GOLDEN TIDINGS.
Days and weeks passed over before the feeling of loneliness caused by
Tom’s departure from Gatehouse Farm quite wore itself away—before
Lionel got thoroughly back into his old contented frame of mind, and
felt again in the daily routine of his quiet homely life that simple
satisfaction which had been his before the night of the storm. But as
the lengthening days of autumn deepened slowly onward towards
Christmas, the restlessness and gloom that had shrouded his life of
late began to vanish little by little, so that, by-and-by, as Mrs.
Bevis joyfully told her husband, “Master was beginning to get quite
like his old self again.”
The farm preparations for winter were all made. Lionel, looking forward
to a long period of leisure, had decided to begin the study of Italian.
He had been into Melcham to buy the necessary books, and got back home
just as candles were being lighted. On the table he found two letters
which had arrived by the afternoon post. One of the two was deeply
bordered with black; the other he recognized at once as being from Tom
Bristow. He opened Tom’s letter first.
In a few hurried lines Tom told Lionel how he had been laid up again
from a severe cold which had settled on his chest, and how the doctors
had ordered that he should start at once for Algeria with a view of
wintering there. He wrote rather dolefully, as one whose business
concerns would be altogether disarranged by this imperious mandate,
which, nevertheless, he dare not disobey. “I hope to come back next
spring with the swallows, thoroughly rejuvenated,” he wrote; “when I
will not fail to look you up at dear old Gatehouse Farm.”
Lionel took up the second letter with some curiosity. But when he saw
that it bore the Duxley post-mark, he guessed in a moment the tidings
it was about to tell him. Nor was he mistaken. It told him of the death
of his uncle, Arthur St. George, of Park Newton, near Duxley,
Midlandshire—and contained an invitation to the funeral, and to the
subsequent reading of the dead man’s last will and testament.
“This letter is written by my uncle’s lawyer,” said Lionel to himself.
“Why couldn’t my cousin Kester write to me?”
It was hardly to be expected that Lionel could either feel or express
much sorrow for the death of an uncle whom he had never seen; whom he
only knew by reputation as a man thoroughly selfish and hard hearted;
who had persistently slighted and ignored his, Lionel’s, mother, from
the day she ran away from home till the day of her death—and who had
been heard to declare, again and again, that neither his sister nor any
child of hers should ever touch a penny of his money. Knowing all this,
Lionel was surprised to have received even the acknowledgment of an
invitation to his uncle’s funeral. His cousin Kester was the heir, and
would inherit everything. For him, Lionel, to attend as a mourner at
the solemn ceremony was to make a hypocrite of himself by assuming a
regret which he could not feel.
This Arthur St. George who had just died was Dorothy Dering’s eldest
brother. He had lived and died a bachelor. The second brother, Geoffry,
had died many years before, leaving one son, Kester, who was adopted by
Arthur, and always looked upon as his uncle’s heir. Of the youngest
brother, Lionel, we already know something. He, too, was a bachelor. He
it was who, when over from India on leave of absence, had called upon
Mrs. Dering, and had subsequently got that appointment for Lionel which
his mother was not willing that he should accept.
While in England, General St. George, who did not believe in family
feuds, contrived to bring his two nephews, Lionel and Kester, together.
The result was, to a certain extent, a failure. The two young men had
never met each other before; and when, after a week’s intercourse, they
bade each other goodbye, it is greatly to be doubted whether either of
them cared about seeing the other again. Kester, who could make himself
very agreeable when he chose to do so, was, as his uncle’s heir,
inclined to look down upon Lionel, and to treat him with a certain
superciliousness which the latter could not readily brook. There was no
open rupture between them, but from that time to the present they had
never met again.
Before Lionel had quite made up his mind whether he would attend the
funeral or not, there came a second note from Mr. Perrins, more
imperative than the first one:—“Your cousin, Mr. Kester St. George, is
away on the Continent. I am doubtful whether my notification of your
uncle’s death will reach him in time to allow of his being at the
funeral. You and he are the late Mr. St. George’s sole relatives,
except General St. George, who is in India. If neither you nor your
cousin attend the funeral, your uncle will be followed to the grave by
no one of his own blood. But that apart, it is highly desirable that,
as a near relative of the deceased gentleman, you should be present at
the reading of the will, which is fixed to take place in the blue
drawing-room at four o’clock on the afternoon of the day of interment.”
After this there was nothing left for Lionel but to go.
It was not without a strange commingling of various feelings that
Lionel Dering found himself under the roof of a house which had been
the home of his ancestors for two hundred years. A stately and
venerable old pile, truly. He had often heard his mother talk about it,
but till this day he had never seen it. It was something to feel proud
of, that he was the scion of a family which could call a place like
Park Newton its home.
He was received by Mr. Perrins with a cordiality that was at once grave
and respectful. Kester St. George had not arrived; neither had there
been any message from him. They waited till the last possible moment,
but he did not come. Thus it happened that Lionel found himself in the
novel position of chief mourner at the funeral of a man whom he had
never even seen. He was glad when the ceremony was over.
Then came the reading of the will. “I wish to goodness my cousin would
come, even at this the last moment,” said Lionel to the lawyer as they
walked together towards the blue drawing-room.
“I don’t really know that it matters greatly,” replied Mr. Perrins with
a significant smile. “I dare say we shall get on very well without Mr.
Kester St. George.”
Ten minutes later Lionel understood the meaning of the lawyer’s strange
remark. Ten minutes later he found himself the owner of Park Newton,
and the possessor of an income of eleven thousand pounds a year.
It was even so. Everything, with the exception of a few trifling
legacies to old servants, that Arthur St. George possessed in the world
he had bequeathed without reservation to his nephew, Lionel Dering. The
name of Kester St. George was not even mentioned in the will.
“The Park Newton estates have never been entailed,” said Mr. Perrins in
parenthesis, as he folded up the will. “It was quite competent to the
testator to have left the whole of his property to St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, had he chosen to do so.”
For the moment Lionel was overwhelmed. But when Mr. Perrins had
congratulated him, and the doctor had congratulated him, and the butler
and the housekeeper, old servants of the family, had followed suit, he
began to feel as if his good fortune were really a fact.
“Now I can marry Edith,” was his first thought.
“It seems more like a dream than anything else,” said Lionel to Mr.
Perrins a little later on, as the latter stood sipping a glass of dry
sherry with the air of a connoisseur.
“I should very much like to dream a similar dream,” answered the
lawyer.
“But about my cousin Kester St. George,—he was adopted by my uncle
after his father’s death, and was brought up at Park Newton, and it was
understood by everybody that he was to be my uncle’s heir?”
“It is entirely Mr. Kester St. George’s own fault that he does not
stand in your position to-day.”
“I fail to understand you.”
“For years your uncle’s will was made in his favour. Everything was
left to him as absolutely as it is now left to you. But about nine
months ago your uncle and your cousin had a terrible quarrel. As to how
it arose, or what was the cause of it, I know nothing. I can only
surmise that your cousin had done something which your uncle felt that
he could not forgive. But be that as it may, Mr. Kester St. George was
turned out of Park Newton at ten o’clock one night, and forbidden ever
to set foot across the threshold again—nor has he ever done so. Next
day your uncle sent for me, and in my presence he tore up the old will
which had been in existence for years, and substituted in its place the
one which I had the honour of reading this afternoon.”
That same night saw Lionel Dering in London. He felt that he could
neither go back to Gatehouse Farm, nor make any arrangements respecting
his new position, till after he had seen Edith West—till after he had
seen her and told her that his love was still unchanged, and that there
no longer existed any reason why she should not become his wife.
It was past ten o’clock before he got into London. His mind was too
much excited either to allow of his going to bed or of his sitting
quietly in the hotel. So he lighted a cigar, and set out for a quiet
ramble through the streets. After a time he found himself on
Westminster Bridge. He stood awhile watching the river as it flowed
along so dark and mysterious—watching it, but with thoughts that were
far away. Suddenly he became conscious of a dull, confused noise, like
the far-away murmur of a great crowd. Swiftly the murmur grew, growing
and swelling with every moment, till it swelled into a mighty roar from
a thousand throats. Then, all at once, there was a flashing of lights,
and the trampling of innumerable feet, and three fire-engines went
thundering past with yells, and shouts, and hoarse, inarticulate cries
from a huge mob that followed hard and fast behind. Lionel stood back
to let this crowd of desperadoes pass,—when all at once, among them,
but not of them—borne helplessly along by the press from which he was
struggling in vain to free himself, he saw his cousin, Kester St.
George. There was a lamp close overhead, and their eyes met for a
moment in recognition across a seething mass of the crowd. It was but
for a moment, and then Kester was carried away; but in that moment
there flashed into his eyes a look of such deadly, fiend-like hate as
thrilled Lionel from head to foot. It was a look that once seen could
never be forgotten. It chilled Lionel’s heart, and, for a time, even
blotted out from his thoughts the sweet image of Edith West. He walked
back to his hotel, gloomy, ill at ease, and oppressed with strange
presentiments of some vague, far-off evil. Even after he fell asleep
that look on his cousin’s face oppressed him and would not be
forgotten. He dreamt that Kester was pursuing him from room to room
through the old house at Park Newton. As Kester came in at one door,
with that terrible look in his eyes, he, Lionel, passed swiftly out at
the opposite door, but on each door-handle, as he touched it, he left
behind a stain of blood. The oppression of his dream grew at length too
great to be any longer borne, and he awoke shivering with dread, and
thankful to find that the blessed daylight was at hand.