PART THE SECOND.
CHAPTER XII.
Coastdown.
Rushing through the streets of London, as if he were rushing for his life, went a gentleman in deep mourning. It was Robert Hunter. Very soon after we last saw her, he had followed the hearse that conveyed his wife to her long home in Katterley churchyard.
Putting aside his grief, his regret, his bitter repentance, her death made every difference to him. Had there been a child, the house and income would have remained his; being none, it all went from him. Of his own money but little remained: he had been extravagant during the brief period when he was Lieutenant Hunter, had spent right and left. One does not do these things without having to pay for it. Mrs. Chester, going over to offer a condoling visit, heard this, and spoke out her opinion with her usual want of reserve. She looked upon him as a man lost. "No," said he, "I am saved! I shall go to work now." "Hoping to redeem fortune?" she rejoined. "Yes," he said, "and something else besides."
Heavily lay the shadow of the past upon Robert Hunter. The drooping form of his loving and neglected wife, bright with hope once, mouldering in her grave now, was in his mind always; the years that he had wasted in frivolity, the money he had recklessly spent. Oh, the simpleton he was--as he thought now, looking back in his repentance. When he had become master of a good profession, why did he abandon it because a little money was left him? To become a gentleman amongst gentlemen, forsooth; to put away the soiling of his hands; to live a life of vanity and indolence. Heaven had recompensed him in its own just way: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. His soldiership was gone; his wife was gone; money, the greater portion of it, was gone. Nothing left to him but remembrance, and the ever-present, bitter sense of his folly. He was beginning life anew: he must go back to the bottom of the tree of his engineering profession, lower than where he had left off: he would so begin it and take up his work daily, and untiringly persevere in it, so as--Heaven helping him--to atone for the past. Not all the past. The wasted years were gone for ever; the gentle wife, whom he had surely helped to send to the grave, could not be recalled to earth. Not so much on his wife were his musings bent as on the career of work lying before him. He had so grieved for her in the days before and immediately after her death, that it seemed as though the sorrow had, in a degree, spent itself, and reaction set in. If his handicraft's best skill, indifference to privation, unflagging industry, could redeem the past idleness, he would surely redeem that. Not in a pecuniary point of view, it was not of that he thought, but in the far graver one of wasted life. His eyes were opening a little; he saw how offensive on High must be a life of mere idle indulgence; a waste of that precious time, short at the best, bestowed upon him to use. This, this was what he had resolved to atone for: Heaven helping him, he once more aspirated in the sad but resolute earnestness of his heart.
Making an end of his affairs at Katterley, he came to London, presented himself at the office of the firm where he was formerly employed, and said he had come to ask for work. They remembered the clever, active, industrious young man, and were glad to have him again. And Robert Hunter--dropping his easy life, just as he dropped the name he had borne in it--entered on his career of toil and usefulness.
The spring was growing late when his employers intimated to him that he was going to be sent to Spain, to superintend some work there. Anywhere, he answered; he was quite ready, let them send him where they would.
On this morning that we see him splashing through the mud of London improvised by the water carts, he was busy making his preparations for departure, and was on his way to call on Professor Macpherson. He wanted some information in regard to the locality for which he was bound, and thought the professor could supply it. The previous night, sitting alone in his lodgings, he had been surprised, and rather annoyed, by the appearance of Mrs. Chester. That lady was in town on her own business, and found him out. Incautiously he let slip that he was going on the morrow to Dr. Macpherson's. She seized upon the occasion to make a visit also.
At this very moment Mrs. Chester was en route also. Pushing her way along, inquiring her road perpetually, getting into all sorts of odd nooks and turnings, she at length emerged on the more open squares of Bloomsbury, and there she saw her brother, who had been calling at places on his way, in front of her.
"You might have waited for me, Robert, I think."
"I did wait twenty minutes. I came on then. My time is not my own, you know, Penelope."
"Have you seen anything of Lady Ellis since you came to London?" inquired Mrs. Chester, as they walked on together.
"No, I should not be likely to see her."
"She is staying in London; she came to it direct when she left me. At least, she was staying here, but in a letter I had from her she said she thought of going on a visit to Coastdown. Her plans----"
"Excuse me, Penelope, I don't care to hear of Lady Ellis's plans."
"You have grown quite a bear, Robert! That's what work's doing for you."
He laughed pleasantly. "I think it is hurry that is doing it for me this morning, I feel as if I had no time for anything. Number fifteen. Here we are!"
It was a commodious house, this one in Bloomsbury, steps leading up to the entrance. He sent in his card, "Mr. Robert Hunter," and they were admitted.
"Lawk a' mercy! Is it you?" exclaimed Mrs. Macpherson, looking first at the card and then at its owner, as they were shown into a handsome room, and the professor's lady, in sky-blue silk, and a scarlet Garibaldi body elaborately braided with black, advanced to receive them. She did not wear the bird-of-paradise feather, but she wore something equivalent to it: some people might call it a cap and some a turban, the front ornament of which, perching on the forehead, was an artificial bird, with shining wings of green and gold.
Mrs. Macpherson took a hand of each, shaking them heartily. "And so you have put away your name?" she said.
"Strictly speaking, it never was my name," he answered. "It was my wife's. I had to assume it with her property, but when the property left me again, I thought it time to drop the name."
The professor came forward in his threadbare coat, with (it must be owned) a great stream of some sticky red liquid down the front of it, for they had fetched him from his experimenting laboratory. But his smile was bright, his welcome genial. Mrs. Macpherson, whose first thoughts were always of hospitality, ordered luncheon to be got ready. Robert Hunter, sitting down between them, quietly told them he had become a working man again, and where he was going, and what to do. Mrs. Macpherson heard him with a world of sympathy.
"It's just one o' them crosses in life that come to a many of us," remarked she. "Play first and work afterwards! it's out o' the order of things. But take heart. You've got your youth yet, and you'll grow reconciled."
"If you only knew how glad I am to be at work again!" he said, a faint light of earnestness crossing his face. "My years of idleness follow me as a reproach--as a waste of life."
"But for steady attention to my work and studies, I should never have been able to contribute my poor mite to further the cause of science," said the professor, meekly, speaking it as an encouragement to Robert Hunter.
"If he hadn't stuck at it late and early--burning the candle at both ends, as 'twere--he'd not have had his ologies at his fingers' tips," pursued Mrs. Macpherson, who often deemed it necessary to explain more lucidly her husband's meaning.
"And so you are about to migrate to Spain?" said the professor. "You----"
"He says he's going off to it by rail," interposed Mrs. Macpherson. "What are the people there? Blacks?"
"No, no, Betsy; they are white, as we are."
"I knew a Spanish man once, professor, and he was olive brown."
"They are dark from the effects of the sun. I thought you alluded to the race. The radiation of heat there is excessive; and----"
"That is, it's burning hot in the place," corrected Mrs. Macpherson. "I wish you joy of it, Mr. Hunter. You'll catch it full, a-laying down of your lines of rail."
"I think you have been in Spain?" observed Mr. Hunter to the doctor.
"I once stayed some months there. What do you say?--that you want some information that you think I can supply? I hope I can. What is it? Please to step into my room."
The professor passed out of the door by which he entered, Mr. Hunter following him. A short passage, and then they were in the square back room consecrated to the professor and his pursuits. It was not a museum, it was not a laboratory, it was not a library, or an aviary of stuffed birds, or an astronomical observatory; but it was something of all. Specimens of earth, of rock, of flowers, of plants, of weeds, of antiquarian walls; of animals, birds, fish, insects; books in cases, owls in cages; and a vast many more odd things too numerous to mention. Mrs. Macpherson thought it well to follow them.
"Law!" said she to Mrs. Chester, "did living mortal ever see the like o' the place?"
"What a confused mass of things it is!" was the answer, as Mrs. Chester's eyes went roving around in curiosity.
"He says it isn't. He has the face to tell me everything is in its place, and he could find it in the dark. The great beast there with its round eyes, is a owl that some of 'em caught and killed when they went out moralizing into Herefordshire."
"Not moralizing, Betsy. One of the excursions of the Geological Society----"
"It's all the same," interrupted Mrs. Macpherson; and the professor meekly turned to Mr. Hunter and continued an explanation he was giving him, a sort of earthenware pipe in his hand. The ladies drew near.
"You perceive, Mr. Hunter, there is a small aperture for the passing in of the atmospheric air?"
"That is, there's a hole where the wind goes out," explained the professor's wife.
"By these means, taking the precautions I have previously shown you, the pressure on the valve may be increased to almost any given extent! As a natural consequence----"
"Oh, bother consequences!" cried Mrs. Macpherson; "I'm sure young Robert Hunter don't care to waste his time with that rubbish, when there's cold beef and pickled salmon waiting."
"Just two minutes, Betsy, and Mr. Hunter shall be with you. Perhaps you and Mrs. Chester will oblige us by going on."
"Not if I know it," said the lady, resolutely. "I've had experience of your 'two minutes' before today, prefessor, and seen 'em swell into two mortal hours. Come! finish what you've got to say to him, and we'll all go together."
Dr. Macpherson continued his explanations in a low voice, possibly to avoid more interruptions. Five minutes or so, and they moved from the table, the doctor still talking in answer to a question.
"Not yet. I grieve to say we have not any certain clue to it, and opinions are much divided among us. It needs these checks to remind us of our finite nature, Mr. Hunter. So far shalt thou go, but no farther. That is a law of the Divine Creator, and we cannot break it."
Robert Hunter smiled. "The strangest thing of all is to hear one of you learned men acknowledge as much. The philosopher's stone; perpetual motion; the advancing and receding tides--do you not live in expectation of making the secret of these marvels yours?"
Professor Macpherson shook his head. "If we were permitted: but we never shall be. If. That word has been the arresting point of man in the past ages, as it will be in the future. Archimedes said he could move the world, you know, if he had but an outward spot to rest the fulcrum of his lever on."
"It's a lucky thing for us that Archimy didn't," was the comment of Mrs. Macpherson. "It wouldn't be pleasant to be swayed about promiscous, the earth tossing like a ship at sea."
Robert Hunter declined the luncheon; he had many things to do still, and his time in England was growing very short; so he said adieu to them both then, and to his sister.
"Now remember, Robert Hunter," said Mrs. Macpherson, taking both his hands, "when you visit England temporay, and want a friendly bed to put yourself into, come to us. Me and the prefessor took to you when we first saw you at Guild. You remember that night," she added, turning to Mrs. Chester: "we come up in a carriage and pair; I wore my orange brocade and my bird-o'-paradise; and there was a Lady Somebody there, one o' those folks that put on airs and graces; which isn't pretty in a my lady, any more than it is in a missis. You took our fancies, Mr. Hunter--though it does seem odd to be calling you that, and not Lake--and we'll look upon it as a favour if you'll come to us sometimes. The prefessor knows we shall, but he's never cute at compliments. He was born without gumption."
The professor's lingering shake of the hand, the welcoming look in his kindly eyes, said at least as much as his wife's words; and Robert Hunter went forth, knowing that they wished to be his friends.
So they sat down to their luncheon and he departed; and the same night went forth on his travels.
Coastdown lay low in the light of the morning sun. The skies were clear, the rippling sea was gay with its fishing boats. Spring had been very late that year, but this was a day warm and bright. The birds were singing, the lambs were sporting in the fields, the hedges were bursting into buds of green.
Swinging through the gate of the Red Court Farm, having been making a call there to fetch a newspaper, came Captain Copp: a sailor with a wooden leg, a pea jacket, and a black glazed hat. Captain Copp had been a merchant captain of the better class, as his father was before him. After his misfortune--the loss of his leg in an encounter with pirates--he gave up the sea, and settled at Coastdown on his small but sufficient income.
The captain's womenkind--as he was in the habit of calling the inmates of his house--consisted of his wife and a maid servant. The former was meek, yielding, gentle as those gentle lambs in the field; the latter, Sarah Ford, worth her weight in gold for honest capability, liked to manage the captain and the world on occasions. There were encounters between them. He was apt to call her a she-pirate and other affectionate names. She openly avowed her disbelief in his marvellous reminiscences, especially one that was a standing story with him concerning a sea-serpent that he saw with his own eyes in the Pacific Ocean. He had also seen a mermaid. Like many another sailor, the captain was a simple-minded man in land affairs, only great at sea and its surroundings; with implicit faith in all its marvels.
On occasions the captain's mother honoured him with a visit; a resolute, well-to-do lady, who used to voyage with her husband, and had now settled in Liverpool. When she came she ruled the house and the captain, for she thought him (forty, now) and his wife little better than children yet. In solid sense, if you believed herself, nobody could approach her.
Captain Copp came forth from his call at the Red Court Farm, letting the gate swing behind him, and stumped along quickly, his stout stick and his wooden leg keeping time on the ground. The captain's face was beaming with satisfaction, for he had contrived to lay hold of young Cyril Thornycroft, and recount to him (for the fiftieth time) the whole story of the sea-serpent from beginning to end. He was a short, wiry man, with the broad round shoulders of a sailor. The road branched off before him two ways, like an old-fashioned fork; the way on the right led direct to the village and the common beach; the way on the left to his home.
The captain halted. Sociably inclined, he was rather fond of taking himself to the Mermaid; that noted-public house where the sailors and the coastguard men congregated to watch the omnibus come in from Jutpoint. It must be getting near to the time of its arrival, half-past eleven, and the captain's leg moved a step forward in the direction; on the other hand, he wanted to say a word to that she-serpent Sarah (with whom he had enjoyed an encounter before coming out) about the dinner. The striking of the clock decided him, and he bore on for home, past the churchyard. Crossing part of the heath, he came to the houses, red brick, detached, cheerful, his own being the third. At the window of the first sat an old lady. Captain Copp went through the little gate and put his face without ceremony against the pane, close to Mrs. Connaught's.
"How's the master this morning?" he called out through the glass.
She answered by drawing aside and pointing to the fire. An asthmatical old gentleman, just recovering from a fit of the gout, sat there in a white cotton nightcap and dressing-gown made of yellow flannel.
"He's come down for the first time, Captain Copp. He looks brave this morning," was Mrs. Connaught's answer.
"Glad to see ye, comrade; I'll come in later," cried the captain through the window, flourishing his stick in token of congratulation. And old Mr. Connaught, who had not heard a word, nodded the tassel of the white cap by way of answer.
In the parlour at home, when Captain Copp entered it, sat his wife at work, a faded lady with a thin and fair face. Taking out the newspaper he had brought, he began to open it.
"Did you see the justice, Sam?" asked his wife in her gentle, loving tones.
"No, he was out. I only saw Cyril. There'll be a fine row when he comes home. Mary Anne has run away."
Mrs. Copp dropped her work. "Run away! oh, Sam! Run away from where?"
"From where?--why, from school," said the choleric captain, who was just as hot as his wife was calm. "She came bursting in upon them this morning at breakfast, having run home all the eight miles. And she says she won't go back."
Mrs. Samuel Copp, who had never in her life presumed to take a walk without express permission given for it, lifted her hands in dismay. "I feared she would never stay at school; I feared she would not."
"Old Connaught is downstairs today, Amy," observed the captain to her after a long interval of silence, as he turned his paper.
"I am glad of that. He suffers sadly, poor man."
"Well, he's getting old, you see; and he's one that has coddled himself all his life, which doesn't answer. I say! who's this?"
A vision of something bright had flashed in at the little garden gate, on its way to the door. Mrs. Copp started up, saying that it was Mary Anne Thornycroft.
"Not a bit of it," said the captain. "Mary Anne Thornycroft would come right in and not stand knocking at the door like a simpleton."
The knocking was very load and decisive, such as, one is apt to fancy in a simple country place, must herald the approach of a visitor of consequence. Sarah appeared showing in the stranger.
"Lady Ellis, ma'am," she said to her mistress.
A dress of rich black silk, a handsome India shawl, a girlish straw bonnet, with a great deal of bright mauve ribbon about it, a white veil, and delicate lavender gloves. My lady had got up herself well for her journey; stylish, but not too fine to travel. She had discarded her mourning, but it was convenient to wear her black silks. The captain and his wife rose.
Yes, it was Lady Ellis. But she had mistaken the direction given her, and had come to Captain Copp's instead of Mrs. Connaught's. When the explanation came, the gallant captain offered to take her in.
"Old Connaught is better today," observed he, volunteering the information. "He's downstairs in a nightcap and flannel gown."
Another minute, and Lady Ellis had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the articles of attire mentioned, and the old gentleman they adorned. Captain Copp, with his nautical disregard to ceremony, went into his neighbour's house as usual, without knocking, opened the sitting-room door, and sent the visitor in. Mrs. Connaught was not there, and he went to the kitchen in search of her. They were primitive-mannered, these worthy people of Coastdown, entering each others' kitchens or parlours at will.
Mr. Connaught, very excessively taken aback at the unexpected apparition, did nothing but look up with a stolid stare, as unable mentally to comprehend what the lady did there, and who she might be, as he was physically to rise and receive her. Lady Ellis lost her ready suavity for a moment, struck out of it by the curious old figure before her.
Mrs. Connaught was preparing some dainty little dish for her husband; sick people have fancies, and he liked her cooking better than the cook's. She heard the wooden leg coming along the passage.
"Here!" said the captain, "some lady wants you. Came by the omnibus from Jutpoint, I gather; got a white figure-head."
He stumped out the back way as he spoke, and Mrs. Connaught entered the parlour. When Lady Ellis was a girl of fifteen, twenty years before, and she an unmarried woman getting on for forty, they had seen a good deal of each other. Not having met since, each had some little difficulty in making the recognition of the other; but it dawned at last.
"I could not stay any longer from coming to see you," said Lady Ellis. "You seem to be the only link left of my early home and my dear parents. Forgive me for intruding on you today; had I waited longer I might not have been able to come at all."
She sat down and untied her bonnet, and laid hold of Mrs. Connaught's hand and kept it, letting fall some tears. Old Connaught stared more than ever; Mrs. Connaught, not a demonstrative woman, but simple and kindly, answered in kind.
"How long it seems ago! And you must have grown grand since then, Lady Ellis! But I never knew your people very much, you know."
"Ah, you forget! I grand!"--she went on, with a cheery laugh; "you will soon see how different I am from that. I came home to find nearly all those I cared for dead; you only are left, and I thought I must come down and find you out. Dear Mrs. Connaught, dear old friend, the longing for it got irrepressible."
Lady Ellis, it may be remembered, had pencilled down Mrs. Connaught's address at Mrs. Chester's, as supplied by Mr. Thornycroft. It might prove useful, she thought, on some future occasion. And the occasion had come.
The world, as she thought, had not dealt bountifully with her; quite the opposite. Not to mince the matter, she had to scheme to live, just as much as Mrs. Chester had, only in a different way. She liked good clothes, she liked ease and good living. Never, save for those few short days of her Indian marriage, had she known what it was to be free from care. Her father had liked play better than work; he and her mother, both, had a propensity to live beyond their income, to get into society that was above them, for they were not altogether gentlepeople. Extravagance, struggles, debts, pinching; all sorts of contrivances and care, outside show, meanness at home--such had been the experience of Angeline Finch, until some lucky chance took her to India as companion to a lady, and a still luckier introduced her to Sir George Ellis, an old man in his dotage. Two years of her reign as my lady--two blessed years; show, ease, life. Looking back upon them now, they seemed like a very haven. But Sir George died; it came to an end; and she home to Europe again, where she found herself a little embarrassed how to get along in the world.
Whether she had lost sight of her European acquaintances during her stay in India, or whether she had originally not possessed many, certain it was they seemed scarce now.
The vision, coming and going almost like a flash of lightning, of Mr. Thornycroft and his daughter, the gentleman's evident admiration of her, the tales she heard (perhaps exaggerated) of the style of living and the wealth at the Red Court, had set her mind a-longing. She thought often how desirable would be a visit there: what might it not lead to? The determination to effect it grew into a settled hope. It might almost have been called a prevision, as you will find from what came of it. Of all the ills that can possibly befal this life, Lady Ellis, perhaps from the circumstances of her early experience, regarded poverty as the most fatal. She had grown to dread it awfully. After that short interval of ease and luxury, the thought of having to relapse back to contrivances, debts, duns, difficulties, turned her sick. Ah, what a difference it is!--what a wide gap between!--a shoulder of mutton for dinner one day, cold the next, hashed the third, beer limited, a gown turned and turned again, shabby at the best; and a good dinner of three courses and wines, and the toilette of Madame Elise!
And so, Lady Ellis, working out her own plans, had come swooping down today on Coastdown and Mrs. Connaught.
She went up to Mr. Connaught and took his hand; she looked admiringly at him, as if a yellow flannel gown and cotton nightcap were the most charming articles of attire that fashion could produce; she expressed her sorrow for his ailments with a gentle voice. Certainly she did her best to win his heart and his wife's, and went three-parts of the way towards doing it.
Meanwhile things were in a commotion at the Red Court Farm. On the departure of Miss Derode at Christmas the justice had put his daughter to school, an eligible place eight miles only away. She had gone rebelliously; stayed rebelliously; and now finished up by running home again.
As the justice found when he got home. Mary Anne flatly refused to go back. She refused altogether to leave home.
Mr. Thornycroft, privately not knowing in the least what to do with his self-willed daughter, sat in his magisterial chair, the young lady carpeted before him. All he could say, and he said a great deal, did not move her in the least; back to school she would not go. It seemed that she had resumed at once old habits; had fed her birds, sang her songs to the grand piano, danced gleefully in and out amid the servants, and finally put on a most charming silk dress of delicate colour, that she would never have been permitted to wear at school, and was too good to have been taken there.
"I shall drive you back in an hour, Mary Anne."
"I will not go, papa."
"What's that, girl? Do you mean to tell me to my face you will not go when I say you shall? That's something new."
"Of course if you make me get into the carriage and drive me there yourself, I cannot help it; but I should ran away again tomorrow."
"It is enough disgrace to you to have run away once."
Mary Anne stood, half in contrition, half in defiance. Nearly seventeen now, tall and fair, very handsome, she scarcely looked one to be coerced to this step. Her clear blue eyes met those of her father; the very self-same eyes as his, the self-same will in them.
"As to disgrace, papa, I did nothing more than come straight home. It was the same thing as a morning walk, and I have often gone out for that."
"What do you suppose is to become of you?" questioned Mr. Thornycroft, the conviction seating itself within him that she would not be forced from home again. He ran away from school himself, and his father had never been able to get him back to it. Mary Anne had inherited his self-will.
"I can learn at home. Oh, papa, I will be very good and obedient if you let me stay."
"You are too old now to be at home alone. And you would not obey mademoiselle, you know."
"If you had wanted to place me at school, you should have done it when I was young, papa. I am too old to be sent there now, for the first time."
Inwardly the justice acknowledged the truth of this. He began thinking that he must keep her, and engage some strict governess. But he did not want to do this; he objected to having governesses at the Red Court Farm.
"You don't believe me perhaps, papa. Indeed, I will be good and obedient; but you must not send me away!"
He supposed it must be so. He did not see his way clearly out of the dilemma; she had been indulged always, she must be indulged still. Some signs of relenting in the blue eyes--handsome still as his daughter's--Mary Anne saw it, and flew into his arms with a shower of tears.
What an opportunity for Lady Ellis! She stayed on at Mrs. Connaught's, and went daily to the Red Court, and read with Mary Anne and saw to her studies; and was her charming companion and indulgent governess. Excursions abroad in plenty! Going to Jutpoint in Mr. Thornycroft's high carriage; sailing to sea in Tomlett's boat; here, there, everywhere! The young men happened to be away at this period, and Lady Ellis had the field open.
There were some weeks of it. My lady had made a private arrangement with Mrs. Connaught, insisting upon paying for herself while she stayed. The sea air was doing her so much good, she said. The sea air! My lady would have taken up her permanent abode in old Betts's boat rather than have removed herself to a distance from that desirable pile of buildings, the Red Court Farm. Looking at it from her little chamber window, that is, at its chimneys, and imagining the charming life underneath, it appeared to her as a very haven of refuge.
And Justice Thornycroft was becoming fascinated. He began to think there was not such another woman in the world.
Perhaps there was not. Let Harry Thornycroft be assured of one thing--that when these clever women set their minds to lay hold of a man, to bend him to their will, in nine cases out of ten they will carry it out, surrounding circumstances aiding and abetting.
One day when she was dining at the Red Court Farm, she suggested to Mr. Thornycroft that he should take a dame de compagnie for Mary Anne. She always appeared to have that young lady's best interest on her mind and heart and tongue. Mary Anne, accustomed to do what she liked, went out with the cheese.
"It is the only thing, as you will not have a governess. Believe me, my dear sir, it is the only thing for that dear child," she urged, her dark eyes going straight out to the honest blue ones of Harry Thornycroft.
He made no reply. He was thinking that a dame de compagnie might be more troublesome at the Red Court than even a governess.
"Mary Anne wants now some one who will train her mind and form her manners, Mr. Thornycroft. It is essential that it should be done. Wanting a mother, wanting a stepmother, I see only one alternative--a gentlewoman, who will be friend, governess, and companion in one. It is a pity, for her sake, that you did not marry again."
Mr. Thornycroft put out a glass of wine with a sudden movement, and drank it. Lady Ellis resumed, piteously.
"Ah, forgive me! I know I ought not to be so free; to say these things. I was but thinking of that dear child. You will forgive me?"
"There's nothing to forgive," said the justice. "I am exceedingly obliged for the interest you take in her, and for any suggestion you may make. The consideration is--what to do for the best? I don't see my way clear."
He sat with his fine head a little bent, the light of the wax chandelier falling on his fair, and still luxuriant, hair; his blue eyes went out to the opposite wall, seeing nothing; his fingers played with the wine glass on the table. Evidently there were considerations to be regarded of which Lady Ellis knew nothing.
"It has been partly out of love to my daughter that I have never given her a stepmother," said he, coming out of his reverie. "Second wives are apt to make the home unhappy for the first children; you often see it."
She smiled sweetly on him. "Dear Mr. Thornycroft! Make the home unhappy! Ah, then, yes, perhaps so! Women with a hard selfish nature. Still I do not see how even they could help loving Mary Anne. She is so----"
What she was, Mr. Thornycroft lost the pleasure of hearing. Sinnett the housekeeper came in at this juncture, and said the landlord of the Mermaid, John Pettipher, had come up, asking to see the justice. "Tomlett has been quarrelling with him, he says, sir," added Sinnett, "and he wants to have the law of him."
"Tomlett's a fool!" burst impulsively from the lips of Mr. Thornycroft. "Show him into the justice room, Sinnett."
He went out with a brief word of apology, and he never came back again. My lady sat and waited, and looked and hoped, but he did not return to gladden her with his presence. At length Sinnett came in with some tea.
"Is Mr. Thornycroft gone out?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady. He went out with John Pettipher."
She almost crushed the fragile cup of Sèvres china in her passionate fingers. Had Mr. John Pettipher heard the good wishes lavished upon him that evening, he might have stared considerably.
CHAPTER XIII.
What was the Fear?
The early buds had gone, the flowers of May were springing. Richard and Isaac Thornycroft were at home again, and the old profuse, irregular mode of life reigned at the Red Court Farm.
The skies are grey this afternoon; there is a chillness in the early summer air. Mr. Thornycroft, leaning lightly on the slender railings, that separate his grounds from the plateau, looks up to see whether rain will be falling.
There was trouble at home with Mary Anne. Uncontrolled as she was just now, no female friend to watch over her, she went her own way. Not any very bad way; only a little inexpedient. Masters came from the nearest town for her studies, taking up an hour or two each day; the rest of it she exercised her own will. The fear of school had subsided by this time, and she was growing wilful again--careering about on the heath; calling in at Captain Copp's and other houses; seated on some old timber on the beach, talking to the fishermen; riding off alone on her pony; jolting away (she had done it twice) in the omnibus to Jutpoint, without saying a word to anybody. Only on the previous day she had gone out in old Betts's tub of a boat, with the old man and his little son, got benighted, and frightened them at home. Clearly this was a state of things that could not be allowed to continue; and Mr. Thornycroft, leaning there on the railings, was revolving a question: should he ask Lady Ellis to come to the Red Court as dame de compagnie?--or as his wife?
"Of the two, a wife would be less dangerous than a companion," thought Justice Thornycroft, giving the light railings a shake with his strong hand "I'm not dying for either; but then--there's Mary Anne."
Almost as if she had heard the word, his daughter came out of the house and ran up to him. The justice put his hand on hers.
"What are you doing here, papa?"
"Thinking about you."
"About me?"
"Yes, about you. You are getting on for seventeen, Mary Anne; you have as much common sense as most people; therefore--listen, I want to speak to yon seriously."
She had turned her head at the ringing of the bell of the outer gate. But the injunction brought it round again.
"Therefore you must be quite well aware, without my having to reiterate it to you, that this kind of thing cannot be allowed to go on."
"I do no harm," said Mary Anne, knowing well to what the words tended.
"Harm or no harm, it cannot go on; it shall not. Now, which will you do--go to school again, or have a governess?"
"I don't want either," she answered, with a pout of her decisive lips.
"Or would you like--it is the one other alternative--a lady to come here as your friend and companion?"
"Frankly speaking, papa, I don't see what the difference would be between a companion and a governess. Of course, of the two I'd rather have a companion. To school I will not go. Lady Ellis was talking to me of this. I think she was fishing to be the companion herself."
"Fishing!" echoed the justice.
"Well, I do."
"Would you like her?"
"Not at all, papa."
"Who is it that you would like?" asked the justice, tartly.
"I should like nobody in that capacity. I might put up with it; but that is very different from liking."
"For my own part, if we decide upon a companion, there's no one I would so soon have as Lady Ellis," remarked Mr. Thornycroft. "Would you?"
"La la, la la!" sang Mary Anne, her eyes following a passing bird.
"Answer me without further trifling," sternly resumed Mr. Thornycroft, putting his hand on her shoulder.
The tone sobered her. "Of course, papa; if some one must come, why, let it be Lady Ellis."
Heaving a sort of relieved sigh, he released her, and she went away singing to herself a scrap of a pretty little French song, the refrain of which was, rendered in English--"If you come today, madam, you go tomorrow."
The misapprehension that arises in this world! None of us are perfectly open one with the other. Between the husband and the wife, the parents and the children, the brothers and the sisters, involuntary deceit reigns. Mr. Thornycroft assumed that Lady Ellis would be more acceptable to his daughter as a resident at the Red Court than any one else that could be found: had Miss Thornycroft spoken the truth boldly, she would have said that my Lady Ellis was her bête noire; the person she most disliked of all others on earth.
But the chief question was not solved yet in the mind of Justice Thornycroft. Should it be wife, or should it be only companion? He was quite sufficiently taken with my lady's fascinations to render the first alternative sufficiently agreeable in prospective; he deemed her a soft-hearted, yielding gentlewoman; he repeated over again to himself the mysterious words, "As a wife she would be less dangerous than a companion." But still, there were considerations against it that made him hesitate. And with good cause.
He went strolling towards the village, turning down the waste land, a right of way that was his own, past the plateau. The first house, at the corner of the street, was the Mermaid. He passed the end of it, and struck across to a low commodious cottage on the cliffs, whose rooms were all on the ground-floor. Tomlett lived in it; he was called the fishing-boat master, and was also employed occasionally on the farm of Mr. Thornycroft, as he had leisure. Mrs. Tomlett, a little woman with a red face and shrill voice, was hanging out linen on the lines to dry.
"Where's Tomlett today?" asked the justice. "He has not been to the farm."
Mrs. Tomlett turned sharply round, for she had not heard the approach, and dropped a curtsey to the justice. "He have gone to Dartfield, sir," she answered, lowering her voice to the key people use when talking secrets. "Mr. Richard he come in the first thing this morning and sent him."
Mr. Thornycroft nodded, and went away, muttering to himself exclusively something to the effect that Richard might have mentioned it. Passing round by the Mermaid again, he went towards home.
And he was charmingly rewarded. Standing on the waste land near the plateau, in her pretty and becoming bonnet of delicate primrose and white, her Indian shawl folded gracefully round her, her dress looped, was Lady Ellis.
"Do you know, Mr. Thornycroft," she said, as he took her hand, "I have never been on the plateau. Will you take me?"
Mr. Thornycroft hesitated visibly. "It is not a place for a lady to go to," he said, after a pause.
"But why not? Mary Anne told me one day you objected to her going on it."
"I do. The real objection is the danger. The cliff has a treacherous edge just there, and you might be over before you were aware. A sharp gust of wind, a footing too near or not quite secure, and the evil is done. Some accidents have occurred there; one, the last of them, was attended by very sad circumstances, and I then had these railings put round."
"You said the real objection was the danger; is there any other objection?" resumed Lady Ellis, who never lost a word or its emphasis.
"There are certain superstitious fancies connected with the plateau," answered Mr. Thornycroft, and very much to her surprise his face took a solemn look, his voice a subdued tone, just as if he himself believed in them: "a less tangible fear than the danger, but one that effectually scares visitors away, at night especially."
They were walking round towards the Red Court now, to which he had turned, and Mr. Thornycroft changed the subject. She could not fail to see that he wished it dropped. At the gates of the farm she wished him good afternoon, and took the road to the heath.
Justice Thornycroft did not enter the gates, but went round to the back entrance. Passing by the various outbuildings, he gained the yard, just as a man was driving out with a waggon and team.
"Where are you going?" asked the justice.
"After the oats, sir. Mr. Richard telled me."
"Is Mr. Richard about?"
"He be close to his own stables, sir."
Mr. Thornycroft went on across the yard, not to the house but to the stables at its end. This portion of the stables (as may be remembered) was detached from the rest, and had formed part of the old ruins. It was shut in by a wall. The horses of the two elder sons were kept there, and their dog-cart. It was their whim and pleasure that Hyde, the man-servant (who could turn his hand to anything indoors or out), should attend to this dog-cart and the horses used in it, and not the groom. Richard was sitting on the frame of the well just on this side the wall, doing something to the collar of his dog.
"Dicky," said the justice, without any sort of circumlocution, "I think I shall give the Red Court a mistress."
Richard lifted his dark stern face to see whether--as he verily thought--his father was joking. "Give it a what?" he asked.
"A mistress. I shall take a wife, I think."
"Are you mad, sir?" asked Richard, after a pause.
"Softly, softly, Dick."
Richard lifted his towering form to its full height. Every feeling within him, every sense of reason rebelled against the notion of the measure. A few sharp words ensued, and Richard went into a swearing fit.
"I knew it would be so; he was always hot and hasty," thought the justice to himself. "What behaviour do you call this?" he asked aloud. "Perhaps if you'll hear what I have to say you may cool down. Do you suppose I should be intending to marry for my own gratification?"
"I don't suppose you'd be marrying for that of anybody else," said the undaunted Richard.
"It is for the sake of Mary Anne. Some one must be here with her, and a wife will be less--less risk than a crafty, inquisitive governess."
"For the sake of Mary Anne!" ironically retorted Richard. "Send Mary Anne to school."
"I did send her; and she cane back again."
"I'd keep her there with cords. I said so at the time."
"Unfortunately she won't be kept. She has a touch of the Thornycroft will, Dick."
"Hang the Thornycroft will!" was Dick's angry answer. Not but what it was a stronger word he said.
"When you have cooled down from your passion I'll talk further with you," said the justice, some irritation arising in his own tone. "You have no right to display this temper to me. I am master here, remember, Dick; though sometimes, if appearances may be trusted, you like to act as if you forgot that."
Richard bit his dark lip. "You must know how inexpedient the measure would be, sir. Give yourself a wife!--the house a mistress! Why, the place might no longer be our own."
"Do you suppose I have not weighed the subject on all sides? I have been weeks considering it, and I have come to the conclusion that of the two--a wife or a governess--the former will be the less risk."
"No," said Richard; "a governess may be got rid of in an hour; a wife, never."
"But a governess might go out in the world and talk; a wife would not."
Richard dashed the dog's collar on the ground which he had held all the while. "Mark me, father"--he said, his stern eyes and resolute lips presenting a picture of angry warning rarely equalled--"this step, if you enter on it, will lead to what you have so long lived in dread of,--to what we are ever scheming to guard against. Mary Anne! Before that girl's puny interests should lead me to--to a measure that may bring ruin in its wake, I'd send her off to the wilds of Africa."
He strode away, haughty, imperious, rigid in his sharp condemnation. Mr. Thornycroft, one of those men whom opposition only hardens, turned to the fields, thinking of his brother Richard; Dick was so like him. There he found Isaac, stretched idly on the ground with a book. The young man rose at once in his respect to his father. His handsome velveteen coat, light summer trousers and white linen, his tall form with its nameless grace, his fair features, clear blue eyes and waving light hair, presenting as fine a picture as man ever made.
"That's one way of being useful," remarked Mr. Thornycroft.
Isaac laughed. "I confess I am idle this afternoon: and there's nothing particular to do."
"Isaac--" Mr. Thornycroft came to a long pause, and then went on rapidly, imparting the news that he had to tell. And it was a somewhat curious fact, that an embarrassment pervaded his manner in making this communication to his second son, quite contrasting with the easy coolness shown to his eldest. A bright flush rose to Isaac's fair Saxon face as he listened.
"A wife, sir! Will it be well that you should introduce one to the Red Court?"
"Don't make me go over the ground again, Isaac. I repeat that I think it will be well. Some lady must be had here--a wife or a governess, and the former in my judgment will be the lesser evil."
"As you please, of course, sir," returned Isaac, who could not forget the perfect respect and courtesy due to his father, however he might deplore the news. "I have heard you say--"
"Well? Speak out, Ikey."
"That had the time to come over again you would not have married my mother. I think it killed her, sir."
"My marrying her?" asked the justice in a joke. Isaac smiled.
"No, sir. You know what I mean; the constant state of fear she lived in."
"She was one of those sensitive, timid women that fear works upon; Cyril is the only one of you like her," said the justice, his thoughts reverting with some sadness to his departed wife. "But the error committed there, Isaac, lay in my disclosing it to her."
"In disclosing what, sir?" asked Isaac, rather at sea.
"The secret connected with the Red Court Farm," laconically answered Mr. Thornycroft.
There ensued a pause. Isaac put a straw in his lips and bit it like a man in pain. He had loved his mother with no common love; to hear that her place was to be occupied fell on him like a blow, putting aside other considerations against it.
"It is a great risk, sir."
"I don't see it, Isaac. But for an accident your mother would never have suspected. I then disclosed the truth to her, and I cursed myself for my folly afterwards. But for that she might have been with us now. As to risk, we run the same every day with Mary Anne. Ah me! your poor mother was too sensitive, and the fear killed her."
Isaac winced. He remembered how his mother had faded visibly, day by day; he could see, even now, the alarm in her soft eyes that the twilight often brought.
Mr. Thornycroft went away with the last words. Richard, who appeared to have been reconnoitring, came striding up to his brother, and let off a little of his superfluous anger, talking loud and fast.
"He is going out of his senses; you know it must be so, Isaac. Who is the woman? Did he tell you?"
"No," replied Isaac; "but I can give a pretty shrewd guess at her."
"Well?"
"Lady Ellis."
"Who?" roared Richard, as if too much surprised to hear the name distinctly.
"Lady Ellis. I have seen him walking with her two or three times lately."
"The devil take Lady Ellis!"
"So say I; rather than she should come into the Red Court."
"Lady Ellis!" repeated Richard, panic-stricken. "That beetle-browed, bold-eyed woman--with her soft, false words, and her stealthy step! 'Ware her, Isaac. Mark me, 'ware her, all of us, should she come home to the Red Court!"