Maurice had full opportunity for the exercise of patience during the
last weeks of his grandfather's life. It was hard to sit there day after
day watching the half-conscious old man, who lay so still and seemed so
shut out from human feelings or sympathies, and to feel all the while
that any one of those hours of vigil might be the one that stole from
him his heart's desire. Yet there was no alternative. His grandfather,
who had received and adopted him, was suffering and solitary, dependent
wholly on him for what small gratification he could still enjoy.
Gratitude, therefore, and duty kept him here. But _there_, meanwhile, so
far out of his reach, what might be going on? He lived a perfectly
double life. Lucia was in trouble--some inexplicable shadow of disgrace
was threatening her--something so grave that even her mother, who knew
him so well, thought it an unsurmountable barrier between
them--something which looked the more awful from its vagueness and
mystery. It is true that he was only troubled--not discouraged by the
appearance of this phantom. He was as ready to fight for his Una as ever
was Redcross Knight--but then would his Una wait for him? To be forcibly
held back from the combat must have been much worse to a true champion
than any wounds he could receive in fair fight. So at least it seemed to
Maurice, secretly chafing, and then bitterly reproaching himself for his
impatience; yet the next moment growing as impatient as before.
To him in this mood came Mrs. Costello's last letter. Now at last the
mystery was cleared up, and its impalpable shape reduced to a positive
and ugly reality. Like his father, Maurice found no small difficulty in
understanding and believing the story told to him. That Mrs. Costello,
calm, gentle, and just touched with a quiet stateliness, as he had
always known her, could ever have been an impulsive, romantic girl, so
swayed by passion or by flattery as to have left her father's house and
all the protecting restraints of her English life to follow the fortunes
of an Indian, was an idea so startling that he could not at once accept
it for truth. In Lucia the incongruity struck him less. Her beauty, dark
and magnificent, her fearless nature, her slender erect shape, her free
and graceful movements--all the charms which he had by heart, suited an
Indian origin. He could readily imagine her the daughter of a chief and
a hero. But this was not what he was required to believe. He had read
lately the description of a brutal, half-imbecile savage, who had
committed a peculiarly frightful and revolting murder, and he was told
to recognize in this wretch the father of his darling. But it was just
this which saved him. He would believe that Christian was Mrs.
Costello's husband and Lucia's father, because Mrs. Costello told him so
herself and of her own knowledge--but as for a murder, innocent men were
often accused of that; and when a man is once accused by the popular
voice of a horrible crime, everybody knows how freely appropriate
qualities can be bestowed on him. So the conviction which remained at
the bottom of Maurice's mind, though he never drew it up and looked
steadily at it, was just the truth--that Christian, by some train of
circumstances or other, had been made to bear the weight of another
person's guilt. As to the other question of his giving up Lucia, Maurice
never troubled himself to think about it. He was, it must be confessed,
of a singularly obstinate disposition, and in spite of his legal
training not particularly inclined to listen to reason. Knowing
therefore perfectly well, that he had made up his mind to marry Lucia,
provided she did not deliberately prefer somebody else, he felt it
useless to complicate his already confused ideas any further, by taking
into consideration the expediency of such a connection. There was quite
enough to worry him without that; and by some inconceivable stupidity it
never entered his head that, while he was really so completely incapable
of altering his mind, other people should seriously think he was doing
it.
Yet as he read Mrs. Costello's letter over a second time, he began to
perceive something in its tone which seemed to say clearly--"Don't
flatter yourself that the matter rests at all with you. I have decided.
I am no longer your ally, but your opponent." At this a new element came
into play--anger.
He had been rather unreasonable before--now he became utterly so. "A
pretty sort of fellow she must think me, after all," he said to himself.
"I suppose she'd be afraid to trust Lucia to me now. However, if she
thinks I mean to be beaten that way, she'll find that she is mistaken."
He was walking up and down his room, and working himself up into a
greater ill-humour with every turn he made.
"If I could only get to Lucia herself," he went on thinking, "I should
see if I could not end the matter at once, one way or the other--that
fellow is clear out of the way now, and I believe I should have a
chance; but as for Mrs. Costello, she seems to think nothing at all of
throwing me over whenever it suits her."
Poor Maurice! he sat down to write to his father in a miserable
mood--Mr. Beresford had become suddenly and decidedly worse. The doctors
said positively that he was dying, and that a few days at the utmost
would bring the end. Maurice had stolen away while he slept, but his
angry meditation on Mrs. Costello's desertion had taken up so much of
his time, that Mr. Leigh's note was short and hurried. Ill-humour
prevailed also to the point of the note being finished without any
message (he had no time to write separately) to the Cottage.
His packet despatched, he returned to his grandfather's room. Lady
Dighton, now staying in the house, sat and watched by the bedside; and
by-and-by leaving her post, she joined Maurice by the window and began
to talk to him in a low voice. There was no fear of disturbing the
invalid; his sleep continued, deep and lethargic, the near forerunner of
death.
"Maurice," Lady Dighton said, "I wish you would go out for an hour. You
are not really wanted here, and you look worn out."
"Thank you, I am all right. My grandfather might wake and miss me."
"Go for a little while. Half an hour's gallop would do you good."
Maurice laughed impatiently.
"Why should I want doing good to? It is you, I should think, who ought
to go out."
"I was out yesterday. Are you still anxious about your father and
Canada?"
Lady Dighton's straightforward question meant to be answered.
"Yes," Maurice said rather crossly. "I am anxious and worried."
"You can do no good by writing?"
"I seem to do harm. Don't talk to me about it, Louisa. Nothing but my
being there could have done any good, and now it is most likely too
late."
She saw plainly enough the fight that was going on--impatience,
eagerness, selfishness of a kind, on one side--duty and compassion on
the other. She had no scruple about seeing just as much of her cousin's
humour as his looks and manner could tell her, and she perceived that at
the moment it was anything but a good or heroic one. She thought it
possible that it would have been a relief to him to have struck, or
shaken, or even kicked something or somebody; and yet she was not at all
tempted to think the worse of him. She did not understand, of course,
the late aggravations of his trouble; but she knew that he loved loyally
and thought his love in danger, and she gave him plenty of sympathy,
whatever that might be worth. She had obtained a considerable amount of
influence over him, and used it, in general, for his good. At present he
was in rather an unmanageable mood, but still she did not mean to let
him escape her.
"He looks dreadfully worried, poor boy!" she said to herself. "Being
shut up here day after day must be bad for him. I shall _make_ Sir John
take him out to-morrow."
But when to-morrow came, and Sir John paid his daily visit to his wife,
she had other things to think about. He found the servants lingering
about the halls and staircases in silent excitement, and in the sick
room a little group watching, as they stood round the bed, for the old
man's final falling asleep.
He had been conscious early in the morning, and spoken to both his
grandchildren; but gradually, so very gradually that they could not say
"he changed at such an hour," the heavy rigidity of death closed upon
his already paralysed limbs, and his eyes grew dimmer. It was a very
quiet peaceful closing of a long life, which, except that it had been
sometimes hard and proud, had passed in usefulness and honour. And so,
towards sunset, some one said, "He is gone," and laid a hand gently upon
the stiffening eyelids.
Sir John took his wife away to her room, and there she leaned her head
against his shoulder and cried, not very bitterly, but with real
affection for her grandfather. Maurice went away also, very grave, and
thinking tenderly of the many kind words and deeds which had marked the
months of his stay at Hunsdon. And yet within half an hour, Lady Dighton
was talking to her husband quite calmly about some home affairs which
interested him; and Maurice had begun to calculate how soon he could get
away for that long-deferred six weeks' absence.
But, of course, although they could not keep their thoughts prisoners,
these mourners, who were genuine mourners after their different degrees,
were constrained to observe the decorous, quiet, and interregnum of all
ordinary occupation, which custom demands after a death. Lady Dighton
returned home next day, hidden in her carriage, and went to shut herself
up in her own house until the funeral. Maurice remained at Hunsdon,
where he was now master, and spent his days in the library writing
letters, or trying to make plans for his future, and it was then that
the letter with his lost message to Mrs. Costello was sent off.
Yet the space between Mr. Beresford's death and his funeral was to his
heir a tedious and profitless blank. He had till now been kept here by
living powers, gratitude and reverence; death came, and handed his
custody over to cold but tyrannous propriety. Now he rebelled with all
his heart, and spent hours of each solitary day in pacing backwards and
forwards the whole space of the great dim room which seemed a prison to
him.
The day before the funeral broke this stillness, two or three gentlemen,
distant relations or old friends of his grandfather, came to Hunsdon,
and towards evening there arrived the family solicitor, Mr. Payne. At
dinner that day Maurice had to take his new position as host. It was, as
suited the circumstances, a grave quiet party, but still there was
something about the manner of the guests, and even in the fact of their
being _his_ guests, which was unconsciously consoling to Maurice as
being a guarantee of his freedom and independence. Next morning the
house was all sombre bustle and preparation. Lady Dighton and her
husband arrived. She, to have one last look at the dead, he to join
Maurice in the office of mourner; and at twelve o'clock, the long
procession wound slowly away through the park, and the great house stood
emptied of the old life and ready for the commencement of the new one.
The new one began, indeed, after those who had followed Mr. Beresford
to the grave had come back, and assembled in the great unused
drawing-room to hear the will read. Lady Dighton shivered as she sat by
one of the newly-lighted fires, and bending over to Maurice whispered to
him, "For heaven's sake keep the house warmer than poor grandpapa used
to do."
"Used" already! The new life had begun.
There was nothing in the will but what was pretty generally known. Mr.
Beresford had made no secret of his intentions even with regard to
legacies. There was one to his granddaughter, with certain jewels and
articles which had peculiar value for her; some to old friends, some to
servants, and the whole remainder of his possessions real and personal
to Maurice Leigh, on the one condition of his assuming the name and arms
of Beresford.
It was a very satisfactory will. Maurice, in his impatience, thought its
chief virtue was that it contained nothing which could hinder him from
starting at once for Canada. He told Mr. Payne that he wished to see him
for a short time that evening; and after the other guests had gone to
bed, the two sat down together by the library fire to settle, as he
fancied, whatever small arrangements must be made before his going.
He soon found out his mistake. In the first place the solicitor, who had
a powerful and hereditary interest in the affairs of Hunsdon, was
shocked beyond expression at the idea of such a voyage being undertaken
at all. Here, he would have said if he had spoken his thoughts, was a
young man just come into a fine estate, a magnificent estate in fact,
and one of the finest positions in the country, and the very first thing
he thinks of, is to hurry off on a long sea-voyage to a half-barbarous
country, without once stopping to consider that if he were to be
drowned, or killed in a railway accident, or lost in the woods, the
estate might fall into Chancery, or at the best go to a woman. Mr. Payne
mentally trembled at such rashness, and he expressed enough of the
horror he felt, to make Maurice aware that it really was a less simple
matter than he had supposed, and that his new fortunes had their claims
and drawbacks. Mr. Payne followed up his first blow with others. He
immediately began to ask, "If you go, what do you wish done in such a
case?" And the cases were so many that Maurice, in spite of the
knowledge Mr. Beresford had made him acquire of his affairs, became
really puzzled and harassed. Finally, he saw that a delay of a week
would be inevitable; and the solicitor, having gained the day so far,
relented, and allowed him to hope that after a week's application to
business, he would be in a position to please himself.
Next day Maurice was left alone at Hunsdon. He wrote his last letter to
his father, and being determined to follow it himself so shortly, he
sent no message to the Costellos. Then he set to work hard and steadily
to clear the way for his departure.