ARRIVALS AT THE CHASE
It was in the course of the afternoon of the second day after the
departure of Mrs. Clare that Lady Pell, accompanied by Miss Ethel
Thursby, arrived at Withington Chase (her maid, in company with the
luggage, would follow later on). They had been driven over from the
Shrublands in Mrs. Forester’s landau. Sir Gilbert was waiting in the
entrance-hall to receive them. As Lady Pell advanced he went forward
with outstretched hand.
“Welcome, Louisa, thrice welcome to the Chase!” he said in his most
cordial tones. “It is indeed an immense pleasure to me to see you again
after so long a time.” With that he drew her closer, and stooping a
little—for tall though her ladyship was, he was considerably the taller
of the two—imprinted a cousinly salute on her cheek, which might once
have been round, but was so no longer.
Sir Gilbert had never kissed her but once previously, when she was a
girl of eighteen, and only a few hours before her mother’s illness had
summoned her away at a moment’s notice. It was a kiss which had given
birth in her heart to many delicious hopes, never destined to be
fulfilled, and it still lived in her memory like the faint vague
fragrance exhaled from a _pot-pourri_. But to-day her cousin’s second
kiss, so wholly unexpected, recalled in all its pain and all its
sweetness that incident of long ago. For a moment or two her heart
throbbed so that she could not speak. Then, with a little shiver, she
came back to the present.
“It is very kind of you, cousin, to say such pretty things to me,” she
replied, with a curious little tremor in her voice and a dim wistful
smile. Then, more composedly: “But, indeed, I must ask you to believe
me, when I assure you that I am as pleased to find myself again at the
dear old Chase as you can possibly be to see me here. And now you must
allow me to introduce to you Miss Ethel Thursby, a very dear young
friend of mine, who is good enough to keep an old woman company, and
put up with her vagaries while her regular companion is incapacitated
by illness.” Then turning to Ethel: “Child, this is my kinsman, Sir
Gilbert Clare, of whom you have many times heard me speak.”
“It is a happiness to me to welcome Miss Thursby under my roof, not
merely for my cousin’s sake, but also for her own,” said the Baronet,
with simple old-fashioned courtesy as he took Ethel’s timidly offered
hand in his. Next moment a thrill went through him from head to foot,
which even extended to his fingertips and was perceptible to Ethel,
while a strangely startled look leapt into his eyes. It was as if a
ghost from out the dead past had suddenly confronted him. Then he
passed his hand across his eyes as if to sweep away the vision,
murmuring under his breath as he did so: “No—no; I must indeed be
getting into my dotage even to imagine such a thing.”
He turned away with a stifled sigh. Lady Pell had observed nothing. She
was gazing round the old entrance-hall, all the features of which had
that half-strange, half-familiar air which inanimate things have a way
of putting on when we have not seen them for a long time, more
particularly when they happen to have formed the framework of some
unforgettable episode in our private history.
Presently Mrs. Burton, the housekeeper, conducted the ladies to their
rooms, and nothing more was seen of them till after the second dinner
gong had sounded. It may be here recorded that when Ethel accompanied
Lady Pell on her visit to Withington Chase, she was wholly unaware that
Everard Lisle was living within half a mile of it, and that there was
rarely more than one day out of the seven on which he did not spend
some hours there. If the place had ever been mentioned in her hearing
as that where Everard was now located, it had escaped her memory—which
by no means implies that Everard himself was forgotten.
To-day, however, Lisle had not been asked to dine at the Chase, for one
reason, because Mr. Kinaby, the steward, whose health had improved
during the last few days, was desirous of his help in going through
certain accounts and other matters connected with his stewardship.
On entering the drawing-room the two ladies found both the Baronet and
Luigi there.
“Louisa,” said Sir Gilbert, “allow me to introduce to you my grandson,
Lewis Clare, the only son of my late eldest son, John Alexander Clare,
whom I think you met once or twice when he was a youth. Lewis—my
cousin, Lady Pell.” Then, a few seconds later, when her ladyship and
the young man had shaken hands: “Miss Thursby—my grandson.”
The young people contented themselves with a simple bow, after which
they each drew back a little way. Then said Sir Gilbert aside to her
ladyship: “Of course you have heard that only quite recently was I made
aware of the existence of my grandson.”
“It would have been impossible for me not to have heard of it. It is
the talk of the county—in everybody’s mouth.”
“And more than one pretty version of the affair has got into
circulation, I do not doubt. Some people have more imagination than
they are aware of. Give them but the merest thread of fact, and they
will weave out of it a tissue of romance which does credit to their
inventive powers, if to nothing else.”
“But is not that your own fault in some measure? The central fact of
the affair, that you had found your long-lost grandson and had
installed him at the Chase, was one which you had evidently no wish to
conceal, even had it been in your power to do so. Why, then—— But,
really, I have no right to question you in the matter.”
“Don’t say that. Why, then, you were about to add, throw any cloak of
concealment round the subordinate facts of the case? I will tell you
why, my dear Louisa. Simply because, although I have chosen to
acknowledge my grandson and to instal him in that position which the
world—very mistakenly—regards as his by inalienable right, it by no
means follows that there are not circumstances connected with the
antecedents and personal history both of himself and his mother which I
have no intention, if I can anyhow avoid it, of allowing to become
public property. You, however, are in an altogether different position;
from you I desire to have no concealments in the affair, and after
dinner I will tell you all there is to tell.”
It was with a curious mixture of sulkiness and gratification that Luigi
took Miss Thursby in to dinner. His sulkiness arose from the fact that
in the company of this beautiful girl he felt strangely bashful and out
of his element; for once he was possessed by a vivid consciousness of
being the very inferior creature that he really was, and it was one of
those unsought conclusions which we prefer not to have forced upon us.
His gratification arose from the fact that for the first time in his
life he found himself in a position to treat a being in every other way
so much above him, not merely as his social equal but as his inferior;
for one of the parlour-maids who was deeply smitten with Luigi’s good
looks, and acted as a sort of house spy for him, had already whispered
in his ear that the extremely pretty girl whom Lady Pell had brought
with her was nothing more than her ladyship’s companion.
Only a paid companion, and, as such, one who ought to feel herself
honoured by whatever attentions the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare might
choose to pay her (for by this time Luigi had got into the way of
taking himself and his position quite seriously), and yet, try as he
might, he could not feel himself at home in her company. He felt
altogether different when in the society of Miss Jennings, the barmaid
at the _King’s Head_, who, in her way, was a very pretty girl, and also
a good girl. When with Miss J., as she was generally called by the
young men of the billiard-room, he never felt in the slightest degree
bashful, or ill at ease, and certainly never at a loss for words. Why,
they two would go on “chaffing” each other for half an hour at a
stretch when Miss J. happened to be in the humour and to have no other
customers to claim her attention. And yet for all that, although he
could not have told himself why, in his secret heart he did not wish
Miss Thursby to be a bit different from what she was, for she was a
revelation to him.
What on earth was he to talk to her about? he asked himself. His
grandfather and Lady Pell were immersed in their recollections, and to
go on sitting by Miss Thursby like a dummy was fast becoming
intolerable. Evidently he must make a plunge of some kind.
“I suppose—er—that you and Lady Pell have knocked about a good deal
together,” at length he ventured to observe. Then seeing Ethel’s look
of surprise, he added hastily: “I mean that you have been great
travellers, you know. I heard her ladyship say just now that
something—er—put her in mind of—of something else she had seen abroad.”
“I have only had the pleasure of knowing Lady Pell for about a couple
of months,” answered Ethel. “I believe she has been a considerable
traveller in her time; indeed, she was to have gone to France this
autumn had not sickness broken out in the house of the friend whom she
was about to visit.” It was a relief to Luigi to find that Miss Thursby
was not a travelled person, as, in that case, she might have chosen to
talk about things of which he knew next to nothing, and so have made
his ignorance more patent than was desirable.
“I suppose, now, that you are pretty well acquainted with London,” was
his next remark. He was beginning to feel more at his ease.
Ethel shook her head. “My knowledge of London is very limited indeed. I
spent a fortnight there once with my aunts, but that is the only time I
have been there. I was brought up in a small provincial town, and know
very little of the world beyond its narrow limits.”
“I hope Lady Pell intends making a long stay at the Chase,” he
presently ventured to remark, “as, in that case, we shall also have the
pleasure of _your_ society, Miss Thursby. It’s precious dull here, I
can tell you. My grandfather goes nowhere, and only by rare chance does
a visitor find his way to the Chase. Of course one can get through the
day pretty well, but the evenings are awful. Most nights grandad has
his secretary fellow to play chess, or backgammon with him, and there’s
poor me left without a soul to talk to. It’s something cruel, I can
assure you.”
There was quite a pathetic note in Luigi’s voice as he spoke the last
words. Having once begun to touch on the subject of his own imaginary
grievances, he could be fluent enough.
“But no doubt you have resources within yourself, Mr. Clare, sufficient
to cause the time not to hang too heavily on your hands. Books and
music, for instance, and—and probably other things.”
“I don’t know so much about that, Miss Thursby. I’m not much of a
reading man, not built that way, don’t you know. And one can’t be
everlastingly jingling by oneself on the piano; besides, Sir Gilbert
wouldn’t stand it when he’s deep in a game of chess. No; what I do is
to get through an awful amount of yawning, mixed with a little bit of
drawing, for which—the drawing, not the yawning—there are people who
say I have something of a gift. All the same it’s inf—uncommonly slow
work, Miss Thursby, I give you my word.”
“Is it asking too much to be allowed to see your drawings, Mr. Clare?”
queried Ethel. “Not that I have the slightest pretension to set myself
up as a critic,” she made haste to add, “being all but destitute of
technical knowledge, and only able to appreciate a work of art of any
kind in so far as it satisfies my conceptions of the beautiful, or
appeals to my sense of humour, or pathos, or teaches me something which
I feel it is good for me that I should know.”
Luigi felt that the conversation was getting a little beyond him, so he
contented himself with saying: “Oh, my sketches are quite at your
service, you know; but I give you my word that you will find them awful
rubbish.”
After dinner, the evening was so sunny and pleasant, that Sir Gilbert
caused a couple of lounging chairs to be placed on the terrace, where
he and Lady Pell stationed themselves, ostensibly to watch the sunset,
but in reality that they might enjoy a _tête-à-tête_ without any risk
of being overheard by the young people. At dinner their talk had mostly
concerned itself with reminiscences of people whom they had known when
they were forty years younger.
Meanwhile, Ethel, with Luigi standing by her, his hands deep in his
pockets, was going through the latter’s portfolio of drawings.
“And now,” said Lady Pell presently, settling herself in her chair with
a comfortable conviction that she was about to listen to a most
interesting recital, “and now, cousin Gilbert, for your chapter of
family romance. I confess that I am dying to hear the genuine version
of the affair.”
For a couple of minutes or so Sir Gilbert lay back with closed eyes, as
if endeavouring to concentrate his thoughts on the task he had set
himself to go through with. Then, in a low voice, slowly and
hesitatingly at first, he began to tell that story with which the
reader is already familiar. With some of its earlier incidents Lady
Pell was acquainted; for instance, she knew that Alec Clare had left
home in consequence of having quarrelled with his father about money
matters, that, later on, he had settled in the United States, and
there, some few years afterwards, had come to an untimely end. But the
rest of Sir Gilbert’s narrative, from the incident of the cutting off
of the entail to his daughter-in-law’s presentation of herself at the
Chase, and his ultimate acknowledgment of his grandson, had for Lady
Pell all the charm of novelty. She knew how much Sir Gilbert disliked
being interrupted, and she listened to him in silence, but she caused
him to feel that it was the silence of one who was deeply interested in
all he had to tell her. Neither was she in a hurry to speak when at
length he had come to an end.
Her first words were: “Thank you, cousin Gilbert.” Then, after a
momentary pause: “I appreciate to the full the confidence you have seen
fit to repose in me, and I need scarcely tell you it will be as sacred
with me as if it had been poured into the ear of a father confessor.
Certainly your narrative is a most extraordinary one; but one has only
to read ‘The Romance of the Peerage’ to discover that still stranger
things, and all duly authenticated, are associated with the private
histories of some of our oldest families. Still, with all due
deference, I must say that in this Italian-looking grandson of yours, I
am unable to find a single trait which helps to recall his father to my
memory, if, indeed, poor Alec was his father.”
Sir Gilbert gave vent to a little angry snort.
“Do you mean to imply, Louisa, that——”
Lady Pell laid a hand on his sleeve.
“I mean to imply nothing. I only hope that you sifted the evidence most
thoroughly before bringing yourself to accept this young man as your
dead son’s offspring.”
“What do you take me for, Louisa? There was no flaw in the
evidence—none whatever.”
Lady Pell tapped her teeth with her fan. “Do you know, Gilbert,” she
said, “that I felt quite grieved when one day in the _Times_ obituary I
came across a notice of the death of Mr. Page, your old adviser, whom I
remember quite well. What a pity it is he did not live a few years
longer.”
The old man’s shaggy brows came together for a moment, but that was the
only notice he took.
“And this daughter-in-law of yours has gone back to Italy,” continued
her ladyship presently. “I should very much like to have seen her.”
“You have only to extend your visit at the Chase in order to do so. I
presume that Mrs. Clare will not be gone more than a month at the
most.”
Lady Pell shook her head. “I am only awaiting a letter from Madame de
Bellecour in order to——”
At this juncture Luigi stepped out through the long window, and
crossing to his grandfather, said: “Have you any objection, sir, to
Miss Thursby playing the piano? If it will annoy you in the slightest
degree, of course——”
“Not at all—not at all,” broke in Sir Gilbert a little brusquely. “Let
her play by all means. Why should it annoy me, eh?”
“Not a bit like poor Alec—not one little bit,” remarked Lady Pell as if
to herself; but, for a man of his years, Sir Gilbert’s hearing was
extraordinarily keen, and her words reached him.
His first impulse was to indulge in a little explosion, his second was
to think better of it. After all, his cousin was merely enunciating a
truth of which no one could be more unpleasantly conscious than he was;
still, it is not always agreeable to have truths which we cannot deny,
but would fain ignore, stated thus bluntly by another.
“And is it the boy’s fault, Louisa, that he resembles in no way his
father?” asked Sir Gilbert presently, but without any trace of
irritability. “Which of us can help our looks?”
Lady Pell felt a touch of compunction. Without intending it, she had
pricked her kinsman in a sore place. “Of course the young man is in no
way to blame,” she replied, “and it would be nonsense to impute any
such meaning to my words. I could not help saying what I did because
for hundreds of years back there has not been a Clare in the direct
line whose features did not bear the unmistakable Clare stamp. If you
dispute what I say, your own portrait gallery will suffice to convince
you that I am right. But, as you are well aware, you can’t dispute my
dictum. Why, as far as features and expression go, you yourself are as
like the Maurice Clare who fell at Marston Moor as one pea is like
another. Still, as you justly observe, your grandson can in no way be
held answerable for the misfortune of his looks, and if in other
respects he fulfils your expectations, there’s not a word more to be
said.”
There was a little space of silence; then, with a half sigh, Sir
Gilbert said: “Between you and me, Louisa, that is just where the shoe
pinches. Unfortunately, Lewis does _not_ fulfil my expectations—far
from it. But then, as I sometimes put it to myself, considering the way
he was brought up, am I not asking more of him than I have any right to
expect?”
“That certainly is a point of view which should not be lost sight of,”
responded her ladyship. “But what is it in particular that you complain
of in him?”
“Oh, I am not complaining—nothing of the kind. I should not feel myself
justified in doing so. It is simply that I am disappointed.” Then
placing a hand lightly on her arm, he added: “My great fear is that I
shall never succeed in making a gentleman of him.”
“That would indeed be a misfortune. He would be the first Clare against
whom such an allegation could be brought.”
“Knowing, as I did,” resumed Sir Gilbert, “(for, as far as I am aware,
his mother hid nothing from me), the defects under which he laboured as
regards his education and upbringing, I determined to have them
remedied as far as it might be possible to do at this late time of day.
Accordingly I arranged with the vicar of St. Michael’s, an old
Cambridge man, to do what he could in the way of introducing Lewis to
some, at least, of the great writers of antiquity. Of course I knew it
was too late to do much unless the boy took kindly to the vicar’s
teaching. I also engaged a man to give him riding lessons. Well, I
waited till several weeks had gone by without making any inquiry as to
the progress he was making. I did not want it to seem as if I were in
anyway hurrying the boy. The other day, however, I made it my business
to call both on the vicar and on Marsh, the livery-stable keeper. From
both I heard the same story, reluctantly told, of incompetence and
hopeless failure. ‘He’ll never look anything but a figure of fun on
horseback, sir; he’s no more nerve than a mouse,’—was Marsh’s
uncompromising verdict; and from the vicar I had no better a report. ‘I
am grieved to say that it is simply a waste of time and money to
endeavour to impart even a smattering of classical knowledge to Mr.
Clare,’ was what he had to say to me.”
“That must be excessively disheartening for you,” remarked her ladyship
in her most sympathetic tones.
“Disheartening indeed, Louisa; still, all that might be overlooked and
forgiven him in consideration of his bringing up, but unfortunately he
seems to have contracted a number of low tastes, and to be addicted to
a class of company which cannot but tend to degrade him still further.
Some men’s weaknesses and shortcomings are accidents of their lives and
are more or less curable, others seem as if they had been bred in the
system and cannot be eradicated. I greatly fear that my grandson’s
failings belong to the latter category.”
“It grieves me greatly that you should have cause to say this of one
who ought to be the comfort and stay of your declining years.”
“The necessity is indeed a grievous one; but it is a relief to have
someone to unburden my mind to. It was not till the evening of the day
before yesterday that sundry of Lewis’s shortcomings were brought under
my notice, of which I had hitherto been purposely kept in ignorance. It
appears that Trant, my butler, has a nephew who is billiard marker at
the _King’s Head_ hotel in Mapleford. The two had not seen each other
for some months till they met the other day. Then the young man
revealed to his uncle certain facts which the latter deemed it his duty
at once to lay before me. It seems that on two or three afternoons in
each week, presumably when his lessons are over at the vicarage, where
he generally stays for luncheon, Lewis finds his way to the billiard
room in question, which at that hour of the day is frequented by a
number of idle and fast young men, where he poses as the grandson of
Sir Gilbert Clare, and the great man of the company, treating all who
care to drink at his expense, in other words, everybody who happens to
be there. Nor is that all. One revelation led to another, and a little
questioning on my part elicited the fact that, for some weeks past,
Lewis has been in the habit, after he was supposed to have retired for
the night, of stealing out of the house by one of the back entrances
and making his way to the saddle-room, where he and Snell, a groom whom
I took into my service about a year ago (for I keep a couple of horses
still, although I make very little use of them), are in the habit of
hobnobbing together over short pipes and whisky till long after
midnight. Needless to say, Snell was packed off at a moment’s notice,
although I hold that he was by far the less blameworthy of the two.”
“This is dreadful. Have you spoken to your grandson?”
“Not yet—not yet,” answered Sir Gilbert a little wearily, “I have,
perhaps weakly, delayed doing so. It is not merely a question of what I
ought to say to him; that is a very simple matter—but of what I ought
to do, in short, of what steps it behoves me to take in order to break
him of his wretched propensities at once and for ever. That he will
make me all sorts of fine promises I do not doubt, but can I trust his
promises? I am afraid not. At the time he may fully intend to keep
them, but the moment temptation comes in his way they will be powerless
to restrain him. Of late I have made it my business to study him. He
puzzled me at first, but after Trant’s revelation—well, well!” He was
silent and sat rubbing one hand slowly and softly within the other, a
look of perplexity and distress clouding his grand old features. Then
after a pause he added with an unwonted quaver in his voice: “He is my
grandson and I cannot cast him adrift. To do so now, to relegate him to
the position from which I raised him, would merely be to put a premium
on his ruin.”
To this Lady Pell apparently found nothing to reply.
For the last few minutes, the sound of music had reached them from the
drawing-room, but now came a burst of song, so clear, so sweet, so
penetrating, that they both listened, spell-bound. Not a word passed
between them till the song had come to an end. Then Sir Gilbert said:
“I have not enjoyed anything so much for a long time. Miss Thursby is
not only possessed of an exquisite organ, but she has been taught how
to use it to the best advantage. She sings with taste, _brio_ and
expression. In her, Louisa, you have evidently secured a treasure.”
“She’s a dear, good girl—which is far better than having an exquisite
organ, as you term it—and if she were my own daughter could scarcely
love her more than I do.”
“The sun has set, and the evening is growing chilly; suppose we go
indoors. Miss Thursby must sing to us again.”
Miss Thursby was only too pleased to find that her song had afforded
Sir Gilbert so much pleasure, and, at his request, she sang again and
again, Luigi standing by her meanwhile and turning over her music. A
spell was upon him, under the influence of which he felt as if he
scarcely knew himself. Emotions and feelings were at work within him to
which he had heretofore been a stranger. He caught flying gleams of
something higher and better than existence had yet revealed to him. He
thought of “Miss J.” and scorned himself for his fatuity.
Outside on the terrace it was grey dusk. The long windows were still
wide open. A single lamp had been lighted in the drawing-room, which
shone on the two figures at the piano. In the semi-obscurity which
shrouded the rest of the room, sat Sir Gilbert and Lady Pell, dim
figures faintly outlined. Miss Thursby, at Sir Gilbert’s request, was
singing “Robin Adair.” She had just begun the second verse when all in
the room were startled by three or four piercing shrieks following
quickly on each other, and evidently proceeding from someone on the
terrace. Ethel stopped singing on the moment and sprang to her feet, as
did Lady Pell. Sir Gilbert, with surprising agility for a man of his
years, made a dash for the open window, followed more leisurely by
Luigi. But scarcely had the Baronet set foot on the terrace before a
female figure almost literally stumbled into his arms. So taken aback
was he that he could only splutter out: “What! what! Who are you?
What’s amiss?”
At the sound of his voice the girl—who was none other than Bessie
Ogden, the under-housemaid—started back as if she had been shot, and
although she was shaking in every limb and the pallor of her face was
discernible through the dusk, she contrived to bob a little curtsey.
“Oh, sir,” she said, “I humbly beg your pardon. I had no idea it was
you I run against, but I was so frightened that I quite lost my head.”
“But what was it that frightened you?” demanded Sir Gilbert, who had
recognised the girl, a little impatiently.
Then Bessie, half crying and still trembling from the shock she had
undergone, contrived to tell her tale. It had been her “afternoon out,”
and in coming back she had taken a short cut across the terrace (which
she had no business to do), and when opposite the drawing-room windows
had been confronted by a tall, dark, hooded figure, which had appeared
suddenly from behind a clump of evergreens, and, a few seconds later,
had vanished as mysteriously as it had come.
By this time Trant and Mrs. Burton, followed by the rest of the
servants, had appeared on the scene, drawn thither by Bessie’s shrieks.
Sir Gilbert gave vent to an impatient snort. “Here, Mrs. Burton,” he
said in a tone of grave displeasure, “take this idiot away and give her
a good talking to. If I hear any more of this nonsense she shall be
sent about her business at a moment’s notice.”
Lady Pell, Ethel, and Luigi were standing together just outside the
window.
“It is the Grey Brother whom the girl believes she has seen.”
“And who is the Grey Brother, Lady Pell, if I may take the liberty of
asking?” queried Luigi.
Lady Pell bit her lip. She had spoken aloud without intending to do so.
“The Grey Brother, Mr. Clare, is the family spectre,” she said behind
her fan. “But not a word of this before your grandfather, unless you
wish to have your head snapped off.”