Chapter Twenty Five.
A Turn of the Wheel.
“This changing, and great variance
Of earthly states, up and down,
Is not but casualty and chance
(As some men say is without ressown).”
Robert Henrysoun.
It did “pass off” again. The next day Mr Western seemed nearly as well as usual, though to Mary’s eyes there was a tired and unrestful expression on his face with which she could not feel familiar.
“He is not looking well. He does not seem like his old self, I am certain,” she said in her own mind over and over again. But what could be done? He declared there was nothing really wrong; the very mention of sending for Mr Brandreth irritated him unaccountably, and he was most urgent with Mary to say nothing to arouse her mother’s anxiety. So the utmost Mary could do was to please him in all the small ways ready affection can always suggest, to exert herself to be even more cheerful and entertaining than her wont.
She wrote to Lilias, begging her to let most of her letters be to her father, and urging upon her the desirability of meeting with all possible cordiality Mrs Brabazon’s friendly overtures. But for some days Lilias had nothing more to tell of the new-found cousins.
A week passed, a week of pretty hard work for Mary. What with “the children’s” extra calls upon her patience and attention, her anxiety about her father, and unusual efforts to seem cheerful and light-hearted, its close found her really tired and dispirited.
“Far more tired than with nursing Alys,” she said to herself, when on Saturday afternoon she was taking Brooke and Francie a walk, thankful to know that the more troublesome members of her charge were safely disposed of for the rest of the day in a holiday expedition to old Mr Halkin’s farm. “That was play compared with the worry and fret of the last few days. And why should I feel it so? There is something not right about me just now. I am changed, though I blame the children. I have grown captious and discontented. I do believe that fortnight at the farm spoiled me—the being thanked and praised for everything I did. What a silly goose I am, after all! How I do wish I could hear how Alys is—I do think she might write again, but I suppose it is my own doing,” with a little sigh.
For two or three pencilled words from Miss Cheviott, saying merely that they had got safe to Romary, that she had borne the drive pretty well, but was woefully dull without Mary, were all the news Mary had had of her late patient.
Her thoughts were interrupted by little Francie. She had been running on in front of her brother, but turning suddenly, fled back to Mary in alarm.
“What’s the matter, dear?” her sister exclaimed, for the child was white and trembling.
“A horse,” whispered Francie, “another naughty horse coming so fast, Mary, and it makes me think of that dedful day.”
Francie’s fears had exaggerated facts. The horse, coming up behind them on the soft turf at the side of the path, which deadened the sound of its approach, was proceeding at an ordinary pace, which slackened somewhat when its rider caught sight of the little party in front of him. Slackened, but that was all. Mr Cheviott, for it was he, passed them at a gentle trot, just lifting his hat to Mary as he did so. Mary’s face flushed as she bowed in return.
“I do think,” she said to herself, “as we are not to be friends, it would be much better taste for him not to come our way at all. It will annoy poor father exceedingly, in his nervous state, to hear of Mr Cheviott almost, as it were, passing our door. But, of course, he may have business at the farm.”
And she called to Brooke and Francie, volunteering to tell them a story, and tried her best bravely to force her mind away from the sore subject. But a surprise was in store for her.
More than an hour later, when she and the children were close to the Rectory gate on their return home, little Brooke, who was of an observant turn of mind, called her attention to some fresh hoof marks on the gravel drive.
“See, Mary,” he said, “some one’s been here since we came out. I wonder if it was that horse we met, that the gentleman belonged to that bowed to you?”
“That belonged to the gentleman, you mean,” said Mary, laughing in spite of herself. “Oh! no, I am sure it has not been he, Brooke dear.”
But Mary was wrong. Her mother met her at the door, her face bright and interested, her hands filled with some lovely flowers.
“Mr Cheviott has been here,” she said, eagerly, “and it has done your father so much good. He stayed fully half an hour with him, and talked so pleasantly, your father says, and he brought these flowers for you from his sister with a note. What a pity you were out!”
“I dare say it was quite as well,” said Mary, calmly. “Papa has had him all to himself, and he enjoys a quiet talk with one person alone just now. I am really very glad Mr Cheviott called, as it has pleased papa.”
And in her heart she could not deny that this was behaving with “something like” generosity!
Alys’s note was but a few words—she was not yet allowed to write more, she said—but few as they were, the words were full of affection and gratitude. The London doctor had not yet been, but was expected next week. In the mean time she had to lie perfectly still, and it was rather dull, though “poor Laurence” did his best. And she ended by hoping that Mary would think of her while arranging the flowers. Mary certainly did so—and with feelings of increased affection, not unmingled however with the pain of the old vague self-reproach.
For some days Mr Western seemed quite to have recovered his usual strength and spirits, and Mary was glad to be able to write cheerfully to Lilias, who had been threatening a premature return home, had the news thence not improved.
“Papa is better,” she announced to Mrs Greville, two days after their arrival at Hastings, when the afternoon post brought Mary’s letter.
“It seems to me,” she went on, after receiving Mrs Greville’s congratulations on the good accounts,—“it seems to me that it is far more his spirits than anything else that are affected.”
“But at his age that is not a good sign,” said Mrs Greville.
“I suppose not,” said Lilias, thoughtfully. “Mary says he has begun to think and speak so anxiously about our future in case of anything happening to him.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr Greville, complacently, “that’s the worst of a large family.”
“The worst and the best too,” said Lilias. “If papa’s health did break down he would have us all to work for him.”
Mr Greville smiled—a not unkindly but somewhat dubious smile.
“Easier said than done, my dear girl,” he said. He rather liked to provoke Lilias into a battle of words, she grew so eager and looked so pretty when she got excited; he would not have objected to a daughter, or even a couple of daughters like her, though the bare thought of all the younger Westerns in the overflowing Rectory made him shiver.
But before Lilias had time to take up her weapons there occurred a sudden diversion. A ring at the front door bell, which, while talking they had not noticed, was followed by the announcement, by Mrs Greville’s maid, that a lady was asking for Miss Western.
“A lady for Miss Western,” repeated Mrs Greville. “Show her in then, Miller, at once.”
But the lady, it appeared, declined to be “shown in.” She had begged that Miss Western would speak to her for a moment in the hall, not feeling sure that there might not be some mistake.
“What a queer message,” said Mrs Greville. “Take care, Lilias; it is probably some begging person.”
“No,” said Lilias, with a sudden inspiration, as she turned to leave the room, “I don’t think it is. I do believe it is Mrs Brabazon.”
Her intuition was correct. Mrs Brabazon it proved to be. Mrs Brabazon on foot, with none of the apanage of the Brooke wealth about her except her richly comfortable attire and general air of prosperity and well-being. Only her kindly eyes had a somewhat careworn expression, and there were lines in her face which told of past and present anxiety. She received Lilias with cordiality almost approaching affection.
“I am so glad it is you,” she said as she shook hands with Lilias. “I was so afraid it might be some other Miss Western, though the name is uncommon, not like Weston. Do you know what I did? Fancy anything so stupid! I lost your address, which you remember I noted down on a bit of paper in Dr —’s waiting-room. I could not remember the name of the friends you were staying with, and of course hunting for you in all the hotels in London would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I have so little time, I am always so hurried to get back to Anselm when I am out. It was not till the day before we left town that it occurred to me to try to trace you through Dr —, and when I went to his house for the purpose, he was off to the country! Oh! you don’t know how vexed I was.”
“And how did you find me out here?” asked Lilias, a little bewildered by Mrs Brabazon’s unconcealed eagerness to prosecute the acquaintance so unexpectedly begun.
“By the local paper—the visitor’s guide, or whatever they call it. Of course I was not looking for you, I had no reason to suppose you were here; but the moment I saw the name Western I felt sure it must be you, and Anselm felt sure that Greville was the name of your friends. It really seems quite—what people call providential, though, somehow, I never like using the expression in that way.”
“And how is your nephew—young Mr Brooke?” said Lilias.
Mrs Brabazon shook her head.
“It is Basil over again—ah, it is heart-breaking work,” she said, sadly. “But I forget, I am speaking to you as if you knew all about us.”
“Somehow I feel as if I did,” said Lilias, “the familiar names—one of my brothers is Basil, and another Anselm Brooke, but we call him Brooke always.”
“And which is Basil?”
“The eldest,” said Lilias. “He has got a berth, as he calls it, in an office in the city. It is a good opening, I believe, and he will probably be sent out to India in a year or two. But in the mean time, of course, he gets very little, and—and it keeps us very strait at home,” she added, with a smile.
Mrs Brabazon listened with unfeigned interest.
“I must hear all about them,” she said. “But not today. And I am keeping you out here in the passage all this time.”
“That is my fault,” said Lilias. “Won’t you come in? I know Mrs Greville would be pleased to see you.” (A thoroughly true assertion, as Mrs Greville was already on the verge of that peculiar phase of ennui so apt to seize on active practical people when away from “home” and its duties, stranded in a strange place where they know no one, and never go out without the consciousness of the terrible word “visitors” branded on their foreheads.)
“Not to-day, thank you, my dear. I must run home,” said Mrs Brabazon. “But tell me what day will you spend with us? Can you come to-morrow? We are at the —.”
Lilias might have hesitated to accept too readily the invitation, however cordial, of the rich relations who for so many long years had ignored Margaret Western and her children; but the influence of Mary’s earnest advice was too strong upon her to make her dream of holding back. Besides, it was impossible to look in Mrs Brabazon’s face and doubt her good intentions.
“Thank you,” the girl replied. “I should like to come very much. But I think I must return here early, the evenings are so dull for Mr and Mrs Greville.”
“Of course,” said Mrs Brabazon. “And Anselm is always so tired in the evening. The day-time is the best for us. I will send the carriage for you at half-past twelve—will that do?—and it shall bring you back again at four or five, or any time you like. Possibly Anselm may be going a drive, and would come round this way for you. And pray apologise to Mrs Greville for my unceremonious behaviour.”
“Thank you,” said Lilias. “Yes, that will suit me perfectly. I shall be ready at half-past twelve.”
“Good-bye, then, for the present. I shall have a great deal to talk to you about to-morrow. I want to hear everything about your brothers and sisters and everybody,” said Mrs Brabazon, as she shook hands in farewell.
Lilias went back to the drawing-room to tell her surprising news to her friends. Mrs Greville was full of interest and excitement, Mr Greville somewhat inclined to question the advisability of this sudden friendship.
“Have you ever heard your mother speak of this Mrs Brabazon? Are you quite sure she is what she represents herself to be?” he said, doubtfully.
Lilias smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I am quite sure of that. Mamma remembered Mrs Brabazon by name. She was a Miss Brooke, and her father and my grandfather were first cousins. These Brookes are the elder branch.”
“But who are they?—I mean, how many are there of them?” asked Mrs Greville. “Why is Mrs Brabazon always with them?”
“The mother is dead, I am sure of that,” said Lilias, “and I think Mrs Brabazon has kept house for Mr Brooke since her death. It was Mary that told us all we knew, and she heard it from some ladies she met at your house.”
“Of course,” exclaimed Mrs Greville, in a tone of relief, “the Morpeths—you remember, Charles? Oh, yes, of course, it is all right. Frances Morpeth was always saying how nice Mrs Brabazon was. I am sure you are quite right to cultivate the acquaintance, Lilias. Don’t you agree with me, Mr Greville?”
“I suppose so,” said Mr Greville, lazily. “But I hope the cultivation of it will not absorb you altogether, Lilias. It would be wretchedly dull in these stupid lodgings without you, my dear, to argue with and contradict, and look at.”
“You need not be afraid. I am not going to desert you,” said Lilias, laughing, as she left the room.
“That girl really grows prettier and prettier,” said Mr Greville. “She is much more amusing, too, than her sister Mary. I fancy Mary is something of a prig; there was no getting a smile out of her the last time she was over with us. Lilias is brighter than ever I knew her, full of fun and pleased with everything.”
“She is very nice,” agreed Mrs Greville. “But they are both very nice. I am not at all sure but that it is Mary who has the lion’s share of the work at home. How pleased I shall be if anything comes of these new relations.”
“Umph,” said Mr Greville.
“Mr Brooke’s carriage” came for Miss Western at half past twelve. Whether “Mr Brooke” referred to the young man she had already seen, or to a father whom she had as yet heard nothing of, Lilias felt in some doubt. But before the day was over Mrs Brabazon’s extreme communicativeness had put her in full possession of the family history past and present, and had, besides, suggested hints which made the poor girl giddy with surprise and bewilderment, and an utterly novel sense of perplexity.
“I must consult some one,” she said to herself, when she got back to Mrs Greville’s lodgings. “I feel too confused and amazed to decide what to do. I had better tell the Grevilles, they are sensible and kind and really interested in us, and they will advise me as to whether I should write home about what I have heard.”
So to Mrs Greville’s inquiries as to how she had got on, what she had heard, etc, etc, Lilias was very ready to give most comprehensive answers.
“I got on very well indeed, thank you,” she said. “They were as cordial and kind as possible. Mr Brooke, Anselm’s father, is to be down here on Friday, and Mrs Brabazon wants me to spend Saturday with them to see him, and what’s more, she made me write from the hotel to Basil, to ask him to come to them from Saturday to Monday if he can get off, which I am sure he can. She told me to tell him she would ‘frank’ him both ways. Wasn’t that considerate, Mrs Greville?”
“Very,” replied Mrs Greville, heartily. “I am exceedingly glad to hear it.”
“I am sure Basil will come,” continued Lilias, “for I told him papa and mamma would wish it. But, oh! Mrs Greville, you will really think I am dreaming when I tell you what else Mrs Brabazon told me.”
She looked up in Mrs Greville’s face, her blue eyes bright with excitement, her cheeks glowing with eagerness. Even lazy Mr Greville’s curiosity was aroused.
“Why, let us guess,” he said, jokingly. “Is old Mr Brooke going to adopt you and make you his heiress? Why, you would be irresistible then, Lilias! But, by-the-bye, he has a son and heir, so it can’t be that.”
“No,” said Lilias, “not exactly. But it’s something quite as wonderful. What do you think Mrs Greville—Mrs Brabazon gave me to understand—in fact, she said so plainly—that after Anselm, Mr Brooke’s only remaining child, mamma is heir to all, or, at least, to a great part of their property.”
“Your mother!” exclaimed Mrs Greville, apparently too astonished to say more. Mrs Western, she knew, had been a governess when her husband fell in love with and married her, and though she had always known her to be what is vaguely termed “well-connected,” she had somehow never associated her with possible riches or “position;” she had, on the contrary, often annoyed the Western girls by a slight shade of patronage in her tone of speaking of their mother, whom she looked upon as an amiable, decidedly unsophisticated and unworldly woman—“sair hauden doun” by the small means and large family at the Rectory.
“Your mother!” she repeated.
But Mr Greville’s worldly wisdom prevented his losing his head at the news.
“After Mr Brooke’s son, you say,” he observed. “But that makes all the difference. Lots of people are next heir but one to a fortune without ever coming any nearer it. What’s to prevent this Mr Anselm marrying and having half a dozen sons and daughters of his own?”
“That is the thing,” said Lilias, “that—Anselm, I mean, is, of course, what the whole depends upon. Had he been strong and well we should probably never have heard or known of our—of mamma’s position. But—it seems so horrid to talk about it so coolly—Anselm will never grow up and marry, Mr Greville—he is only sixteen now—for he is dying.”
“Dear me, dear me,” said Mr Greville, “how very, very sad!”
But underneath his not altogether conventional expression of sympathy, Lilias could plainly detect the reflection—“That very decidedly alters the state of the case.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “it is terribly sad.”
“And under these circumstances—for you speak of this son as an only child, and he has probably long been delicate,” pursued Mr Greville—“how is it, may I ask, that these Brookes have never before looked up your mother? Their meeting with you now is purely accidental, and more Mrs Brabazon’s doing than Mr Brooke’s, it seems to me.”
“She explained all that,” said Lilias. “It is only very lately that Anselm has been an only child. There was quite a large family of them, and five, I think, lived to grow up. But one by one they have dropped off—all died of consumption like their mother. Basil, the second son, and apparently the strongest, lived to be six-and-twenty, and only died last year, having caught cold at some races—regimental races, I mean; he was in the Dragoons,” her colour rising unaccountably as she mentioned the regiment. “Before his death, Mrs Brabazon says, he was very anxious to look us up, for he never expected that Anselm would live long. But his father has been in such a broken-down state that Mrs Brabazon could never get him to take any interest in the matter. She does; it is wonderful how she can do so, I think, when one remembers how she has seen her own nephews and nieces die one by one.”
“There is no chance, I suppose, of old Mr Brooke’s marrying again,” said Mr Greville, consideringly.
“None whatever. He is nearly seventy, fifteen years older than his sister, and thoroughly aged by trouble, she says.”
“Then the estates are entailed?”
“Principally, not altogether. But they have never been separated, and that was why Basil Brooke wanted his father to look us up. He was anxious that the alienable—is that the word?—part of the property should go with the entailed if the next heir were a desirable sort of person. For I must explain Basil is the real heir; mamma would only have a certain life-rent, a very ample one though, she could provide for all her other children out of it. The entail is somehow rather peculiar. Mrs Brabazon comes in for nothing, though so much nearer than mamma, because she has no son.”
“And has your mother no idea of all this?” inquired Mr Greville.
“None whatever,” said Lilias, decidedly. “She knew there had been an unprecedented number of deaths among the Brookes, but she has always had a vague idea there were scores of them left still. Then she never associated herself, being a woman, with the possibility of succession. There were several female Brookes only a few years ago, but of the three now left not one has a son, and they are all old, Mrs Brabazon the youngest. Now, dear Mr Greville, the question is this—what, or how much should I write home of all that I have heard?”
“Why not all?” said Mrs Greville.
“I don’t know,” said Lilias. “I suppose it is from a vague fear of rousing hopes that may possibly be—no, not disappointed, there hardly seems any chance of that—but deferred, long deferred, possibly. Anselm may live some months, but there can be no question of his recovery. He spoke to me about it himself; he is nearly as anxious for his father to recognise us and settle things as his brother Basil was, Mrs Brabazon says. But Mr Brooke may live a good many years, may quite possibly outlive papa,” the girl added, with a sad little drop in her voice.
“It is of that I am thinking,” said Mr Greville, turning to Lilias with a kind earnestness of manner contrasting strongly with his usual easy indifference. “By ‘that’ I mean your father’s state of health and spirits. It seems to me it would be cruel to keep all this from him for fear of possible delay in its coming to pass. The relief to him of knowing you all would have something to look to in case of his death would be great enough to be almost like a new lease of life. And surely, if things were turning out as Mrs Brabazon says,—surely if any such need were to arise, Mr Brooke would do something for your mother at once.”
“I think so,” said Lilias. “Mrs Brabazon did not say so exactly, but she certainly inferred it. When speaking of Basil, and hearing of his being in an office in the City, she and Anselm looked at each other. ‘That is just what we heard,’ Mrs Brabazon said, and Anselm asked if he did not dislike the life very much. I said, ‘No, not so very much—he was glad to be doing anything, though his great wish had been to go into the army,’ and poor Anselm said he did not see why that might not still be arranged.”
“Curious unselfishness, surely, to take such an interest in the one who, he believes, will eventually take his place,” observed Mr Greville.
“Yes,” said Lilias, “it struck me as strangely unselfish. But Mrs Brabazon says Anselm has never cared to live since his brother’s death. Basil was the strong one, and Anselm leaned on him for everything, he has always been so delicate, ‘living with a doom over him ever since he was born,’ Mrs Brabazon called it.”
“Consumption, I suppose?” said Mr Greville. “But your mother does not look as if she came from a consumptive family.”
“No, it is not from the Brookes, but from their mothers side that they are consumptive,” said Lilias. “The deaths among the other Brookes have been in many cases from accidental causes.”
There fell a little pause; Lilias, eager for decision, was just about to break it with a repeated request for advice, when Mr Greville intercepted her intention.
“I’ll tell you what I’d do in your place, my dear,” he said, suddenly. “Write the whole to your sister Mary. She’s as sensible a girl as one often meets with, and, being on the spot, can judge as to the effect the news is likely to have on your father.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, “I think I shall. She is on the spot, as you say, and could tell it less startlingly than I could write it. Besides,” she added, with a slight touch of filial jealousy, “she can consult mamma.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Mrs Greville, in a conventionally proper tone.
“And, after all,” said Mr Greville, a little maliciously, ”‘Mamma’ is really the chief person concerned.”
He was shrewd enough to suspect that notwithstanding his wife’s honest pleasure in good fortune coming to her old friends, she would have preferred its not coming to them through their mother, the quiet, reserved woman whom she had somehow never been able quite to understand, who met her good-natured patronage with an unruffled dignity which always prevented hearty Mrs Greville from feeling quite at ease in her presence, though mentally considering her as rather a poor creature than otherwise.
It was late that night, or early, rather, the next morning, before Lilias went to bed. For, till her letter to Mary was written, she felt she could not rest. If only she could have written one other letter too!
“Oh, Arthur,” she said to herself, “what good fortune your love seems to have brought us already! And should you become poor for my sake, what happiness if it should ever be in my power to restore to you any of what you may have sacrificed! My sisters and I would have daughters’ portions, Mrs Brabazon said; and mine could not, at the worst, but be enough for us to live on. How strange that the Brookes should know him!”
For in the course of conversation that day, it had been mentioned, à propos of the Cheviotts’ meeting with Mrs Brabazon in Paris, that Arthur Beverley and Basil Brooke had been brother officers and great friends.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Sir Ingram de Romary.
“Raged the loud storm...
The lightning o’er his path
Flashed horribly—the thunder pealed—the winds
Mournfully blew; yet still his desperate course
He held; and fierce he urged his gallant steed
For many a mile. The torrent lifted high its voice.”
Lydford Bridge.
Hathercourt letters sometimes came of an evening. When any thoughtful or good-natured neighbour happened to pass the Withenden post-office at or after three o’clock in the afternoon, it was a favourite attention to call for the Rectory letters. And sometimes it happened that the owners of the letters were not sorry to receive them in private, for even among the least reserved or secretive natures it is not always pleasant to have one’s affairs discussed or guessed at by half a dozen inquisitive young people round a breakfast table.
Lilias had not written quite as much to Mary as usual of late, finding it difficult to make time for more than the almost daily lengthy and amusing letters she sent to her father. So when Mr Wills from the Edge, who, since her residence under his roof, had taken “Miss Mary” into special favour, called with a thick budget addressed in Lilias’s hand, Mary felt surprised as well as delighted.
But her pleasure was somewhat tinged with alarm when she read the few words which, at the top of the sheet, first met her glance:
“Read this when you are alone, and likely to be uninterrupted. It is nothing wrong. Don’t be frightened.”
But frightened of course she was, and thankful to be able at once to satisfy herself.
“Nothing wrong!” It would have been difficult to judge from Mary’s face, when she looked up after finishing the letter, what had been the nature of its contents. Like Lilias, her first impression was one of such utter bewilderment that it seemed as if her brain were refusing to take in the facts before her. She got up from her seat, pushed her hair back from her forehead, and tried to think reasonably and rationally. But it was difficult.
“Can I be dreaming?” she said to herself. “Mamma heir to all the Brookes’ property! Can it be true? Oh, papa, poor papa—he must be told. Only last night again he was talking to me of his racking anxiety about our future; it is so impressed on him that he is not going to live long. And, as Lilias says, this news may be fresh life to him.”
She sat down again, and for some minutes allowed her fancy to run riot in the new world so suddenly opened before her. To be rich! How extraordinary the idea seemed to her—no more furrows on her father’s face of anxiety as to the future, no more daily worries for her mother about butchers’ and grocers’ books and servants’ wages and everlasting new boots for the boys; plenty of books and music, and pretty dresses even, which in her heart Mary was by no means given to despise, for herself and Lilias; a first-rate governess for the girls—unlimited power as well as will to help their poorer neighbours—a pretty and luxurious home, something like Romary, perhaps! A flush rose to Mary’s cheek at the thought—what would the Cheviotts think of this marvellous news? Would it increase or diminish the separation between them? Was it possible that even yet all might come right between Lilias and Arthur Beverley, or had Lilias quite left off caring for him? Was it—? Her speculations were suddenly brought to a close—a tap at the door reminded her of the present, and recalled her to the consideration of how and when she should first break this astonishing revelation to her parents.
“Consult with mamma,” Lilias had said. Yes, of course, that was the first thing to be done. But to get hold of her mother alone for an uninterrupted talk was by no means so easy as it seemed, just now especially, since Mr Western’s failing health had rendered him exigeant and capricious in a way quite foreign to his ordinary character.
The tap at the door was repeated.
“Come in,” cried Mary, starting up as she spoke.
“How can I when the door is locked?” said her mother’s voice.
Mary hastened to unlock it.
“I am so sorry for keeping you waiting,” she said, penitently, as she did so. “I had no idea it was you, mother.”
“I have been looking for you all over the house, and began to think you must have gone out,” said her mother, in a slightly aggrieved tone. “It is nearly tea-time, and I want to hasten it, for possibly a cup of tea may do your father good. It is about him I wanted you, Mary. He seems to me decidedly less well this evening, and I have just been wondering if we should not ask Dr Brandreth to come to see him to-morrow. The postman will be here directly. What do you think?”
“Would papa not mind?” said Mary, consideringly.
“I don’t know—that is the difficulty. He is always pleased to see Dr Brandreth, and often enjoys a talk with him; but whenever I have proposed it lately, he has begun worrying about the expense. Dr Brandreth is very kind—to do any good to your father I know he would gladly come for nothing at all; but your father would not have that. He has always paid our doctor’s charges to the full, and would be miserable not to do so. But it can’t be helped; we are certainly unusually short of money just now, but where your father is concerned, Mary dear, I seem to grow reckless.”
Mary had drawn her mother within the threshold of her room. They stood talking near the door-way in low tones.
“If that is the only hesitation,” the girl replied, eagerly, with a suppressed excitement in her voice which, had she been a whit less preoccupied, her mother could not but have noticed, “if that is the only difficulty, oh! mother dear, don’t hesitate an instant.”
Mrs Western sighed. Her heart only too thoroughly agreed with Mary, but, alas! to her life experience of poverty it seemed no longer unendurable and inconceivable, no longer anything but sadly inevitable that, even in such a matter as a question of health or sickness, possibly even of life or death, considerations of pounds, shillings, and pence should force themselves to the front. She only sighed and hesitated.
“Mother dear,” persisted Mary, “let me write to Dr Brandreth at once. I know it is right. And oh, mother, I have such wonderful news to tell you. I have a letter from Lilias—it was to read it quietly I had locked myself into my room. Mother I don’t know how to tell you what she has written about.”
Mrs Western’s mind was still running on the fors and againsts of sending for Dr Brandreth. She hardly took in the sense of Mary’s words.
“A letter from Lilias!” she repeated. “Poor Lily, I am glad she is enjoying herself. But, Mary, if you really think we should send for Dr Brandreth, there is no time to lose. Josey called out as I came up-stairs that she heard Jacob’s ‘make-ready’ whistle at the end of the lane, and when he whistles so far off it’s always a sign that he is in a hurry.”
“Then he must just not be in a hurry,” said Mary; “but all the same, mother, I’ll write the note at once. And, in the mean time, can’t you try to guess what Lilias’s letter is about?”
“It surely isn’t that she has met Captain Beverley again,” said Mrs Western, anxiously, “or surely not that any one else has taken a fancy to her? I never thought Lilias anything of a flirt, but—”
“Oh, no, mother dear, it is nothing of that sort,” said Mary, as she ran down-stairs before her mother. “Don’t make yourself uneasy. I will tell you all as soon as I have sent off the note to Dr Brandreth.”
“We must have tea as soon as possible,” replied her mother. “I will be getting it ready, Mary, and when you have sent the note, go into your father’s study and try to get him to come into the dining-room. It will be better for him than sitting alone in the study when he is feeling ill.”
“Very well,” said Mary. She could not bring herself to share her mother’s apprehensions, she was in a state of such excitement that the whole world seemed to have changed to her. Her father could not but get better and stronger now; mental anxiety, she felt certain, had far more to do with his failing health than any one imagined.
Still when the note—less urgently worded, it must be owned, than had it been written to her mother’s dictation—was dispatched, and she went to the study to seek her father, she felt a little startled. He was sitting in his chair by the fire, half dozing, it seemed to Mary, but when he looked up in answer to her greeting, she saw that his face looked changed somehow, its expression told of pain and oppression greater than he had yet endured.
“Is your head so bad, dear father?” she said, anxiously.
“Very, very bad indeed. I feel perfectly stupid with that sense of oppression, and my sight is so strangely hazy. I could not conceal it from your mother,” he went on, half apologetically, “though you know, my dear, how I always shrink from making her uneasy.”
“Yes,” said Mary, half absently, “I know. Will you come into the dining-room to tea, papa? Mamma sent me to fetch you.”
“Very well. If she wishes it, though I feel as if I would rather stay here. I hope the children will be quiet, poor things. I can’t stand any noise or excitement tonight.”
Mary looked at him as he spoke, and dismissed the half-formed idea—that, since she had been alone with her father, had seized her with sudden temptation—of telling him the contents of the letter in her pocket, now, at once. She saw he spoke the truth. He was unfit to bear any great excitement.
Tea passed over with unwonted quiet. The “children” were impressed by their father’s weary looks, and conversation was carried on in unusually amicable whispers. After tea Mr Western went back to his study, and Mary at last succeeded in getting her mother to herself.
“For a quarter of an hour only, dear,” said Mrs Western. “Then I must take my work into the study and sit with your father. And I want to persuade him to go early to bed.”
“It is barely seven yet, mother,” said Mary. “Now listen—first of all, do you remember Lilias writing—of course you do—about having met a cousin of yours, a Mrs Brabazon, in town?”
“At the doctor’s, wasn’t it? Waiting for Mr Greville at the doctor’s, and your father was so pleased at it, and thought something might come of it—of course, I remember,” replied Mrs Western, growing interested. “Well, Mary?”
“Well, mother,” continued Mary, “Lilias’s letter is all about these relations of yours. She has met them again, they are at Hastings just now, and she has been to spend a day with them. And, mother,” she proceeded cautiously, “it does indeed seem as if something were going to come of it. Do you happen to know, did you ever hear how the Brooke property is left—entailed, I suppose I should say?”
“In the usual way, entailed on to the eldest son. I have always known that,” said Mrs Western, in some surprise.
“But failing an eldest son, mother, failing any direct male heir at all, do you—?”
Her question was never completed. At that moment a bell rang sharply and violently through the house. Mary and her mother stared at each other for a moment in silence. Bells were at no time in great request at the Rectory, and the sound of the special bell now heard seemed strange and unfamiliar.
“What can that be?” said Mary. “Some trick of the children’s I am afraid. Wait here, mother; I’ll go and see.”
She ran to the door, but before she had more than opened it her mother had overtaken her.
“Let me pass,” she whispered, in a hoarse, breathless voice—“let me go first, Mary. I know what it is. It is the study bell. Mary, your father—”
They rushed across the hall and down the study passage together. Which first reached the door Mary never knew. But between them it was thrown open and—ah, yes!—Mrs Western’s instinct was correct; the blow that for so long had threatened them had fallen at last—the Rector lay unconscious on the floor, and at the first glance Mary thought her mother was right when in agony she wailed out—“He is dead! Oh, Mary, he is dead!”
But he was not dead. They did what in their ignorance they could, poor things! and then, a quarter of an hour or so after the first alarm, Mary came rushing into the school-room, where the frightened children were all collected together.
“George, where is George?” she said. “He must go, or find some one to go, for the doctor. Simmons is out—it is always the way. But where is George? Can none of you tell me?”
“Oh, Mary, I am so sorry,” said poor Alexa. “I am afraid George has gone to bed. Have you forgotten about his sore knee? I don’t think he could go for the doctor. Couldn’t Josey and I go? Oh, dear! what shall we do?”
Mary for an instant wrung her hands in perplexity. It all came back to her memory about George’s having hurt his knee by a fall from a tree the day before, hurt it badly too. What was to be done? The nearest possibility of a man and horse was a mile off, and even then only a possibility, hardly worth wasting precious time on the chance of. Simmons, their own factotum, was out for the evening—what was to be done? Mary’s quick mind glanced it all over and decided.
“Get my cloak and hat, quick, Josey—any of you,” she said. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll run myself to the Edge and get Wills to go. He has a good horse, and has often had to bring Dr Brandreth when Al—Miss Cheviott was there. Yes, that will be best, better than running a mile the other way on the mere chance of Giles Swanwick being able to go.”
She was off before any one could stop her. But indeed it was the best thing to do. It was terrible to have to leave her mother alone with the silent, already in a strange sense, unfamiliar figure that Mary found it hard to believe could be “papa,” but what might not delay or a bungled message result in? She only glanced in again to impress upon Martha, a fairly intelligent woman of her class, on no account to leave her mistress alone; if anything were wanted to call to Miss Alexa, or Miss Josephine, who would remain within ear-shot.
At the front door Mary was stopped by Alexa, trembling and pale with repressed anxiety, yet, Mary was glad to see, crying but little.
“Tell me, Mary, dear Mary—forgive me for stopping you,” she said, breathlessly, “but do tell me, do you think he is going to die?”
“I don’t know—oh! Alexa, how can I tell?” said Mary. “Let me go, dear, and try all of you to be good. That’s the only thing you can do just now.”
“I will, indeed I will,” said Alexa, bravely, “and, Mary, you shall see a difference in me from this time, see if you don’t.”
Mary kissed her and hurried out.
“Perhaps there is really more strength and sense in Alexa than we have given her credit for,” she said to herself. It was a very tiny drop of comfort, still there was some in her young sister’s sympathy and evident desire to be of use. “For,” thought Mary, “it is impossible not to recall all dear papa’s forebodings—he has spoken so much of them lately, as to what would become of them all, and Alexa and Josey seemed as much on his mind as any—in case—”
She stopped suddenly as there flashed across her mind the recollection of Lilias’s letter, which by some strange brain freak the new excitement of the last half hour had completely banished from her memory. Could it still be true—this wonderful news which so short a time ago had seemed to illumine the dark future so brilliantly and scatter every cloud? Could it be true?
“And what if it be?” thought Mary, recklessly, a sob rising in her throat. “What shall we care for money or comfort without him! What a mockery it seems coming now when the greatest sorrow of our lives is upon us! What madness it seems ever to have murmured at our small means or privations or difficulties or anything while we were all together and well! Oh, to think that only the last time I walked down this lane I was grumbling to myself at the home worries and the children’s troublesomeness and the monotonous commonplaceness of my life! If only we were back to all that—if only—would I ever grumble again?”
The tears would come. Mary ran faster in hopes of driving them away and preserving the self-possession which she felt she dare not lose, and another ten minutes brought her to the Edge. She knew the ins and outs of the place so well that without knocking she quickly found her way into the kitchen, where Mrs Wills was busy ironing. The familiar kitchen—how little she had thought the last time she saw it, on what an errand she would next be there!
This errand was soon told, and Mrs Wills was full of sympathy. But sympathy, alas! was all she had to give, and Mary was in sore need of something more. It was terribly disappointing to find that Wills himself was not at home, nor likely to be for some hours to come. On his return from Withenden he had ridden on to Bewley, a village some miles the other way, about a horse buying or selling, or some business of the kind, which, rendered diffusive by her excitement, Mrs Wills would have given Mary the whole details of, had not the girl cut her short with an anguished exclamation:
“What am I to do? What can I do?” she cried. “They are all depending on me to find some way—mamma and all—and even now he may be dying. Oh, Mrs Wills!”
Mrs Wills wiped away her tears with one corner of her apron, while she stopped to consider.
“There’s neither man nor boy about this blessed place to-night, as ill luck would have it,” she said. “I would offer to run myself, and gladly, but I’m not as quick as when I was younger, Miss Mary. But stay—there’s farmer Bartlemoor’s not more than a mile and a quarter away, where there’s sure to be one of the sons at home and plenty of horses. To be sure it’s not exactly on the way to Withenden, but not so far about neither. Do you know it, miss?—Bartle’s farm, I mean? Bartles we calls them mostly for shorter.”
“No,” said Mary, “I don’t. But tell me and I am sure I can find it.”
Mrs Wills’s description recalled the place to Mary’s recollection. The Bartlemoors were not her father’s parishioners, but she remembered noticing the house, a rather picturesque old-fashioned one, in some of the long summer rambles the Rectory children were so fond of.
It was not yet quite dark when again she set out. But had it been the blackest of midnights, little, save for the increased difficulty and delay, would Mary have cared. She hurried on, trying hard not to think, nor to distract herself by picturing what might at that moment be happening at the Rectory. It seemed to her that she had implicitly followed Mrs Wills’s directions, yet the landmarks she was on the look-out for were strangely long of coming. It was all but dark now—the road, hardly indeed worthy of the name, along which she was hastening was perfectly bare of any sign of human habitation; she had met no one since she left the Edge, not a single belated market-cart even had passed her, and now, as Mary stood still in despair, she noticed that the clouds, which all the evening had been gathering ominously together, had joined their phalanxes—there was no longer a break in the sky—the rain began slowly but steadily, in five minutes it was a perfect pour.
Mechanically almost, poor Mary crept under a tree and stood still to think what she should do. Where indeed was the use of hurrying on, when every step, for all she knew, might but be taking her further and further in the wrong direction? It was too evident she had lost her way. What she would have done she often afterwards asked herself, if, at that moment, the sound of wheels approaching rapidly in her direction had not caught her ears. Too rapidly indeed was her next fear—how, amidst the pouring rain and the darkness, could she attract the driver’s attention? She ran forward—yes, to her delight the vehicle, whatever it was, had lamps! Could it possibly, by any blessed chance, be Dr Brandreth himself returning from a country round? Anyway, whoever and whatever it was, she must do her utmost to attract attention. And as Mary said this to herself there flashed across her memory a gruesome legend of the neighbourhood, which many a night, when a child, had made her put her fingers in her ears for terror of what she might hear—a legend of a certain Sir Ingram de Romary who, maddened by wine and some wild quarrel, had driven himself and his horse to destruction over the Chaldron water-fall, a mile or more the other side of Hathercourt. All the way from Romary Dene, an old ruin now long given up to the owls and bats, the mad race had been run, and still on wild, dark, stormy nights “folks said ’twas to be heard again.”
Mary, standing in the road, shivered as the story rushed through her brain—shivered with strange nervous terror, for which, at the same moment, she vigorously despised herself.
“Papa dying,” she said to herself, “and I to be frightened of a ridiculous ghost story! What can I be made of? Have I no heart?”
Afterwards she did herself more justice. A strong excitement may, indeed, override every other sensation, but it may also, by some slightest variation, kindle every perception, every nerve, every feeler, so to speak, of our Briareus-like imagination into abnormal acuteness. Who cannot but recall with astonishing minuteness the trifling outside details of any scene morbidly impressed on our memory—the pattern on the walls above the bed where our best beloved lay dying, the details of the dress of the indifferent messenger who brought us that news we can never forget? Who cannot but remember the wild, even ludicrous, vagaries that flashed through our fancy at some “supreme moment” of our lives?
But, shiver as she might, Mary had already committed herself to action. She stood some little way forward on the road, and, as the gig, dog-cart, whatever it was, came within hail, she called out as loudly as she could the first thing that came into her head to say:
“Is that you, Dr Brandreth?”
She could not at first have been heard. There was no visible abatement of the driver’s speed. Again, and yet again, Mary repeated her cry, but apparently with no effect. On flew the wheels, down poured the rain. Mary was obliged, to save herself the risk of being knocked down as it passed her, to draw back a little.
“It surely must be Sir Ingram, after all,” she said to herself, but with no terror this time, with rather a wild, incomprehensible desire to laugh. But as the vehicle actually drew near her, as the lamps flashed into her face, common sense and self-possession returned.
“Oh, stop—stop!” she cried, “for mercy’s sake, whoever you are, stop!”
This last appeal, though she knew it not, was unneeded. Already the pace had been slackening, but it was not so easy, as might appear, suddenly to pull up a powerful, fast-trotting horse instinctively sharing its master’s desire to get home and out of the storm of rain as fast as possible. But two or three yards beyond the spot where Mary stood it was achieved. There were two men on the dog-cart, one driving, the other sitting behind. Almost before the horse stopped, the latter jumped down and was at its head.
“What can it be?” said the driver, as the man ran past him. “Yes, stay you by Madge, Andrew, or we shall have her getting excited. I’ll get down.”
Andrew, to tell the truth, was by no means averse to do as he was told. Madge’s kicks and plunges impressed him infinitely less than a hand-to-hand or face-to-face encounter with a ghost, or, failing a ghost, a lunatic escaped from the county asylum, which was the next idea presented to his bucolic brain. And, to do him justice, Mary might reasonably enough have been mistaken for the latter, if not for the former, as she stood in the pouring rain, umbrellaless, hatless even, at first sight; for, habitually careful, she had, when the rain first came on, half unconsciously drawn over her head the hood of the large waterproof cloak with which, most fortunately, she had enveloped herself for her run to the Edge. And from under this curious head-dress gleamed out her white face and brown eyes, unnaturally bright with anxiety and excitement, looking almost black in the flashing light of the lamps—different, how different, from the sunny hazel eyes that had looked up in Mr Cheviott’s face, half shyly, but all frankly, that Sunday morning in the old church porch!
They looked up now with a wild yet most piteous beseeching in their gaze. There was no need for Madge’s master to get down from his seat to question this strange suppliant. Before he could move she had run up to the side of the wheel, and before he could speak she had, so far, told her story:
“I have lost my way,” she said, “and, oh! I shall be so grateful if you can help me. Can you tell me if I am anywhere near Farmer Bartlemoor’s? You must forgive my stopping you. I did not know what to do.”
And for all answer, the man she was addressing sprang down at one bound to her side, exclaiming:
“Mary! You here? You poor child, what is—what can be the matter?”