MISS CULPEPPER SPEAKS HER MIND.
Mrs. McDermott had reached Pincote, and she did not fail to let every
one know it. As the Squire had predicted, the moment she had taken off
her waterproof, and changed her boots, she marched straight into the
library, and asked for her money. It was with a feeling of profound
satisfaction that her brother unlocked his bureau, and handed her a
roll of notes representing five thousand seven hundred and fifty
pounds. She counted the notes over twice, slowly and carefully.
“What are the seven hundred and fifty pounds for?” she asked.
“Interest for three years at five per cent. per annum.”
“I thought you would have got me seven per cent. at the least,” she
said ungraciously. “My man of business tells me that seven is quite a
common thing nowadays. He says that he can get me nine or ten per cent.
on real property, without any difficulty.”
“I should advise you to be careful what you are about,” said the
Squire, gravely. “Big profits, big risks; little profits, little
risks.”
“I know perfectly well what I’m doing,” said Mrs. McDermott, with a
toss of her antiquated curls. “It’s you slow, sleepy, country folks,
who crawl behind the times, and miss half the golden chances that come
to people who keep their eyes wide open.”
The Squire shook his head, but said no more. He groaned in spirit when
he thought what his “golden chance” had done for him.
“Let her buy her experience as I’ve bought mine,” he said to himself.
“From a girl she was always pig-headed: let her pay for it.”
“Have you any idea how long your aunt is likely to stay?” he asked
Jane, a day or two later.
“No idea whatever, papa. If the quantity of her luggage is anything to
go by, I should say that her stay is likely to be a long one.”
“I hope not, with all my heart,” sighed the Squire.
Mrs. McDermott, in truth, was not a lady who ever troubled herself to
make her presence agreeable to those with whom she might be staying.
Consideration for the comfort of others was a thought that never
entered her mind. From the day of her arrival at Pincote she began to
interfere with the existing arrangements of the house; finding fault
with everything: changing this, altering the other, and evidently
determined to have her own way in all. The first thing she did was to
find fault with her bedroom, although it was one of the pleasantest
apartments in the house, and had been especially arranged by Jane
herself with a view to her aunt’s comfort. But it was not the best
bedroom—the state bedroom, therefore Mrs. McDermott would have none of
it. Into the state bedroom, a gloomy apartment fronting the north,
which was never used above once or twice in half a dozen years, she
migrated at once with all her belongings. Her next act, she being
without a maid of her own at the time, was to induct one of the Pincote
servants into that office, taking her altogether from her proper
duties, and not permitting her to do a stroke of work for any one but
herself. Then she talked her brother into allowing the dinner hour to
be altered from six to half-past seven; so that, as the Squire grumbled
to himself, the cloth was hardly removed before it was time to go to
bed. Then the Squire must never appear at dinner without a dress coat,
and a white tie—articles which, or late years, he had been tacitly
allowed to dispense with when dining en famille. A white cravat
especially was to him an abomination. He never could tie the knot
properly, and after crumpling three or four, and throwing them across
the room in a rage, Jane’s services would generally have to be called
into requisition as a last resource.
One other infliction there was which the Squire found it very difficult
to bear patiently. After dinner, when there was no particular company
at Pincote, it was an understood thing that the Squire should have the
dining-room to himself for half an hour, in order that he might enjoy
the post-prandial snooze which long custom had made almost a necessity
with him. But this was an arrangement that failed to meet with the
approbation of Mrs. McDermott. She insisted that the Squire should
either accompany the ladies, or, otherwise, she herself would keep him
company in the dining-room; and woe be to him if he dared so much as
close an eye for five seconds! It was “Where are your manners, sir? I’m
thoroughly ashamed of you;” or else, “Falling asleep, sir, in the
presence of a lady? a clodhopper could do no more than that!” till the
Squire felt as if his life were being slowly tormented out of him.
Nor did Jane fail to come in for a share of her aunt’s strictures. Mrs.
McDermott evidently looked upon her as little more than a child.
Firstly, her hair was not arranged in accordance with her aunt’s ideas
of propriety in such matters, which, truth to say, belonged to a
somewhat antiquated school. Then the girl was altogether too bright and
sunny-looking, with her bows of ribbon and bits of lace showing
daintily here and there. And she was too forward in introducing topics
of conversation at meal-times, instead of allowing the introduction of
appropriate themes to come from her elders and her betters. Then Jane
was addicted to the heinous offence of laughing too heartily, and too
often. Altogether her aunt saw in her much that stood in need of
reformation. Jane bore everything with a sort of good-humoured
indifference. “The time to speak is not come yet. I will see how much
further she will go,” she said to herself. But when the cook came to
her one morning and said: “If you please, miss, Mrs. Dermott says that
for the future I am to take my dinner orders from her,” then Jane
thought that the time to speak was drawing very near indeed.
“Do as Mrs. McDermott tells you,” she said quietly to the astonished
cook.
“Well, I never! I thought that the mistress had more spirit than that,”
said the woman as she went back to her duties in the kitchen.
Next day brought the coachman. “Beg pardon, miss,” he said, with a
touch of his hair; “but Mrs. McDermott have given orders that the
brougham and gray mare is to be ready for her every afternoon at three
o’clock to the minute. I am to take the order, miss, I suppose?”
“Quite right, John, till I give you orders to the contrary.”
Next came the gardener. “Very sorry, miss, but I shall have to give
notice—I shall really.”
“Why, what’s amiss now, Gibson?”
“It’s all Mrs. McDermott, miss; begging your pardon for saying so. Why
will she pretend to understand gardening better than me that has been
at it, man and boy, for fifty year? Why will she come finding fault
with this, that, and the other, in a way that neither the Squire nor
you, miss, ever thinks of doing? And she not only finds fault, but
gives orders, ridiculous orders, about things she knows nothing of. I
can’t stand it, miss, I really can’t.”
“Mrs. McDermott will give you no more orders, Gibson, after to-day. You
can go back to your work with an easy mind.”
Jane waited till next morning, and then having ascertained that her
aunt had again given orders to the cook respecting dinner, she walked
straight into the breakfast-room where she knew that she should find
Mrs. McDermott alone, and busy with her correspondence—for she was a
great letter writer at that hour of the morning.
“What a noisy girl you are,” she said crossly, as her niece drew up a
chair and sat down beside her. “I was just writing a few lines to dear
Lady Clark when you came in in your usual brusque way and put all my
ideas to flight.”
“They must be poor, timid, little ideas, aunt, to be so easily
frightened away,” said Jane.
“Jane, there has been a flippant tone about you for the last day or two
that I don’t at all approve of. Flippancy in young people is easily
acquired, but difficult to get rid of. The sooner you get rid of yours
the better I shall be pleased.”
Jane rose from her chair and swept Mrs. McDermott a stately curtsey.
“Is it not almost time, aunt,” she said quietly, “that you gave up
treating me, and talking to me, as if I were a child?”
“If you are no longer a child in years, you are still very childish in
many of your ways.”
“You are quite epigrammatic this morning, aunt.”
“Don’t be impertinent, young lady.”
“I have no intention of being impertinent. But I have come to see you
about the order for dinner which you gave the cook half an hour ago.”
“What about that?” asked Mrs. McDermott snappishly. “In what way does
it concern you?”
“It concerns me very materially indeed,” answered Jane. “You have
ordered several things for dinner that papa does not care about; some,
in fact, that he never eats. Fried soles, for instance, and veal
cutlets—articles he never touches. So I have told the cook to
supplement your order with some turbot and a boiled fowl à la marquise.
I have also told her that for the future she will receive from me every
evening the menu for next day. Should my list contain nothing that you
care about, the cook has orders to obtain specially for you any
articles that you may wish to have.”
“Upon my word! what next?” was all that Mrs. McDermott could gasp out
at the moment, so overcome was she with rage and surprise.
“This next,” said Jane. “From to-day the dinner hour will be altered
back to six o’clock. Half-past seven suits neither papa nor me. Should
the latter hour be a necessity with you, you can always have your
dinner served at that time in your own room. But papa and I will dine
at six.”
“I shall talk to your papa about this, and ascertain from his own lips
whether I am to be dictated to and insulted by a chit like you.”
“That is just what I must forbid you to do,” said Jane. “Papa’s health
has not been what it ought to be for a long time past.
“Only a few weeks ago he had a slight stroke. Happily he soon recovered
from it, but Dr. Davidson says that all exciting topics must be kept
carefully from him. You know how little things will often excite him;
and if you begin to worry him about any petty differences that may
arise between you and me, you will do so at your peril, and must be
satisfied to take whatever consequences may arise from your so doing.”
Mrs. McDermott stared at her niece in open-mouthed wonder.
“Perhaps you have something more to say to me,” she gasped out.
“Yes, several things. Before ordering the brougham to be at your beck
and call every day at three o’clock, it might, perhaps, be just as well
to make sure that your brother is not likely to want it. He has taken
to using it rather frequently of late.”
“Oh, indeed; I’ll make due inquiry,” was all that Mrs. McDermott could
find to say.
“And if I were you, I wouldn’t go quite so often into the greenhouses,
or near the men at work in the garden.”
“Anything else, Miss Culpepper? You may as well finish the list while
you are about it.”
“Simply this: that after dinner papa must be left to himself for an
hour. He is used to have a little sleep at such times, and he cannot do
without it. This is most imperative.”
“I was never so insulted in the whole course of my life.”
“Then your life must have been a very fortunate one. There is no
intention to insult you, aunt, as your own common sense will tell you
when you come to think calmly over all that I have said. You are here
as papa’s guest, and both he and I will do our best to make you
comfortable. But there can be only one mistress at Pincote, and that
mistress, at present, is your niece, Jane Culpepper.”
And before Mrs. McDermott could find another word to say, Jane had bent
over her, kissed her, and swept from the room.
For two days Mrs. McDermott dined in solitary state, at half-past
seven, in her own room. But she found it so utterly wretched to have no
one to talk to but her maid, that on the third day her resolution
failed her; and when six o’clock came round she found herself in the
dining-room, sitting next her brother, with something of the feeling of
a school-girl who has been whipped and forgiven.
Her manner towards her brother and her niece was very frigid and
stand-off-ish for several days to come. Towards the Squire she
imperceptibly thawed, and the old familiar intimacy was gradually
resumed between them. But between herself and Jane there was
something—a restraint, a coldness—which no time could altogether
remove. It was impossible for the older woman to forget that she had
been worsted in the encounter with her niece. Could she have seen some
great misfortune, some heavy trouble, fall upon Jane, she could then
have afforded to forgive her, but hardly otherwise.
It was with a sense of intense relief that Squire Culpepper handed over
to his sister the five thousand pounds that he was indebted to her. It
was a great weight off his mind, and although he did not say much to
Tom Bristow about it, he was none the less grateful in his secret
heart. He was still as much at a loss as ever to understand by what
occult means Tom had been able to raise the mortgage of six thousand
pounds on Prior’s Croft. He had hinted more than once that he should
like to know the secret by means of which a result so remarkable had
been achieved, but to all such hints Tom seemed utterly impervious.
Still more surprised was the Squire when, a few days after the six
thousand pounds had been put into his hands, Tom came to him and said:
“With regard to Prior’s Croft, sir. You have taken my advice once in
the matter: perhaps you won’t object to it a second time.”
“What is it, Bristow, what is it?” said the Squire, graciously. “I
shall be glad to listen to anything you may have to say.”
“What I want you to do, sir,” said Tom, “is to have some plans at once
drawn up, and have the foundations laid of a number of houses—twenty to
thirty at the least—on Prior’s Croft.”
“I thought you crazy about the mortgage,” said the Squire, with a
twinkle in his eye. “Are you quite sure you are not crazy now?”
“I am just as sane now as I was then.”
“But to build houses on Prior’s Croft! Why, nobody would ever live in
them. The place is altogether out of the way.”
“That has nothing whatever to do with the question. If you will only
take my advice, sir, you will get the foundations down without an
hour’s unnecessary delay.”
“And where should I be at the end of a month, when the contractor came
to me for the first instalment of his money?”
“All that can be arranged for without difficulty. Your credit is sound
in the market, and that is the one thing indispensable.”
“But what is to be the ultimate result of all these mysterious
proceedings?”
“Now you get me in a corner. But I must again crave your indulgence,
and ask you to let the mystery remain a mystery a little while longer.
If you have sufficient faith in me, why, take my advice. If not—you
will simply be missing a chance of making an odd thousand or so.”
“And that is what I can by no means afford to do,” said the Squire with
emphasis.
The result was that a week later some forty or fifty men were busily at
work cutting the turf and digging the foundations for the score of
grand new villas which Mr. Culpepper had decided on building at Prior’s
Croft.
Everybody’s verdict was that the Squire must be mad. New villas,
indeed! Why there were hardly people enough in sleepy old Duxley to
occupy the houses that fell vacant as the older inhabitants died off.
“That may be,” said the Squire, when this plea was urged on his notice;
“but I mean to make my villas so handsome, so commodious, and so
healthy, that a lot of the old rattletrap dens will at once be
deserted, and I shall not have house-room for half the people who will
want to become my tenants.” So spoke the Squire, putting a brave face
on the matter, but really as much in the dark as any one.
But if there was one person more puzzled than another, that person was
certainly Mr. Cope the banker. He had ascertained for a fact that
within a few days of their interview—their very painful interview, he
termed it to himself—his quondam friend had actually become the
purchaser of Prior’s Croft; and what was a still greater marvel, had
actually paid down two thousand pounds in hard cash for it! And now the
town’s talk was of nothing but the grand villas which the Squire was
going to build on his new purchase. Mr. Cope could hardly credit it all
till he went and saw with his own eyes the men hard at work. Still, it
was altogether incomprehensible to him. Could the Squire have merely
been playing him a trick; have only been testing the strength of his
friendship, when he came to him to borrow the five thousand pounds? No,
that could hardly be; else why had his balance at the bank been allowed
to dwindle to a mere nothing? Besides which, he knew from words that
the Squire had let drop at different times, that he must have been
speculating heavily. Could it be possible that his speculations had,
after all, proved successful? If not, how account for this sudden flood
of prosperity? For several days Mr. Cope failed to enjoy his dinner in
the hearty way that was habitual with him: for several nights Mr.
Cope’s sleep failed to refresh him as it usually did.
Although the Squire’s heaviest burden had been lifted off his mind with
the payment of his sister’s money, he had by no means forgotten the
loss of his daughter’s dowry. And now that his mind was easy on one
point, this lesser trouble began to assume a magnitude that it had not
possessed before. He could not get rid of the thought that there was
nothing but his own frail life between his daughter and all but
absolute penury. A few hundred pounds Jane would undoubtedly have, but
what would that be to a young lady brought up as she had been brought
up? “Not enough,” as the Squire put it in his homely way, “to find her
in bread-and-cheese and cotton gowns.”
But what was to be done? Life assurance was out of the question. He was
too old and too infirm. There was nothing much to be got out of the
estate. It was true that he might thin the timber a little and make a
few hundreds that way; but the heir-at-law had too shrewd an eye to his
own ultimate interests to allow very much to be done in that line.
Besides which, the Squire himself could not for very shame have
impaired what was the chief beauty of the Pincote property—its
magnificent array of timber.
There was, perhaps, a little cheese-paring to be done in the way of
cutting down domestic expenses. A couple of servants might be dispensed
with indoors. The under-gardener and the stable-boy might be sent about
their business. The gray mare and the brougham might be disposed of.
The wine merchant’s bill might be lightened a little; and fewer coals,
perhaps, might be burnt in winter—and that was nearly all.
But even such reductions as these, trifling though they were, could not
be made secretly—could not be made, in fact, without becoming the talk
of the whole neighbourhood; and if there was one thing the Squire
detested more than another, it was having his private affairs
challenged and discussed by other people. And what, after all, would
the saving amount to? How many years of such petty economy would be
needed to scrape together even as much as one-fourth of the sum he had
lost by his mad speculations? It was all a muddle, as he said to
himself; and his brain seemed getting hopelessly muddled, too, with
asking the same questions over and over again, and still finding
himself as far from a satisfactory answer as ever.
There was one thing that he could do, and one only, that had about it
any real basis of satisfaction. He could sell that piece of ground
which has already been spoken of as not forming part of the entailed
estate—the piece of ground on which his new mansion was to have been
built. Land, just now, was fetching good prices. Yes, he would
certainly sell Knockley Holt, and fund in Jenny’s name whatever money
it might fetch—not that it would command a very high price, being a
poor piece of land, as everybody knew. Still it would be a nest egg,
though only a little one, for a rainy day.