And the state of mind that Jacob Chandler went into with the knowledge, might have read many a careless man a lesson. It seemed to him that he had a whole peck of suddenly-recollected sins on his head, and misdeeds to be accounted for. He remembered Tom Chandler then.
“I have not done by him as I ought; it lies upon me with an awful weight,” he groaned. “Valentine, you must remedy the wrong. Take him in, and give him his proper share. I should like to see Tom. Some one fetch him.”
Tom had to be fetched from Islip. He came at once, his long legs skimming over the ground quickly; and he entered the sick-chamber with the cordial smile on his open face, and took his uncle’s hand.
“It shall all be remedied, Tom; all the injustice; and you shall have your due rights. I see now how unjust it was: I don’t know what God’s thinking of me for it. I wanted to make a good provision for my old age, you see; to be able to live at ease; and now there is no old age for me: God is taking me before it has come on.”
“Don’t distress yourself, Uncle Jacob; it will be all right. And I’m sure I have not thought much about it.”
“But others have,” groaned Jacob. “Your mother; and Mary Ann; and—and Squire Todhetley. They have all been on at me at times. But I shut my ears. Oh dear! I wish God would let me live a few years over again! I’d try and be different. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”
And that was how he kept on the best part of the day. Then he called out that he wanted his will altered. Valentine brought in pen and ink, but his father motioned him away and said it must be done by Paul. So Paul the lawyer was got over from Islip, and was shut up alone with the sick man for a quarter-of-an-hour. Next the parson came, and read some prayers. But Jacob still cried out his piteous laments, at having no time to redeem the past, until his voice was too weak to speak. At nine o’clock in the evening all was over.
The disease that killed him must have been making silent progress for a good while, Cole said, when the truth was ascertained: but he had never seen it develop itself with so little warning, or prove fatal so quickly as in the case of Jacob Chandler.
II.
Jacob Chandler, solicitor, conveyancer, and land-agent, had died: and his son Valentine (possibly taking a leaf out of the history of Jonas Chuzzlewit) determined that he should at least be borne to the grave with honours, if he had never had an opportunity to specially bear them in life. Crabb churchyard was a show of mutes and plumes, and Crabb highway was blocked up with black coaches. As it is considered a compliment down with us to get an invitation to a funeral, and a great slight on the dead to refuse it, all classes, from Sir John Whitney, down to Massock, the brickmaker, and little Farmer Bean, responded to Valentine Chandler’s notes. Some people said that it was Valentine’s mother, the new widow, who wished for so much display; and probably they were right.
It took place on a Saturday. I can see the blue sky overhead now, and the bright sun that shone upon the scene and lighted up the feathers. It was thought he must have died rich, and that the three daughters he left would have good portions. His son Valentine had the practice: so, at any rate, he was provided for. Tom Chandler, the nephew, made one of the mourners: and the spectators talked freely enough in an undertone, as he passed them in his place when the procession walked up the churchyard path. It seemed but the other day, they said, that his poor father was buried, killed by that lamentable accident. Time flew. Years passed imperceptibly. But Jacob—lying so still under that black and white pall, now slowly disappearing within the church—had not done the right thing by his dead brother’s son. The practice had been made by Thomas, the elder brother. Thomas took Jacob into full partnership without fee or recompense; and there was an understanding entered into between them later (but no legal agreement) that if the life of either failed his son should succeed to his post. If Thomas, the elder, died, his son Tom was to take his father’s place as senior partner in due time. Thomas did die; died suddenly; but from that hour to this, Jacob had never attempted to carry out the agreement: he had taken his own son, Valentine, into partnership, but not Tom. And Crabb knew, both North and South, for such things get about curiously, that the injustice had troubled Jacob when he was dying, and that he had charged Valentine to remedy it.
Sunday morning was not so fine: leaden clouds, threatening rain, had overshadowed the summer sky. But all the family mourners came to church, Valentine wearing his long crape hatband and shoulder scarf (for that was our custom); the widow in her costly mourning, and the three girls in theirs. The mourning was furnished, Miss Timmens took the opportunity of whispering to Mrs. Todhetley, from a fashionable black shop at Worcester: and, to judge by the frillings and furbelows, very fashionable indeed the shop must have been. Mrs. Chandler and her son Tom sat together in their own pew, Mrs. Cramp, Jacob’s sister, with them. It chanced that we were staying at Crabb Cot at the time of Jacob’s death, just as we had been at Thomas’s, and so saw the doings and heard the sayings, and the Squire was at hand for both funerals.
The next morning, Monday, Valentine Chandler took his place in the office as master for the first time, and seated himself in his late father’s chair in the private room. He and his mother had already held some conversation as to arrangements for the future. Valentine said he should live at the office at Islip: now that there was only himself he should have more to do, and did not want the bother of walking or driving to and fro morning and evening. She would live entirely at North Villa.
Valentine took his place in his father’s room; and the clerks, who had been hail-fellow-well-met with him hitherto, put on respect of manner, and called him Mr. Chandler. Tom had an errand to do every Monday morning connected with the business, and did not enter until nearly eleven o’clock. Before settling to his desk, he went in to Valentine.
They shook hands. In times of bereavement we are apt to observe more ceremony than at others. Tom sat down: which caused the new master to look towards him inquiringly.
“Valentine, I want to have a bit of talk with you. Upon what footing am I to be on here?”
“How do you mean?” asked Valentine: who was leaning back in the green leather chair with the air of his new importance full upon him, his elbows on the low arms, and an ivory paper-knife held between his fingers.
“My uncle Jacob told me that from henceforth I was to assume my right place here, Valentine. I suppose it will be so.”
“What do you call your right place?” cried Valentine.
“Well, my right place would be head of the office,” replied Tom, speaking, as he always did, cordially and pleasantly. “But I don’t wish to be exacting. Make me your partner, Valentine, and give me the second place in the firm.”
“Can’t do it, old fellow,” said Valentine, in tones which seemed to say he would like to joke the matter off. “The practice was my father’s, and it is now mine.”
“But you know that part of it ought to have been mine from the first, Valentine. That is, from the time I have been of an age to succeed to it.”
“I don’t know it, I’m sure, Tom. If it ‘ought’ to have been yours, I suppose my father would have given it to you. He was able to judge.”
Tom dropped his voice. “He sent for me that last day of his life, you know, Valentine. It was to tell me he had not done the right thing by me, but that it should be done now: that he had charged you to do it.”
“Ah,” said Valentine, carelessly, “worn-out old men take up odd fancies—fit for a lunatic asylum. My poor father must have been spent with disease, though not with age: but we did not know it.”
“Will you make me your partner?”
“No, Tom, I can’t. The practice was all my father’s, and the practice must be mine. Look here: on that same day you speak of he sent for John Paul to add a codicil to his will. Now it stands to reason that if he had wished me to take you into the firm, he would have mentioned it in that codicil and bound me down to do it.”
“And he did not?”
“Not a word of it. You are quite welcome to read the will. It is a very short and simple one: leaving what property he had to my mother, and the business and office furniture to me. The codicil Paul wrote was to decree that I should pay my mother a certain sum out of the profits. Your name is not mentioned in the will at all, from beginning to end.”
Tom made no reply. Valentine continued.
“The object of his tying me down to pay over to my mother a portion of the profits is, because she has not enough to live on without it. There need be no secret about it. I am to give her a third of the income I make, whatsoever it may be.”
“One final word, Valentine: will you be just and take me in?”
“No, Tom, I cannot. And there’s another thing. I don’t wish to be mean, I’m sure; it’s not in my nature: but with all my own expenses upon me and this third that I must hand over to my people, I fear I shall not be able to continue to give your mother the hundred and fifty a-year that my father has allowed her so long.”
“You cannot help yourself, Valentine. That much is provided for in the original partnership deed, and you are bound by it.”
“No,” dissented Valentine, flicking a speck off the front of his black coat. “My father might have been bound by it, but I am not. Now that the two original partners are dead, the deed is cancelled, don’t you see. It is not binding upon me.”
“I think you are mistaken: but I will leave that question for this morning. Is your decision, not to give me a share, final?”
“It is.”
“Let me make one remark. You say the codicil stipulates that you shall pay a third of the profits to your mother—and it is a very just and right thing to do. Valentine, rely upon it, that your father’s last intentions were that, of the other two-thirds left, one of them should be mine.”
Valentine flushed red. He had a florid complexion at all times, something like salmon-colour. Very different from Tom’s, which was clear and healthy.
“We won’t talk any more about it, Tom. How you can get such crotchets into your head, I can’t imagine. If you sit there till midday, I can say no more than I have said: I cannot take you into partnership.”
“Then I shall leave you,” said Tom, rising. He was a fine-looking young fellow, standing there with his arm on the back of the client’s chair, in which he had sat; tall and straight. His good, honest face had a shade of pain in it, as it gazed straight out to Valentine’s. He looked his full six-and-twenty years.
“Well, I wish you would leave me, Tom,” replied Valentine, carelessly. “I have heaps to do this morning.”
“Leave the office, I mean. Leave you for good.”
“Nonsense!”
“Though your father did not give me the rights that were my just due, I remained on, expecting and hoping that he would give them some time. It was my duty to remain with him; at least, my mother told me so; and perhaps my interest. But the case is changed now. I will not stay with you, Valentine, unless you do me justice; I shall leave you now. Now, this hour.”
“But you can’t, Tom. You would put me to frightful inconvenience.”
“And what inconvenience—inconvenience for life—are you putting me to, Valentine? You take my prospects from me. The position that ought to be mine, here at Islip, you refuse to let me hold. This was my father’s practice; a portion of it, at least, ought to be mine. I will not continue to be a servant where I ought to be a master.”
“Then you must go,” said Valentine.
Tom held out his hand. “Good-bye. I do not part in enmity.”
“Good-bye, Tom. I’m sorry: but it’s your fault.”
Tom Chandler went into the office where he had used to sit, opened his desk, and began putting up what things belonged to him. They made a tolerable-sized parcel. Valentine, left in his chair of state, sat on in a brown study. All the inconvenience that Tom’s leaving him would be productive of was flashing into his mind. Tom had been, under old Jacob, the prop and stay of the business; knew about everything, and had a clear head for details. He himself was different—and Valentine was never more sure of the fact than at this moment. There are lawyers and lawyers. Tom was one, Valentine was another. He, Valentine, had never much cared for business; he liked pleasure a great deal better. Indulged always by both father and mother, he had grown up self-indulgent. It was all very fine to perch himself in that chair and play the master; but he knew that, without Tom to direct things, for some time to come he should be three-parts lost. But, as to making him a partner and giving him a share? “No,” concluded Valentine emphatically, “I won’t do it.”
Tom, carrying his paper parcel, left the house and crossed the road to the post-office, which was higher up the street, to post a letter he had hastily written. It was addressed to a lawyer at Worcester. A week or two before, Tom, being at Worcester, was asked by this gentleman if he would take the place of head clerk and manager in his office. The question was put jokingly, for the lawyer supposed Tom to be a fixture at Islip: but Tom saw that he would have been glad for him to take the berth. He hoped it might still be vacant. What with one thing and another, beginning with the injustice done him at the old place and his anxiety to get into another without delay, Tom felt more bothered than he had ever felt in his life. The tempting notion of setting-up somewhere for himself came into his mind. But it went out of it again: he could not afford to risk any waste of time, with his mother’s home to keep up, and especially with this threat of Valentine’s to stop her hundred and fifty pounds a-year income.
“How do you do, Mr. Chandler?”
At the sound of the pretty voice, Tom turned short round from the post-office window, which was a stationer’s, to see a charming girl all ribbons and muslins, with sky-blue eyes and bright hair. Tom took the hand only half held out to him.
“I beg your pardon, Emma: I was reading this concert bill. The idea of Islip’s getting up a concert!”
She was the only child of John Paul the lawyer, and had as fair a face as you’d wish to see, and a habit of blushing at nothing. To watch her as she stood there, the roses coming and going, the dimples deepening, and the small white teeth peeping, did Tom good. He was reddening himself, for that matter.
“Yes, it is to be given in the large club-room at the Bell to-night,” she answered. “Shall you come over for it?”
“Are you going to it, Emma?”
“Oh yes. Papa has taken twelve tickets. A great many people are coming in to go with us.”
“I shall go also,” said Tom decidedly. And at that the roses came again.
“What a large parcel you are carrying!”
Tom held the brown-paper parcel further out at the remark.
“They are my goods and chattels,” said he. “Things that I had at the office. I have left it, Emma.”
“Left the office!” she repeated, looking as though she did not understand. “You don’t mean really left it?—left it for good?”
“I have left it for good, Emma. Valentine——”
“Here’s papa,” interrupted Emma, as a stout, elderly gentleman with iron-grey hair turned out of the stationer’s; neither of them having the least idea he was there.
“Is it you, Tom Chandler?” cried Mr. Paul.
“Yes, it is, sir.”
“And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day.”
“Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do,” returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer’s face. “And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation.”
Mr. Paul stared at him. “Why, it is your own office. What’s that for?”
“It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father’s before me. But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partnership; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps. Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away.”
Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. “How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he’d lift off my shoulders!” Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul’s mind.
But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.
“When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were, he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together.”
“Yes, he said the same thing to me,” replied Tom. “But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away.”
“And what are you going to do, young man?”
Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was. “I should like to set up in practice for myself,” he answered; “but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t mind—if you are going to it,” said the old lawyer: “but I can’t see what young men want at concerts?”
Tom caught Miss Emma’s eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.
But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.
Rough-hew them how we will.”
Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma’s charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.
“My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that.”
“I am so sorry,” whispered Emma. “But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!”
“I don’t care for the concert,” avowed Tom. “I—I should like to have gone to it, though.”
“At least you—you will stay and take some tea,” suggested Emma.
“If I may.”
“Would you please loose my hand?” went on Emma. “The lace has caught in your sleeve-button.”
“I’ll undo it,” said Tom. “What pretty lace it is! Is it Valenciennes? My mother thinks there’s no lace like Valenciennes.”
“It is only pillow,” replied Emma, bending her face over the lace and the buttons. “After you left this morning, papa said he wished he had remembered to ask you where he could get a prospectus of those water-works. He——”
“Mrs. and Miss Maceveril,” interrupted a servant, opening the door to show in some ladies.
So the interview was over; and Tom took the opportunity to go to the lawyer’s dining-room, and tell him about the water-works.
“You have come over from Crabb to go to this fine concert!” cried Mr. Paul, sipping his port wine; which he always took out of a claret-glass. Though never more than one glass, he would be half-an-hour over it.
“I have come to say I can’t go to it,” replied Tom. “My mother thinks it would not be seemly so soon after Uncle Jacob’s death.”
“Quite right of her, too. Why don’t you sit down? No wine? Well, sit down all the same. I want to talk to you. Will you come into my office?”
The proposal was so sudden, so unexpected, that Tom scarcely knew what to make of it. He did not know that Mr. Paul’s office wanted him.
“I have been thinking upon matters since I saw you this morning, Tom Chandler. I am growing elderly; some people would say old; and the thought has often crossed me that it might be as well if I had some one about me different from an ordinary clerk. Were I laid aside by illness to-morrow the conduct of the business would still lie upon me; and lie it must, unless I get a confidential manager, who is a qualified lawyer: one who can act in my place without reference to me. I offer you the post; and I will give you, to begin with, two hundred a-year.”
“I should like it of all things,” cried Tom in delight, eyes and face sparkling. “I am used to Islip and don’t care to leave it. Yes, sir, I will come with the greatest pleasure.”
“Then that’s settled,” said old Paul.
Just about two years had gone on, and it was hot summer again. In the same room at North Villa where poor Thomas Chandler had died, sat Valentine Chandler and his mother. It was evening, and the window was open to the garden. In another room, its window also open, sat the three girls, Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta; all of them singing and playing and squalling.
“Not talk about business on a Sunday night! You must have grown wonderfully serious all on a sudden!” exclaimed Mrs. Chandler, tartly. “I never get to see you except on a Sunday: you know that, Valentine.”
“It is not often I can get time to come over on a week-day,” responded Valentine, helping himself to some spirits and water, which had been placed on the table after supper. “Business won’t let me.”
“If all I hear be true, it is not business that hinders you,” said Mrs. Chandler. “Be quiet, Valentine: I must speak. I have put it off and off, disliking to do it; but I must speak at last. Your business, as I am told, is falling off alarmingly; that a great deal of it has gone over to John Paul.”
“Who told you?”
“That is beyond the question, Valentine, and I am not going to make mischief. Is it true, or is it not true?”
“A little of the practice went over to Paul when Tom left me. It was not much. Some of the clients, you see, had been accustomed to Tom at our place, and they followed him. That was a crafty move of John Paul’s—getting hold of Tom.”
“I am not alluding to the odds and ends of practice that left you then, Valentine. I speak chiefly of this last year. Hardly a week has passed in it but some client or other has left you for Paul.”
“If they have, I can’t help it,” was the careless reply. “How those girls squall!”
“I suppose there is no underhand influence at work, Valentine?” she said dubiously. “Tom Chandler does not hold out baits for your clients, and so fish them away from you?”
“Well, no, I suppose not,” repeated the young lawyer, draining his glass. “I accused Tom of it one day, and for once in his life he flew into a passion, asking me what I had ever seen in him to suspect he could be guilty of such a thing.”
“No. I fear it is as I have been given to understand, Valentine: that the cause lies with you. You spend your time in pleasure instead of being at business. When clients go to the office, three times out of every five they do not find you. You are not there. You are over at the Bell, playing at billiards, or drinking in the bar.”
“What an unfounded calumny!” exclaimed Valentine.
“I have been told,” continued Mrs. Chandler, sinking her voice, “that you are getting to drink frightfully. It is nothing for clients now to find you in a state incapable of attending to them.”
“Now, mother, I insist upon knowing who told you these lies,” spluttered Valentine, getting up and striding to the window. “Let anybody come forward and prove that he has found me incapable—if he can.”
“I heard that Sir John Whitney went in the other day and could make neither top nor tail of what you said,” continued his mother, disregarding his denial. “You are agent for the little bit of property he owns here: he chanced to come over from Whitney Hall, and found you like that.”
“I’ll write to Sir John Whitney and ask what he means by saying it.”
“He did not say it—that I know of. Others were witnesses of your state as well as he.”
“If my clerks tell tales out of my office, I’ll discharge them from it,” burst forth Valentine, too angry to notice the tacit admission his words gave. “Not the clerks, you say? Then why don’t you——”
“Do be still, Valentine. Putting yourself out like this will do no good. I hope it is not true: if you assure me it is not, I am ready to believe you. All I spoke for was, to caution you, and to tell you what is being said, that you may be on your guard. Leave off going to the Bell; stick to business instead: people will soon cease talking then.”
“I dare say they will!” growled Valentine.
“If you are always at your post, ready to confer with clients, they would have no plea for leaving you and going to Paul. For all our sakes, Valentine, you must do this.”
“And so I do. If——”
“Hush! The girls are coming in. I hear them shutting the piano.”
Valentine dashed out a second supply, and drank it, not caring whether it contained most brandy or water. We are never so angry as when conscience accuses us: and it was accusing him.
In came the young ladies, laughing, romping, and pushing one another; Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow. The chief difference Sunday made to them was, that their smartest clothes came out.
Mrs. Chandler’s accusations were right, and Valentine’s denials wrong. During the past two years he had been drifting downwards. The Bell was getting to possess so great a fascination for him that he could not keep away from it more than a couple of hours together. It was nothing for him to be seen playing billiards in the morning, or lounging in the parlour or the bar-room, drinking. One of his clerks would come interrupting him with news that some client was waiting at the office, and Valentine would put down his cue or his glass, and go flying over. But clients, as a rule, don’t like this kind of reception: they expect to find their legal advisers cool and ready on the spot.
The worst of all was the drink. Valentine had made a friend of it so long now, that he did not attempt to do without it. Thought he could not. Where he at first drank one glass he went on to drink two glasses, and the two gave place to three, or to more. Of course it told upon him. It told now and then upon his manner in the daytime: which was unfortunate. He could leave his billiards behind him and his glass, but he could not leave the effects of what the glass had contained; and it was no uncommon thing now for his clients, when he did go rushing in to them, to find his speech uncertain and his brains in a muddle. As a natural result, the practice was passing over to John Paul as fast as it could: and Tom, who was chief manager at Paul’s now, had been obliged to take on an extra clerk. Every day of his life old Paul told himself how lucky his move of engaging Tom had turned out. And this, not for the extra business he had gained: a great deal of that might have come to him whether Tom was with him or not: but because Tom had eased his shoulders of their hard work and care, and because he, the old man, had grown to like him so much.
But never a word had Mr. Paul said about raising Tom’s salary. Tom supposed he did not intend to raise it. And, much as he liked his post, and, for many reasons, his stay at Islip, he entertained notions of quitting both. Valentine had stopped the income his father had paid to Mrs. Chandler; and Tom’s two hundred a-year, combined with the trifle remaining to her out of her private income, only just sufficed to keep the home going.
It chanced that on the very same Sunday evening, when they were talking at North Villa of Valentine’s doings, Tom broached the subject to his mother. They were sitting out of doors in the warm summer twilight, sniffing the haycocks in the neighbouring field. Tom spoke abruptly.
“Should you mind my going to London, mother?”
“To London!” cried Mrs. Chandler. “What for?”
“To live.”
“You—you are not leaving Mr. Paul, are you?”
“I am thinking of it. You see, mother mine, there is no prospect of advancement where I am. It seems to me that I may jog on for ever at two hundred a-year——”
“It is enough for us, Tom.”
“As things are, yes: but nothing more. If—for instance—if I wanted to set up a home of my own, I have no means of doing it. Never shall have, at the present rate.”
Mrs. Chandler turned and looked at Tom’s face. “Are you thinking of marrying, Tom?”
“No. It is of no use to think of it. If I thought of it ever so, I could not do it. Putting that idea aside, it occurs to me sometimes to remember that I am eight-and-twenty, and ought to be doing better for myself.”
“Do you fancy you could do better in London?”
“I am sure I could. Very much better.”
Opening the Bible on her lap, Mrs. Chandler took out the spectacles that lay between the leaves, and put them into their case with trembling fingers.
“Do whatever you think best, Tom,” she said at length, having waited to steady her voice. “Children leave their parents’ home for one of their own; this Book tells us that they should do so. Had Jacob Chandler done the right thing by you, you would never have needed to leave Islip: had his son done the right thing by me, I should not be the burden to you that I am. But now that George has taken to sending me money over from Canada——”
“Burden!” interrupted Tom, laughingly. “Don’t you talk treason, Mrs. Chandler. If I do go to London, you will have to come with me, and see the lions.”
That night, lying awake, Tom made his mind up. He had been offered a good appointment in London to manage a branch office for a large legal firm—four hundred a-year salary. And he would never for a moment have hesitated to take it, but for not liking to leave old Paul and (especially) old Paul’s daughter.
Walking to Islip the next morning, he thought a bit about the best way of breaking it to Mr. Paul—who would be sure to come down upon him with a storm. By midday he had found no opportunity of speaking: people were perpetually coming in: and in the afternoon Tom had to go a mile or two into the country. In returning he overtook Emma. She was walking along the field-path under the hedge, her hat hanging on her arm by its strings.
“It is so warm,” said she, in apology, as Tom shook hands. “And the trees make it shady here. I went over to ask Mary Maceveril to come back with me and dine: but they have gone to Worcester for the day.”
“So much the better for me,” said Tom. “I want to tell you, Emma, that I am going to leave.”
“To leave!”
“I have had a very good place offered me in London. Mr. Paul knows nothing about it yet, for I did not make up my mind till last night, and I could not get a minute alone with him this morning.”
She had turned her face suddenly to the hedge, seemingly to pick a wild rose. Tom saw that the pink roses on her cheek had turned to white ones.
“I shall be very sorry to leave Islip, Emma. But what else can I do? Situated as I am now, I cannot even glance at any plans for the future. By making this change, I may be able to do so. My salary will be a good one and enable me to put by: and the firm I am going to dropped me a hint of a possible partnership.”
“I wish these dog-roses had no thorns! And I wish they would grow double, as the garden roses do!”
“So that I—having considered the matter thoroughly—believe I shall do well to make the change. Perhaps then I may begin to indulge dreams of a future.”
“There! all the petals are off!”
“Let me gather them for you. What is the matter, Emma?”
“Matter? Nothing, sir. What should there be?”
“Here is a beauty. Will you take it?”
“Thank you. I never thought you would leave papa, Mr. Chandler.”
“But—don’t you perceive my reasons, Emma? What prospect is there for me as long as I remain here? What hope can I indulge, or even glance at, of—of settling in life?”
“I dare say you don’t want to settle.”
“I do not put the question to myself, because it is so useless.”
“I shall be late for dinner. Good-bye.”
She took a sudden flight to the little white side-gate of her house, which opened to the field, ran across the garden, and disappeared within doors. Tom, catching a glimpse of her face, saw that it was wet with tears.
“Yes, it’s very hard upon her and upon me,” he said to himself. “And all the more so that I cannot in honour speak, even just to let her know that I care for her.”
Continuing his way towards the office, he met Mr. Paul, who was just leaving it. Tom turned with him, having to report to him of the business he had been to execute.
“I expected you home before this, Chandler.”
“Willis was out when I arrived there, and I had to wait for him. His wife gave me some syllabub.”
“Now for goodness’ sake don’t mix up syllabubs with law!” cried the old gentleman, testily. “That’s just you, Tom Chandler. Will Willis do as I advise him, or will he not?”
“Yes, he is willing; but upon conditions. I will explain to-morrow morning,” added Tom, as Mr. Paul laid his hand upon the handle of his front-gate, to enter.
“You can come in and explain now: and take some dinner with me.”
Emma did not know he was there until she came into the dining-room. It gave her a sort of pleasant shock. They were deep in conversation about Willis, and she sat down quietly.
“I am glad he has asked me,” thought Tom. “It will give me an opportunity of telling him about myself after dinner.”
Accordingly, when the port wine was on the table and Emma had gone, for she never stayed after the cloth was removed, Tom spoke. Old Paul was pouring out his one large glass. The communication was over in a few words, for Tom did not feel it a comfortable one to make.
“Oh!” said old Paul, after listening. “Want to better yourself, do you? Going to London to get four hundred a-year, with a faint prospect of partnership? Have had it in your mind some time to make a change? No prospects here at Islip? Can only just keep your mother? Perhaps you want to keep a wife as well, Tom Chandler?”
Tom flushed like a school-girl. As the old gentleman saw, peering at him from under his bushy grey eyebrows.
“I should very much like to be able to do it, sir,” boldly replied Tom, playing with his wine-glass. “But I can’t. I can’t as much as think of it under present circumstances.”
“Who is the young lady? Your cousin Julietta?”
Tom burst into laughter. “No, that it is not, sir.”
“Perhaps it is Miss Maceveril? Well, the Maceverils are exclusive people. But faint heart, you know, never won fair lady.”
Tom shook his head. “I should not be afraid of winning her.” But it was not Miss Maceveril he was thinking of.
“What should you be afraid of?”
“Her friends. They would not listen to me.”
“Thinking you are not rich, I suppose?”
“Knowing I am not, sir.”
“The young lady may have money.”
“There’s the evil of it,” said Tom, impulsively. “If she had none, it would be all straight and smooth for us. I would very soon make a little home for her in London.”
“It is the first time I ever heard of money being an impediment to matrimony,” observed old Paul, taking the first sip at his wine.
“Not when the money is on the wrong side, sir.”
“Has she much?”
“I don’t know in the least. She will be sure to have some: she is an only child.”
“Then it is Mary Maceveril!” nodded the old man. “You look after her, Tom, my boy. She will have ten thousand pounds.”
“Miss Maceveril would not look at me, if I wanted her ever so. She is as proud as a peacock.”
“Tut, tut! Try. Try, boy. Why, what could she want? As my partner, you might be a match for even Miss Maceveril.”
“Your what, sir?” cried Tom, in surprise, lifting his eyes from the blue-and-red checked table-cover.
“I said my partner, Tom. Yes, that is what I intend to make you: have intended it for some time. We will have no fly-away London jaunts and junkets. Once my partner, of course the world will understand that you will be also my successor: and I think I shall soon retire.”
Tom had risen from his seat: for once in his life he was agitated. Mr. Paul rose and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder.
“With this position, and a suitable income to back it, Tom, you are a match for Mary Maceveril, or for any other good girl. Go and try her, boy; try your luck.”
“But—it is of no use,” spoke Tom. “You don’t understand, sir.”
“No use! Go and try,”—pushing him towards the door. “My wife was one of the proud Wintertons, you know: how should I have gained her but for trying? I did not depreciate myself, and say I’m not good enough for her: I went and asked her to have me.”
“But suppose it is not Mary Maceveril, sir?—as indeed it is not. Suppose it is somebody nearer—nearer home?”
“No matter. Go and try, I say.”
“I—do—think—you—understand—me, sir,” cried Tom, slowly and dubiously. “I—hope there is no mistake!”
“Rubbish about mistake!” cried old Paul, pushing him towards the door. “Go and do as I bid you. Try.”
He went to look for Emma, and saw her sitting under the acacia tree on the bench, which faced the other way. Stepping noiselessly over the grass, he put his arms on her shoulders, and she turned round with a cry. But Tom would not let her go.
“I am told to come out and try, Emma. I want a wife, and your father thinks I may gain one. He is going to make me his partner; and he says he thinks I am a match for any good girl. And I am not going to London.”
She turned pale and red, red and pale, and then burst into a fit of tears and trembling.
“Oh, Tom, can it be true! Oh, Tom, Tom!”
And Tom kissed her for the first time in his life. But not for the last.
The news came out to us in a lump. Tom Chandler was taken into partnership and was to marry Emma. We wished them good luck. She was not to leave her home, for her father would not spare her: she and Tom were to live with him.
“I had to do it, you know, Squire,” said old Paul, meeting the Squire one day. “Only children are apt to be wilful. Not that I ever found Emma so. Had I not allowed it, I expect she’d have dutifully saddled herself, an old maid, upon me for life.”
“She could not have chosen better,” cried the Squire, warmly. “If there’s one young fellow I respect above another, it’s Tom Chandler. He is good to the back-bone.”
“He wouldn’t have got her if he were not; you may rely upon that,” concluded old Paul, emphatically.
So the wedding took place at Islip in the autumn, and old Paul gave Tom a month’s holiday, and told him he had better take Emma to Paris; as they both seemed, by what he could gather, red-hot to see it.
Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, came down the rain, dropping with monotonous patter on the decaying leaves that strewed the garden. Not the trim well-kept garden it used to be, but showing signs of neglect. What with the long grass, and the leaves, and the sloppy roads, and the November skies, nothing could well look more dreary than the world looked to-day, as seen from the windows of North Villa.
Time had gone on, another year, bringing its events and its changes; as time always does bring. The chief change, as connected with this little record, lay in Valentine Chandler. He had gone to the dogs. That was Islip’s expression for it, not mine. A baby had come to Tom and Emma.
Little by little, step by step, Valentine had gone down lower and lower. Some people, who are given to bad habits, make spasmodic efforts to reform; but, so far as Islip could see, Valentine never made any. He passed more time at the Bell, or at less respectable public-houses, and drank deeper: and at last neglected his business almost entirely. Enervated and good for nothing, he would lie in bed till twelve o’clock in the day. To keep on the office seemed only a farce. Its profits were not enough to pay for its one solitary clerk. Valentine was then pulled up by an illness, which confined him to his bed, and left him in a shaky state. The practice had quite gone then, and the clerk had gone; and Valentine knew that, even though he had had sufficient energy left to try to bring them back, no clients would have returned to him.
He was going to emigrate to Canada. His friends hoped he would be steady there, and redeem the past: he gave fair promises of it. George Chandler (Tom’s brother, who was doing very well there now, with a large farm about him, and a wife and children) had undertaken to receive Valentine and help him to employment. So he would have to begin life over again.
It was all so much gall and bitterness to his mother and sisters, and had been for a long while. The tears were dropping through the fingers of Mrs. Chandler now, as she leaned on her hand and watched the dreary rain on the window-panes. With all his faults, she had so loved Valentine. She loved him still, above all the trouble he had brought; and it seemed, this afternoon, just as though her heart would break.
When the business fell off, of course her income fell off also. Valentine was to have paid her a third of the profits, but if he did not make any profits, he could not pay her any. She had the private income, two hundred a-year, which Jacob had secured to her: but what was that for a family accustomed to live in the fashion? There is an old saying that necessity has no law: and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters had proved its truth. One of the girls had gone out as a governess; one was on a prolonged visit to her aunt Cramp; and Julietta and her mother were to move into a smaller house at Christmas. The practice and the other business, once Valentine’s, and his father’s before him, had all gone over to the other firm, Paul and Chandler.
“I’m sure I don’t know what Georgiana means by writing home for money amidst all our troubles!” cried Mrs. Chandler, fretfully. “She has fifteen pounds a-year salary, and she must make that do.”
“She says her last quarter’s money is all spent, and she can’t possibly manage without a new mantle for Sunday,” returned Julietta.
“I can’t supply it; you know I can’t. I am not able to pay my own way now. Let her write to Mrs. Cramp.”
“It would be of no use, mamma. Aunt Mary Ann will never help us to clothes. She says we have had too many of them.”
“Well, I don’t want to be worried with these matters: it’s enough for me to think of poor Valentine’s things. Only two days now before he starts. And what wretched weather it is!”
“Valentine says he shall not take much luggage with him. He saw me counting his shirts, and he said they were too many by half.”
“And who will supply him with shirts out there, do you suppose?” demanded Mrs. Chandler. “You talk nothing but nonsense, Julietta. Where is Valentine? He ought to be here, with all this packing to do. He must have been gone out these two hours.”
“He said he had business at Islip.”
Mrs. Chandler looked gloomy at the answer. She hated the very name of Islip: partly because they held no longer any part in the place, partly because the Bell was in it.
But Valentine had not gone to the Bell this time. His visit was to his cousin Tom; and his errand was to beg of Tom to give or lend him a fifty-pound note before sailing.
“I shall have next to nothing in my pocket, Tom, when I land,” he urged, as the two sat together in Tom’s private room. “If I get on over there, I will pay you back. If I don’t—well, perhaps you won’t grudge having helped me for the last time.”
For a moment Tom did not answer. He sat before his desk-table, Valentine near him: just as Valentine had one day sat at his desk in his private room, and Tom had been the petitioner, not so many years gone by. Valentine looked upon the silence as an ill-omen.
“You have all the business that once was mine in your fingers now, Tom. It has left me for you.”
“But not by any wish or seeking of mine, Valentine; you know that,” spoke Tom readily, turning his honest eyes and kindly face on the fallen man. “I wish you were in your office still. There’s plenty of work for both of us.”
“Well, I am not in it; and you have got it all. You might lend me such a poor little sum as fifty pounds.”
“Of course I mean to lend it: but I was thinking. Look here, Valentine. I will not give it you now; you cannot want it before sailing: and you might lose it on board,” he added laughing. “You shall carry with you an order upon my brother George for one hundred pounds.”
“Will George pay it?”
“I will take care of that. He shall receive a letter from me by the same mail that takes you out. Stay, Valentine. I will give you the order now.”
He wrote what was necessary, sealed it up, and handed it over. Valentine thanked him.
“How is Emma?” he asked as he rose. “And the boy?”
“Quite well, thank you: both. Will you not go in and see them?”
“I think not. You can say good-bye for me. I don’t much care to trouble people.”
“God bless you, Valentine,” said Tom, clasping his hand. “You will begin life anew over there, and may have a happy one yet. One of these days you will be coming back to us, a prosperous man.”
Valentine went trudging home through the rain, miserable and dispirited, and found a visitor had arrived—Mrs. Cramp. His mother and sister were upstairs then, busy over his trunks; so Mrs. Cramp had him all to herself. She had liked Valentine very much. When he went wrong, it put her out frightfully, and since then she had not spared him: which of course put out Valentine.
“Yes, it will be a change,” he acknowledged, in reply to a remark of hers. “A flourishing solicitor here, and a servant there. For that’s what I shall be over yonder, I conclude; I can’t expect to be my own master. You don’t know how good the business was, Aunt Mary Ann, at the time my father died. If I could only have kept it!”
“You could not expect to keep it,” said Mrs. Cramp, who sat facing him, her bonnet tilted back from her red and comely face, her purple stuff gown pulled up above her boots.
“I should have kept it, but for now and then taking a little drop too much,” confessed poor Valentine: who was deeper in the dumps that day than he had ever been before.
“I don’t know that,” said Mrs. Cramp. “The business was a usurped one.”
“A what?” said Valentine.
“There is an overruling Power above us, you know,” she went on. “I am quite sure, Valentine—I have learnt it by experience—that injustice never answers in the long run. It may seem to succeed for a time; but it does not last: it cannot and it does not. If a man rears himself on another’s downfall, causing himself that downfall that he may rise, his prosperity rests on no sure foundation. In some way or other the past comes home to him; and he suffers for it, if not in his own person, in that of his children. Ill-gotten riches bring a curse, never a blessing.”
“What a growler you are, Aunt Mary Ann!”
“I don’t mean it for growling, Valentine. It is true.”
“It’s not true.”
“Not true! The longer I live the more examples I see of it. A man treads another down that he may rise himself: and there he stands high and flourishing. But wait a few years, and look then. He is gone. Gone, and no trace of his prosperity left. And when I mark that, I recall that verse in the Psalms of David: ‘I went by, and lo, he was gone: I sought him, but his place was nowhere to be found.’ That verse is a true type of real life, Valentine.”
“I don’t believe it,” cried Valentine. “And where’s the good of having the Psalms at your finger-ends?”
“You do believe it. Why, Valentine, take your own case. Was there ever a closer exemplification? Tom was injured; put down; I may say, crushed by you and your father. Yes, crushed: crushed out of his rights. His father made the business; and the half of it, at any rate, ought to have been Tom’s. Instead of that, your father deposed him and usurped it. He repented when he was dying, and charged you to remedy the wrong. But you did not; you usurped it. And what has it ended in?”
“Ended in?” cried Valentine vacantly.
“You are—as you are; ruined in character, in purse, in reputation; and Tom is respected and flourishing. The business has left you and gone to him; not through any seeking of his, but through your own doings entirely; the very self-same business that his father made has in the natural course of time and events gone back to him—and he is not thirty yet. It is retribution, nephew. Justice has been righting herself; and man could neither stay nor hinder it.”
“What nonsense!” debated Valentine testily. “Suppose I had been steady: would the business have left me for Tom then?”
“Yes. In some inscrutable way, that we see not, it would. I am sure of it. You would no more have been allowed to triumph to the end on your ill-gotten gains, than I could stand if I went out and perched myself on yonder weathercock,” affirmed Mrs. Cramp, growing warm. “Your father kept his place, it is true; but what a miserable man he always was, and without any ostensible cause.”
“I wonder you don’t set up for a parson, Aunt Mary Ann! This is as good as a sermon.”
“Then carry the sermon in your memory through life, Valentine. Our doings, whether they be good or ill, bring back their fruits. In some wonderful manner that we cannot understand, events are always shaping onwards their own true ends, their appointed destiny, and working out the will of Heaven.”
That’s all. And the Squire seemed to take a leaf out of Mrs. Cramp’s book. For ever so long afterwards, he would tell us to read a lesson from the history of the Chandlers, and to remember that none can deal unjustly in the sight of God without having to account for it sooner or later.
VERENA FONTAINE’S REBELLION.
I.
You have been at Timberdale Rectory two or three times before; an old-fashioned, red-brick, irregularly-built house, the ivy clustering on its front walls. It had not much beauty to boast of, but was as comfortable a dwelling-place as any in Worcestershire. The well-stocked kitchen-garden, filled with plain fruit-trees and beds of vegetables, stretched out beyond the little lawn behind it; the small garden in front, with its sweet and homely flowers, opened to the pasture-field that lay between the house and the church.
Timberdale Rectory basked to-day in the morning sun. It shone upon Grace, the Rector’s wife, as she sat in the bow-window of their usual sitting-room, making a child’s frock. Having no little ones of her own to work for—and sometimes Timberdale thought it was that fact that made the Rector show himself so crusty to the world in general—she had time, and to spare, to sew for the poor young starvelings in her husband’s parish.
“Here he comes at last!” exclaimed Grace.
Herbert Tanerton looked round from the fire over which he was shivering, though it was a warm and lovely April day. A glass of lemonade, or some such cooling drink, stood on the table at his elbow. He was always catching a sore throat—or fancied it.
“If I find the delay has arisen through any neglect of Lee’s, I shall report him for it,” spoke the Rector severely. For, though he had condoned that one great mishap of Lee’s, the burning of the letter, he considered it his duty to look sharply after him.
“Oh but, Herbert, it cannot be; he is always punctual,” cried Grace. “I’ll go and ask.”
Mrs. Tanerton left the room, and ran down the short path to the little white gate; poor old Lee, the letterman, was approaching it from the field. Grace glanced at the church clock—three-quarters past ten.
“A break-down on the line, we hear, ma’am,” said he, without waiting to be questioned, as he put one letter into her hand. “Salmon has been in a fine way all the morning, wondering what was up.”
“Thank you,” said Grace, glancing at the letter; “we wondered too. What a beautiful day it is! Your wife will lose her rheumatism now. Tell her I say so.”
Back ran Grace. Herbert Tanerton was standing up, impatient for the letter he had been specially expecting, his hand stretched out for it.
“Your letter has not come, Herbert. Only one for me. It is from Alice.”
“Oh!” returned Herbert, crustily, as he sat down again to his fire and his lemonade.
Grace ran her eyes quickly over the letter—rather a long one, but very legibly written. Her husband’s brother, Jack Tanerton—if you have not forgotten him—had just brought home in safety from another voyage the good ship Rose of Delhi, of which he was commander. Alice, his wife, who generally voyaged with him, had gone immediately on landing to her mother at New Brighton, near Liverpool; Jack remaining with his ship. This time the ship had been chartered for London, and Jack was there with it.
Grace folded the letter slowly, an expression of pain seated in her eyes. “Would you like to read it, Herbert?” she asked.
“Not now,” groaned Herbert, shifting the band of flannel on his throat. “What does she say?”
“She says”—Grace hesitated a moment before proceeding—“she says she wishes Jack could leave the sea.”
“I dare say!” exclaimed Herbert. “Now, Grace, I’ll not have that absurd notion encouraged. It was Alice’s cry last time they were at home; and I told you then I would not.”
“I have not encouraged it, Herbert. Of course what Alice says has reason in it: one cannot help seeing that.”
“Jack chose the sea as his profession, and Jack must abide by it. A turncoat is never worth a rush. Jack likes the sea; and Jack has been successful at it.”
“Oh yes: he’s a first-rate sailor,” conceded Grace. “It is Alice’s wish, no doubt, rather than his. She says here”—opening the letter—“Oh, if Jack could but leave the sea! All my little ones coming on!—I shall not be able to go with him this next voyage. And I come home to find my little Mary and my mother both ill! If we could but leave the sea!”
“I may just as well say ‘If I could but leave the Church!’—I’m sure I’m never well in it,” retorted Herbert. “Jack had better not talk to me of this: I should put him down at once.”
Grace sighed as she took up the little frock again. She remembered, though it might suit her husband to forget it, that Jack had not, in one sense of the word, chosen the sea; he had been deluded into it by Aunt Dean, his wife’s mother. She had plotted and planned, that woman, for her daughter’s advancement, and found out too late that she had plotted wrongly; for Alice chose Jack, and Jack, through her machinations, had been deprived of the greater portion of his birthright. He made a smart sailor; he was steady, and stuck to his duty manfully; never a better merchant commander sailed out of port than John Tanerton. But, as his wife said, her little ones were beginning to grow about her; she had two already; and she could not be with them at New Brighton, and be skimming over the seas to Calcutta, or where not, in the Rose of Delhi. Interests clashed; and with her whole heart Alice wished Jack could quit the sea. Grace sighed as she thought of this; she saw how natural was the wish, though Herbert did not see it: neither could she forget that the chief portion of the fortune which ought to have been Jack’s was enjoyed by herself and her husband. She had always thought it unjust; it did not seem to bring them luck; it lay upon her heart like a weight of care. Their income from the living and the fortune, comprised together, was over a thousand pounds a-year. They lived very quietly, not spending, she was sure, anything like half of it; Herbert put by the rest. What good did all the money bring them? But little. Herbert was always ailing, fretful, and grumbling: the propensity to set the world to rights grew upon him: he had ever taken pleasure in that, from the time when a little lad he would muffle himself in his step-father’s surplice, and preach to Jack and Alice. Poor Jack had to work hard for what he earned at sea; he had only a hundred and fifty pounds a-year, besides, of the money that had been his mother’s; Herbert had the other six hundred and fifty of it. But Jack, sunny-natured, ever-ready Jack, was just as happy as the day was long.
Lost in these thoughts, her eyes bent on her work, Alice did not see a gentleman who was coming across the field towards the house. The click of the little gate, as it swung to after him, caused her to look up, but hardly in time. Herbert turned at the sound.
“Who’s come bothering now, I wonder?”
“I think it is Colonel Letsom,” answered Grace.
“Then he must come in here,” rejoined Herbert. “I am not going into that cold drawing-room.”
Colonel Letsom it was; a pleasant little man with a bald head, who had walked over from his house at Crabb. Grace opened the parlour-door, and the colonel came in and shook hands.
“I want you both to come and dine with me to-night in a friendly way,” spoke he; “no ceremony. My brother, the major, is with us for a day or two, and we’d like to get a few friends together to meet him at dinner.”
Herbert Tanerton hesitated. He did not say No, for he liked dinners; he liked the importance of sitting at the right or left hand of his hostess and saying grace. He did not say Yes, for he thought of his throat.
“I hardly know, colonel. I got up with a sore throat this morning. Very relaxed indeed it is. Who is to be there?”
“Yourselves and the Fontaines and the Todhetleys: nobody else,” answered the colonel. “As to your throat—I dare say it will be better by-and-by. A cheerful dinner will do you good. Six o’clock sharp, mind.”
Herbert Tanerton accepted the offer, conditionally. If his throat got worse, of course he should have to send word, and decline. The colonel nodded. He felt sure in his own mind the throat would get better: he knew how fanciful the parson was, and how easily he could be roused out of his ailments.
“How do you like the Fontaines?” questioned he of the colonel. “Have you seen much of them yet?”
“Oh, we like them very well,” answered the colonel, who, in his easy nature, generally avowed a liking for everybody. “They are connections of my wife’s.”
“Connections of your wife’s!” repeated Herbert quickly. “I did not know that.”
“I’m not sure that I knew it myself, until we came to compare notes,” avowed the colonel. “Any way, I did not remember it. Sir Dace Fontaine’s sister married——. Stop; let me consider—how was it?”
Grace laughed. The colonel laughed also.
“I know it now. My wife’s sister married a Captain Pym: it is many years ago. Captain Pym was a widower, and his first wife was a sister of Dace Fontaine’s. Yes, that’s it. Poor Pym and his wife died soon; both of them in India: and so, you see, we lost sight of the connection altogether; it slipped out of memory.”
“Were there any children?”
“The first wife had one son, who was, I believe, taken to by his father’s relatives. That was all. Well, you’ll come this evening,” added the colonel, turning to depart. “I must make haste back home, for they don’t know yet who’s coming and who’s not.”
A few days previously to this, we had taken up our abode at Crabb Cot, and found that some people named Fontaine had come to the neighbourhood, and were living at Maythorn Bank. Naturally the Squire wanted to know who they were and what they were. And as they were fated to play a conspicuous part in the drama I am about to relate, I must give to them a word of introduction. Important people need it, you know.
Dace Fontaine belonged to the West Indies and was attached to the civil service there. He became judge, or sheriff, or something of the kind; had been instrumental in quelling a riot of the blacks, and was knighted for it. He married rather late in life, in his forty-first year, a young American lady. This young lady’s mother—it is curious how things come about!—was first cousin to John Paul, the Islip lawyer. Lady Fontaine soon persuaded her husband to quit the West Indies for America. Being well off, for he had amassed money, he could do as he pleased; and to America they went with their two daughters. From that time they lived sometimes in America, sometimes in the West Indies: Sir Dace would not quite abandon his old home there. Changes came as the years went on: Lady Fontaine died; Sir Dace lost a good portion of his fortune through some adverse speculation. A disappointed man, he resolved to come to England and settle down on some property that had fallen to him in right of his wife; a small estate called Oxlip Grange, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Any way, old Paul got a letter, saying they were on the road. However, when they arrived, they found that the tenants at Oxlip Grange could not be got to go out of it without proper notice—which anybody but Sir Dace Fontaine would have known to be reasonable. After some cavilling, the tenants agreed to leave at the end of six months; and the Fontaines went into that pretty little place, Maythorn Bank, then to be let furnished, until the time should expire. So there they were, located close to us at Crabb Cot, Sir Dace Fontaine and his two daughters.
Colonel Letsom had included me in the dinner invitation, for which I felt obliged to him: I was curious to see what the Fontaines were like. Tom Coney said one of the girls was beautiful, lovely—like an angel: the other was a little quick, dark young woman, who seemed to have a will of her own.
We reached Colonel Letsom’s betimes—neighbourly fashion. In the country you don’t rush in when the dinner’s being put on the table; you like to get a chat beforehand. The sunbeams were slanting into the drawing-room as we entered it. Four of the Letsoms were present, besides the major, and Herbert Tanerton and his wife, for the throat was better. All of us were talking together when the strangers were announced: Sir Dace Fontaine, Miss Fontaine, and Miss Verena Fontaine.
Sir Dace was a tall, heavy man, with a dark, sallow, and arbitrary face; Miss Fontaine was little and pale; she had smooth black hair, and dark eyes that looked straight out at you. Her small teeth were brilliantly white, her chin was pointed. A particularly calm face altogether, and one that could boast of little beauty—but I rather took to it.
Did you ever see a fairy? Verena Fontaine looked like nothing else. A small, fair, graceful girl, with charming manners and pretty words. She had the true golden hair, that is so beautiful but so rare, delicate features, and laughing eyes blue as the summer sky. I think her beauty and her attractions altogether took some of us by surprise; me for one. Bob Letsom looked fit to eat her. The sisters were dressed alike, in white muslin and pink ribbons.