Produced by James Rusk and David Widger
MY LADY’S MONEY
by Wilkie Collins
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A YOUNG GIRL
PERSONS OF THE STORY
Women:
Lady Lydiard (Widow of Lord Lydiard)
Isabel Miller (her Adopted Daughter)
Miss Pink (of South Morden)
The Hon. Mrs. Drumblade (Sister to the Hon. A. Hardyman)
Men
The Hon. Alfred Hardyman (of the Stud Farm)
Mr. Felix Sweetsir (Lady Lydiard’s Nephew)
Robert Moody (Lady Lydiard’s Steward)
Mr. Troy (Lady Lydiard’s Lawyer)
Old Sharon (in the Byways of Legal Bohemia)
Animal
Tommie (Lady Lydiard’s Dog)
PART THE FIRST.
THE DISAPPEARANCE.
CHAPTER I.
OLD Lady Lydiard sat meditating by the fireside, with three letters
lying open on her lap.
Time had discolored the paper, and had turned the ink to a brownish hue.
The letters were all addressed to the same person--“THE RT. HON. LORD
LYDIARD”--and were all signed in the same way--“Your affectionate
cousin, James Tollmidge.” Judged by these specimens of his
correspondence, Mr. Tollmidge must have possessed one great merit as a
letter-writer--the merit of brevity. He will weary nobody’s patience,
if he is allowed to have a hearing. Let him, therefore, be permitted, in
his own high-flown way, to speak for himself.
_First Letter._--“My statement, as your Lordship requests, shall be
short and to the point. I was doing very well as a portrait-painter
in the country; and I had a wife and children to consider. Under
the circumstances, if I had been left to decide for myself, I should
certainly have waited until I had saved a little money before I ventured
on the serious expense of taking a house and studio at the west end of
London. Your Lordship, I positively declare, encouraged me to try the
experiment without waiting. And here I am, unknown and unemployed, a
helpless artist lost in London--with a sick wife and hungry children,
and bankruptcy staring me in the face. On whose shoulders does this
dreadful responsibility rest? On your Lordship’s!”
_Second Letter._--“After a week’s delay, you favor me, my Lord, with a
curt reply. I can be equally curt on my side. I indignantly deny that
I or my wife ever presumed to see your Lordship’s name as a means
of recommendation to sitters without your permission. Some enemy has
slandered us. I claim as my right to know the name of that enemy.”
_Third (and last) Letter._--“Another week has passed--and not a word
of answer has reached me from your Lordship. It matters little. I have
employed the interval in making inquiries, and I have at last discovered
the hostile influence which has estranged you from me. I have been, it
seems, so unfortunate as to offend Lady Lydiard (how, I cannot imagine);
and the all-powerful influence of this noble lady is now used against
the struggling artist who is united to you by the sacred ties of
kindred. Be it so. I can fight my way upwards, my Lord, as other men
have done before me. A day may yet come when the throng of carriages
waiting at the door of the fashionable portrait-painter will include her
Ladyship’s vehicle, and bring me the tardy expression of her Ladyship’s
regret. I refer you, my Lord Lydiard, to that day!”
Having read Mr. Tollmidge’s formidable assertions relating to herself
for the second time, Lady Lydiard’s meditations came to an abrupt end.
She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and
threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them,
among other papers that had not been arranged since Lord Lydiard’s
death.
“The idiot!” said her Ladyship, thinking of Mr. Tollmidge, “I never even
heard of him, in my husband’s lifetime; I never even knew that he was
really related to Lord Lydiard, till I found his letters. What is to be
done next?”
She looked, as she put that question to herself, at an open newspaper
thrown on the table, which announced the death of “that accomplished
artist Mr. Tollmidge, related, it is said, to the late well-known
connoisseur, Lord Lydiard.” In the next sentence the writer of the
obituary notice deplored the destitute condition of Mrs. Tollmidge and
her children, “thrown helpless on the mercy of the world.” Lady Lydiard
stood by the table with her eyes on those lines, and saw but too plainly
the direction in which they pointed--the direction of her check-book.
Turning towards the fireplace, she rang the bell. “I can do nothing in
this matter,” she thought to herself, “until I know whether the report
about Mrs. Tollmidge and her family is to be depended on. Has Moody
come back?” she asked, when the servant appeared at the door. “Moody”
(otherwise her Ladyship’s steward) had not come back. Lady Lydiard
dismissed the subject of the artist’s widow from further consideration
until the steward returned, and gave her mind to a question of domestic
interest which lay nearer to her heart. Her favorite dog had been ailing
for some time past, and no report of him had reached her that morning.
She opened a door near the fireplace, which led, through a little
corridor hung with rare prints, to her own boudoir. “Isabel!” she called
out, “how is Tommie?”
A fresh young voice answered from behind the curtain which closed the
further end of the corridor, “No better, my Lady.”
A low growl followed the fresh young voice, and added (in dog’s
language), “Much worse, my Lady--much worse!”
Lady Lydiard closed the door again, with a compassionate sigh for
Tommie, and walked slowly to and fro in her spacious drawing-room,
waiting for the steward’s return.
Accurately described, Lord Lydiard’s widow was short and fat, and, in
the matter of age, perilously near her sixtieth birthday. But it may be
said, without paying a compliment, that she looked younger than her age
by ten years at least. Her complexion was of that delicate pink tinge
which is sometimes seen in old women with well-preserved constitutions.
Her eyes (equally well preserved) were of that hard light blue color
which wears well, and does not wash out when tried by the test of
tears. Add to this her short nose, her plump cheeks that set wrinkles at
defiance, her white hair dressed in stiff little curls; and, if a doll
could grow old, Lady Lydiard, at sixty, would have been the living
image of that doll, taking life easily on its journey downwards to the
prettiest of tombs, in a burial-ground where the myrtles and roses grew
all the year round.
These being her Ladyship’s personal merits, impartial history must
acknowledge, on the list of her defects, a total want of tact and taste
in her attire. The lapse of time since Lord Lydiard’s death had left her
at liberty to dress as she pleased. She arrayed her short, clumsy figure
in colors that were far too bright for a woman of her age. Her dresses,
badly chosen as to their hues, were perhaps not badly made, but were
certainly badly worn. Morally, as well as physically, it must be said of
Lady Lydiard that her outward side was her worst side. The anomalies
of her dress were matched by the anomalies of her character. There were
moments when she felt and spoke as became a lady of rank; and there were
other moments when she felt and spoke as might have become the cook in
the kitchen. Beneath these superficial inconsistencies, the great heart,
the essentially true and generous nature of the woman, only waited the
sufficient occasion to assert themselves. In the trivial intercourse
of society she was open to ridicule on every side of her. But when a
serious emergency tried the metal of which she was really made, the
people who were loudest in laughing at her stood aghast, and wondered
what had become of the familiar companion of their everyday lives.
Her Ladyship’s promenade had lasted but a little while, when a man in
black clothing presented himself noiselessly at the great door which
opened on the staircase. Lady Lydiard signed to him impatiently to enter
the room.
“I have been expecting you for some time, Moody,” she said. “You look
tired. Take a chair.”
The man in black bowed respectfully, and took his seat.