Rupert Godwin

HIDDEN IN THE YEW-TREE.

It was the eve of the 25th of March—that day whose approach had been so dreaded by Clara Westford and her children,—the day on which they were to be banished for ever from their happy home.

As yet the banker had given no notice of his intentions with regard to his victims. But Clara knew how little mercy she had to expect from him, and she had determined on saving herself and her children the agony of humiliation.

She would not wait for Rupert Godwin to act. She would not be turned out of her happy home by the man whose blighting influence had darkened her youth. She determined therefore, to leave the Grange early on the morning of the 25th.

But when she announced this determination to Violet, the girl expressed considerable surprise.

“Why should we be in such a hurry to leave the dear old place?” Violet exclaimed. “This Mr. Godwin may not press his claim upon the Grange. They say he is enormously rich, and surely he would be happy to let us stay here till he has a tenant for the place. We may be allowed to live here for some time to come, dear mother, till you are better and stronger, and more fit to face the world.”

Mrs. Westford shook her head.

“No, Violet,” she answered firmly; “I will not remain one hour under this roof when it becomes the property of Rupert Godwin.”

“Mamma, you speak as if you knew this Mr. Godwin?”

“I know that he is one of the vilest of men,” answered Mrs. Westford. “Do not question me further, Violet; my resolution is not to be shaken upon this point. Believe me when I assure you that I am acting for the best. And now, write to your brother, dear, and ask him to meet us at the Waterloo Terminus to-morrow at one o’clock.”

Lionel had been in London for the last few weeks, endeavouring to obtain a situation in some office.

But the young man, highly educated though he was, found it extremely difficult to procure any kind of employment, however humble.

His University education availed him little. London seemed to swarm with clever young men, all engaged in the struggle for daily bread. Lionel Westford’s heart sank within him as he made application after application, only to fail alike in all.

For every situation that offered there seemed a hundred competitors. And ninety-nine out of this hundred must endure the misery of failure.

Lionel had secured a very cheap and humble lodging on the Surrey side of the Thames, and had made arrangements for the reception of his mother and sister as soon as they left the Grange.

O, what a dreary change was that darksome London lodging, after the luxurious country-house, the lovely gardens, the horses and grooms, the dogs and guns, and all those things which are so especially dear to a young man!

On his own account, however, Lionel Westford never once complained. His only thought was of his mother and sister; his most earnest desire that he might be enabled to shield them from all the bitterest ills of poverty.

He thought very seriously of his future career. His classical learning seemed unlikely to be of the smallest use to him; unless, like Goldsmith and Johnson, he accepted the slavery of a schoolmaster’s drudge. How bitterly he regretted his careless youth, his want of a profession, which would give him at least something! He asked himself whether there was yet time for him to adopt a profession. There was the Church. Yes; but he must waste two or three years before he could hope for a curacy worth from fifty to a hundred per annum. There was the law; but, alas, he was too familiar with the proverbial miseries of briefless youth idling in the garrets of the Temple.

It was a living he wanted, an immediate living, and in search of this he tramped the streets of London with untiring feet; but day by day went by, and he seemed no nearer to the object of his desire.

The afternoon of the 24th of March was dull and cheerless. The wind howled among the branches of the old trees about the Grange; the grey sky was cold and sunless.

Yet upon this afternoon, cheerless and cold though it was, Violet Westford opened the little garden-gate leading out into the forest, for the first time for many months.

Never since her illness had she seen or heard of the artist, George Stanmore.

She had fully expected that he would have come to the Grange to inquire about her during that long illness; and she had contrived to ask Lionel, in an apparently careless manner, if he had heard anything of his friend Mr. Stanmore.

But the answer had been in the negative. George had therefore taken no steps to discover the cause of Violet’s absence from her favourite forest haunts. This seeming neglect and indifference had cruelly stung the girl’s heart.

“His pretended attachment to me was only a passing fancy, perhaps,” she thought; “and I daresay he was amused by my sentimental folly in believing all his protestations of regard. I can understand now why he shrank from seeing my mother, and making an open avowal of his love.”

The idea that she had been the dupe of a sentimental delusion was very bitter to the girl’s sensitive mind. Her pride was outraged, and from the time of her recovery she had shunned the forest pathways, with an obstinate determination to avoid all meetings with her false lover.

But now that she was going to leave the Grange for ever, an irresistible impulse took possession of her, and she felt that she could not quit the neighbourhood of the forest without making some endeavour to ascertain the cause of George Stanmore’s neglect.

Might not he, too, have been ill? Or might he not have been compelled to leave the forest? It was almost easier to believe anything than that he could be false.

Thus it was that Miss Westford’s love overcame her pride; and once more she opened the little gate leading to her beloved woodland—the sweet scene which had been familiar and dear to her from infancy.

The forest pathways looked dreary this cold March afternoon, but the change in the aspect of the woodland was not so striking as the change in her who now passed through that rustic gateway.

The brilliant girl, whose smiling face was once like the sunlight, looked now wan and pale as some misty shape that glides about the mountain-tops in the evening dimness.

She walked with feeble steps along the grassy path, for the beating of her heart seemed to paralyze her strength. She went straight to the cottage where the landscape-painter had lodged; but the walk was a long one, and the twilight was gathering fast when she reached the modest little habitation, nestling amongst grand old trees.

The firelight from the cottage window streamed out upon the chill gray twilight, and there was a look of homeliness and comfort in the aspect of the simple place.

A sudden pang pierced through Violet’s heart as she looked at that cosy little cottage, with the neat, well stocked garden, and the red firelight in the window.

“If my mother and I had such a home as that, we might think ourselves very happy,” she thought; “and yet I daresay the people who live here have often envied our wealth and luxury.”

A woman was standing at the open door of the cottage as Violet approached the gate, and she came out into the pathway to welcome her visitor.

“Lor, Miss Westford!” she exclaimed, “you a’most frightened me, standing there so dark and ghostly like. Do step in, miss, and rest yourself a bit by the fire. It’s quite chilly these March afternoons. How sad it do seem to see your black dress, and to think of the poor dear kind free-spoken gentleman that’s gone! Ah, deary me, deary me, he were a good friend to all us poor folks, and there’s many will miss him in these parts. Take a chair close to the fire, miss. I am so glad to see you getting about once more, though you’re looking but sadly yet. I was at the Grange many times to ask after you during your illness.”

Violet’s heart beat convulsively. She began to think that George Stanmore had employed this woman as his messenger.

“It was very good of you to inquire after me,” she faltered.

“Lor, miss! wasn’t it likely I should be wishful to know how you was? Haven’t I known you ever since you was a little bit of a child? and hasn’t your dear ma been a good friend to me times and often? and didn’t your pa send me a bottle of his own old East-Indy Madeery, last Christmas was a twelvemonth, when he heard I was ailing?”

In all this there was no mention of Mr. Stanmore. Violet’s heart sank. She could not bring herself to question the simple dame, and she was not sufficiently skilled in diplomacy to extort the information she was so eager to obtain without direct questioning. She looked hopelessly round the comfortable little cottage chamber, wondering what she could say next. She was very pale; but the red light of the fire gave a false glow to her face, and the good-natured cottager did not perceive her visitor’s agitation.

“How neatly you keep your cottage, Mrs. Morris!” Violet said at last, feeling that she must say something. “It’s quite pleasant to see your place, it looks such a picture of comfort.”

“You’re very good to say so, miss, I’m sure,” answered Mrs. Morris. “But talking of pictures, and talking of comfort, we ain’t half as comfortable now, since we’ve lost our lodger.”

Violet’s heart gave a great bound. He was gone, then! But how—and where?

“You’ve lost your lodger?” she said. “You mean Mr. Stanmore?”

“Yes, miss. Mr. Stanmore, that painter gentleman. He left us all of a sudden, the very first week as you was taken ill; and, what’s more, it was against his own wishes as he went.”

“Against his own wishes! How so?”

“Why, you see, miss, this is how it was. I was ironing in that window one afternoon, when I saw a dark, foreign-looking gentleman standing at our gate, and with such a frown upon his face that he set me all of a tremble like, which I scorched one of my good man’s shirt-fronts as brown as a coffee-berry for the first time this ten years, having had an aunt, Rebecca Javes by name, which was brought up to the clear-starching and laundry-maid at Sir Robert Flinder’s, three miles on this side of Netley Abbey, and has shown me to iron a shirt-front with her own hands more times than I could count——”

“But the foreign-looking gentleman——”

“Yes, miss. That’s just what I was a-saying. There he stands as large as life. In he walks, right into our place, as cool as you please. ‘Is my son at home?’ he asks. ‘Your son, sir!’ I answered. ‘Lor, bless me, no; I don’t know any such person.’ ‘O yes you do,’ he says. ‘The person who painted that picture yonder is my son, and he lodges in your house.’ With that he points to one of Mr. Stanmore’s landscapes, that’s been set to dry on my little table yonder. ‘Mr. Stanmore your son!’ I cried out. And I assure you, miss, you might have knocked me down with a feather. ‘He is capable of calling himself Stanmore, or any other false name,’ answered the dark gentleman; ‘but whatever he calls himself, the man who painted that picture is my wicked and undutiful son.’

“Before he could get out another word, Mr. Stanmore walked in, with his hat on, and his drawings and things under his arm. He’d just come in from the forest.

“‘I am here, father,’ he said, ‘to answer for my sins, whatever they may be;’ and he said it as proud-like as if he’d been a prince of the royal family.

“So then the two gentlemen walked upstairs to Mr. Stanmore’s sitting-room, and our walls being thin, you know, miss, I could hear a good deal of what was said; not the words exactly, but the tones of voice like, though I’m sure as to bemean myself by listening, I wouldn’t do it, there, not if you was to lay me down twenty pound; and I could hear as the two gentlemen seemed at variance, as you may say; and at last down comes Mr. Stanmore’s father, as stiff as a poker, and as black as any thunderstorm as I ever see, and walks out of the house without so much as a word to me; but I could see by his face that he was regularly upset. And then, about an hour or so afterwards, down came Mr. Stanmore, looking very pale, but very quiet-like. He’d packed all his things, he said, and he wanted my husband to carry them over to Winchester Station in his cart, in time for the mail-train, which he did. I was regular cut up at the young gentleman leaving me so sudden like, for never was there a better lodger, and he paid me very handsome, and was altogether the gentleman. He seemed quite broken-hearted like at going away, miss; and, lor bless me, if that don’t remind me of something!”

The dame stopped suddenly, looking at Violet.

“Something about you, too, miss!”

The blood rushed into Violet’s pale face.

“Did Mr. Stanmore mention me?” she asked.

“Yes, miss; indeed he did. Just as he was going out of the house he stopped all of a sudden, and said, ‘If you should see Miss Westford, tell her that I have painted the old yew-tree she was so fond of; and I want her to look once more at the tree, in order that she may remember it when she sees my picture.’ Wasn’t that a funny message, miss?”

“Yes,” Violet answered, with pretended carelessness. “I suppose Mr. Stanmore means an old yew near the lake, which my brother and I very much admired. I sha’n’t have many opportunities of looking at the tree, Mrs. Morris, for we are going to leave this neighbourhood to-morrow.”

The woman expressed her regret at the departure of Violet and her mother; but, in the country, news travels fast, and she had heard some days before that the Grange was to be deserted. The change of fortune that had befallen the Westfords had been talked of and lamented by rich and poor.

Violet left the cottage with a heavy heart. George Stanmore had gone, leaving no trace behind him—not even a letter for the woman he had sworn to love and cherish for ever.

It was all a mystery, which Violet strove in vain to understand.

The moon had risen when she left the cottage, and every branch and leaf stood sharply out against the silvery light. Violet looked at the peaceful scene with inexpressible sadness.

“It may be the last time that I shall ever see it,” she thought; “the last time! And I have been so happy here!”

Then she thought of George Stanmore’s message about the old yew-tree.

It seemed a very absurd and meaningless message—a message which to any one not in love would have appeared the very extreme of maudlin sentimentality. But Violet was by no means inclined to regard it in that light. She looked upon it rather as a solemn and mysterious mandate which it was her duty to obey to the very letter.

Madame Laffarge, of unpleasant notoriety, wrote to her husband entreating him to eat certain cakes made by her own fair hand, and to contemplate the moon at a certain hour, when she too would be absorbed in sentimental meditation upon that luminary. The idea was poetical, but, unfortunately for M. Laffarge, the cakes were poisoned, and he died, the victim of obedience.

Violet was in that state of mind in which she found it pleasanter to loiter in the forest than to go home, and there was a kind of consolation in the idea of doing anything that her lover had asked her to do. It seemed to bring him nearer to her for the moment. He might be thinking of that favourite spot at the very moment she stood there thinking so sadly of him. He might even see her in her loneliness and despondency by some subtle power of second-sight given to lovers. Was anything impossible to true love?

So Miss Westford turned aside from her homeward path, and vent fearlessly through the solitary avenue that led towards the lake.

That forest lake looked very lovely under the still evening sky. The broad branches of the yew made patches of black shadow on the grass; the fallen leaves made a faint rustling noise as the wind stirred them—a kind of ghostly murmur.

Around the trunk of the tree there was a rustic bench of roughly-hewn wood; and on this Violet seated herself, exhausted by her long walk, and glad to linger on a spot so associated with her lost happiness.

As she sat there, the beauty of the scene impressed her with an almost painful sense of its splendour. For the first time throughout that sorrowful day the tears, passionate tears of regret, rushed down her pale cheeks.

She turned her head aside, and rested her forehead against the rugged bark of the yew.

As she did so, she perceived a hollow in the tree—a great hollow, in which George Stanmore had often hidden his colour-box and brushes. The remembrance of this suddenly flashed upon her. It had been her lover’s habit to hide things in that old tree. What if he had hidden a letter there, and had directed her attention to the fact by means of that message left with Mrs. Morris! In the next moment Violet Westford was on her knees before the hollow, groping in it with her hands.

She found it half-filled with moss and withered leaves; but, after dragging these out, she saw something white gleaming in the moonlight.

Ah, how eagerly she picked up that scrap of white from among the scattered leaves and moss!

It was a letter. Miss Westford could just make out the words “For Violet,” written on the envelope. Impatient as she was to see the contents of that precious envelope, she was fain to wait until she reached home; for brightly as the moon shone above forest and lake, that poetic radiance was not sufficient to throw light upon the mysteries of a modern gentleman’s penmanship.

Never in her happiest day had Violet Westford’s feet tripped more lightly along those forest pathways. She reached the Grange panting and exhausted, took a candle from the hall, and hurried to her own apartment—the bright airy room, so prettily decked to suit her girlish tastes, so soon to pass into the hands of strangers.

She seated herself close to the light, and tore open George Stanmore’s envelope. The letter it contained was brief, and had evidently been written in extreme haste.

It consisted of only these words:

“My dearest Girl,—Circumstances which I cannot explain in this letter compel me to leave England immediately. I do not know when I may be able to return; but when I do return, it will be to claim you as my wife. In the mean time, I implore you to write to me at the Post-office, Bruges, Belgium. Write to me, dearest, and tell me that you do not doubt my fidelity: tell me also that your faith will be as constant and unshaken as that of your devoted

“George.”

No words can express the comfort which Violet Westford derived from this brief letter. To a woman of the world, George Stanmore’s assurance of unalterable affection might have seemed of very little value; but to this girl, who did not know what it was to deceive, that assurance was all in all.

“He loves me! He is true to me!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands in a rapture of delight. “And when he comes back, it will be to seek me as his wife. But what will he do when he finds the Grange deserted, and our circumstances so cruelly changed? Will he change too?” This was the question which Violet asked herself very sadly, as she sat in the familiar room that was so soon to be hers no longer.

There was little sleep or rest for the dwellers in that pleasant country-house during the last sad night. The servants sat late in the cosy housekeeper’s-room, bewailing the misfortunes of their mistress over a very comfortably-furnished supper-table—for even a funeral table must be provided with “baked meats;” and faithful retainers, weighed down by the sadness of approaching farewell, require to be sustained by extra beer. They were unanimous in their praises of the family they had served so long, and in their dread of the unknown ills to be encountered in strange households, and from masters and mistresses whose “ways” would be new to them. But the old-fashioned type of servant, who appears so frequently in Morton’s comedies and in old novels, seems to be almost as extinct as the dodo. The Grange retainers were honestly sorry for Mrs. Westford’s misfortunes, but they had no idea of volunteering to follow the family in exile and poverty without wages, and, if need were, without food. Nor did cook or housemaid rush into the parlour to lay her savings at the feet of mistress, in the pathetic manner so familiar in the fairy world of romance. They sighed over the sorrows of the house as they ate their cold meat, and shook their heads dolefully over the old housekeeper’s famous pickles; but their boxes were all packed, and their plans all made for an early departure from the ruined house.

All through that long dreary night Mrs. Westford sat at her desk, sorting and destroying old letters and documents, the records of her happy womanhood. Of all the friendly notes, the pleasant gossiping letters, she kept none, except those written by her husband and her children.

Ah, how happy she had been in that simple country-house! What a calm life it had been!—and how brief the years seemed as she looked back to the early days in which her husband had brought her into Hampshire house-hunting, in a happy summer holiday, when their honeymoon was scarcely waned, and there was still in the minds of both the sweet strange sense that it was a new thing to be thus together!

She remembered her first year in that quiet haven. The glorious summer time, in which every sunny day had brought the discovery of some new treasure in shrubbery or garden. She remembered the warm midsummer night, in which she had lain, faint and weak, but unspeakably happy, looking up at the stars, with the perfumed air of the June night blowing in upon her from the wide window, and her baby Lionel on her breast.