoped by means of George and
Tom to hand down to a whole prosperous family of Chesters, transformed
into landowners, great proprietors, perhaps--who could tell?--Lord
Chancellors and Prime Ministers. The disappointment which comes upon
such a man when his children, instead of doing him honour, turn out the
proverbial spendthrifts and consumers of the newly-made fortune, does
not meet with any great degree of sympathy in the world. A tacit “serve
him right” is in the minds of most people. Much righteous indignation
has been expended upon a very different matter, upon the ambition even
of such a man as Scott to found a family: the moralist has been almost
glad that it came to nothing, that the children of the great man were
nobodies, that his hope was a mere dream. And how much more when the man
had, like George Chester, nothing but his money and a certain strenuous
determination and force of character to recommend him!

But the disappointment was not less bitter to the new man than if he had
been a monarch mourning over a degenerate son. Neither George nor Tom
did anything but get into scrapes at the University. They had no heads
for books, and they had the habit of rash expenditure, of
self-indulgence, of considering themselves masters of everything that
could be bought. Mr. Chester would have taken their extravagance in
perfectly good part, he would have winked at their peccadilloes and
forgiven everything had they done him credit as he said: nor was he
very particular as to the nature of the credit; had either manifested
any capacity for taking university prizes, or a good degree, that,
though he would have understood it little, would have delighted him. Had
they rowed in the eight or played in the eleven, he would have been
doubly proud of the distinction. Failing those legitimate paths to
honour, had they brought a rabble of the young aristocracy to Bedloe,
had they gone visiting to great houses, had they found a place even
among the train of any young duke or conspicuous person, he was so
easily pleased that he would have been content. But they did none of
these things. George, with the beautiful voice, of which his father was
not proud, since it awakened memories of hereditary talent which he did
not wish to keep before men’s minds, had not used this gift as a way of
making entrance into select circles, but roared it out in undergraduate
parties made up of clergymen’s sons, of young schoolmasters, of people,
as he said bitterly, no better, nay, not so good as himself; and made
friends with the lower class of the musical people, the lay clerks at
the Cathedral, the people who gave local concerts. He was quite ready to
join them, to sing with them, to take his pleasure among them, with a
return to all the old habits of the singing men at Chester, which was
bitterness to the father’s soul. It scarcely made it any worse that
George fell into ways of dissipation and went wrong as well. _That_ his
father, perhaps, might have forgiven him had it been done in better
company; but as it was, the sin was unpardonable. When news came to
Bedloe that George was about to marry a poor organist’s daughter, the
proceedings Mr. Chester took were very summary; he stopped his son’s
allowance instantly, provided him with a clerkship at Sydney, and sent
him off to the end of the world, requesting only that he might see him
no more.

Then Tom became his hope. Tom had aspirations higher than George’s, but
he went, if possible, more hopelessly astray. Tom had, or seemed to
have, something more of fancy and imagination than belonged to the rest
of his family. He was the clever one, bound, or so at least his father
hoped, to make a figure in the world; but he was idle, he was sarcastic
and hot-tempered, he quarrelled with everybody whom he ought to have
conciliated, and supported the company only of those who flattered and
agreed with him, and helped him to gratify his various tastes and
inclinations, which were not virtuous. If George had fallen among the
lower class of professionals, Tom’s company was, his father declared,
composed of the out-scourings of the earth. And when the inevitable
moment came in which Tom was plucked (or ploughed, as the word varies),
his father’s bitter disappointment and disgust came to the same result
as in his brother’s case. The civil letter in which his tutor lamented
Tom’s foolishness exasperated Mr. Chester almost to madness. No doubt he
had bragged in his day of his two boys who were to carry all before
them, and his humiliation was all the more hard to bear. He was
uncompromising and remorseless in the revenge he took. According to his
code, he who failed was the most criminal of mankind. Whatever a man
might do, so long as he attained something, if it were no more than
notoriety, there were hopes of him; but failure was insupportable to the
man of business--the self-made, and self-sustaining.

It was with a pang that he gave up the idea of all possibility as
regarded his sons; but he did so with the same decision and promptitude
with which he would have rejected a bad investment. He had still a
child, who was, indeed, one of the inferior sex, a mere girl, not for a
moment to be considered in the same light as a son, had the sons been
worthy, but something to fall back upon when they failed. Winifred, so
long as the boys were in the foreground of their father’s life, had cost
him little trouble. She had been so fortunate as to be provided with a
good governess when her mother died; and, unnoticed, unthought of, had
grown up into fair and graceful womanhood--in mind and manners the child
of the poor gentlewoman who had trained her, and who still remained in
the house as her companion and friend. Insensibly it had become apparent
to Mr. Chester that Winnie was the one member of his family who was not
a failure. The society around, the people whom he reverenced as county
people, but despised as not so rich as himself, received her with
genuine regard and friendship, even when they received himself with but
formal civility. As for George and Tom, not even their prospective
wealth during their time of favour had commended them to the county
neighbours, whose pride Mr. Chester cursed, yet regarded with
superstitious admiration. Winifred had broken through the stiffness of
these exclusive circles, but no one else; and even while he fumed over
the downfall of Tom, he had begun to console himself with the success of
Winnie. At the recent county ball she had been, if not the beauty, at
least the favourite of the evening. Lord Eden himself had complimented
her father upon her looks. He had tasted the sweetness of social success
for the first time by her means. All was not then lost. He condemned
Tom, as he had condemned George, by attainder and confiscation of all
his rights; and Winifred was elected to the post of heir and
representative of the Chesters. Perhaps the decision gave the father
himself a pang. It was coming down in the world. A man with his sons
about him has something of which to be glorious--but a mere girl! At the
best it was a humiliation. But in default of anything better it was
still a mode of triumph, after all. It secured his revenge upon the
worthless boys who had done nothing for his name, and a place among
those who recognised in Winnie, if not in any other member of the
family, their equal in one way, their superior in another.

He was a man of rapid conclusions, and he had made up his mind on this
point on the evening of the day on which he had heard of Tom’s
disgrace--for disgrace he had felt it to be, accepting no consolation
from the fact that many young men not thereafter to be despised met
with the same fate. He would not allow his son to return home, but had
his fate intimated to him at once by the solicitor whom Mr. Chester
chose to employ in business of this sort. It was to New Zealand this
time that the unfortunate was to be sent. His passage-money and fifty
pounds, and a desk in an office when he reached his destination--this
was the fate of the unhappy youth, fresh from all indulgences and
follies. No hope even was held out to him of ever retrieving his lost
position; and Tom knew with what remorseless decision George had already
been cut off. Perhaps he had not lamented as he might have done his
brother’s punishment, which left such admirable prospects to himself,
but it left no doubt on his mind as to his own fate. He had asked, what
George had not had the courage to ask, that he might come home and take
farewell of his sister, at least. And this had been granted to him. If
any forlorn hope was in his mind of being able to touch the heart of his
father, it was a very forlorn hope indeed, and one which he scarcely
ventured to whisper even to himself.

He had arrived at the country station which was nearest Bedloe while his
father and sister were talking of him, and had been received by the
groom with that somewhat ostentatious sympathy and regard for his
comfort with which servants are wont to show a consciousness of the
situation. The groom was very anxious that Mr. Tom should be protected
from the rain, the soft, continuous drizzle of a spring night. “I’ve
brought your waterproof, sir; the roads is heavy, and we’ll be a long
time getting home”--

“Never mind the waterproof,” said Tom; “I like the rain.”

“It’s cooling, sir; but after a while, when you’re soaked through--if
you get a chill, sir?”

“It don’t matter much,” said Tom. “How are they all at home?”

“Pretty nicely,” said the man, “though Mrs. Pierce do say that she don’t
like master’s looks, and Miss Winifred is that pale except when she
flushes up”--

“How’s Bayleaf?” This was Tom’s hunter which he never mounted, yet felt
a certain property in all the same.

“Nothing to brag of, sir. That poor animal, he’s like a Christian. He
knows as well when there’s something up”--

“You had better drive on,” said Tom. “How dark it is!”

“It’s all the rain, sir, like as if the skies themselves--But we’re glad
as the equinoctials is over, and you’ll have a good season for your
voyage. Shall you see Mr. George, sir, where you are going?”

At this Tom laughed, with a most unmirthful outburst. “No,” he said;
“that’s the fun of the thing--he in one country and I in another. It’s
all very nicely settled for us.”

“Let’s hope, sir,” said the man, “that when things get a little more
civilised there will be a railway or something. We should all like to
send our respects and duty to Mr. George.”

To this Tom made no reply. He was not in a very cheerful mood, nor did
this conversation tend to elevate his spirits. There was nothing
adventurous in his disposition. The distant voyage, the new world, the
banishment from all those haunts in which he could find his favourite
enjoyments, with an occasional compunction, indeed, but nothing strong
enough to disturb the tenor of his way, were terrible anticipations to
him. Some lurking hope there was still in his mind that his fate was
impossible; that such a catastrophe could not really be about to happen;
that his father would relent at the sight of him or at Winnie’s prayers.
It did not enter into Tom’s thoughts that Winnie would ever forsake him.
The thought of her own advantage would not move her. He was aware that,
in the question of George, it had more or less moved himself, and that
he had not, perhaps, thrown all that energy into his intercession for
his brother which he hoped and believed Winnie would employ for himself.
But then he had feared to irritate his father, who would bear more from
Winnie than from any one. At this moment, while he drove shivering
through the rain,--shivering with nervous depression rather than with
cold, for the evening was mild enough,--he had no doubt that she was
doing her best for him. And was it possible that his father could hold
out, that he could see the last of his sons go away to the ends of the
earth without emotion? The very groom was sorry for him, Bayleaf was
drooping in sympathy, the skies themselves weeping over his fate. When
the fate is our own, it is wonderful how natural it seems that heaven
and earth should be moved for us. In George’s case he had seen the other
side of the question. In his own the pity of it was far the most
powerful. His mind was almost overwhelmed by the prospect before him,
but as he drove along in the rain, with the groom’s compassionate voice
by his side in the dark, expressing now and then a respectful and veiled
sympathy, there flickered before Tom’s eyes a faint little light of
hope. Surely, surely, this, though it had happened to his brother, could
not happen to him? Surely the father’s heart was not hard enough, or
fate terrible enough, to inflict such a punishment upon _him_? Others,
perhaps, might deserve it, might be able to bear it; but he--how could
he bear it? Tom said to himself that in his case it was impossible, and
could not be.




CHAPTER II


In family troubles such as that which we have indicated, it is generally
a woman who is the chief sufferer. She stands between the conflicting
parties, and, whether she is mother or sister, suffers for both, unable
to soften judgment on one hand, or to reduce rebellion on the other; or
else securing a ground of reconciliation by entreaties and tears which
she would not use on her own behalf, and often by the sacrifice of her
own reason and power of judging, and conscious humiliation to all the
imbecilities of peace-making. A woman in such circumstances has to
pledge herself for reformations in which, alas! her heart has but
little faith. She has to persuade the angry father that his son has
erred less than appears, to invent a thousand excuses, to exhaust
herself in palliation of offences which are far more offensive and
terrible to her than to him whose wrath she deprecates; and she has to
convince the impatient and resentful son that his father is acting
rather in love than in anger, and that his sins have wounded as much as
they have exasperated. Those women who have no judgment of their own to
exercise, and who can believe everything, are the happiest in this
ever-returning necessity: and indeed in many complications of life it is
much better for all parties that the woman should be without judgment,
the soft and boneless angel of conventional romance. Winifred Chester
was not of this kind. She was a just and tender-hearted woman, full of
affection and compassion, to whom nature gave the hard task of
mediating between two parties whose conflicting errors she was, alas!
but too well able to estimate--the father, whose indignation and rage
were in fact sufficiently just, yet so little righteous, and her
brothers, of whom she knew that they neither felt any real compunction
nor intended any amendment. There is, let us hope, some special
indulgence for those luckless advocates of erring men who have to
promise amendment which they can put no faith in, and plead excuses
which to their own minds have no validity.

After the conversation which had been held in the great drawing-room,
when Mr. Chester settled himself to a study of the evening papers which
had just been brought in, Winifred left the room softly, and stole
upstairs to the window of her brother’s room, which commanded the
avenue, and from which she could see his approach. The room was faintly
lit with firelight and full of all the luxurious contrivances for
comfort to which a rich man’s sons are accustomed. Poor Tom! what would
he do without them all, without the means of procuring them? Poor
George! what was he doing, he who now had some years’ experience of work
and poverty? She stole behind the drawn curtains and looked out upon the
darkness and the falling rain. There was little light in the wild
landscape, and no sound but that of the rain pattering upon the thick
ivy which clothed the older part of the house, and streaming silently
down upon the trees, which were still bare, though swelling at every
point with the sap of spring. The air was soft and warm; the rain and
the darkness full of a wild sense of fertility and growth. Winifred’s
imagination depicted to her only too clearly the state of half-despair,
yet unconviction, in which her brother’s mind would be. He would not
believe it was possible, and yet he would know. He was very well aware
that his father was remorseless, yet he would not be able to understand
how ruin could overtake _him_. The circumstances brought back before her
vividly the other occasion on which she had implored in vain the
reversal of the sentence on her elder brother. George, too, had been
taken by surprise. He had not believed it, and when at last he was
convinced, had burst forth into wild defiance and consuming wrath. But
Tom would probably be less simple, and not manly at all: he would never
believe that all was over, that it was not possible to make another and
another appeal.

Winifred stood and watched for his coming, feeling that if by any will
of hers she could bring about an accident, either to delay her brother’s
arrival, or even to bring him into the house in a condition which would
compel a prolonged stay, she would have done it. Tom would have
arrived, it is to be feared, with a broken leg, or the beginnings of a
fever, could his sister have procured it or he would not have come at
all. Railway accidents occur in many cases when they do harm without
doing any good, but a railway accident which should awake some natural
movement in her father’s mind, which should perhaps make him anxious,
which would force him to exert himself on Tom’s behalf--what an
advantage that would be! Alas! such things do not come when people wish
for them. A broken arm or leg, what a small price to pay for the moral
advantages of reawakened interest, anxiety, the softening charm of an
illness and convalescence! No father could turn out of his house the
wounded boy who was brought home to be cured.

But Winifred’s wishes, it need not be said, were quite unavailing. By
and by she heard the steady tread of the horse, the roll of the wheels
over those little heaps of gravel with which the avenue was being
mended. Evidently Tom was coming, without any interposition of
Providence, to his fate. She ran softly down the stairs to meet him and
prevent any unnecessary sound or attempt to usher the returning prodigal
into his father’s presence. The door was open, the waterproof of the
groom glistening in the light, and Tom scrambling down from the dog-cart
with that drenched and dejected look which is the result of a long drive
through steady and persistent rain. He scarcely looked at the butler as
he stepped past, saying, “Is my father in?” in a voice as despondent as
his appearance, and not pausing to listen as the man began to explain--

“Master is at home, sir, but”--

“Tom! Oh, how wet you are! You must run upstairs and change first of
all.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind. I suppose there is a fire somewhere,”
said Tom. “Where are you sitting? in the dining-room? No supper for me.
I don’t want any supper. To arrive like this is calculated to give a
fellow an appetite, don’t you think?”

Winifred put her arm through her brother’s, wet though he was. She
whispered, “Don’t say anything before the servants,” as she led him
towards the open door of the room in which the table was laid for him
before the shining fire. Tom was mollified by the second glance at its
comfort and brightness.

“It looks warm here,” he said, suffering her to guide him. “Though why I
should mind warm or cold I don’t know. Look here, Winnie. There is this
interview with the governor; I’d better get it over, don’t you think?”

“Oh, Tom, come in and get warmed and eat something.”

“Is it going to be very bad, then?” the young man said.

“I think,” said Winifred anxiously, “you had much better change those
wet clothes; your room is ready.”

“Look here!” he cried; “all that about New Zealand, that’s all nonsense,
of course?” He watched the changes of her countenance as he spoke.

Winifred shook her head. “Oh, Tom, I told you long ago you must never
take what my father says as nonsense. He is not that sort of man. Come
to the fire, then, if you will not change your clothes. And here is
Hopkins coming with the tray. Don’t say anything before Hopkins, Tom.”

“Why shouldn’t I? If he means that, they’ll know soon enough. I don’t
believe he means it. The governor--the governor”--Tom’s voice died away
in his throat, partly because it trembled, partly because of Hopkins’
presence. “Yes, yes, that’ll do,” he said fretfully, as the butler
placed a chair for him, and stood waiting. “I don’t want anything to
eat, thank you. I’ll have a drink if you like. The governor,” he
resumed, with a sort of laugh, as Hopkins, knowing the nature of the
drink required, went off to fetch it, “would never repeat himself,
Winnie. He is not such a duffer as that. All very well once perhaps; but
to send George to Sydney and me to New Zealand--oh, that’s too much of a
good thing! I can’t believe he means it. Thank you, that’s more to the
purpose,” he added, as he took a large fizzing glass out of Hopkins’
hand.

“You need not wait. We have everything my brother will want,” said
Winifred. “Oh, Tom, what can I say to you? You know how my father had
set his heart on your success--success anyhow, he did not mind what
kind.”

“Well, well,” said Tom sulkily; “you women are always harping on what is
past. I know very well I have been an ass. But there is no such dreadful
harm done after all. I’m not fifty, if you come to that, and this time
I’ll work, I really will, and get through.”

Winifred said no more for the moment. She persuaded him to seat himself
at the table, to fortify himself with food. “We can talk it all over
when you have had your supper. There is plenty of time; and what a
wretched journey you must have had, Tom!”

“Wretched enough, but nothing so bad as the drive from the station, with
the rain pouring down upon one, and that fellow Short pitying one all
the way. Talk of not speaking before the servants--he knew as well as I
did I was in disgrace with the governor, and was sorry for me--my own
groom! Why didn’t you let me get a fly from the station? It would have
been twenty times more comfortable.”

“That is what my father said,” said Winifred, with a smile.

“Oh, he thought of that, did he? The governor has a great deal of
sense,” said Tom, brightening a little. “He understands a fellow better
than you can. I don’t say anything against you, Win; you are always as
good as you know how.”

Winifred looked at her brother with a tremulous smile of wonder and
pity. Nothing could be more forlorn than his appearance; the steam
rising from his wet coat, his hair limp on his forehead, his colourless
face more eloquent of anxiety and suspense than his words were. He
swallowed with difficulty the dainty food, the dish he specially liked,
and pushed his chair from the table with relief.

“Am I to see him to-night?” he said. “If it’s got to be, the sooner the
better. It will be a thing well over.”

“Tom,”--Winifred’s voice faltered, she could hardly say what she had to
say,--“I am afraid it is all a great deal worse than you think. He did
not want to see you at all, and if he has consented at last, it is
chiefly because he thinks you will then be convinced how little you have
to expect.”

Tom’s countenance fell, and then he made an effort to recover himself,
and laughed. “Nobody ever was so hard as the governor looks,” he said;
“he wants to frighten me, I know that.”

He looked anxiously in her eyes, and Winifred’s eyes were not
encouraging. Her brother broke out again with a stifled oath. “You can’t
mean me to suppose that that about New Zealand is true, Winnie? You
don’t mean that?”

“Dear Tom!” Winifred said, with tears in her eyes.

“Don’t dear Tom me! That’s not natural, you don’t mean it. Good heavens!
I’d sooner you were taking your fun out of me, if it was a moment for
that. I won’t go! I’m not a child to be ordered about like that. I tell
you I won’t go!”

“Oh, Tom! if you could but do anything at home; if you would but let him
see that you could manage for yourself! That might be of some use, if
you could do it, Tom.”

“I won’t go,” he repeated hoarsely, “to the other end of the world, away
from everything I care for! There is a limit to everything. You can tell
him I won’t do that. And all for what? For having been unlucky about my
books, as half the men in the university have been one time or the
other. What does it matter being ploughed? It happens every day.
Winnie, I swear to you I’ll work like--like a navvy, if I can only have
another chance.”

“Oh, Tom, I have said everything, I have tried every way. I think if you
were to do as you said just now, say to him that you won’t go to New
Zealand, that you can manage for yourself at home, that would be your
best chance. Show him that you can maintain yourself, do something,
write something, it does not matter what it is”--

“Maintain myself?” said Tom. He had left his seat, and was standing in
front of the fire, his pale face and dishevelled, damp hair showing
against the black marble of the mantelpiece; his eyes had a bewildered
and discomfited look. “Do something? It is so easy to talk. What am I to
do? Write? I am not one of the fellows that can write. I have never been
used to that sort of thing. I say, Winnie, for God’s sake speak to my
father! I can’t, I can’t go to that dreadful place.”

“Oh, Tom!” she cried, turning her head away.

To see him standing there, helpless, feeble, sure only of one thing, and
that that he himself was good for nothing, was like a sword in this
young woman’s heart. It is the most horrible of all the tortures that
women have to bear, to see the men belonging to them, whom they would so
fain look up to, breaking down into ruinous failure. He gave her a
distracted look, and when she withdrew her eyes, went and plucked her by
the sleeve. “Winnie, for Heaven’s sake tell my father! It’s all dreadful
to me: I can’t work in an office; I can’t go a long voyage. I hate the
sea, I am not strong, not a man that can rough it and knock about.
George was different, he was always that sort of fellow; and then he’s
married. Winnie, speak for me. You can do it if you like.”

“I have done nothing else ever since he told me, Tom, and I dare not say
any more. He will not listen, he says he will send me away too. I
shouldn’t care for that if I could help you, but I can’t--I can’t. It is
almost worse for me, for I can do nothing--nothing!”

“Oh no,” said Tom; “don’t make believe, Winnie. Worse for you?--Why,
what does it matter to you? While I am out at sea, perhaps in danger of
my life, you’ll be snug at home, with everything that heart can desire.
And who is he going to leave his money to, if he casts me off? You? Oh,
I see it all now! Why should you speak for me? It’s against your own
interests. I see it all now.”

She could only look at him with an appeal for pity in her eyes. She
could not protest that her own interests were little in her mind. There
are some things which it is impossible to say, as it ought to be
needless to say them. Tom for his part worked himself up to an outburst
of miserable, artificial rage which it is to be supposed was a relief to
his excitement.

“Oh, it is you that are to be his heir?” he cried. “A girl! I might have
known. No wonder you don’t speak up for me, when it’s all in your own
favour. I’m to be cut off, and George is to be cut off, all for you! Oh,
I might have known! A girl is always at home, wriggling and wriggling
into favour, cutting out the lawful heirs. And what does he think he’s
going to make of you, that haven’t even a name of your own, that are no
more good for the family than a stranger? George wasn’t enough, I might
have had the sense to see that--there was me that had to be got rid of
too, and now you’ve done it; now you have succeeded. Yes, yes! and this
is Winnie!” he cried in a burst of despairing rage. “Winnie! I thought
Winnie was my friend whoever failed me; and all this time you were
plotting to get rid of me too!”

Tom had been advancing towards her, gesticulating with fury, his hand
raised, his blood-shot eyes gleaming, when the door opened suddenly. In
a moment he fell back, his hand dropped by his side, the look as of a
beaten hound came into his eyes. Mr. Chester had come in, and set his
back against the door.




CHAPTER III


They were little, and he was tall; they were slight of form, and he was
massive and big--a vigorous man with a great “wind of going” about him,
like one who could push through every difficulty, and make his way. He
stood against the door, and looked at them; a man who felt more life in
him than was in both put together, to whom they were nobodies,
insignificant creatures whom he could make or unmake at his pleasure. He
looked at his son with contempt unmixed with pity. He was not touched by
Tom’s miserable looks, his air of hopeless dejection, or furtive,
trembling hope. And for the moment Winifred’s want of size and
importance struck him more than the fact which had been forced upon him,
that she had done him credit. He despised them both, the products of a
smaller race than his own, taking after their mother, like the
Robinsons. The Chesters were a better race in point of thews and sinews,
though nobody knew very well from what illegitimate source these sinews
came.

“Look here!” he said; “I don’t permit you to bully your sister. What’s
she done to you? She has always stood up for you a deal more than you
deserve. If I let you come here at all, it was because she insisted upon
it. I never could see what was the use of it, for my part.”

Tom’s rage had been subdued in a moment. He was supposed to be a being
of small will, unable to restrain himself; but he was capable of an
effort of the will when it was necessary, as most people are. He looked
at his father with a piteous desire to conciliate and touch his heart.
“I thought,” he said, “papa,--I hope you’ll forgive me,--that I had a
right to come here.”

“Don’t call me papa, sir. I like _her_ to do it, since others do it; but
when do you ever find a man with such a word in his mouth? Not that I
have to learn for the first time to-day that you are no man, and nothing
manlike is to be expected from you. No, I don’t see what right you have
here. If it had been your great-grandfather’s house, as many people
think, you might have had a certain right; but it’s my house, bought
with my money--and I have washed my hands of you.” He had been a little
vehement at first, but now was perfectly calm, delivering his sentences
with his hands in his pockets, looking down contemptuously upon his
son.

“I know, sir, that you have a right to be angry”--Tom began.

“I am not angry. I don’t care enough about it. So long as there was some
hope of you, I might be angry, but now that you’ve gone and made a fool
of me--the rich man that tried to make a gentleman of his son!--I might
as well have tried to make a gentleman of Winnie. As soon as I
understand it, that’s enough, and I’ve learned my lesson, thank you. You
are no good, and I have washed my hands of you.”

“Father, I know I have been an ass. You can’t say more to me than I have
said to myself. And I’ve learned my lesson too. Give me another chance,
and I’ll do all you wish,” he cried, holding up his hands, almost
falling on his knees.

“Come, I’m not going to have a scene out of the theatre,” said Mr.
Chester roughly. “I’ve given you all you have a right to ask of me--a
start in the world. When I was your age, fifty pounds in my pocket would
have seemed a fortune to me. And if you like,--there’s no better field
for a young man than New Zealand,--you may come home in twenty years
with as many thousands as you have pounds to take with you, or hundreds
of thousands if you have luck. The only thing is to exert yourself.
You’d thank me for the chance if you had any spirit. That’s all, I
think, there is to say. Winnie will tell you the rest. Cable Line,
Liverpool--I’ve taken you a first-class cabin, though on principle I
should have sent you in the steerage. Good luck to you, my boy! Work and
you’ll do well. Winnie will tell you the rest.”

“Father, you are not going to throw me overboard like this?” cried the
miserable young man, rushing forward as Mr. Chester turned round to open
the door.

“You are going to the bottom as fast as you can, and I throw you into
the lifeboat, which is a very different matter. You’ll find a decent
salary and an honest way of getting your living on the other side. Only
don’t think any more of Bedloe and that sort of thing. Good-bye. If you
do well, you can send Winnie word; if not”--He gave a shrug of his
shoulders. “Farewell to you, once for all: don’t think I am either to be
coaxed or bullied. What’s done is done, and I make no new beginnings.
Get him up in time once in his life, and let him leave to-morrow by the
first train, Winnie. I shall have to speak to Hopkins if I cannot trust
you.”

“Let him stay to-morrow. Oh, papa! don’t you see how ill he is
looking--how miserable he is? Let him stay to-morrow; let him get used
to the idea, papa.”

“I must speak to Hopkins, I see,” Mr. Chester said. “Hopkins, Mr. Tom
is going off to-morrow by the first train--see that he is not late. If
he misses that, he will lose his ship; and if you let him miss it, it
will be the worse for you. That’s enough, I hope. Tom, good-bye.”

“I can’t--I can’t get ready at a day’s notice. I have got no outfit--I
have nothing”--

“All that’s been thought of,” said Mr. Chester, waving his hand. “Winnie
will tell you. Good-bye!”

He left the brother and sister alone with a light step and a hard heart.
They could hear him whistling to himself as he went away. When Mr.
Chester whistled, the household trembled. The sound convinced Tom more
than anything that had been said. He threw himself down in the great
easy-chair by the fire, and covered his face with his hands. What the
sounds were that misery brought from his convulsed bosom we need not
pause to describe. Sobs or curses, what does it matter? He was in the
lowest deep of wretchedness--wretchedness which he had never believed
in, which had seemed to him impossible. He could not say that it was
impossible any longer, but still it seemed incredible, beyond all powers
of belief. His sister flew to him to comfort him, and wept over him,
notwithstanding the insult he had offered her; and he himself forgot,
which was more wonderful, and clung to her as to his only consolation.
Misery of this kind which has no nobleness in it, but only weakness,
cowardice--compunction in which is no repentance--are of all things in
the world the most terrible to witness. And Winnie loved her brother,
and felt everything that was unworthy in him to the bottom of her heart.

Next morning he went away with red eyes and a pallid face and quivering
lips. It was all he could do to keep up the ordinary forms of composure
as he crossed the threshold of his father’s house. He was sorry for
himself with an acute and miserable anguish, broken down, without any
higher thought to support him. He never believed it would have come to
this. He could not believe it now, though it had come. He feared the
voyage, the unknown world, the unaccustomed confinement, every thing
that was before him; that he should be no longer the young master, but a
mere clerk; that he should have to work for his living; that all his
little false importance was gone; that he should be presently, he who
could not endure the sea, sick and miserable on a long voyage. All these
details drifted across his mind in the midst of the current of miserable
consciousness that all was over with him, and the impulse of frenzied
resistance that now and then rose in his mind, resistance that meant
nothing, that could make no stand against inexorable fact.

Winifred stood at the door as long as he was in sight; but the horse was
fresh and went fast, which was a relief. She stood there still with the
fresh damp morning air in her face, after the wheels had ceased to sound
in the avenue. It was a dull morning after the rain, but the air was
full of the sensation of spring, the grass growing visibly, the buds
loosening from their brown husks on the trees, the birds twittering
multitudinous, all full of hope in the outside world, all dismal in that
which was within. Many people envied Winifred Chester--and if her father
carried out his intention, and made her the heir of all his wealth, many
more would envy and many court the young mistress of Bedloe; but Winnie
felt there was scarcely any woman she knew with whom she might not
profitably change places at this moment of her life. There was old Miss
Farrell, sitting serenely among her wools and silks, anxious about
nothing but a new pattern, amusing herself with the recollections of the
past which she recounted to her favourite and best pupil, day after day,
as they sat together. Winifred knew them all, yet was never tired of
these chapters in life. Though Miss Farrell was sixty and Winnie only
twenty-three, she thought she would gladly change places with her
companion--or with the woman at the lodge who had sick children for whom
to work and mend. No one in the world, she thought, had at that moment a
burden so heavy as her own. She was called in after a while to Mr.
Chester’s room, which was a large and well-filled library, though its
books were little touched except by herself. He was seated there as
usual surrounded by local papers,--attending the moment when the _Times_
should arrive with its more authoritative views,--with many letters and
telegrams on his table; for though he went seldom to business, he still
kept the threads in his hand. He demanded from her an account of Tom’s
departure, listening with an appearance of enjoyment.

“It is the best thing that could happen to him,” he said, “if there is
anything in him at all. If there isn’t, of course he will go to the
wall--but so he would do anyhow.”

“Oh, papa! He is your son.”

“And what of that? He’s no more like me than Hopkins is. You are the
only one that is like me. I have sent for Babington to make another
will.”

“I do not want your money, papa.”

“Softly, young woman; nobody is offering it to you. I don’t mean to be
like King Lear. Indeed, for anything I know, I may marry, and put all
your noses out of joint. But in the meantime”--

“I will never supplant my brother,” said Winifred. “I will never take
what does not belong to me. I wish you would dispose of it otherwise,
father. It is yours to do what you like with it; but I have a will of my
own too.”

“That you have,” he said with a smile; “that’s one of the things I like
in you. Not like that cur, that could do nothing but shiver and cringe
and cry.”

“Tom did not cry,” she exclaimed indignantly. “He did not think you
could have the heart. And how could you have the heart? Your own son! I
ask myself sometimes whether you have any heart at all.”

“Ask away; you are at liberty to form your own opinion,” he said
good-humouredly. “If that fellow had faced me as you do, now--but mind
you, Winnie, if you go against me, I am not so partial to you but that I
shall take means to have my own way. What I have, nobody in this world
has any right to but myself. I have made it every penny, and I shall
dispose of it as I please. If you think you will be able to do what you
like with it after I am gone, you’re mistaken; take care--there are ways
in which you can displease me now, as much as Tom has done. So you had
better think a little of your own affairs.”

She looked at him with startled eyes.

“I don’t wish to displease you, papa--I don’t know”--

“Not what I mean perhaps? Remember that the sort of match which might be
good enough for Winnie with two brothers over her head, might not be fit
for Miss Chester of Bedloe. I don’t want to say any more.”

This silenced Winifred, whatever it might mean. She said no more, but
withdrew hastily, with a paleness and discomfiture which was little
like the grief and indignation with which she entered the room. Her
father looked after her with a chuckle.

“That has settled her, I hope,” he said to himself.




CHAPTER IV


Miss Farrell came home next day from her visit. She was a little old
lady of the period when people became old early, and assumed the dress
and the habits of age before it was at all necessary. She was about
sixty, but she had been distinctly an old lady for ten years. She wore a
cap coming close round her face, and tied under her chin. Whenever she
had the least excuse for doing so, she wore a shawl, an article the
putting on of which she considered to afford one of many proofs whether
or not the wearer was “a lady,” which was to Miss Farrell something more
than a mere question of birth. She was very neat, very small, very
light-hearted, seeing the best in everything. Even Mr. Chester, though
she saw as little of him as possible, she was able to talk about as
“your dear father” to her pupil; for, to be sure, whatever might be the
opinion of other people, every father ought to be dear to his own child.
Miss Farrell had gone on living at Bedloe since Winifred’s education was
finished, for no particular reason,--at least, for no reason but love.
She was a person full of prejudices in favour of aristocracy and against
persons of low birth, but she was sufficiently natural to be quite
inconsistent, and contradict herself whenever it pleased her--for, as a
matter of fact, she preferred Winifred Chester, who was of no family at
all, to several young ladies of the caste of Vere de Vere, whom she had
formerly had under her care. How she had managed to “get on” with Mr.
Chester was a problem to many people, and why she could choose to stay
in the house of an individual so little congenial. As a matter of fact,
it was not so difficult as people supposed. She was a woman who
systematically put the best interpretation upon everything, moved
thereto not only by natural inclination, but by profound policy; for it
did not consist with Miss Farrell’s dignity ever to suppose, or to allow
any one to suppose, that it was possible for her to be slighted. She
would permit no possibility of offence to herself. It occasionally
happened that people had bad manners, which was so very much worse for
themselves than for any one else. Miss Farrell had made up her mind from
the beginning of her career never to accept a slight, nor to look upon
herself as a dependant. If offence was so thrust upon her that she could
not refuse to be aware of it, she left the house at once; but on less
serious occasions presented a serene obtuseness, apologising to others
for the peculiarities which were “such a pity,” or the “want of tact”
which was so unfortunate. In this way she had overawed persons more
confident in their own _savoir faire_ than Mr. Chester. She had always
been admirable in her own sphere, and the alarm of an anxious mother who
had obtained such a treasure, lest the peace of the house should be
endangered by the sudden departure of the governess, may be supposed.
Once it had occurred to her in her life to be compelled to take this
strong step. She never required to do it again. As for Winifred, it was
long since the relation of pupil and teacher had been over between them;
but the motherless girl of the _parvenu_, to whom she went with
reluctance, and chiefly out of compassion, had entirely gained the heart
of the proud and tender little woman. She did not hesitate to say that
Winifred was beyond all rules.

“It does not matter who her father was--I have always thought the mother
must have been a lady,” Miss Farrell said, with a conception of the case
very different from that of the master of the house. “But at all events
Winifred is--born. I never said I insisted upon a number of quarterings.
I don’t care who was her great-grandfather--nothing could be worse than
the father, if you come to that; but she is a lady--as good as the
Queen.”

“You have made her so,” said the wife of the Rector, who was her
confidante.

“No one can make a lady, except the Almighty. It is a thing that has to
be born,” was the prompt reply.

But, notwithstanding, Miss Farrell was able to speak to Winifred about
“your dear father,” and to look upon all the proceedings of the boys
with an indulgence which sometimes almost exasperated their sister, yet
was an unspeakable consolation and support to her in the troubles of
the past years. For to have some one who will not believe any evil, who
will never appear conscious of the existence of anything that needs
concealing, who will know exactly how not to ask too many questions, yet
not to refrain from questions altogether, is, in the midst of family
trouble, a help and comfort unspeakable. Winifred’s mind was full to
overflowing when her friend came back. She had felt that it was almost
impossible to exist without speaking to some one, delivering herself of
the burden that weighed upon her. It had been a relief to have Miss
Farrell away at the moment of Tom’s visit, and to feel that no eye but
her own had looked upon her brother’s discomfiture, but it was a relief
now to meet her frank look and unhesitating question--

“Well, my dear, and how about poor Tom?”

“He is gone,” Winifred said, the tears coming to her eyes. “He is to
sail from Liverpool to-day.”

“My dear,” said Miss Farrell, “it is very natural for you to feel it,
but do you know it is the very best thing that could have happened for
him? It will no doubt be the making of him. He has never had any need to
rely on himself, he has always felt his father behind him. Now that he
is sent into the world on his own account, it will rouse all his
strength. Yes, cry, my dear, it will do you good. But I approve, for my
part. Your dear father has been very wise. He has done what was the best
for Tom.”

“Do you think so? Perhaps if that were all--But it does not seem to have
been the best thing for George, and how can we tell if it will answer
with Tom?”

“George, you see, has married, which brings in a new element--a great
deal more comfortable for him, but still what the gentlemen call a new
factor, you know, that we are not acquainted with. Besides, he is a
different kind of boy. But Tom wants to be thrown on his own resources.
Depend upon it, my dear, it is the very best thing for him. I should
have thought that you would have seen that with your good sense.”

“Oh, Miss Farrell, if that were all!”

“And is there something more? Don’t tell me unless you like; but you
know you take a darker view than I do.”

“There is but one view to take,” Winifred said. “It makes me miserable.
My father--I hope he does not intend it to be known, but I cannot
tell--anyhow you must know everything. My father says he has made up his
mind to cut off both the boys, and to leave everything to me.”

Miss Farrell grew a little pale. She was old-fashioned and strong upon
the rights of sons and the inferior importance of girls. She paused
before she spoke, and then said, with a little catching of her breath,
“If it is because you are the most worthy, my dear, I can’t say but he
is right. A girl of your age is always more worthy than the boys. You
have never been exposed to any temptation.”

“But that is no virtue of mine. Think what it is for me--the boys that
were brought up to think everything was theirs--and now cast away, one
after another, and everything fixed upon me.”

“My dear,” said Miss Farrell, recovering her courage, “you must not
disturb yourself too soon. Your father will live to change the
disposition of his property a hundred times. It is a sort of thing that
only wants a beginning.”

“But don’t you see,” said Winifred, with great seriousness, “that is
poor comfort; for he may be displeased with me next, and leave it all
to some stranger. And then, who would care for George and Tom?”

“I see what you mean--you are going to share with them, Winnie. My dear,
you may take my word for it, that will be better for them, far better
than if they got your father’s immense fortune into their hands.”

“But injustice can never be best,” she said.

They were in Miss Farrell’s pretty sitting-room, seated together upon
the sofa, and here Winifred, losing courage altogether, threw her arms
round her old friend, and put her head down upon the breast that had
always sympathy for her in all her troubles.

“I am very unhappy,” she said. “I do not see any end to it. My brothers
both gone and I alone left, and nothing but difficulty before me
wherever I move. How can I tell how my father’s mind may change in other
ways, now that he has made up his mind to put me in this changed
position--and how can I tell--even if that were not so”--

These broken expressions would have conveyed little enlightenment to any
stranger, but Miss Farrell understood them well enough. She pressed
Winifred in her arms, and kissed the cheek which was so near her own.

“Has anything been said about Edward?” she asked in a low tone.

“Nothing yet; but how can I tell? Oh yes! there was something. I can’t
remember exactly what--only a sort of hint; but enough to show--Miss
Farrell, you always think the best of every one. What can make him do
it? He must love us--a little--I suppose?”

The doubt in her tone was full of pathos and wondering bewilderment.
Winnie, though she had already many experiences, had not reached the
length of understanding that love itself can sometimes torture.

“Love you, my dear? why, of course he loves you! Whom has he else to
love? You must not let such foolish thoughts get into your mind. Thank
Heaven, since you were a child you have never had any doubt that I loved
you, Winnie, and yet I often made you do things you didn’t like, and
refused to let you do things you did like. Don’t you remember? Oh, I
could tell you a hundred instances. A man like your dear father, who has
been a great deal in the world, naturally forms his own ideas. And I can
tell you, Winnie, it is very, very difficult when one has the power, and
when one sees that young people are silly, not to take matters into
one’s own hand, and do for them what one knows to be best. But,
unfortunately, one never can get the young people to see it--they prefer
their own way. If they went according to the ideas of their fathers and
mothers, perhaps there would be less trouble in the world.”

“You don’t really think so,” cried Winnie, indignant. “You would never
have one go against one’s own heart.”

“I say perhaps, my dear,” said Miss Farrell mildly,--“only perhaps. It
is a thing no one can be arbitrary about. To have one’s own way is the
most satisfactory thing, so long as it lasts, but often ‘thereof comes
in the end perplexity and madness.’ Then one thinks, if one had but
taken the other turn! Nobody knows, till time shows, which is for the
best.”

“Is that a proverb?” asked Winnie, with some youthful scorn.

“It sounds a little like it,” said the cheerful old lady, with a little
laugh, “but, the rhyme was quite unintentional; and, as a matter of
fact, we know that whatever happens to us in God’s providence is for the
best.”

“Is my father’s hardheartedness God’s providence?” said Winifred, her
face becoming almost severe in youthful gravity.

It was not a question easy to answer. She scarcely listened to the
little lecture Miss Farrell gave, as to the wickedness of condemning her
father, or calling that hardheartedness which probably was the highest
exercise of watchful tenderness. “I don’t know that I should have had
the strength of mind to carry it out; but, my dear,” she said, “I have
not the very slightest doubt that this is by far the best thing for Tom.
He will come home a better man; he will have found out that life is
different from what he thinks. It may be the making of him. Your dear
father, who is stronger-minded than we are, does it, you may be sure,
for the best.”

“And if I am ordered to give up everything I care for, perhaps you will
think that for the best too,” said the girl, withdrawing, half
sorrowful, half indignant. The elder woman gave her a look full of love
and sorrow. Behind the smiling of her cheerful little countenance there
was that consciousness which belongs to experience, that teaching of a
long life which at her age throws confusing lights upon much that is
plain and simple to the uninstructed. Miss Farrell in her heart answered
this last indignant question in a manner which would have confounded
Winifred; but she said nothing. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.”




CHAPTER V


Winifred, it will be divined, was not without affairs of her own, which
were indeed kept in the background by the more urgent complications of
her family life, but yet were always there; and in every moment of
repose came in to fill up with sweetness mingled with pain all the
intervals of her thoughts. A few years before, when Mr. Chester had
retired from business and had come to live permanently at Bedloe, he had
begun his life of ease by a long illness, an illness at once dangerous
and tedious, which he had been “pulled through” by a young doctor, still
quite unknown to fame, who had devoted himself to the case of his
patient with an absorbing attention such as elderly gentlemen of
mercantile connections rarely call forth. Mr. Chester was a man who was
always sensible of services rendered personally to himself, and as young
Dr. Langton gave up both time and ease to him, watched by his bedside at
the crisis of the disease, and never grudged to be called out of bed or
disturbed at any moment of the day or night, it was natural that a
grateful patient should form the highest idea of the man who had saved
his life.

It did not detract from the merits of the young doctor that he belonged,
though remotely, to a county family, the ancient owners of Bedloe, and
that he held a higher place in the general estimation than the new
millionaire himself, whose advent had not been received with enthusiasm.
Dr. Langton, indeed, was of considerable use to the new-established
household. He decided several important people to call who had no
immediate intention of calling, and described with so much fervour the
sweetness and good manners of the young lady of the house, that the way
had thus been smoothed for that universal acceptance of Winifred which
had opened her father’s eyes to the fact that she alone of all the
family did him credit. Unfortunately, Dr. Langton went a little farther
than this. He was young, and Winifred was but just taking upon her the
independent position of mistress of her father’s house. They saw each
other every day, watched together at the sick-bed, and met in the most
unrestrained intimacy--and the natural result followed. Had Winifred
been poor, all his friends would have protested that she was a very bad
match for Edward Langton, who was believed to have what is called a fine
career before him; but as she was, instead, the daughter of a very rich
man, it was permissible that on her side of the question Edward Langton
should be supposed a very poor match for Winifred. It had been
accordingly with very doubtful feelings and a great screwing up of his
courage that the young doctor had presented himself before the rich man
and asked him for his daughter. The reception he received was less
terrible than he feared, but more embarrassing. Mr. Chester had received
the proposal as a joke, a strange but extremely amusing pleasantry.
“Marry Winnie?” he had said; “you must wait till she is out of long
clothes--or of short frocks, is it?” And this had been the utmost that
could be extracted from him. But, at the same time, he had taken no
steps to discourage or separate the lovers. They had gone on seeing each
other constantly, and had been sufficiently confident that no serious
obstacle was to be placed in their way--but never had been able to
extract a more definite decision or anything that could be called
consent. For some time, in the freshness of their mutual enchantment,
the two young people had gone on very gaily with this imperfect
sanction; but there had then come a time when Edward, impatient, yet not
venturing to risk a definite negative by using pressure upon the father,
had filled Winifred’s life with agitation, urging upon her the claims of
his faithful love, and even now and then proposing to carry her off, and
trust to the chance of pardon afterwards, rather than bear that
tantalising, unnecessary delay. Winifred, with mingled happiness and
distress, had spent many an hour in curbing this impetuosity, and it was
strange to her, a relief, but yet a surprise and wonder, when he
suddenly ceased all instances of the kind, and assumed the aspect of a
man quite satisfied with the present state of affairs, though very
watchful of all that happened, and curious to know the details of
everything. The change in him filled her with surprise, and at first
with a vague uneasiness. But there was no appearance of any failure in
his devotion to herself, and it was in many respects less embarrassing
than the constant entreaties which she had found it so difficult to
resist. Still she would wonder sometimes, accepting, as women so often
accept, the unexplained decision of the men who are most near to them,
with that silent despair of ever understanding the motives of the other
half of humanity which men too so often feel in respect to women.

As for Miss Farrell, who had seen so much both of men and women, she
divined, or thought she divined, what Dr. Langton meant. But she said
not a word to her pupil of her divinations. She said, “What a good thing
that Edward has made up his mind to it. You never would have given in
to him, Winnie?”

“Oh, never!” said the girl, with a silent, unexpressed sense that
perhaps it might have been better if she could.

“No, you never would have done it; it is against your nature, and it
would have been the worst policy. Your dear father is a man of very
strong principles, and he never would have forgiven you. It would have
been quite past all hoping for. It is such a good thing Edward perceives
that at last.”

Winifred did not receive this explanation with all the satisfaction that
her friend hoped. She felt uneasily the existence of some other with
which she was not acquainted; but so long as there was no doubt of
Edward’s love, what did it matter? And she was not herself impatient.
She saw him every day; she knew (or supposed she knew) all his
thoughts; she had his confidence, his full trust, his unbroken devotion;
what more can a woman want? It is sometimes aggravating in the highest
degree to a man that she should want no more, that she should be content
with relations which stop so far short of his wishes, and Edward had
often expressed this fond exasperation. But now he took it quietly
enough, seeing possibilities which Winifred had not begun to see.

Now, however, the calm of this unexpected content was interrupted from
the other side. Tom was scarcely gone, shaking off the dust from his
shoes as he crossed for the last time the threshold of his father’s
house, when Winifred learned all that was involved in the disastrous
promotion which had already made her so miserable--not only to supplant
her brothers (which yet it might be possible to turn to their
advantage), but to expose herself to risks which were worse than theirs,
to fall perhaps in her turn and make herself incapable of helping them,
or for their sake to resign all that was to herself best in life.
Winifred had retired from her father’s presence with this sword in her
heart. And Miss Farrell’s consolations, though they soothed her for the
moment, did not draw it out. She felt the pang and quivering anguish
through all her being. It was now her turn: she was about to be called
upon to act the heroic part which is so admirable to hear about, so
terrible to perform: to give up love and life for the sake of family
affection lightly returned, or not returned at all, rewarded with
suspicions and unkindness by those for whom she sacrificed everything.
To give up her love, her husband, for her brothers! She did what those
who are disturbed in mind instinctively learn to do. She went out by
herself into the park, and took a long solitary walk, communing with
herself. She had looked forward to Miss Farrell’s return as to something
which would help and strengthen her. And for the moment that new event,
and all the gentle philosophies that had come from her old friend’s
lips, had helped her a little. But at the end every one must bear his
own burden. She went out into the park, which, though the sun had come
out, was still wet and sodden with last night’s rain. The half-opened
leaves were all sparkling with wet, the sky had that clear and keen
sweetness of light which is like the serenity which comes into a human
face after many tears. The sod was soft and spongy under her feet; but
Winifred was not in a mood to observe anything. She walked fast and far,
carrying her thoughts with her, passing everything in review with the
simplicity and frankness which is impossible when we have to clothe our
thoughts in words. She would not have said, even to herself, that George
and Tom would never understand her motives, never believe in her
affection; but she knew it very well, just as she knew that the grass
was damp and that she was wetting her feet, a consciousness that neither
in one case nor the other meant any blame. She knew, too, that her
feelings and her happiness would matter little more to her father than
did to herself the feelings, if they had any, of the thorns which she
put out of her way. To put these consciousnesses into words is to
condemn; but in one’s thoughts one takes such known facts for granted
without any opinion.

To leap into the midst of such complications all at once is very hard
for a young soul. Ordinarily, the girl to whom it suddenly becomes
apparent that she may be called upon to give up her love, has at least
something to rest upon in the way of compensation; when it is in
fiction, she has to save her father from ruin, and often it happens in
real life that the delight of all her friends, the approbation of her
parents, the satisfaction of all who love her, is the reward for her
sacrifice. But poor Winifred was without any such consolation. If she
gave up her happiness for the sake of retaining and restoring their
inheritance to her brothers, they would revile her in the meantime, and
take it as the mere restitution of something stolen from them, in the
future. Or she might find that the inheritance came to her under
restrictions which made her sacrifice useless, and her desire to do
justice impossible. What was she then to do? There came into her mind a
sudden wish that Edward was still as he was six months ago, vehement,
impatient, almost desperate. Oh, if he would but take the matter into
his own hands, risk everything, carry her away, make it impossible once
for all that she should be the one who had to set all right! She said to
herself that she ought to have consented when he had urged this upon
her. Why should she have hesitated? They had been held in suspense for
two years, a long time in which to exercise patience, to linger on the
threshold of life. And it was not as if her father wanted her love, or
would feel his house vacant and miserable without her. He who could cut
off his sons without a compunction had never shown any particular love
for his daughter. His thoughts were concentrated upon himself. She was
not so necessary to him as old Hopkins was, who understood all his
tastes.

When Winifred suffered herself for a moment to think of herself, to leap
in imagination from Bedloe, with all its luxuries, from the sombre life
at home, undisturbed now by any joyous expectation of the boys, with no
hope even of family letters that would afford anything but pain--to the
doctor’s little house full of sunshine and pleasantness, the life of two
which is the perfection of individual existence--her heart, too, seemed
to leap out of her bosom towards that other world. Oh, if she could but
be liberated without any action of her own, carried away, transported
from her own dim life to that of him to whom above all others she
belonged! This flight of fancy lifted her up in a momentary exaltation
above all her troubles. Then she tumbled down, down to the dust. She
knew very well it would not be. He could not, even if he wished it,
which now it seemed he did not, carry her away without consulting her,
without her consent. And she could never give that consent. She could
not abandon her home, her duties, the possibility of serving her
brothers, the necessity of serving her father. One must act according
to one’s nature, however clearly one may see a happier way, however
certain one may be of the inefficiency of self-denial. Sometimes even
duty becomes a kind of immorality, a servile consent to the tyranny of
others; but still to the dutiful it is a bond which cannot be broken.
Winifred felt herself look on like a spectator, and sadly assent to the
possible destruction of her own life and all her hopes. It might be
delayed, it might not come at all, but still it was impending over her,
and she did not know how she was to escape, even in that one impossible
way.

She had reached the edge of the park without knowing it in the fulness
of her preoccupation, when the sound of a dog-cart coming along the road
awoke her attention. It was no wonderful thing that Edward should be
passing at that moment, though she had not thought of it. Neither was
it extraordinary that he should throw the reins to his servant and join
her. “I have just time to walk back with you,” he said.




CHAPTER VI


It was scarcely in nature that the appearance of her betrothed, coming
so suddenly in the midst of her thoughts, should be disagreeable to
Winifred, but it was an embarrassment to her, and rather added to than
lessened the trouble on her mind. He led her back into the park, which
she had been coming out of, scarcely knowing where she wandered. As was
his way when they were beyond the reach of curious eyes, he took her arm
instead of offering her his. There was something more caressing, more
close in this manner of contact. When they were safe beyond all
interruption, he bent over her tenderly.

“Something is the matter,” he said.

“Nothing new, Edward.”

“Only the trouble of yesterday, Tom’s going away?”

“It is not the trouble of yesterday. It is a trouble which lasts, which
is going on, which may never come to an end. I don’t think you can say
of any trouble that it is only of yesterday.”

“That is very true; still, you and I are not given to philosophising,
Winnie, and I thought there might be some new incident. I suppose he
sails to-day?”

“Yes, he sails to-day: and when will he come back again? Will he ever
come back? The two of them? Oh, Edward, life is very hard, very
different from what one thought.”

“At your age people are seldom so much mixed up in it. But there is the
good as well as the bad.”

“Perhaps,” said the girl, faltering, “I am looking through spectacles,
not rose-coloured, all the other way. I don’t see very much of the
good.”

He pressed her arm close to his side.

“Am not I a little bit of good; is not our life all good if it were only
once begun?”

“But what if it never begins?”

“Winnie!” he cried, startled, standing still and drawing her suddenly in
front of him so that he could look into her face.

“Oh, Edward, don’t add to my troubles; I don’t see how it is ever to
begin. My father means to put me in Tom’s place, as he put Tom in
George’s place, and already he has said”--

“What has he said?”

“Perhaps it means nothing,” she went on after a pause; “I should have
kept it to myself.”

“Winnie, that is worse than anything he can have said. What he says I
can bear, but not that you should keep anything to yourself.”

“It was not much. It was a sort of a threat. He said the match that was
good enough for Winnie might not be good enough for”--

“His heiress. He is right enough,” young Langton said.

At this, Winifred, who had been anticipating in her own mind all that
was involved, trembled as if it had never occurred to her before, and
turned upon him with an air, and indeed with the most real sentiment of
grieved surprise.

“Right?” she said, with wonder and reproach in her voice.

“A country doctor,” said the young man, “a fellow with nothing, is not a
match for the heiress of Bedloe. He is right enough. We cannot
contradict him. You ought to make an alliance like a princess with some
one like yourself.”

“I did not think,” said Winnie, raising her head with a flush of anger,
“that you would have been the one to make it all worse.”

He smiled upon her, still holding her closely by the arm. “Did you think
I had not thought of that before now? Of course, from his point of view,
and, of course, from all points of view except our own, Winnie”--

“I am glad you make that exception.”

“It is very magnanimous of me to do so, and you will have to be all the
more good to me. I am not blind, and I have seen it all coming, from the
moment of Tom’s failure. Why was he so silly as to fail, when a hundred
boobies get through every year?”

“Poor Tom!” she said, with a little gush of tears.

“Yes; poor Tom! I suppose he never for a moment thought--But, for my
part, I have seen it coming. I have seen for a long time what way the
tide was turning. At first there was not much thought of you; you were
only the little girl in the house. If it had not been so, I should have
run away, I should not have run my head into the net, and exposed myself
to certain contempt and rejection. But I saw that nobody knew there was
in the house an angel unawares.”

“Edward, you make me ashamed! You know how far I am”--

“From being an angel? I hope so, Winnie. If I saw the wings budding, I
should get out my instruments and clip them: it would be a novel sort
of an operation. I thought their ignorance was my opportunity.”

She was partly mollified, partly alarmed. “You did not think all this
before you let yourself--care for me, Edward?”

“I did before I allowed myself to tell you that I--cared for you, as you
say. One does not do such a thing without thinking. There was a time
when I thought that I must give up the splendid practice of Bedloe, with
Shippington into the bargain; the rich appointment of parish doctor, the
fat fees of the Union”--

“You can laugh at it,” she said, “but it is very, very serious to me.”

“And so it is very, very serious to me. So much so that six months ago I
wanted to throw everything up, if you would only have consented to come
with me, and seek our fortune, I did not mind where”--

“Ah!” she said. There was in the exclamation a world of wistful meaning.
What an escape it would have been from all after peril! Winifred said
this with the slight shiver of one who sees the means of safety which
she could never have taken advantage of.

“But now,” he said, “it is too late for that.”

His tone of conviction went to Winifred’s heart like a stone. She would
never have consented to it; but yet why did he say it was too late? She
gave him a wistful glance, but asked no question. To do so would have
been contrary to her pride and every feeling. They went on for a few
minutes in silence, she more cast down than she could explain--he adding
nothing to what he had said. Why did he add nothing? Things could not be
left now as they were, without mutual explanation and decision what they
were to do. Too late? She felt in her heart, on the contrary, that now
was the only moment in which it could have been done, in which she could
have wound herself up to the possibility--if it were not for other
possibilities, which, alas! would thrust themselves into the way.

“I have something to tell you,” he said, “something which you will think
makes everything worse. I might have kept you in ignorance of it, as I
have been doing; but the knowledge must come some time, and it will
explain what I have said”--

She withdrew a little from him, and drew herself up to all the height
she possessed, which was not very much. There went to her heart a quick
dart like the stab of a knife. She thought he was about to tell her that
his own mind had changed, or that her coming wealth and importance had
made it incompatible with his pride to continue their engagement.
Something of this kind it seemed certain that it must be. In the sudden
conviction of the moment it did not occur to Winifred that such a new
thing could scarcely be told while he held her so closely to him, and
clasped her hand and arm so firmly. But it was not a moment for the
exercise of reason. She did not look up, but she raised her head
instinctively and made an effort to loosen her hand from his clasp. But
of these half-involuntary movements he took no note, being fully
occupied with what was in his mind.

“Winnie,” he said in a serious voice, “your father talks at his ease of
making wills and changing the disposition of his property. I don’t
suppose he thinks for a moment how near he may be--how soon these
changes may come into effect.”

A little start, a little tremor ran through her frame. Her attitude of
preparation for a blow relaxed. She did not understand what he meant in
the relief of perceiving that it was not what she thought.

“My father? I don’t understand you, Edward.”

“No, I scarcely expected you would. He looks what people call the
picture of health.”

She started now violently and drew her arm out of his in the shock of
the first suggestion. “My father!” she stammered--“the picture of
health--you do not mean, you cannot mean”--

“I have been cruel,” he said, drawing tenderly her arm into his. “I have
given you a great shock. My darling, it had to be done sooner or later.
Your father, though he looks so well, is not well, Winnie. I never was
satisfied that he got over that illness as he thought he did. But even I
was not alarmed for a long time. Now for several months I have been
watching him closely. If he does not make this new will at once, he may
never do it. If he does, it will not be long before you are called on to
assume your place.”

“Edward! you do not mean that my father--You don’t mean that there is
absolute danger--to his life--soon--now? Edward! you do not think”--

“Dear, you must show no alarm. You must learn to be quite calm. You must
not betray your knowledge. It may be at any moment--to-day, to-morrow,
no one can tell. It is not certain--nothing is certain--he may go on for
a year.”

The light seemed to fail in Winifred’s eyes. She leant against her lover
with a rush and whirl of hurrying thoughts that seemed to carry away her
very life. It was not the awful sensation of a calamity from which there
is no escape, such as often overwhelms the tender soul when first
brought face to face with death; but rather a horrible sense of what
that doom would be to him, the cutting off of everything in which, so
far as she knew, he took any pleasure or ever thought of. The idea of a
spiritual life beyond would not come into any accordance with her
consciousness of him. Mr. Chester was one of those men whom it is
impossible to think of as entering into rest, or attaining immediate
felicity by the sudden step of death. There are some people whom the
imagination refuses to connect with any surroundings but those of
prosaic humanity. They must die, too, like the most spiritually-minded;
but there comes upon the soul a sensation of moral vertigo when we think
of them as entering the life of an unseen world. This, though it may
seem unnatural to say so, was the first sensation of Winifred, a sense
of horror and alarm, an immediate realisation of the terrible
inappropriateness of such a removal. What would become of him when
removed from earth, the only state of existence with which he had any
affinities? It sent a shiver over her, a chill sense of the unknown and
unimaginable which seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. It was only
when she recovered from this that natural feeling gained utterance. She
had leant against her lover in that first giddiness, with her head
swimming, her strength giving way. She came slowly back to herself,
feeling his arm which supported her with a curious beatific sense that
everything was explained between him and her, mingled with the sensation
of natural grief and dismay.

“I do not feel as if it could be possible,” she said faintly. Then, with
trembling lips, “My father?” and melted into tears.

“My dearest, it is right you should know. It is for this reason I have
tried to persuade you not to go against him in anything. The more
tranquillity he has, the better are his chances for life. Let him do as
he threatens. Perhaps if you withdraw all opposition he will delay the
making of another will, as almost all men do--for there seems time
enough for such an operation, and nothing to hurry for. Get him into
this state of mind if you can, Winnie. Don’t oppose him; let it be
believed that you see the justice of his intention, that you are willing
to do what he pleases.”

“Even”--she said, and looked up at him, pausing, unable to say more.

He took both her hands in his, and looked at her, smiling. “Even,” he
said, “to the length of allowing him to believe that you have given up a
man that was never half good enough for you; but who believes in you
all the same like heaven.”

“Believes in me--when I pretend to give up what I don’t give up, and
pretend to accept what I don’t accept? Is that the kind of woman you
believe in?” she cried, drawing away her hands. “How can I do so? How
can I consent to cheat my father, and he perhaps--perhaps”--

She stood faltering, trembling, crying, but detaching herself with
nervous force from his support, in a passion of indignation and trouble
and dismay.

He answered her with a line in which is the climax of heart-rending
tragedy, holding out to her the hands from which she had escaped--

    “Faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”

“That may do for poetry,” she said; “but for me, I am not great enough
or grand enough to--to--to be able to brave it. Edward, do not ask me.
I must tell the truth. If I tried to do anything else, my face, my looks
would betray me. Oh, don’t be so hard on me. Ask me something less than
this, ask me now to”--

She stopped terror-stricken, not knowing what she had said; but he only
looked at her tenderly, shaking his head. “If I had ever persuaded you
to that,” he said, “I should have been a cad and a rascal, for it would
have broken your heart. But now I should be worse--I might be a
murderer. Winnie, you must yield for his sake. You must let him live as
long as God permits.”

“And deceive him?” she said, almost inaudibly. “Oh, you don’t know what
you are asking of me! You are asking too much cleverness, too much
power. I can only say one thing or another. I cannot be falsely true.”

“You can do everything that is necessary, whatever it may be, for those
you love,” he said.

She stood faltering before him for a moment, turning her eyes from one
side to the other, as if in search of help. But there was nothing that
could give her any aid. The heavens seemed to close in above her, and
the earth to disappear from under her feet. If she had ever consented to
an untruth in her life, it had been to shield and excuse her brothers,
for whom there were always apologies to be made. And how to deceive she
knew not.

They went on together across the park, not noticing the wetness of the
grass or the threatening of the sky, upon which clouds were once more
blowing up for rain, so much absorbed in their consultation that they
were close to the house before they were aware, and started like guilty
things surprised when Mr. Chester came sharply upon them round a corner,
buttoned up to the chin, and with an umbrella in his hand.




CHAPTER VII


“Why don’t you come to the house and have your talk out? She has got her
feet wet, and if she does not look sharp, we shall all be caught in the
rain--a doctor should know better than to expose a young lady to
bronchitis. Besides, her life is more important than it ever was
before.”

“We forgot how the skies were looking. You should not be out of doors
either; it is worse for you than for her. I told you this morning you
had a cold.”

“You are always telling me I have a cold. I shan’t live a day the less
for that,” said Mr. Chester, with a jauntiness which made Winifred’s
heart sick.

“I hope not, but we must take care,” said young Langton. “Come back
now--don’t go any farther. I hope you were coming only to bring Miss
Chester back.”

“I was coming to bring Miss Chester back--and for other things,” said
her father significantly. He put a little emphasis on the name, and
Winifred had already been painfully affected by hearing her name
pronounced so formally by her lover. He had never addressed her
familiarly in her father’s presence, but now there seemed a meaning in
everything, and as her father repeated it, there seemed in it a whole
new world and new disposition of affairs. “But as it is going to be a
wet night,” he added, “and we shall have a dull time of it, nothing but
myself and two females at dinner, you had better come and dine with us,
doctor, if you have nothing better to do.”

“I will come with pleasure,” Langton said. He had perfect command of
himself, and yet he could not refrain from a momentary glance at
Winifred, which said much.

She, too, divined, with a sinking of her heart, that it was not merely
for dinner, or to relieve himself from the society of “two females,”
that her father gave the invitation. He was unusually gracious and
smiling.

“You know you’re always welcome,” he said. “The ladies spoil you. A
young doctor is something like a curate, he is always spoiled by the
ladies; but they shan’t have so much of your company as they expect, for
I have got several things to talk to you about.”

“As many as you like,” said Langton, “but let me entreat you to go in
now.”

“You see how anxious our friend is about my health, Winnie; he does not
care half so much for yours, and you are a deal more liable to take cold
than ever I was. You take that from your mother, who was always a feeble
creature. The stamina is on the Chester side. Very well, doctor, very
well. I don’t like the wet any more than you do. I’m going in, don’t be
afraid. Dinner at seven, sharp, and don’t keep us waiting.”

Mr. Chester’s laugh seemed to the young pair to mean much; the very wave
of his hand as he turned away, his insistance upon the hour of dinner,
all breathed of fate. The two young people exchanged one look as they
shook hands; on his side it was a look at once of encouragement and
entreaty--on hers of terror and wistfulness. She was afraid and yet
anxious to be left alone with her father. It seemed to Winifred that she
could bear what he said to herself, however painful it might be, but
that an insulting dismissal of Edward was more than she could bear. She
could not linger, however, nor say a word to him beyond what ordinary
civility required. Even the momentary pause did not pass without remark.

“Some last words?” Mr. Chester said; “one would think you had seen
enough of each other. You should make your appointments a little earlier
in the day.”

“It was no appointment, papa. I was walking, and Dr. Langton came up in
his dog-cart.”

“Oh, very likely; these things fall in so pat, don’t they? I suppose I
am past the age for encountering people in dog-carts just when I want
them. But you must not calculate too much on that,” he said with a
laugh. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t marry and provide myself with
another family, that might be more to my mind than you.”

To this Winnie made no reply. The threat had offended her on other
occasions; now it affected her with that dreadful sense of the
intolerable to which words can give no expression; it brought the blood
in a rush to her face, and she looked at him in spite of herself with
eyes in which pity and horror were mingled. He met her look with a
laugh.

“You are horrified, are you? That’s all very well for you; but let me
tell you, many an older man than I, and less pleasing, perhaps, has got
a pretty young wife before now. It has to be paid for, like every other
luxury; but women are plenty, my dear, though you mayn’t think so.”

“Papa, do you think this is a subject to discuss with me?”

“Why not? You are the only one except myself that would be much affected
by it. It might interfere with your comforts, and it would interfere
very much with your importance, I can tell you, Miss Winnie.”

“Then, father,” the girl said, “for Heaven’s sake do it, and don’t talk
of it any more. Rather that a thousand times than to be forced to agree
to what I abhor, than to be put in another’s place, than to have to give
up”--

He turned round and looked at her somewhat sternly. “What do you expect
to be obliged to give up?” he said.

Between her fear of doing harm to him, whose tranquillity she had been
charged to preserve, and her fear of precipitating matters and bringing
upon herself at once the prohibition she feared--and that natural
nervous desire to forestall a catastrophe which was entirely
contradictory of the other sentiments, Winifred paused and replied to
him with troubled looks rather than with speech. When she found her
voice, she answered, faltering--

“What you said to me yesterday, meant giving up the truth and all I have
ever cared for in my life. I have always wanted, desired, more than my
life, to be of use to--the boys--and to be made to appear as if I were
against them”--

Her voice was interrupted with sobs. Ah, but was not this the beginning
of treachery? It was the truth, but not the whole truth; the boys were
much, but there was something which was still more. Already in the first
outset and beginning she was but falsely true.

“This is all about the boys, is it?” he said coldly--“as you call them.
I should say the men--who have taken their own way, and had their own
will, and like it, I hope. If it comes to a bargain between you and me,
Winnie, there must be something more than that.”

“There can be no bargain between you and me,” said Winifred. In the
meantime, looking at him, she had thought his colour varied, and that a
slight stumble he made over a stone was a sign of weakness; and her
heart sank with sudden compunction. “Oh, no bargain, papa! It is yours
to tell me what to do, and mine to--to obey you.” Her voice weakened and
grew low as she said these words. She felt as if it were a solemn
promise she was making, instead of the most ordinary of dutiful
speeches. He nodded his head repeatedly as she spoke.

“That’s as it should be, Winnie,--that’s as it should be; continue like
that, my dear, and you shall hear no more of the new wife. So long as
you are reasonable, I am quite content with my daughter, who does me
credit. It is your duty to do me credit. I am going to do a great deal
for you, and I have more claim than just the ordinary claim. Go in now,
the rain’s coming. As for me, for all that young fellow says, I don’t
believe it matters. I feel as fit as ever I did in my life. Still,
bronchitis is a nuisance,” he added, coughing a little, as he followed
her indoors.

Winifred did not appear again till the hour of dinner. She was, like
every one who hears a sentence of death for the first time, apprehensive
that the event which seemed at one moment incredible might happen the
next, and she stole along the corridor at least half a dozen times, to
make sure that her father was in the room called the library, in which
he read his newspapers. If any sound was heard in the silence of the
house, she conjured up terrible visions of a sudden fall and
catastrophe.

How was it possible to oppose him in anything? If he told her to abandon
Edward, she would have to reply--as if he had asked her to go out for a
walk, or drive with him in his carriage--“Yes, papa.” It would not
matter what he asked, she must make the same answer, conventional,
meaning as little as if it had been a request for a cup of tea. And
about his will the same assent would have to be necessary. She must
appear to him and to the world to be very willing to supplant her
brothers; she must appear to give up her lover because now she was too
great and too rich to marry a poor man. This was the charge her lover
himself had laid upon her. She must consent to everything. The true
feelings of her mind, and all her intentions and hopes, must be laid
aside, and she must appear as if she were another woman, a creature
influenced by the will of others without any of her own.

Even that was a possible position. A girl might give up all natural will
and impulse. She might be a passive instrument in other people’s hands.
She might take passively what was given to her, and passively allow
something else to be taken away: that might be weak, miserable, and
unworthy--but it need not be false. What was required of her was more
than this. It was required of her that she should pretend to be all this
till her father should die, and then turn round and deceive him in his
grave. The thought made Winifred shiver with a chill which penetrated
her very heart. After, could she undo all she had done, baulk him after
he was dead, proclaim to all the world that she had deceived him? Was
that what Edward meant by being falsely true? She said to herself that
she could not do it, that it would be impossible. In the case of her
brothers, perhaps, where only renunciation was necessary, she might do
it; but to gain happiness for herself she could not do it. “I cannot, I
cannot!” she cried to herself under her breath; and then lower still,
with an anguish of resolution and determination, “I will not!” If she
gave him up, it should be for ever. She would not play a part, and
pretend submission, and deceive.

But, to the astonishment of both these young people, Mr. Chester that
evening did not say a word on the subject. During dinner he was more
agreeable than usual; but when the ladies went out of the room, young
Langton, as he met the eyes of his betrothed, gave her a look which told
that he knew what was coming. He was so nervous when he was left behind
that for the first few minutes he hardly knew what was being said to
him; but when he calmed down and came to himself, an astonished sense
that nothing was being said took the place of his dread, and bewildered
him altogether. All that Mr. Chester had to say was to ask for some
information about a small estate which was to be sold in another part of
the country which was better known to the doctor than to himself. He
asked his advice, indeed, as to whether he should or should not become
its purchaser, in a way which made young Langton’s head go round, for it
was the manner of a man who was consulting one of those who were
concerned, an intimate friend, perhaps a son-in-law. He said to himself,
after a moment, when this subject was exhausted, that now it must be
coming. But, on the contrary, there was not a word.

When the two gentlemen went into the drawing-room, Winifred asked him
with her eyes a question which was full of the anguish of suspense. He
managed behind the cover of a book to say to her, “Nothing has been
said;” but this was so wonderful that the relief was too much, and
neither could she believe in that. They both felt that the pause, though
almost miraculous, could not be real, and that the coming storm was all
the more certain because of this delay.

Late that night Mr. Chester felt unwell, and sent into the village for
the doctor just as he was going to bed. Langton put on his coat, and
jumped into the dog-cart which had been sent for him, with a sudden
quickening of all his pulses, and the sense of a miraculous escape more
distinctly in his mind than solicitude for his patient. Winifred met him
at the door with wild anxiety and terror, and followed him to her
father’s room, with all her nerves strung for the great and terrible
event of which she had been warned. She thought nothing less than that
the hour of calamity had come, and the whole house was moved with a
vague horror of anticipation, although no one knew that there was
anything to fear. The doctor’s practised eye, however, saw in a moment
that it was a false alarm, and it was with a pang almost of
disappointment that he reassured her. He could only appear glad, but
there was no doubt in his own mind that it was a distinct mistake of
Providence. Had Mr. Chester died then, he would have left the world with
one or two sins the less on his conscience, and a great deal of human
misery would have been spared.

“You think I should not have roused you out of your comfortable bed
without the excuse of dying, or at least something more in it?” the
patient said; “but you will find I am a tough customer, and likely to
give you more trouble before you are done with me.”

“It is no trouble,” the doctor said, with a grave face; “but you must
learn to be careful.”

“Pshaw!” said the rich man. “I tell you I am a tough customer. It is not
a bit of an evening walk that will free you of me.”

“We will do our best to fortify you for evening walks; but you must be
careful,” Langton said.

Upon which his patient gave a chuckle, and turned round in his bed and
went to sleep like a two-years child.




CHAPTER VIII


A threatened life is said to last long. Winifred Chester lived in great
alarm and misery for a week or two, watching every movement and every
look of her father, expecting almost to see him fall and die before her
very eyes. The horror of a catastrophe which she could not avert, which
nothing could be done to stave off, intensified the natural feeling
which makes the prospect of another’s death, even of an indifferent
person, overawing and terrible. And though it was impossible to believe
that a man like Mr. Chester could inspire his daughter with that
impassioned filial love which many daughters bear to their parents, yet
he was her father, and all the habits of her life were associated with
him: so that the idea of his sudden removal conveyed almost as great a
shock to her mind as if the warmest bonds of love, instead of a natural
affection much fretted by involuntary judgments given in her heart
against him, had been the bond between them.

And there can be nothing in the world more dreadful to the mind than to
watch the life and actions of a human creature whom we know to be on the
brink of the grave, but who neither suspects nor anticipates any danger,
and lives every day as though he were to live for ever. To hear him say
what he was going to do in the time to come, the changes he meant to
make, the improvements, the new furnishings, the plantings, all that was
to be done during the next ten years, filled Winifred with a thrill of
misery which was not unmingled with compunction. Could she say nothing
to him, give him no hint, whisper in his ear no intimation that his days
were numbered? She shrank within herself at the thought of presuming to
do so; and yet to be with him and walk by him, and listen to all his
anticipations, and never do it, seemed horrible. All his thoughts were
of the world in which he had, as he did not know, so precarious a
footing. He was a man who wanted no other, whose horizon was bounded by
the actual, whose aspirations did not exceed what human life could give
him. He had met with disappointments and probably had felt them as
bitterly as other men, but his active spirit had never been arrested, he
had turned to something else in which he expected compensation. The
something else at present was Winifred; she had done him credit, and
might do so still in a higher degree than had been possible to her
brothers. She might marry anybody. As for the doctor, when the moment
came, Mr. Chester knew very well how to make short work of the doctor.
And Winnie, of whom there could be no doubt that she was a lady, should
marry a lord and satisfy her father’s pride, and make up for everything.

His mind had taken refuge in this with an elasticity which minds of
higher tone and better inspirations do not always possess; and those
plans which to her were so frightful, those arrangements of years which
he should never see, were all with a view to this satisfaction which he
had promised himself. He was going to preserve the game strictly, a duty
which he had not much thought of hitherto: he was going to enlarge the
house--to build a new wing for my lord, as he began within himself to
name his unknown son-in-law. In these arrangements he forgot his own
sons, putting them aside altogether, as if they had never existed, and
forgot also, or at least never took into consideration, any uncertainty
in life, any thought of consolations less positive.

To see a man so terribly off his guard is always a spectacle very
terrible and surprising when the mind of the spectator is roused to it,
just as the sight of any indifferent passer-by going lightly along a
road on which death awaits him round the next corner, is almost more
appalling than the sight of death itself, especially if we cannot warn
him or do anything to save. And how could he die? A man who cared for
nothing that was not in the life he knew, how was he to adapt himself to
another, to anything so different? Winifred’s brain swam, the light
faded before her as she sat watching him, unable to take her eyes from
him, full of terror, compassion, pity.

“What are you staring at so?” he asked on more than one occasion.

“Nothing, papa,” Winifred replied incoherently, consciousness suddenly
coming back to her as his voice broke the giddiness and throng of
intolerable thoughts.

“One would think you saw a ghost behind me,” he said, with a laugh.
“That’s the new æsthetic fashion of absent-mindedness, I suppose;” and
this explanation satisfied and even pleased him, for he wished Winnie to
be of the latest fashion and “up to everything” with the best.

Miss Farrell, on the other hand, scolded her pupil, as much as she could
scold any one, for this sudden alarm which had seized her. “It is just a
fad,” the old lady said. “Edward has his fads like other people: doctors
have; they are fond of a discovery that leads to nothing. I never saw
your dear father look better in his life.”

“He does not look ill,” Winifred allowed, with a faint movement of
relief.

“Ill? he looks strong, younger than he did five years ago, and such a
colour, and an excellent appetite. But I am glad to hear that is what
Edward thinks, for it explains everything.”

“Glad?” it was Winifred’s turn to exclaim.

“My dear, when you are my age you will know that one is sometimes glad
of an explanation of things that have puzzled one, even though the
explanation itself is not cheerful. I think this fright of Edward’s is a
piece of folly, but yet it explains many things. As for your dear
father, if he were a little unwell from time to time, that would be
nothing to wonder at. Gout, for instance--one is always prepared for
gout in a man of his age. But he is up early and late, he has the
complexion of a ploughboy, and can eat everything without even a thought
of his digestion. I envy him,” she said, with fervour. Then, giving
Winifred a kiss as she leant over her, “You are seeing everything _en
noir_, my dear, and Edward is giving in to you. Don’t think any more
about it for three days; in the meantime I will watch him; give me three
days, and promise me to be happy in the meantime.”

This time Winifred did not repeat the inappropriate expression, but only
looked at her old friend with tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I have
very much to be happy about,” she said.

“You have life before you, and youth and hope; and you have Edward; and
your dear father, so far as I can see, in perfect health; and the
others--in the hands of Providence Winnie.”

“Are we not all in the hands of Providence,” said the girl; “those who
live and those who die, those who do well and those who do ill? and it
does not seem to make any difference.”

“That is because we see such a little way, such a little way--never what
to-morrow is going to bring forth,” Miss Farrell said.

But this conversation did not do very much to reassure Winifred, and at
the end of the three days the old lady said nothing. Her experienced
eyes saw, after a close investigation, certain trifles which brought her
to the young doctor’s opinion, or at least made her acknowledge to
herself that he might possibly be right. It is to be feared that Miss
Farrell did not look upon this possibility with horror. She was calmer,
not so much interested, and less full of that instinctive horror and awe
of death which is most strong in the young. She had seen a great many
people die; perhaps she was not for that more reconciled to the idea of
it in her own person than others; but she had come to look upon it with
composure where others were concerned. She thought it likely enough that
Edward might be right; and she thought that, perhaps, this was not the
conclusion which would be most regrettable. It would leave Winifred
free. If he did not alter his will, it would restore the boys to their
rights; and if he did alter his will, Winifred would restore them to
their rights. On making a balance of the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, no doubt it would be for the best that Mr. Chester
should end his career.

After these three days, at the end of which Winifred asked no
explanation from her friend, many other days followed, with nothing
happening. The force of the impression was softened in her mind, and
though the appearance of Mr. Chester’s man of business on two or three
several occasions gave her a renewed thrill of terror, yet her father
said nothing on the subject of his will, and she was glad on her side to
ignore it, feeling that nothing she could say or do would have any
effect upon his resolution. On the last evening, when Mr. Babington,
after a long afternoon with Mr. Chester in the library, stayed to
dinner, the cheerfulness and satisfaction of the master of the house
were visible to everybody. He had the best wine in his cellar out for
his old friend, and talked to him all the evening of “old days,” as he
said, days when he himself had little expectation of ever being the
Squire of Bedloe.

“But many things have changed since that time,” he added, “and the last
is first and the first last, eh, Babington, in more senses than one.”

“Yes, in more senses than one,” the lawyer said gravely, sipping the old
port which had been disinterred for him with an aspect not half so
jovial as that of his patron, though it was wine such as seldom appears
at any table in these degenerate days.

“In more senses than one,” Mr. Chester repeated. “Fill your glass again,
old Bab; and, Miss Farrell, stay a moment, and let me give you a little
wine, for I am going to propose a toast.”

“I am not in the habit of drinking toasts,” said Miss Farrell, who had
risen from her chair; “but as I am sure it is one which a lady need not
hesitate about, since you propose it”--

“No lady need hesitate,” said Mr. Chester, “for it is to one that is a
true lady, as good a lady as if she had royal blood in her veins. You
would not better her, I can tell you, if you were to search far and
wide; and as you have had some share in making her what she is, Miss
Farrell, it stands to reason you should have a share in her advancement.
I have a great mind to call in all the servants and make them drink it
too.”

“Don’t,” said the lawyer hurriedly; “a thing is well enough among
friends that is not fit for strangers, or servants either. For my part,
I wish everything that is good to Miss Winifred; but yet”--

“Hold your tongue, Babington; it is none of your business. Here’s the
very good health of the heiress of Bedloe, and good luck to her, and a
fine title and a handsome husband, and everything that heart can
desire.”

The two ladies had risen, and still stood, Miss Farrell with the glass
of wine which Mr. Chester had given her in her hand, Winifred standing
very straight by the table, and white as the dress she wore. Miss
Farrell grew pale too, gazing from one to the other of the two
gentlemen, who drank their wine, one with a flushed and triumphant
countenance, the other in little thoughtful gulps. “I can’t refuse to
drink the health of Winifred, however it is put,” she said tremulously.
“But if this is what you mean, Mr. Chester”--

“Yes, my old girl,” cried Mr. Chester, “this is what I mean; and I don’t
know what anybody can have to say against it--you, in particular, that
have brought her up, and done your duty by her, I must say. She has
always been a good friend to you, and always will be, I can answer for
her, and you shall never want a home as long as she has one. But if you
have anything to say against my arrangements, or what I mean to do for
her”--

Miss Farrell put down the wine with a hand that trembled slightly. She
towered into tremulous height, or so it seemed to the lookers-on. “I say
nothing about the term which you have permitted yourself to apply to me,
Mr. Chester,” she said. “I can make allowance for bad breeding; but if
you think you can prevent me from forming an opinion, and expressing
it”--

“Be quiet, Chester,” cried the lawyer, kicking him under the table; but
in the height of his triumph he was not to be kept down.

“You may form your opinions as you please, and express them too; but, by
George! if you express anything about my affairs, or take it upon you to
criticise, it will have to be in some one else’s house.”

“That is quite enough,” said the old lady. “I am not in the habit of
receiving affronts. This day is the last I shall spend in your house. I
bid you good evening, Mr. Babington.” She waved her hand majestically as
she went away. As for Winnie, who had endeavoured to stop him with an
indignant cry of “Father!” she turned upon Mr. Chester a pair of eyes,
large and full of woe, which blazed out of her pale face in passionate
protestation as she hurried after her friend. The exit of the ladies was
so sudden after this swift and hot interchange of hostilities that it
left the two men confounded. Mr. Chester gave vent to an exclamation or
two, and turned to his supporter on the other side.

“What did I say?” he cried. “I haven’t said anything, have I, to make a
tragedy about?”

“It would have been a great deal better to say nothing at all,” was all
the comfort Babington gave him. The lawyer went on with the port, which
was very good. He thought quarrels were always a nuisance, but that
Chester did indeed--there could be no doubt of it--want some one to take
him down a peg or two.

“If your daughter does not much like it herself, as seems to be the
case, it’s a pity to set the old lady on to make her worse. And Miss
Winifred wants a lady with her,” he said between the gulps.

He gave no support to the angry man, hot with excitement and triumph, to
whom this sudden check had come in the midst of his outburst of angry
satisfaction.

Mr. Chester’s countenance fell.

“You don’t mean,” he cried, “that she will be such a fool as to go away?
Pshaw! she’s not such a fool as that. She knows on what side her
bread’s buttered. She’s lived at Bedloe these dozen years.”

“Everybody knows Miss Farrell,” said the lawyer. “She’s as proud as
Lucifer, and as fiery, if she is set ablaze.”

“Pooh!” said the other; “it is nothing but a breeze; we’ll be all right
again to-morrow. She knows me, and I know her. She is not such a fool as
to throw away a comfortable home, because I called her old girl. Are you
determined, after all, that you won’t stay the night?”

“I must get home--I must indeed. To-morrow early I have half a dozen
appointments.”

“Then, if you will go,” said Mr. Chester,--“which I take unkind of you,
for, of course, the appointments could stand, if you chose;--but if you
must go, it’s time for your train.”

“Thank you for telling me,” said Mr. Babington. He jumped up with a
slight resentment, though he had been quite determined about going away
that night; but then he had not known that there would be this quarrel,
which he should have liked to see the end of, or that the port would be
so good.




CHAPTER IX


The sound of the brougham rolling along down the avenue, and of the
closing of the great door upon the departing guest, came to Winifred, as
she sat alone, with a dreary sound. Mr. Babington was no particular ally
of hers, and yet it felt like the going away of a friend. Presently her
father came into the room, talking over his shoulder to old Hopkins
about the hot water and lemons which were to be placed in the library
ready for him. “Ten o’clock will do,” he said. It was only about nine,
and Winifred felt, not with transport, that she was to have her father’s
society for the next hour. It was by this time too warm to have a fire
in the evening, but yet they sat habitually, when the lamp was lighted,
near the fireplace. Mr. Chester came up to this central spot, and drew a
chair near to his daughter and sat down. He brought a smell of wine with
him, and a sensation of heat and excitement. “Why are you sitting by
yourself,” he said, “like a sparrow on the housetop? It seems to me you
are always alone.”

“I shall have to be alone in future, papa. Miss Farrell”--Winifred could
not say any more for the sob in her throat.

“Oh, this is too much!” said Mr. Chester. “Couldn’t she or any one see
that I was a little excited? She must know I don’t mean any harm. That
is all nonsense, Winnie. You shall say something pretty to her from me,
and make an end of it. Why, what’s all this fuss about a hasty word? She
_is_ an old girl if you come to that--But I don’t want any botheration
now. I want everything to be straight and pleasant. We are going to have
company, people staying in the house, and you can’t do without her, that
is clear.”

“Oh, papa,” said Winifred, “I wish you would not have any one staying in
the house. I don’t know what you meant to-night, but if it is anything
about me, I--I don’t feel able for company. It is so short a time since
poor Tom”--

“You had better let poor Tom alone. I want to hear nothing more of him,”
said the father. “Mind what I say. I mean to make a lady of you, Winnie;
but if you turn upon me like the rest, I am just as fit to do the same
to you.”

“I would rather you did than have what should be theirs,” said Winifred.
Her heart was beating wildly in her breast with apprehension and dismay,
and she could not be prudent as she had been bidden to be, nor consent
to be what was so odious to her; but even in the warmth of her protest
Edward’s words occurred to her, and she faltered and stopped, with an
alarmed look at her father. He was flushed, and his eyes were fiery and
red.

“You are going a little too fast,” he said. “It is neither theirs nor
yours, but mine; and I should like to know who has any right to take it
from me. Now that we’ve begun on this subject, we’ll have it out,
Winnie. You’ve been having your own way more than was good for you.
Perhaps, after all, Miss Farrell, who has let you do as you pleased, can
go, and somebody else be got who knows better what is suitable to a
young lady like you. I can have no more flirtations with doctors, or
curates, or that sort. You are old enough to be married, and I want no
more nonsense. That sort of thing, though it means nothing, is bad for
a girl settling in life.”

Winifred had turned from white to red, sitting gazing at him, yet
shrinking from his eyes. “Papa,” she said, “I don’t know what you mean,”
in a voice so low and troubled that he curved his hand over his ear,
half in pretence, half in sincerity, to hear what she had to say.

“What I mean?--oh, that is very easy--you are not a child any longer,
and you must throw aside childish things. I have asked a few people for
the week after next. It’s too early for the country, but I know some
that are soon tired of town; and there is a young fellow among them
who--well, who is very well disposed towards you, and well worth your
catching were you twenty times an heiress. So I hope you’ll mind what
you’re about, and play your cards well, and make me father-in-law to an
earl. That’s all that I require of you, my dear; and it’s more for your
own advantage than mine, when all is said.”

He was very much flushed, she thought, and his eyes almost starting from
his head. Terror seized her, as though some dreadful catastrophe might
happen before her eyes. “Papa,” she said, with an effort, “this is all
very new, and there is so much to think of. Please let it be for
to-morrow. There has been so much to-night--my head is quite confused,
and I don’t seem to understand what you say.”

“You shall understand what I say, and it is better to be clear about it
once for all. Here is the young Earl coming, as I tell you. He would
suit me very well, and I mean him to suit you, so let us have no
nonsense. If Miss Farrell thinks fit to leave you just when you want
her, she is an ungrateful old--But we’ll find another woman. I mean
everything to be on a right footing when these people turn up.”

“Papa, of course I shall do all I can to--please your friends.”

“Well, that’s the first step,” he said. “And it’s very much for your own
advantage. You would not be my daughter if you did not think of that.”

She made no reply. If this was all, she was pledging herself to nothing,
she thought, with natural inconsistency. But Mr. Chester was not
satisfied. He drew his chair close, so that the odour of his wine and
the excitement in his mind seemed to make a haze in the air around.

“And look here, Winnie. It doesn’t suit me to send Edward Langton away.
He’s been a fool in respect to you, and you’ve been a fool, and so have
I, for not putting a stop to it at once. But the fellow knows what’s
what better than most. And he knows my constitution. I am not going to
part with him as a doctor because he’s been a presuming prig, and
thought himself good enough for my daughter. It’s for you to let him see
that that’s all over. Come, a word is as good as a wink.”

“Father,” Winnie said: she looked at him piteously, clasping her hands
with the unconscious gesture of anguish--“oh, don’t take everything from
me in a moment!” she cried.

“What am I taking from you? I am giving you a fortune, a title probably,
a husband far above anything you could have looked for.”

“I want no one, papa, but you. Let me take care of you. I will ask for
nothing but only to stay at home quietly and make you comfortable.”

Mr. Chester pushed back his chair noisily with a loud exclamation. “Do
you take me for a fool?” he said. “Have I ever asked you to stay at
home and make me comfortable? I can make myself comfortable, thank you.
What I want is that you should do me credit. Your confounded humility
and domesticity, and all that, may be very fine in a woman’s novel.
Taking care of her old father, the sweet girl! a ministering angel, and
so forth. Do you think I go in for that sort of rubbish? I can make
myself a deuced deal more comfortable than you could ever make me. Come,
Winnie, no more of this folly. You can make me father-in-law to a
British peer, and that is the sort of comfort I want.”

His eyes were red with heat and excitement, the blood boiling in his
veins. The girl’s spirit was cowed as she looked at him, not by his
violence, but by the signs of physical disturbance, which took all power
from her.

“Oh, papa,” she said, “don’t say anything more to-night! I am very
unhappy. I will do anything rather than make you angry, rather
than--disturb you. Have a little pity upon me, papa, and let me off for
to-night.”

“To-night?” he said; “to-night ought to be the proudest day of your
life. Who could ever have expected that you would be the heiress of
Bedloe, a little chit of a girl? Most fathers would have married you off
to the first comer that would take you and your little bit of fortune.
But I have behaved very different. I have made you as good as an eldest
son--not that I can’t take it all away again, as easily as I gave it, if
you don’t do your best for me.”

He swayed forward a little as he spoke, in his excitement, and Winifred,
whose terrified eyes were quite prepared to see him fall down at her
feet, rose up hastily, with a little cry. She put out her hands
unconsciously to support him.

“Oh, papa, I will do whatever you please!” she cried.

Mr. Chester pushed the outstretched hands away. “You think, perhaps, I
want something to steady me,” he said. “That’s a delusion. I am as
steady as you are, and more so, and know quite as well what I am saying.
However, as long as you have come to your senses and obey me, that’s all
I care for. Look here, Winnie!” he said, again sitting down suddenly and
pushing her back into her chair; “I don’t want to be hard upon you. If
old Farrell wants an apology I’ll make it--to a certain extent. I meant
no offence. She’s very useful in her way. She’s a lady, I always said
so; and she’s made you a lady, and I am grateful to her--more or less.
You can say whatever’s pretty on my part; or I’ll even say a word
myself, if you insist upon it. To have her go now would be deuced
awkward. Tell her I meant no offence. I was a little elevated, if you
like. You may take away my character, if that will please her,” he
added, with a laugh. “Say what you like, I can bear it. Getting
everything done as I wished had gone to my head.”

“Oh, papa, if you had but wished something else! I am not--good enough.
I am not--strong enough.”

“Hold your tongue. I hope I’m the best judge of my own affairs,” her
father said. Then he yawned largely in her face. “I think I’ll go and
have my whisky and water. It is getting near bedtime, and I’ve had an
exciting day, what with old Bab, and old Farrell, and you. I’ve been on
the go from morning to night. But you’ve all got to knock under at the
last,” he added, nodding his head, “and the sooner the better, you’ll
find, my dear, if you have any sense.”

Winifred sat and listened to his heavy step as he went across the hall
to the library and down the long corridor. It seemed to be irregular and
heavier than its wont, and it was an effort of self-restraint not to
follow him, to see that all was safe. When the door of his room closed
behind him, which it did with a louder clang than usual, rousing all the
echoes in the silent house, another terror seized her. Shut into that
library, with no one near him, what might happen? He might fall and die
without any one being the wiser; he might call with no one within
hearing. She started to her feet, then sat down again trembling, not
knowing what to do. She dared say nothing to him of the terror in her
mind. She dared not set the servants to watch over him or take them into
her confidence--even Hopkins, what could she say to him? But she could
not go to her own room, which would be entirely out of the way of either
sight or hearing. Sometimes Mr. Chester would sit up late, after even
Hopkins had gone to bed. The terror in her mind was so great that
Winifred watched half the night, leaving the door of the drawing-room
ajar, and sometimes starting out into the darkness of the hall, at one
end of which a feeble light was kept burning. The hours went by very
slowly while she thus watched and waited, trembling at all the creakings
and rustlings of the night. She forgot the pledge she had given, the new
life that was opening upon her in the midst of these terrors. Visions
flitted before her mind, things which she had read in books of dead men
sitting motionless, with the morning light coming in upon their pallid
faces, or lying where they had fallen till some unthinking servant
stumbled in the morning over the ghastly figure. It was long past
midnight when the library door opened, and, shrinking back into the
darkness, she saw her father come out with his candle. He had probably
fallen asleep in his chair, and the light glowing upon his face showed
it pallid and wan after the flush and heat of the evening. He came
slowly, she thought unsteadily, along the passages, and climbed the
stairs towards his room with an effort. It seemed to her excited
imagination almost a miracle when the door of his bedroom closed upon
him, and the pale blueness of dawn stealing through the high staircase
window proved to her that this night of watching was almost past. But
what might the morning bring forth?

The morning brought nothing except the ordinary routine of household
life at Bedloe. Mr. Chester got up at his usual hour, in his usual
health. He sent for the doctor, however, in the course of the day,
partly because he wanted him, partly to see how Winnie would behave.

“I have the stomach of an ostrich,” he said, “but still that port was a
little too much. To drink port with impunity, one should drink it every
day.”

“It is a great deal better never to drink it at all,” said the doctor;
but Mr. Chester patted him on the back, and assured him that good port
was a very good thing, and much better worth drinking than thin claret.

“I believe it is that sour French stuff that takes all the spirit out of
you young fellows,” he said.

Winifred was compelled to be present during this interview. She heard
her father give an account to Edward of the expected guests.

“You shall come up and dine one evening,” he said. “You must make
acquaintance with the Earl, who may be of use to you. I shouldn’t wonder
if we had him often about here.”

To Winifred, looking on, saying nothing, but vividly alive to her
father’s offensive tone of patronage, and to the significance of this
intimation, there was torture in every word. But Edward looked at her
with an unclouded countenance, and laughingly assured her father that he
had known the Earl all his life.

“He is a very good fellow; but he is not very bright,” he said.

“He may not be very bright, but he is a peer of the realm, and that is
the sort of society that is going to be cultivated at Bedloe. I have had
enough of the little people,” Mr. Chester replied.

Edward Langton laughed, with the slightest, but only the very slightest,
tinge of colouring in his face. “The little people must take the hint,
and disappear,” he said.

“But, of course, present company is always excepted. That has nothing to
do with you. You’re professional; you’re indispensable.”

Young Langton gave Winifred a look. It was swift as lightning, but it
told her more than a volume could have done. The indignation and
forbearance and pity that were in it made a whole drama in themselves.
“I hope I shall prove myself worthy of the exception in my favour,” was
all he said.

“I have no doubt you will; you were always one that knew your own
place,” said Mr. Chester.

“Father!” cried Winnie, crimson with shame and indignation.

“Hold your tongue!” he cried. “The doctor knows what I mean, and I know
what he means; we want no interference from you.”

It was the first trial of the new state of affairs. She had to shake
hands with him in her father’s presence, with nothing but a look to
express all the trouble in her mind. But Edward on his part was
entirely calm, with a shade of additional colour, but no more. He played
his part more thoroughly than she did--upon which, with the usual
self-torture of women, a cold thought arose in her that perhaps it was
not entirely an assumed part. From every side she had much to bear.




CHAPTER X


Miss Farrell did not add to her pupil’s trouble. When she heard the
state of affairs, she gave up with noble magnanimity her intention of
going away. “You must not ask me to meet any one--till the visitors
come,” she said. “I shall remain to give you what help I can; but you
know my rule. When I am treated with rudeness, I make no complaint, I
take no offence, but I go away.”

“You would not have the heart to desert me,” Winifred said.

“No, that is just how it is--I have not the heart; but I will take my
meals in my room, my dear. Your dear father”--habit was too strong in
Miss Farrell’s mind even for resentment--“no doubt his meaning was quite
innocent; but we can’t meet again--at all events for the present,” she
added, with much dignity.

“So long as you do not forsake me,” cried Winnie, and Miss Farrell,
touched, declared “I will never forsake you!” with fervour.

This added an element which was tragi-comic to Winifred’s distress. With
all the grave and terrible things that surrounded her, the misery of her
new position, the sense of falsehood in her tacit acceptance of all her
father was doing, her fears for him, the chill of alarm of another kind
with which Edward’s composure filled her--there was something ludicrous
in having to provide for Miss Farrell’s retirement into her own rooms,
and the two different spheres thus established in the house. Perhaps it
gave her a little relief in the more serious miseries that were always
so near. It threw a slight aspect of the fictitious into the sombre air
of the house, which seemed charged with trouble.

But in the meantime the preparations went on for the expected guests.
Mr. Chester meant that they should be received magnificently. Some of
the rooms were entirely refurnished with a luxury and wealth of
upholstering enough to fill even a millionaire with envy. Nothing so
fine existed in the county as the two rooms which were being ornamented
for the use of the very active-minded and energetic woman who was the
young Earl’s mother. To describe the sensation with which Winifred saw
all this is well-nigh impossible. She had been made to consent in
consequence of the arguments used by the very man whose interests were
assailed. But for Edward she would have refused to be any party to the
proposed arrangement--and now she asked herself how far it was to go?
Was she to be forced to consent if a further proposal were made to her?
Was she to be driven to the very church door, in order to avert an evil
which began, to her, every day to appear more visionary? Could it be
that Edward--Edward himself, who had always been the soul of honour in
her eyes--had lent himself to the conspiracy against her? Her heart
cried out so against the coil of falsehood in which her feet seemed to
be caught that life truly became a misery to her--false to her brothers,
false to her father, false to herself. She could not say false to
Edward, since it was Edward himself who exacted this extraordinary proof
of devotion. Every principle in her being rose up against it as it went
on from day to day. She asked herself whether it was doing a less wrong
to her father thus to deceive him by pretended submission than to tell
him the truth even at the risk of an illness. And he had not to her the
least air of being ill. He was a strong man, stronger than almost any
other man of his age, more ruddy, more active. Her head swam with the
multitude of her thoughts. Winifred’s mind was too simple and
straightforward to accept that idea of faith unfaithful. It became like
a yoke of iron upon her shoulders. Mr. Chester grew stronger and more
active, and louder and gayer every day; while she faded and shrank
visibly, unable to make any head against that sea of troubles that
carried her soul away.

The eve of the appointed visit had arrived, and all the preparations
were complete. Mr. Chester insisted that his daughter should go with him
over all the redecorated rooms to see the effect. “You think perhaps
that this is all for my lady’s gratification,” he said; “that’s a
mistake. It’s for the gratification of Winifred, the new Countess, when
she comes home.”

“If you mean me, papa”--

“Oh no, of course not! how could I mean you?” cried her father, rubbing
his hands. “I mean Miss Chester, who is going to marry the Earl. Perhaps
you don’t know that young lady? She will bring her husband a pretty
estate and a pretty bit of money in her apron, and please her father
down to the ground.”

“But, papa--Oh, I cannot, I cannot deceive you! It is deceiving you even
to seem to--even to pretend to”--

“You had better hold your tongue, Winnie,” he said sternly. “You had
better not go any farther or you may be sorry for it. You should know
very well by this time what I’m capable of when I’m crossed. But I don’t
mean to be crossed this time, I can tell you. It would be hard if a man
couldn’t do what he likes with his own daughter. Go along with you, and
don’t speak back to me.”

“But, papa”--

“Go, I tell you, before you put me in a passion,” her father cried. And
Winifred was terrified by the glare in his eyes, and the quick recurring
fear that she might harm him took all power from her. She hurried away,
leaving him to admire his upholstery by himself. And that afternoon and
evening her distress reached its climax. She would not consult Miss
Farrell. She would not see Edward. Things had gone too far indeed to be
talked of, or submitted to any other decision than that of her own
heart. Once or twice, nay a hundred times, the desire of the coward, to
run away, occurred to her. But how could she, to think of nothing more,
leave her father in the lurch, and expose him to all the comments of
the recent unfriendly acquaintances whom he thought friends? Winifred
was one of those to whom the abandonment of a post was impossible; but
such was the confusion of her misery, that flight, now or at another
moment,--flight alone, hopeless, without leaving any trace behind
her,--seemed to be the only way of escape. At dinner her father seemed
to have forgotten her attempt at rebellion. He talked incessantly of the
guests, rolling their titles with an enjoyment which was half ludicrous,
half pitiful. “You must try and persuade old Farrell to show,” he said.
“She’s very well thought of by all these grandees, and she can talk to
them of people they know--besides, there’s her music, Winnie, that’s
first rate. I’ll come and apologise if she pleases, but we must take
care my lady’s not dull of an evening, and she must show.” He was in
such good spirits that after dinner, with much clearing of his throat,
and something like a blush, he made her sit down to the piano and
accompany him in one of the old songs for which he had been famous
before he began to fear the memory of the singing man at Chester
Cathedral. He had the remains of a beautiful voice, and still sang well
in the old-fashioned style which he had learned when a boy. To hear him
carolling forth a love-song of that period when Moore was monarch, was
to Winnie a wonder and portent which took away her very breath. She
trembled so in her part of the performance that the piano became
inaudible in competition with the fine roll of Mr. Chester’s
grace-notes. “Why, I thought you could play at least,” he said roughly.
“I’ll have old Farrell--she knows what she’s about--to-morrow night.”

“Well, my dear,” Miss Farrell said, when this conversation was reported
to her, “you know what my feelings are; but I am not dull to the credit
of the family. It being fully understood what my motive is, I shall
certainly appear to-morrow evening, and do my very best to make things
go off well. I will play your dear father’s accompaniment with the
greatest pleasure. He has the remains of a very fine voice, and he has
science, too, though it is old-fashioned. So has your brother George a
beautiful voice; I always wished him to cultivate it. We must do
everything, Winnie, both you and I, to make things go off well. You are
not in good spirits, it is true,--neither am I,--but we must forget all
that for the credit of the house. And how do you think he is himself?”
she added after a pause.

“He looks very well,” said Winnie. “I see no signs of illness.
Edward”--she paused a little with a faint smile,--“I think I should say
Dr. Langton, for I never see him”--

“Oh, my dear, don’t judge him unjustly!--he thinks that is necessary.”

“You all think it is necessary,” cried Winnie, with a little outburst of
feeling, “to make me as unhappy as possible. I mean to say that I
think--I hope he is mistaken. Even doctors,” she said, with a smile,
“have been mistaken before now.”

“That is very true,” said Miss Farrell gravely, and then she rose and
kissed the pale face opposite to her. “Anyhow, my dear, you and I will
do our best for him as long as there are strangers in the house.”

Winifred was worn out by the strain of these troubled days, and by the
self-controversy that had been going on within her. She fell asleep
early in profound exhaustion, the dead sleep of forces overstrained and
heart stupefied with trouble. She woke suddenly in the early dawn of
the morning, while as yet everything was indistinct. What had woke her,
or if it was any external incident at all that had done so, she could
not tell at first; there seemed a tingle and vibration in the pale air.
Was it the early twittering which had begun faintly among the thick
foliage outside? She listened, rising up in her bed, with an intensity
for which there seemed no reason, for no definite alarm occurred to her
mind. Everything was still, not a sound audible but those first faint
chirpings, interrogative, tentative, from the trees. She was about to
compose herself to rest again, when suddenly there sounded tingling
through the silence the sound of a bell, a little angry, impatient
jingle repeated, tearing the stillness. Winifred was too much startled
and confused to realise what it was, but she got up hastily, and,
throwing her dressing-gown round her, opened her door to hear better.
The thought that came first to her mind was, that the summons was at the
door, and that it meant one of the boys coming home. Her heart leaped to
her throat with excitement. The boys had come home at all sorts of hours
in the time which was past, but now, what could this summons be? It came
again while she stood trembling, wondering; and then, with a cry,
Winifred flew along the corridor. Mr. Chester’s room was in the wing, at
some distance from the other sleeping-rooms of the house. Everything was
silent, an atmosphere of profound sleep, calm tranquillity in the dim
air, through which the night-lamp in the hall below burned with a weird
glimmer. The blueness of the dawn in its faint pervasion seemed more
ghostly than the night.

As Winifred hurried along, another door opened with a hasty sound, and
old Hopkins stumbled forth. “What is it, Miss Winifred?”

She had no breath to reply. She put him before her, trembling as they
reached Mr. Chester’s door. She was terrified by the thoughts of what
she might see. But there was nothing that was terrible to see. A voice
came out of the curtains, querulous, with an outburst of abuse at old
Hopkins, who never could be made to hear.

“Send for Langton,” Mr. Chester said.

“It’s the middle of the night, please sir,” old Hopkins replied.

“Send for Langton,” repeated the voice. It had a curious stammer in it;
a sibilant sound. “S--s--send for Langton,” with another torrent of
exclamations.

The old butler hurried out of the room, muttering to himself, “It will
be half an hour before I can wake one of those grooms, and he’ll take
the skin off me before that. Miss Winifred, oh, it’s only the doctor he
wants; it’s nothing out of the common!”

“I will go,” she said.

“You? But it’s the middle of the night, and not a soul awake.”

“Is he very ill? Tell me the truth. I will go quicker than any one
else.”

“Miss Winifred, you’ve no call to be frightened. He’s been the same
fifty times. He don’t want the doctor no more than I do. Oh, goodness,
there he is at it again!”

Then the bell sent a wild, irritated peal into the air, which evidently
ended abruptly in the breaking of the bell-rope.

“I will go!” Winifred said, and the old man, relieved, hurried back to
his master. She put on quickly a long ulster, which covered her from
head to foot, and hurried out into the strange coolness and freshness of
the unawakened world. There was no need, she said to herself, but it
was a relief and almost pleasure to do something. The great stillness,
the feeling of the dawn, the faint blue-tinted atmosphere, a something
which came before the light, all breathed peace about her. It was like a
disembodied world, another state of existence in which nothing real or
tangible was. She flew along, the only creature moving save those too
early, questioning birds, and felt in herself a curious elevation above
mortal boundaries, as if she too was disembodied and could move like a
spirit. The strange abstractedness of the atmosphere, the keen yet soft
coolness, the unimaginable solitude possessed her like a vision. She
felt no sensation of anxiety or fear, but seemed carried along upon her
errand like a creature of the air, unfamiliar with the emotions of the
world. As it happened, Langton’s groom was already preparing his
master’s horse for some early visit. He stared at Winifred as if she
had dropped from the skies, but made no remark, except that his master
would be ready instantly; and she turned back through the sleeping
village, still wrapped in the same abstraction, walking along as in a
dream. One labourer, setting out to work at distant fields, passed, and
stared dumb and awe-stricken at her, as if she had been a ghost. His was
the only figure save her own that was visible. When she was half-way
home, Edward galloped past, waving his hand to her as he hastened on.
For her part, Winifred felt that there was no longer any need to hurry.
She wandered on under the trees, where now all the birds were awake,
chatting to each other--forming their little plans for the endless
August day, the age of sunshine and sweet air before them, now that
night once more was over--before they began to sing. She was
unspeakably eased, consoled, rested by that universal tranquillity. The
dew fell upon her very heart. She lingered to look at a hundred things
which she had seen every day all her life, which she had never noticed
before. It was not sunrise as yet; the world was still a land of dreams,
waiting the revelation of the reality to come. Thus it was some time
before she reached the house, and yet she was surprised when she reached
it, having got so far away from that centre of human life with all its
throbbings, into the great quiet of the morning world.

Something, an indefinable disturbance, a change of a kind which made
itself felt, was in the place. The door stood wide open, a scared groom
was walking Langton’s horse up and down, the windows were still closed,
except one, at which two or three indistinct figures seemed looking out.
There arose a flutter, she could not tell why, in Winifred’s breast.
She almost smiled at herself for the involuntary sensation which marked
her return from a world of visions to that of real life. Then Edward
Langton appeared coming out, as if to meet her in the open door.







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