‘WILL FORTUNE NEVER COME WITH BOTH HANDS FULL?’
Baffled where he had expected to succeed, Alexis Secretan is at a
loss what to do next. No doubt of Jenny’s truthfulness presents
itself to his mind, youthful candour beamed in that open countenance
of hers. How could he imagine the craft of the serpent in a child who
seemed simple as the sucking dove?
What is he to do? Go to Jersey and hunt for Mrs. Yokohama Gray on
the chance of finding Sibyl still with that lady, despite Jenny’s
assertion of her sister’s fickleness? This seems the most obvious
course for him to take, and he loses no time in taking it. The
journey from Redcastle in Yorkshire to the Channel Islands is a long
one, and it is only on the third day after his interview with Jane
Faunthorpe that Alexis finds himself at St. Helier.
Vain are his inquiries for Mrs. Yokohama Gray, or for any Mrs. Gray
with a name approaching Yokohama in sound. He finds a Mrs. Gray pure
and simple, but she is a laundress, and certainly not in a position
to afford the luxury of a governess for her children. Alexis pursues
his inquiry in every quarter likely to afford information. He sees
postmasters, lodging-house keepers, librarians, and tries to obtain
tidings of any lady with a pretty governess residing in the Island.
Sibyl might be remembered for her pretty face, he thinks, where her
name was unknown or forgotten.
All his efforts are vain. He starts upon various false scents, wastes
a great deal of time and trouble, and leaves the island at last,
thoroughly dispirited.
What more is there for him to do? Nothing assuredly, unless he can
extort the secret of his wife’s whereabouts from that inflexible
young woman, Jane Dimond. It seems such a hard thing to have Sibyl’s
letter in his pocket, to know that she is within a day’s post, and
yet not be able to find her. At Southampton, while he is loitering
about waiting for the train that is to take him back to London,
he remembers that he has or ought to have a kinswoman living in
the neighbourhood of Winchester. A maiden lady, his father’s first
cousin, has lived all her life on a small estate near that cathedral
city. He remembers spending a month at Cheswold Grange with his
father and mother during one of those rare visits which they made to
their native country. He was a child at this time, and it had struck
him since that his father must have had some stronger motive than
family affection in coming over to England to visit a quiet maiden
lady, living in an out-of-the-way village.
His father had possibly some idea of securing Miss Secretan’s fortune
for himself or his boy. Philip Secretan was assuredly the last of men
to degrade himself by courting a wealthy relative, but he may have
thought it his duty to his boy to keep on friendly terms with the
owner of the only estate remaining to the family.
As years went on Mr. Secretan had grown more indolent in his habits,
and less inclined to cross the channel, but one of his farewell
injunctions to Alexis when the young man last visited him had
reference to Matilda Secretan.
‘Go and spend a few days with your cousin Matilda now and then,
Alex,’ said the father. ‘She was very fond of you when you were a
little boy, and I know she’ll be pleased to see you now you’ve grown
into a fine young man. It’s a quiet, out-of-the-way place for you to
visit, but you will be made much of by the old lady, and I dare say
you can get a little shooting there in October. Lord Starborough’s
preserves are close by, and your cousin was always on good terms with
her neighbours.’
Alexis promised most dutifully, and was always intending to perform;
but the visit to Miss Secretan was a business so easy to accomplish
that it was deferred indefinitely. Alexis thought it would be a
pity to go earlier than October, on account of Lord Starborough’s
pheasants, and three Octobers came and went without his finding
leisure for the visit. Then came the sale of his commission, and he
felt he should hardly like to face his cousin Matilda under such
awkward circumstances. He would have to explain things, and he
hated explanations. Next came his entanglement in Cupid’s fatal net,
and he had not a spare thought for Miss Secretan. Then followed his
marriage and rapid descent in the social scale. He had sore need of
a friend in those days; but as he had neglected his cousin Matilda
in his brief day of prosperity, he could not approach her in his
destitution. He might stoop to ask a favour of aunt Gorsuch, at whose
house he had been a familiar guest, but he could not beg of Miss
Secretan, to whom he was a stranger. He had a faint recollection of
her as an old lady with silvery hair in corkscrew curls, a high nose,
delicate peach-bloom cheeks, a slim straight figure, and a dress of
rich black silk, like a clergyman’s presentation gown. That she had
been very kind to him, and that his life had been made particularly
pleasant to him at Cheswold Grange, he could remember distinctly. He
remembered telling Sibyl about his rich maiden cousin, as they sat
by the fire in Dixon Street one November evening, building castles
in a brief interval of hopefulness. He had described that childish
visit to Cheswold, and his girl-wife had been fascinated by his
picture of the pretty English country house and gardens, the meadows,
and the trout-stream in which he had made his juvenile attempts at
fly-fishing.
‘Why shouldn’t your cousin leave you her estate, Alex?’ Sibyl had
said eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t that be a happy thing?’
‘A very happy thing, love, but not a likely turn of the wheel by any
means,’ he had answered. ‘I have never seen my cousin since I was
ten years old. Whatever chances I had in that direction have been
forfeited by my neglect.’
‘Upon my word, Alexis, you seem to have delighted in throwing away
fortune,’ Sibyl had answered, with a touch of anger. And after that
she had given way to low spirits for the rest of the evening, and had
talked of Cheswold Grange as a property that must have come to her
husband if he had not wilfully flung away his prospect of inheritance.
To-day Alexis, sorely perplexed which way to turn in the maze of
life, is inclined to dwell upon the memory of his boyish pleasures at
Cheswold. He is so near the quiet old place, within twenty miles at
most. Why should he not go and see Matilda Secretan? He can approach
her without degradation now that he is a prosperous, money-earning
man. He has no thought of that possible inheritance. It is not in his
nature to calculate upon a thing of that kind; but, being so utterly
alone in the world just now, he feels that it would do him good to
grasp the hand of a relative--to receive kindness and sympathy from
one who had known his father and mother.
The train that was to have carried him to London conveys him to
Winchester. At the station he is told that Cheswold is three miles
from the city, so he determines to walk the distance. It is between
four and five in the afternoon when he turns out of the High Street
into the quiet country road which is to take him to Cheswold. Light
showers have refreshed the verdure, the low water meadows are looking
their greenest, and the grassy hills yonder shut out the world beyond
this fertile valley, and give a look of security and repose to the
landscape, so simply rustic, so thoroughly English in its character.
An hour later, and Alexis stands at the entrance to the village
churchyard, a turnstile at a corner of the wall. He remembers this
very path across the churchyard as a short cut to the Grange; and
after nearly twenty years’ absence the scene comes back to his memory
as vividly as if he had left the place but yesterday. Yes, there
stands the old yew tree, whose widely stretching boughs rustle and
creak against the window by the pulpit in boisterous weather. No
busy work of restoration is going on here. The greenish glass of the
old diamond-paned casements has not been exchanged for the brilliant
colouring of the modern glass-painter. The rough-cast walls are
unchanged.
There is the wooden dial that used to mark the flight of time when he
was a boy. There stands the old family tomb, neglected, forgotten,
under its ivy shroud.
He lingers by the gate for some few minutes in a contemplative mood,
looking dreamily at the well-remembered picture. Then he turns the
stile and goes in.
He crosses the churchyard, looking idly at the tombstones on either
side the path, and within a few paces of the lych-gate he is brought
to a standstill by a tablet that tells him his visit to his cousin
has been deferred too long.
A massive granite slab, surmounted by a cross in white marble, bears
this inscription:--
IN MEMORY OF
MATILDA,
ONLY DAUGHTER AND HEIRESS OF MARK HORATIO SECRETAN,
Who died at Cheswold Grange, August 14th, 186--,
AGED EIGHTY-TWO YEARS
Matilda Secretan has been dead exactly a year, and the friendly grasp
of a kindred hand which Alexis has hoped for is not for him.
‘Poor old lady,’ he sighs. ‘Well, she has lived her life, and a good
long one. An easy, harmless, passionless existence, full of creature
comforts and village dignity. She was a great person in Cheswold.
Perhaps it is wiser to play at greatness in a rural village than to
struggle to be really great amidst the press of men--pleasant to be
born and die on one’s own estate, to lie in one’s shroud in the same
room in which one was rocked in one’s cradle--to look out with our
dying eyes upon the green fields in which we learned to walk, our own
fields, not gained by toil or greed, or overreaching our fellow-men,
but coming to us naturally as the blossoms come to the apple trees in
our orchard. Yes, it must be a peaceful, pleasant life, affording no
opportunity for sin. Satan must have a bad time among small landed
proprietors. Poor cousin Matilda! I wonder who has come in for her
property?’
The Grange lies within ten minutes’ walk, just on the outer edge of
the village. Alexis crosses the green, with its duck-pond, its groups
of ancient elms before the good old village inn, with the ‘Rising
Sun,’ looking very much like a careful representation of a mustard
plaster, swinging from the signpost. A low white house this village
inn, with a sloping thatch and a wonderful display of intensely red
geraniums in intensely red flower-pots, a perfect blaze of scarlet
floriculture.
Beyond the green and the ‘Rising Sun’ the road is shaded by fine
old timber, and has a secluded look, as if one had strayed unawares
into a gentleman’s park. The hedgerows are so neatly cut, the grass
margin of the road looks as if it had been mowed and rolled. There
is a pleasant odour of pine woods. A little further on there comes
an opening in the wooded screen, and across a running brook Alexis
sees the wide park-like meadow which lies in front of Cheswold
Grange. A sunk fence divides the grass land from the old-fashioned
Grange garden; and to the left of the long low old house, with its
many gables, its dovecotes and bell-turret, lies the orchard, whose
treasures are guarded by a thick holly hedge of two centuries’ growth.
How well Alexis remembers the house! a hospitable dwelling in the
days of his boyhood, but somewhat gloomy of aspect now. Everything
has a neglected air. He can see that even at a distance.
‘I suppose Miss Secretan’s heir despises the old place,’ he thinks,
‘and suffers the Grange to go to ruin, while he squanders the revenue
of the land in London. I wonder who the fellow is? Some Low Church
parson, perhaps, or smooth-tongued doctor, who got to the blind side
of cousin Matilda at the last.’
He is at the lodge gate by this time. Even the lodge has a decayed
air, a broken pane conspicuous in the parlour window, paint
blistered, a bit of rotten gutter hanging from an angle of the roof.
‘It looks like an Irish squireen’s place in the bad old times fifty
years ago,’ thinks Alexis.
The lodgekeeper’s wife is spreading out the weekly wash on the
sunward side of a quickset hedge, and to this busy housewife Alexis
addresses himself.
‘You’ve a pretty place here,’ he begins, with the casual air of an
uninterested stranger. ‘Pity it shouldn’t be kept up a little better.’
‘Ah, it is a pity,’ answers the woman, shaking her head over the
family linen. ‘Things was very different in Miss Secretan’s time.’
She says this with the conviction that every one upon earth--the
wandering stranger included--must know all about Miss Secretan. They
may not have had the honour of that lady’s acquaintance, but she must
be known to them by reputation as one of the magnates of the land,
just as Disraeli and Gladstone are known.
‘She was a good mistress?’ hazards Alexis.
‘Ah,’ sighs the woman, seeming to wring her hands as she wrings out
a garment before unfurling it on the hedge, ‘few like her. I won’t
say but what she was near. A lady that wouldn’t allow the waste of
a candle end, and wore a dress from year’s end to year’s end--but a
silk as might stand alone. And them as is nearest towards theirselves
is oftentimes kindest to others. Miss Secretan was a kind friend to
many. She could do more kindness with sixpence than some people can
do with half a crown. And she left a very pretty property. A pity it
should go into Chancery.’
‘Is it in Chancery?’ asks Alexis, warmly interested.
‘Well, I can’t say as it is azackley, but it’s something that way,
I believe. You see, Miss Secretan, she makes her will a good twenty
year ago, and she leaves all her property to a favourite nephew, or
cousin, I’m not certain which, in trust for him if she should die
before he came of age, but he was to have it handed over to him clear
of everythink if he was past twenty-one. And she never altered that
will. She had thoughts of altering it, I’ve heard Mrs. Bodlow, the
housekeeper, say, because of her nephew not paying her the attention
she expected; but once having taken a good bit of trouble to make her
will, she didn’t care about beginning all over again. “I’ll wait,”
says she--as I had it from Mrs. Bodlow,--“and I dare say,” she says,
“as one of these odd days,” says she, “he’ll remember me,” she says,
“and come and see me,” says she; “and if not,” says she, “I’m hale
and hearty still,” she says, “and there’s time enough to alter my
will,” says she, which Mrs. Bodlow repeated to me word batum while
she was lying a corpse in that room with the three windows as you may
see from here.’
Alexis has turned from red to pale and pale to red again during the
progress of this prolix relation. The lodgekeeper’s wife only pauses
for breath ere she pursues her argument.
‘So the will was let stand,’ she resumes, ‘and Miss Secretan didn’t
so much as trouble herself to find out whether the young man was
living or dead; and lo and behold! when the will was made known,
the heir was nowheres to be found. I believe the lawyers and such
like did all as was proper, and he was advertised to his advantage
in the newspapers continual, but he never answered none of the
advertisements, which he couldn’t have failed to do if he was alive
and could write--unless he’d gone out to Horsetralyer and turned
butcher like that simple-’arted young gentleman as you read of in the
newspapers. Howsomedever, there’s the property, belonging to no one,
as you may say, and things going to ruin. There’s one gardener kept
to grub about a bit, where there used to be two men and a by at work
constant, and there’s a pore ’elpless old woman in the ’ouse, with
’ardly strength to open a shutter and let in a breath of hair, so
you may guess as the moths are having their free will of the damass
curtings and such like.’
‘You didn’t hear the name of the heir,’ says Alexis, interrogatively.
‘Not his chrisen name. His other name was the same as hern. “I’ll
have a Secretan to come after me if I can,” she says, and Mrs. Bodlow
told me as she believed it was mostly on account of the name as Miss
Secretan left that young man the property.’
Alexis tries his hardest to still the troubled beating of his heart,
tries to persuade himself that it is too soon to feel the flush and
pride of sudden unexpected fortune. Matilda Secretan may have had
other cousins, or nephews, he tells himself. He is not particularly
well posted in the family history, having heard his father prose
about his kindred with youth’s heedless ear. He tells himself it is
too soon to be glad, yet he feels as if he were lord of the soil. He
stands within the gate, and he plants his foot firmly on the ground.
‘I wonder if I am standing on my own land?’ he thinks. ‘I feel as if
there were a glow in the soil that communicates itself to my blood.
It is the land that has belonged to my race for three hundred years.’
The fact that for the space of a year no one has come forward to
claim the property encourages the supposition that he himself is the
missing heir.
‘Would it be possible for me to see the house? he inquires, seized
with a feverish desire to examine the mansion which may or may not be
his.
‘I dare say if you was to offer the old lady a trifle, she wouldn’t
mind letting you see it, sir. She’s a little hard of hearing.’
‘Suppose I offer you five shillings to begin with,’ suggests Alexis,
dropping two half-crowns into the matron’s hand. ‘You might take me
up to the house and make things square with the old lady.’
The lodgekeeper’s face beams all over with delight. ‘I’m sure I’m
much beholden to you, sir. I’ll dry my hands directly minute, and
step up to the great house with you.’
The Grange has been ‘the great house’ at Cheswold for generations.
‘Oh, Sibyl,’ thinks Alexis as he walks along the grassy path under
the elms, ‘if you had only waited for brighter days, how happy we
might have been! You abandon me in order to seek fortune, and you
don’t seem to have won it yet. Fortune falls into my lap unsought.’
The fact of his wife’s desertion seems harder to him in the face of
this sudden turn of fortune’s wheel than it has seemed before. That
prosperity should come to him thus, and find him a lonely man!
If this estate of Cheswold has been actually left him, shall he lure
his wife back to him by a golden bait? Shall he win from his altered
fortunes the boon that has been refused to a husband’s entreaty? No,
a thousand times no. ‘If she comes back to me ever she shall return
to the pauper she abandoned,’ he tells himself. ‘She shall come back
for love of me her husband, not to be mistress of Cheswold Grange.’
Yet how proud he would be, having won her back to her duty, to
point to this peaceful old English home, and say, ‘I am no longer
an adventurer and a beggar. All this is ours, and our children’s
after us!’ He has quite made up his mind by this time that he is
the missing heir, and that these elms which screen him from the low
western sun are his very own.
Cheswold Grange upon this August evening has a mouldy smell, and
wears the gloomy and somewhat ghostly aspect of a house whose
shutters are for the most part closed against air and sunshine. But
it is a good old house notwithstanding. The rooms are large, the
staircase is wide and substantial, with fine carved oak balusters,
an open gallery above with numerous doors, suggestive of ample
accommodation for a family. The quaint old furniture remains just as
Miss Secretan left it. Chairs and sofas are carefully shrouded in
holland, and the dust lies thick upon the old rosewood tables, the
Canton porcelain, and the crystal chandeliers, whose half-burned wax
candles shed their light upon the vanished mistress of the Grange.
‘Nothing has been touched,’ says Mrs. Cramp, of the lodge, as she
follows Alexis and the old woman in charge from room to room.
‘Everythink is the same as in Miss Secretan’s time, except that when
she was living you couldn’t have found a grain of dust in the place
if you’d offered a five-pound note for it.’
After having looked at the house Alexis explores stables and gardens.
It is dark by the time his inspection is finished, and he makes up
his mind to spend the night at the ‘Rising Sun’ in Cheswold village.
He feels attached to the place already.
‘Is there much land belonging to the Grange?’ he inquires of Mrs.
Cramp, the old woman in charge being little more than a dummy, and
Mrs. Cramp serving as interpreter.
‘I can’t say how many acres, sir, though I dare say my husband might
know if he was at home. There’s Baker’s farm, and there’s the Hollow
farm and the Hill farm--that must be a good bit altogether. Miss
Secretan was lady of the manor.’
This is pleasant to hear. Alexis gratifies the deaf caretaker with
his bounty, and goes back to the gate with Mrs. Cramp, who enlarges
upon the beauties of the place, and asks him if he has any idea of
taking the property if it should be to let.
‘Chancery might just as well let the great house, you see, sir, if it
was only for the sake of having it took care of. It would be all the
better for the heir if he should come to claim his own. It went to my
heart to see things so dusty. And I hope, sir, if you should have any
thoughts of the place you’ll keep on me and my good man at the lodge.
We served Miss Secretan faithful above eleven years.’
‘I won’t displace you, Mrs. Cramp, you may rely on it, if I should
ever come to be master of Cheswold Grange. Good night. Oh, by the
way,’ he adds, just as he is turning to go, ‘do you happen to know
the name of Miss Secretan’s lawyer?’
‘Mr. Scrodgers, of Winchester, sir. Scrodgers and Son it is now.’
‘Thanks. Good night again.’
‘He must be thinking of taking the place,’ muses Mrs. Cramp, ‘or he
wouldn’t want to see Mr. Scrodgers.’
Alexis finds the ‘Rising Sun’ a comfortable old hostelry of a
primitive style. Dinner resolves itself into tea and eggs and bacon,
but the eggs and bacon are admirable, the home-made loaf delicious,
and the cream-jug which accompanies the teapot suggests a land
flowing with milk and honey. The parlour in which the traveller
enjoys this homely meal is clean and bright, and adjoins the bar so
closely that Alexis can carry on a conversation with the landlord as
he takes his refreshment. From this gentleman he hears that Cheswold
Grange is one of the nicest little estates in the county, worth
fifteen hundred a year at the lowest computation, and that Miss
Secretan was a careful old lady, and must have saved money.
‘How could she spend much, you see, sir? living in her quiet way,
never leaving home from year’s end to year’s end, growing her own
meat, and making her own butter, and having everything in a ring
fence, as you may say. Ah, there’ll be a pretty tidy bit of rhino for
that young man to come into if they ever find him.’
That young man--or the young man who supposes himself to be the
heir--feels a thrill of satisfaction at the idea, and is somewhat
impatient for to-morrow morning and an interview with Messrs.
Scrodgers and Son.
‘Do you know much about Mr. Scrodgers of Winchester, the old lady’s
solicitor?’ asks Alexis.
‘Not much, sir, I’m happy to say. I keeps aloof from that cattle.
Not as I’ve ever heard any harm of Scrodgers and Son, but they’re
all tarred with the same brush, to my mind. If you’ve got a bit of
freehold property, they wants you to mortgage it just to give them
something to do. If you’ve got a bit of property to leave, they wants
you to throw it into hodge-podge, just to give them the ’andling of
it, and if they can get you into Chancery body and bones, they do
it, for the good of trade. No lawyers for me, sir, but I believe as
lawyers go, Scrodgers and Son are very decent fellows.’
Alexis sleeps peacefully that night, better than he has slept since
he landed in the port of London and is closeted with Mr. Scrodgers
the elder early next morning, in the quiet front parlour of a
substantial old house in a side street in Winchester. The office has
a respectable and well-to-do look, and Mr. Scrodgers is white-bearded
and venerable enough for an abbot. The grave cathedral overshadows
his dwelling, and increases the respectability of his surroundings.
Alexis has sent in his card:--
ALEXIS SECRETAN,
Agent for Messrs. Keel & Skrew,
SIDNEY.
The lawyer receives him politely, with a manner that is half
friendly, half suspicious.
‘May I ask what Mr. Secretan I have the pleasure of addressing?’ he
inquires, looking at the card.
‘I don’t quite know how you would wish me to describe myself. I am
the son of Philip Secretan, who died at Nice in 1858, and who was
first cousin of Miss Secretan of Cheswold Grange. I come to you,
Mr. Scrodgers, to inquire about my cousin’s will. I have been in
Australia for the last two years, acting as agent for a house in the
City, and I only became aware of my cousin Matilda’s death yesterday
evening.’
‘This is very serious,’ says Mr. Scrodgers, looking at Alexis as
if he should like to convict him as an impostor. ‘And pray how did
you come to hear of Miss Secretan’s demise yesterday evening, not
having heard of it prior to that time? May I ask how the intelligence
reached you finally?’
Mr. Scrodgers rubs his hands complacently after this address, and
fixes Alexis with his large gray eyes, which are of the protuberant
order.
‘The knowledge came to me in the simplest possible manner. I went
over to Cheswold intending to pay my cousin a visit, and found her
name on a tombstone in the churchyard.’
‘Are you quite sure, sir, that the fact of Miss Secretan’s death
did not become known to you in Australia, and did not influence your
return to this country?’ inquires the lawyer, severely.
‘If you think me an impostor, Mr. Scrodgers, I will thank you to say
so plainly, and I will take means to establish my identity. This
beating about the bush is as insulting to my understanding as it is
to my honour.’
‘This is a very serious business, Mr. Secretan, a good deal more
serious than you may suppose. We are entrusted with a great
responsibility, sir. If we err it must be on the side of caution.’
‘You mean that my cousin Matilda left the whole of her property to
Alexis Secretan, and you doubt whether I am the man, although I put
his name upon my card.’
‘It would be for you to establish your identity, Mr. Secretan.’
‘Nothing more easy. My father’s solicitors, Messrs. Gull and Sharpe,
of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, have been familiar with every stage of my
existence up to the time when I sold my commission, about five years
ago. They hold all family documents--certificates of baptism, and
so on. My father was a careless man as to business matters, but he
had infinite faith in his lawyers, and he committed all papers of any
significance into their charge.’
‘Messrs Gull and Sharpe are a most respectable firm,’ answers Mr.
Scrodgers, with a reverential expression of countenance, as if so
old-established a firm ought to be spoken of with awe.
‘I refer you to them for my identification,’ says Alexis, ‘and I
shall be obliged if you will let them have a copy of my cousin’s
will. I shall go to them directly I get back to London, and take all
necessary steps under their advice.’
‘I have not offended you, I hope, Mr. Secretan, by my business-like
manner of discussing this question. I had the honour to enjoy Miss
Secretan’s confidence for many years, and I am naturally----’
‘Very naturally--quite proper. Good morning, Mr. Scrodgers. Please
lose no time about the copy of my cousin’s will.’
‘The original document is in Doctors’ Commons.’
‘Ah, then, Gull and Sharpe will be able to get me a copy. Good
morning.’
Alexis leaves the dull old office elated. He knows all that he wanted
to know--knows that he is lord of Cheswold Grange; that he need
never go back to Australia; that his agency for Keel and Skrew is at
an end; that he is an Englishman of landed estate--a gentleman by
fortune as he is a gentleman by birth.
He is eager to get back to London, if it were only to communicate his
good fortune to the friend of his adversity, Richard Plowden.
‘Dear old Dick! how glad he will be! He shall have an acre of ferns
at Cheswold, and his mother need never let lodgings any more unless
she likes.’
There is one thought that touches him most deeply,--the thought of
the child whose face he has never seen.