Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
CHRISTINA
BY
L. G. MOBERLY
_Author of "Hope, My Wife," "That Preposterous Will," etc._
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE & TORONTO
1912
Dedicated to
WINIFRED V. WALKER,
WITH MUCH LOVE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. "THE LITTLE PRACTICAL JOKE"
II. "MUMMY'S BABA--DAT'S ALL"
III. "ONE OF THE BEST THINGS LEFT"
IV. "I SUPPOSE IT WAS AN HOUR"
V. "I KNOW THIS IS WORTH A LOT OF MONEY"
VI. "BABA LOVES YOU VERY MUCH".
VII. "A VERY BEAUTIFUL PENDANT, WITH THE INITIALS 'A.V.C.'"
VIII. "IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH"
IX. "A VERY BEAUTIFUL LADY"
X. "IT IS ONLY HE WHO MATTERS!"
XI. "YOU CAN TRUST DR. FERGUSSON"
XII. "YOU ARE JUST 'ZACKLY LIKE THE PRINCE"
XIII. "YOU HAVE BEEN A FRIEND TO ME TO-DAY"
XIV. "I AM QUITE SURE YOU NEED NOT BE AFRAID"
XV. "I DO TRUST, CICELY, YOU KEEP HER IN HER PLACE"
XVI. "MY MOTHER GAVE IT TO ME"
XVII. "WHO DO YOU MEAN BY SIR ARTHUR?"
XVIII. "YOU ARE MY OWN SISTER'S CHILD"
XIX. "PER INCERTAS, CERTA AMOR"
XX. "SHE HAS A SWEET, STRONG SOUL"
XXI. "IF YOU GO ACROSS THE SEA!"
XXII. "I CAME TO-DAY TO TELL YOU SO"
XXIII. "THE KING OF MY KINGDOM"
CHRISTINA.
CHAPTER I.
"THE LITTLE PRACTICAL JOKE."
"Don't be a silly ass, Layton. Do I look the sort of man to play such
a fool's trick?"
"My dear fellow, there's no silly ass about it. You, a lonely
bachelor, and not badly off--desirous of settling down into quiet,
domestic life, would like to find a young lady of refined and cultured
tastes who would meet you with--a view to matrimony. I'll take my oath
you are as ready as this gentleman is, to swear you will make an
excellent husband, kind, domesticated, and----"
Further speech was checked by a well-directed cushion, which descended
plump upon the speaker's bronzed and grinning countenance, momentarily
obliterating grin and countenance alike, whilst a shout of laughter
went up from the other occupants of the smoking-room.
"Jack, my boy, Mernside wasn't far wrong when he defined you as a silly
ass," drawled a man who leant against the mantelpiece, smoking a
cigarette, and looking with amused eyes at the squirming figure under
the large cushion; "what unutterable drivel are you reading? Is the
_Sunday Recorder_ responsible for that silly rot?"
"The _Sunday Recorder_ is responsible for what you are pleased to call
silly rot," answered the young man, who had now flung aside the
cushion, and sat upright, looking at his two elders with laughing eyes,
whilst he clutched a newspaper in one hand, and tried to smooth his
rumpled hair with the other. "The _Sunday Recorder_ has a matrimonial
column--and--knowing poor old Rupert to be a lonely bachelor, not badly
off, and desirous of settling down into quiet domestic life, etc.,
etc.--see the printed page"--he waved the journal over his head--"I
merely wished to recommend my respected cousin to insert an
advertisement on these lines, in next Sunday's paper."
"Because some wretched bounders choose to advertise for wives in the
Sunday papers, I don't see where I come in," said a quiet and
singularly musical voice--that of the third man in the room--he who a
moment before had flung the large cushion at young Layton. He was
sitting in an armchair drawn close to the glowing fire, his hands
clasped under his head, his face full of languid amusement, turned
towards the grinning youth upon the sofa. Without being precisely a
handsome man, Rupert Mernside's was a striking personality, and his
face not one to be overlooked, even in a crowd. There was strength in
his well-cut mouth and jaw; and the rather deeply-set grey eyes held
humour, and a certain masterfulness, which dominated less powerful
characters than his own.
In those eyes there was a charm which neutralised his somewhat severe
and rugged features, but in Rupert Mernside's voice lay his greatest
attraction; and a lady of his acquaintance had once been heard to say
that with such a voice as his, he could induce anyone to follow him
round the world.
Why he had remained so long a bachelor had long been matter for
speculation, not only to the feminine portion of the community, but
also to his men friends; but thirty-five still found Rupert Mernside
unmarried, and the manoeuvres of match-making mothers, and of daughters
trained to play up to their mothers' tactics, had hitherto failed to
lead him in the desired direction.
"My dear Rupert," his young cousin said solemnly, after a pause, "you
are a bachelor--the fact is painfully self-evident; you have enough
money to--settle down and become domesticated. There are
hundreds--no--thousands of young women in the world, who would 'meet
you with a view to matrimony.' It seems a crying shame that you should
waste your sweetness on the desert air--when you might be blooming in a
fair lady's garden."
"You utter young rotter," Mernside ejaculated, laughing as he rose, and
stretched himself, "if you are so keen on matrimonial advertisements,
why not put one in on your own account?"
"Awful sport," Layton ejaculated; "think of the piles of letters you
would get from every kind of marriageable woman--old and young. And
you might arrange to meet any number of them at different places, and
have no end of a ripping time. You only have to ask them to meet you
with a view to matrimony; the matrimony needn't come off, unless both
parties are satisfied."
"Silly ass!" Mernside exclaimed again, with a laugh that mitigated the
words, "one of these days you'll find yourself in some unpleasantly
tangled web, my boy, if you play the goat over matrimonial
advertisements. Better leave well alone and come up to Handwell Manor
with me. Cicely wants a message taken to the Dysons."
"Cicely's messages are like the poor--always with us," the younger man
answered flippantly; "no, thank you, Rupert; on this genial and
pleasant November afternoon, when you can't see half a mile ahead of
you for the mist, and the country lanes are two feet deep in mud, I
prefer the smoking-room fire. Besides, I have letters to write."
"I'll go with you, Mernside"; the man who had been lounging against the
mantelpiece straightened himself, and flung away the end of his
cigarette; "Cicely won't be down till tea-time; she is spending the
afternoon in the nursery, looking after the small girl. Confounded
nuisance for her that the nurse had to go off in a hurry like this, for
my respected sister was not intended by nature for the care of
children."
"Fortunate she has only one," Mernside answered; "what would she have
done with a large family party?"
"Managed by hook or by crook to get a party of nurses and nurserymaids
to mind them," laughed the other man; "she's the dearest little soul
alive, but Cicely never ought to have been a mother, though I shouldn't
say that, excepting to you two who are members of the family, and know
of what stuff Cicely and I are made."
Mernside and Layton joined in the laughter, and the younger man said
lazily:
"Cicely's just Cicely; you can't imagine her less perfect than she is,
and you, Wilfrid, being merely her brother, are not entitled to give an
opinion about her. Rupert and I, as cousins, see her in a truer
perspective. Bless her sweet heart! She makes a perfect chatelaine
for this delectable castle, and the small heiress couldn't have a
sweeter guardian."
"Hear, hear," Mernside murmured, touching Layton's shoulder with a
kindly, almost caressing touch, as he and his cousin, Lord Wilfrid
Staynes, went out of the room, leaving the young man in sole possession.
Left alone, Layton stretched himself again, yawned, lighted a
cigarette, and, strolling to the window, looked at the not very
inviting prospect outside. Bramwell Castle stood on the slope of a
hill, and on even moderately fine days, the view commanded, not only by
the window of the smoking-room, but by every window on that side of the
house, was one of the wildest, and most beautiful in the county. But,
on this Sunday afternoon in November, nothing more was visible than the
broad gravel terrace immediately below the house, and a grass lawn that
sloped abruptly from the terrace, and was dotted with trees.
Everything beyond the lawn was swallowed up in a white mist that
drifted over the tree-tops, and clung to the dank grass, blotting out
completely all trace of the park, that swept downwards from the lawn,
and of the great landscape which stretched from the woodlands to the
far-away hills. Park, woods, and hills were visible to Jack Layton
only in the eyes of his imagination; he could see none of them, and,
with a shiver and a shrug of the shoulders, he turned back into the
warm fire-lit room.
Thanks to his close relationship to Lady Cicely Redesdale, the mistress
of the house, to whom he had always been more of younger brother than
cousin, he had _carte blanche_ to be at the Castle whenever he chose,
and to treat the house as if it were in reality, what he assuredly made
of it--his actual home. Both to him--and to Cicely's other cousin,
Rupert Mernside--the late John Redesdale, her husband, had extended the
fullest and most warm hospitality; and since his death, it had still
remained a recognised thing that the two cousins should spend their
weekends at Bramwell, whenever Lady Cicely and her little daughter were
there. The kindly millionaire who had married the lovely but
impecunious Cicely Staynes, one of the numerous daughters of the Earl
of Netherhall, possessed a host of hospitable instincts, and the Castle
had opened its gates wide to Cicely's relations and friends. Only one
reservation had been made by honest John Redesdale. No man or woman of
doubtful reputation, or damaged character, was allowed to be the guest
of his wife; and the shadier members of Society never set foot within
any house of which the millionaire was master. Jack Layton, strolling
idly now across the smoking-room, whose panelled walls and carved
furniture had been Redesdale's pride and joy, glanced up at the
mantelpiece, over which hung a portrait of the dead man.
"Poor old John," the young man reflected, as he kicked a coal back into
its place in the fire; "he was one of the best chaps that ever
lived--even if he hadn't many good looks with which to bless himself."
He looked up again at the plain but kindly features of the man in the
portrait, and a smile crossed his pleasant young face, as his eyes met
the pictured eyes above him.
"It wasn't a love match, of course," his thoughts ran on; "at least, I
don't suppose Cicely loved the dear old fellow. Well; he was thirty
years her senior, so who could wonder? But they were jolly happy, for
all that; John worshipped the ground her pretty feet walked upon, and
he was her master, without ever letting her feel his hand through the
glove. Cicely wants a master--all women do want a master," Jack wagged
his head sagely, when his thoughts reached this point. Having attained
to the ripe age of twenty-five, he felt he had plumbed the nature of
woman to its lowest depths, "and Cicely was lucky to find a master who
could give her a place like this." He sauntered away from the
fireplace, and next surveyed the well-stocked bookcases, but although
they contained every variety of literature, nothing he saw appealed to
his fastidious taste of the moment--and, yawning afresh, he once more
picked up the _Sunday Recorder_, which he had flung upon the floor.
That someone who is perennially ready to turn idle hands to account,
was watching over this idle youth on that November afternoon, may, on
the whole, be taken for granted, for as Jack's blue eyes ran down the
columns of the paper, a sudden mischievous light sprang into them, a
low laugh broke from his lips.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "What sport, what ripping sport. Why on
earth didn't I think of it before? And--as I start for a four months'
trip with Dundas on Saturday--I shan't have to pay the piper, so to
speak, yet awhile. In fact, by the time I come back, good old Rupert
may have forgotten the little practical joke." Whilst he soliloquized,
he was making his way towards the writing-table, where, having seated
himself, he drew towards him a blank sheet of paper--and began to write
a letter, glancing frequently at the _Sunday Recorder_ beside him. An
expansive grin lightened his features as he wrote, and at intervals he
chuckled softly to himself, murmuring under his breath:
"Poor old Rupert. If only I could be there when he gets the answers.
But one can't have everything," he went on philosophically, whilst
addressing an envelope to the Editor of the _Sunday Recorder_; "it will
be pure joy to think of the dear soul's dismay, horror, and disgust.
''Tis a mad world, my masters'--and, oh! to see our Rupert's face when
the letters pour in. For they _will_ pour in." During this rapid
soliloquy, he was writing a second letter, which gave him less trouble,
and needed less thought, than the first. Indeed, it ran very briefly:
"DEAR SIR,--I am desired to ask if you will be good enough to forward
all letters in response to the enclosed advertisement to R.M., c/o your
newspaper, to 200, Termyn Street, S.W.--Yours faithfully,
"J. LAYTON."
With a final chuckle, the young man put both letters into an envelope,
and having stamped it, went whistling from the house, and through the
park to the village, to post the missive himself at the little village
post office.
"Quiet and cultivated gentleman of good family and means, is anxious to
meet a young lady of good birth who needs a home, etc., etc., etc.," he
murmured as he walked slowly back to the Castle through the dripping
November mist. "Oh! what sport--what utterly ripping sport!"