THE SHADOW OF RUIN
Mr. Quest walked to his vestry meeting with a smile upon his thin,
gentlemanly-looking face, and rage and bitterness in his heart.
“I caught her that time,” he said to himself; “she can do a good deal
in the way of deceit, but she can’t keep the blood out of her cheeks
when she hears that fellow’s name. But she is a clever woman, Belle is
—how well she managed that little business of the luncheon, and how
well she fought her case when once she got me in a cleft stick about
Edith and that money of hers, and made good terms too. Ah! that’s the
worst of it, she has the whip hand of me there; if I could ruin her she
could ruin me, and it’s no use cutting off one’s nose to spite your
face. Well! my fine lady,” he went on with an ominous flash of his grey
eyes, “I shall be even with you yet. Give you enough rope and you will
hang yourself. You love this fellow, I know that, and it will go hard
if I can’t make him break your heart for you. Bah! you don’t know the
sort of stuff men are made of. If only I did not happen to be in love
with you myself I should not care. If——Ah! here I am at the church.”
The human animal is a very complicated machine, and can conduct the
working of an extraordinary number of different interests and sets of
ideas, almost, if not entirely, simultaneously. For instance, Mr.
Quest—seated at the right hand of the rector in the vestry room of the
beautiful old Boisingham Church, and engaged in an animated and even
warm discussion with the senior curate on the details of fourteenth
century Church work, in which he clearly took a lively interest and
understood far better than did the curate—would have been exceedingly
difficult to identify with the scheming, vindictive creature whom we
have just followed up the church path. But after all, that is the way
of human nature, although it may not be the way of those who try to
draw it and who love to paint the villain black as the Evil One and the
virtuous heroine so radiant that we begin to fancy we can hear the
whispering of her wings. Few people are altogether good or altogether
bad; indeed it is probable that the vast majority are neither good nor
bad—they have not the strength to be the one or the other. Here and
there, however, we do meet a spirit with sufficient will and
originality to press the scale down this way or that, though even then
the opposing force, be it good or evil, is constantly striving to bring
the balance equal. Even the most wicked men have their redeeming points
and righteous instincts, nor are their thoughts continually fixed upon
iniquity. Mr. Quest, for instance, one of the evil geniuses of this
history, was, where his plots and passions were not immediately
concerned, a man of eminently generous and refined tendencies. Many
were the good turns, contradictory as it may seem, that he had done to
his poorer neighbours; he had even been known to forego his bills of
costs, which is about the highest and rarest exhibition of earthly
virtue that can be expected from a lawyer. He was moreover eminently a
cultured man, a reader of the classics, in translations if not in the
originals, a man with a fine taste in fiction and poetry, and a really
sound and ripe archaeological knowledge, especially where sacred
buildings were concerned. All his instincts, also, were towards
respectability. His most burning ambition was to secure a high position
in the county in which he lived, and to be classed among the resident
gentry. He hated his lawyer’s work, and longed to accumulate sufficient
means to be able to give it the good-bye and to indulge himself in an
existence of luxurious and learned leisure. Such as he was he had made
himself, for he was the son of a poor and inferior country dentist, and
had begun life with a good education, it is true, which he chiefly owed
to his own exertions, but with nothing else. Had his nature been a
temperate nature with a balance of good to its credit to draw upon
instead of a balance of evil, he was a man who might have gone very far
indeed, for in addition to his natural ability he had a great power of
work. But unfortunately this was not the case; his instincts on the
whole were evil instincts, and his passions—whether of hate, or love,
or greed, when they seized him did so with extraordinary violence,
rendering him for the time being utterly callous to the rights or
feelings of others, provided that he attained his end. In short, had he
been born to a good position and a large fortune, it is quite possible,
providing always that his strong passions had not at some period of his
life led him irremediably astray, that he would have lived virtuous and
respected, and died in good odour, leaving behind him a happy memory.
But fate had placed him in antagonism with the world, and yet had
endowed him with a gnawing desire to be of the world, as it appeared
most desirable to him; and then, to complete his ruin circumstances had
thrown him into temptations from which inexperience and the headlong
strength of his passions gave him no opportunity to escape.
It may at first appear strange that a man so calculating and whose
desires seemed to be fixed upon such a material end as the acquirement
by artifice or even fraud of the wealth which he coveted, should also
nourish in his heart so bitter a hatred and so keen a thirst for
revenge upon a woman as Mr. Quest undoubtedly did towards his beautiful
wife. It would have seemed more probable that he would have left
heroics alone and attempted to turn his wife’s folly into a means of
wealth and self-advancement: and this would no doubt have been so had
Mrs. Quest’s estimate of his motives in marrying her been an entirely
correct one. She had told Edward Cossey, it will be remembered, that
her husband had married her for her money—the ten thousand pounds of
which he stood so badly in need. Now this was the truth to a certain
extent, and a certain extent only. He had wanted the ten thousand
pounds, in fact at the moment money was necessary to him. But, and this
his wife had never known or realised, he had been, and still was, also
in love with her. Possibly the ten thousand pounds would have proved a
sufficient inducement to him without the love, but the love was none
the less there. Their relations, however, had never been happy ones.
She had detested him from the first, and had not spared to say so. No
man with any refinement—and whatever he lacked Mr. Quest had
refinement—could bear to be thus continually repulsed by a woman, and
so it came to pass that their intercourse had always been of the most
strained nature. Then when she at last had obtained the clue to the
secret of his life, under threat of exposure she drove her bargain, of
which the terms were complete separation in all but outward form, and
virtual freedom of action for herself. This, considering the position,
she was perhaps justified in doing, but her husband never forgave her
for it. More than that, he determined, if by any means it were
possible, to turn the passion which, although she did not know it, he
was perfectly aware she bore towards his business superior, Edward
Cossey, to a refined instrument of vengeance against her, with what
success it will be one of the purposes of this history to show.
Such, put as briefly as possible, were the outlines of the character
and aims of this remarkable and contradictory man.
Within an hour and a half of leaving his own house, “The Oaks,” as it
was called, although the trees from which it had been so named had long
since vanished from the garden, Mr. Quest was bowling swiftly along
behind Edward Cossey’s powerful bay horse towards the towering gateway
of Honham Castle. When he was within three hundred yards an idea struck
him; he pulled the horse up sharply, for he was alone in the dogcart,
and paused to admire the view.
“What a beautiful place!” he reflected to himself with enthusiasm, “and
how grandly those old towers stand out against the sky. The Squire has
restored them very well, too, there is no doubt about it; I could not
have done it better myself. I wonder if that place will ever be mine.
Things look black now, but they may come round, and I think I am
beginning to see my way.”
And then he started the horse on again, reflecting on the unpleasant
nature of the business before him. Personally he both liked and
respected the old Squire, and he certainly pitied him, though he would
no more have dreamed of allowing his liking and pity to interfere with
the prosecution of his schemes, than an ardent sportsman would dream of
not shooting pheasants because he had happened to take a friendly
interest in their nurture. He had also a certain gentlemanlike distaste
to being the bearer of crushing bad news, for Mr. Quest disliked
scenes, possibly because he had such an intimate personal acquaintance
with them. Whilst he was still wondering how he might best deal with
the matter, he passed over the moat and through the ancient gateway
which he admired so fervently, and found himself in front of the hall
door. Here he pulled up, looking about for somebody to take his horse,
when suddenly the Squire himself emerged upon him with a rush.
“Hullo, Quest, is that you?” he shouted, as though his visitor had been
fifty yards off instead of five. “I have been looking out for you.
Here, William! William!” (crescendo), “William!” (fortissimo), “where
on earth is the boy? I expect that idle fellow, George, has been
sending him on some of his errands instead of attending to them
himself. Whenever he is wanted to take a horse he is nowhere to be
found, and then it is 'Please, sir, Mr. George,’ that’s what he calls
him, ‘Please, sir, Mr. George sent me up to the Moat Farm or somewhere
to see how many eggs the hens laid last week,’ or something of the
sort. That’s a very nice horse you have got there, by the way, very
nice indeed.”
“It is not my horse, Mr. de la Molle,” said the lawyer, with a faint
smile, “it is Mr. Edward Cossey’s.”
“Oh! it’s Mr. Edward Cossey’s, is it?” answered the old gentleman with
a sudden change of voice. “Ah, Mr. Edward Cossey’s? Well, it’s a very
good horse anyhow, and I suppose that Mr. Cossey can afford to buy good
horses.”
Just then a faint cry of “Coming, sir, coming,” was heard, and a long
hobble-de-hoy kind of youth, whose business it was to look after the
not extensive Castle stables, emerged in a great heat from round the
corner of the house.
“Now, where on earth have you been?” began the Squire, in a stentorian
tone.
“If you please, sir, Mr. George——”
“There, what did I tell you?” broke in the Squire. “Have I not told you
time after time that you are to mind your own business, and leave ‘Mr.
George’ to mind his? Now take that horse round to the stables, and see
that it is properly fed.
“Come, Quest, come in. We have a quarter of an hour before luncheon,
and can get our business over,” and he led the way through the passage
into the tapestried and panelled vestibule, where he took his stand
before the empty fireplace.
Mr. Quest followed him, stopping, ostensibly to admire a particularly
fine suit of armour which hung upon the wall, but really to gain
another moment for reflection.
“A beautiful suit of the early Stuart period, Mr. de la Molle,” he
said; “I never saw a better.”
“Yes, yes, that belonged to old Sir James, the one whom the Roundheads
shot.”
“What! the Sir James who hid the treasure?”
“Yes. I was telling that story to our new neighbour, Colonel Quaritch,
last night—a very nice fellow, by the way; you should go and call upon
him.”
“I wonder what he did with it,” said Mr. Quest.
“Ah, so do I, and so will many another, I dare say. I wish that I could
find it, I’m sure. It’s wanted badly enough now-a-days. But that
reminds me, Quest. You will have gathered my difficulty from my note
and what George told you. You see this man Janter—thanks to that
confounded fellow, Major Boston, and his action about those College
Lands—has thrown up the Moat Farm, and George tells me that there is
not another tenant to be had for love or money. In fact, you know what
it is, one can’t get tenants now-a-days, they simply are not to be had.
Well, under these circumstances, there is, of course, only one thing to
be done that I know of, and that is to take the farm in hand and farm
it myself. It is quite impossible to let the place fall out of
cultivation—and that is what would happen otherwise, for if I were to
lay it down in grass it would cost a considerable sum, and be seven or
eight years before I got any return.”
The Squire paused and Mr. Quest said nothing.
“Well,” he went on, “that being so, the next thing to do is to obtain
the necessary cash to pay Janter his valuation and stock the
place—about four thousand would do it, or perhaps,” he added, with an
access of generous confidence, “we had better say five. There are about
fifty acres of those low-lying meadows which want to be thoroughly bush
drained—bushes are quite as good as pipes for that stiff land, if they
put in the right sort of stuff, and it don’t cost half so much—but
still it can’t be done for nothing, and then there is a new wagon shed
wanted, and some odds and ends; yes, we had better say five thousand.”
Still Mr. Quest made no answer, so once more the Squire went on.
“Well, you see, under these circumstances—not being able to lay hands
upon the necessary capital from my private resources, of course I have
made up my mind to apply to Cossey and Son for the loan. Indeed,
considering how long and intimate has been the connection between their
house and the de la Molle family, I think it right and proper to do so;
indeed, I should consider it very wrong of me if I neglected to give
them the opportunity of the investment”—here a faint smile flickered
for an instant on Mr. Quest’s face and then went out—“of course they
will, as a matter of business, require security, and very properly so,
but as this estate is unentailed, there will fortunately be very little
difficulty about that. You can draw up the necessary deeds, and I think
that under the circumstances the right thing to do would be to charge
the Moat Farm specifically with the amount. Things are bad enough, no
doubt, but I can hardly suppose it possible under any conceivable
circumstances that the farm would not be good for five thousand pounds.
However, they might perhaps prefer to have a general clause as well,
and if it is so, although I consider it quite unnecessary, I shall
raise no objection to that course.”
Then at last Mr. Quest broke his somewhat ominous silence.
“I am very sorry to say, Mr. de la Molle,” he said gently, “that I can
hold out no prospect of Cossey and Son being induced, under any
circumstances, to advance another pound upon the security of the Honham
Castle estates. Their opinion of the value of landed property as
security has received so severe a shock, that they are not at all
comfortable as to the safety of the amount already invested.”
Mr. de la Molle started when he heard this most unexpected bit of news,
for which he was totally unprepared. He had always found it possible to
borrow money, and it had never occurred to him that a time might
perhaps come in this country, when the land, which he held in almost
superstitious veneration, would be so valueless a form of property that
lenders would refuse it as security.
“Why,” he said, recovering himself, “the total encumbrances on the
property do not amount to more than twenty-five thousand pounds, and
when I succeeded to my father, forty years ago, it was valued at fifty,
and the Castle and premises have been thoroughly repaired since then at
a cost of five thousand, and most of the farm buildings too.”
“Very possibly, de la Molle, but to be honest, I very much doubt if
Honham Castle and the lands round it would now fetch twenty-five
thousand pounds on a forced sale. Competition and Radical agitation
have brought estates down more than people realise, and land in
Australia and New Zealand is now worth almost as much per acre as
cultivated lands in England. Perhaps as a residential property and on
account of its historical interest it might fetch more, but I doubt it.
In short, Mr. de la Molle, so anxious are Cossey and Son in the matter,
that I regret to have to tell you that so far from being willing to
make a further advance, the firm have formally instructed me to serve
the usual six months’ notice on you, calling in the money already
advanced on mortgage, together with the interest, which I must remind
you is nearly a year overdue, and this step I propose to take
to-morrow.”
The old gentleman staggered for a moment, and caught at the
mantelpiece, for the blow was a heavy one, and as unexpected as it was
heavy. But he recovered himself in an instant, for it was one of the
peculiarities of his character that his spirits always seemed to rise
to the occasion in the face of urgent adversity—in short, he possessed
an extraordinary share of moral courage.
“Indeed,” he said indignantly, “indeed, it is a pity that you did not
tell me that at once, Mr. Quest; it would have saved me from putting
myself in a false position by proposing a business arrangement which is
not acceptable. As regards the interest, I admit that it is as you say,
and I very much regret it. That stupid fellow George is always so
dreadfully behindhand with his accounts that I can never get anything
settled.” (He did not state, and indeed did not know, that the reason
that the unfortunate George was behindhand was that there were no
accounts to make up, or rather that they were all on the wrong side of
the ledger). “I will have that matter seen to at once. Of course,
business people are quite right to consider their due, and I do not
blame Messrs. Cossey in the matter, not in the least. Still, I must say
that, considering the long and intimate relationship that has for
nearly two centuries existed between their house and my family, they
might—well—have shown a little more consideration.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Quest, “I daresay that the step strikes you as a harsh
one. To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. de la Molle, it struck me as a
very harsh one; but, of course, I am only a servant, and bound to carry
out my instructions. I sympathise with you very much—very much indeed.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” said the old gentleman. “Of course, other
arrangements must be made; and, much as it will pain me to terminate my
connection with Messrs. Cossey, they shall be made.”
“But I think,” went on the lawyer, without any notice of his
interruption, “that you misunderstand the matter a little. Cossey and
Son are only a trading corporation, whose object is to make money by
lending it, or otherwise—at all hazards to make money. The kind of
feeling that you allude to, and that might induce them, in
consideration of long intimacy and close connection in the past, to
forego the opportunity of so doing and even to run a risk of loss, is a
thing which belongs to former generations. But the present is a
strictly commercial age, and we are the most commercial of the trading
nations. Cossey and Son move with the times, that is all, and they
would rather sell up a dozen families who had dealt with them for two
centuries than lose five hundred pounds, provided, of course, that they
could do so without scandal and loss of public respect, which, where a
banking house is concerned, also means a loss of custom. I am a great
lover of the past myself, and believe that our ancestors’ ways of doing
business were, on the whole, better and more charitable than ours, but
I have to make my living and take the world as I find it, Mr. de la
Molle.”
“Quite so, Quest; quite so,” answered the Squire quietly. “I had no
idea that you looked at these matters in such a light. Certainly the
world has changed a good deal since I was a young man, and I do not
think it has changed much for the better. But you will want your
luncheon; it is hungry work talking about foreclosures.” Mr. Quest had
not used this unpleasant word, but the Squire had seen his drift. “Come
into the next room,” and he led the way to the drawing-room, where Ida
was sitting reading the _Times_.
“Ida,” he said, with an affectation of heartiness which did not,
however, deceive his daughter, who knew how to read every change of her
dear father’s face, “here is Mr. Quest. Take him in to luncheon, my
love. I will come presently. I want to finish a note.”
Then he returned to the vestibule and sat down in his favourite old oak
chair.
“Ruined,” he said to himself. “I can never get the money as things are,
and there will be a foreclosure. Well, I am an old man and I hope that
I shall not live to see it. But there is Ida. Poor Ida! I cannot bear
to think of it, and the old place too, after all these
generations—after all these generations!”