When she had ended her repast with two hothouse nectarines, her
brother was announced, to her great vexation. She never saw Ronnie
very willingly and now less willing than ever, for his position with
regard to her and her children was one which could not have made him a
_persona gratâ_ even had he been less outspoken and uncompromising than
he was. At the present moment he was especially unwelcome to her; but
as he had come upstairs disregarding the servants’ endeavors to induce
him to wait while they inquired their mistress’s pleasure, he had
entered the room before she had quite finished her second nectarine,
and it was impossible to order him to go away as he came. He had come
on business.
There was a great deal of business concerning little Jack’s succession,
the many burdens already laid thereon, and the various projects
which were in consideration for turning to the best account the long
minority. Then there were her own jointure, her own rights and claims,
her own debts. The views which he had been afforded from time to time
of hers and Cocky’s affairs had been but partial; nothing had ever been
completely divulged to him, neither Cocky or she could ever tell the
exact truth--it was not in them. Therefore, although Hurstmanceaux had
known a good deal of their embarrassments he had not known many matters
which now appalled him when they came before him in the dry, cold prose
of legal fact, and he had not spared his sister the complete expression
of his supreme amazement and supreme disgust.
Their interviews were therefore neither gay nor cordial, and she did
not assume a contentment which she was so far from feeling, as his
entrance made the claret seem corked and the nectarine seem sour.
After the statement of the especial piece of legal business which had
brought him there that morning, the letting on a long lease of the
dower-house at Staghurst, for which her signature was necessary,
Hurstmanceaux, standing on the hearth in the same attitude he had
assumed when he had recommended Black Hazel, said very simply and very
curtly to her:
“You let the dower-house instead of living in it. Will you tell me
where you do mean to live?”
She frowned; she hated direct questions, they were so ill-bred.
“Live?” she repeated. “Oh, I don’t know at all. Of course I shall be a
good deal here----”
“By here do you mean in this house?”
“I dare say--I don’t know; I have not thought about it.”
“You had better think. The rent of this house is fifteen hundred a
year. Happily it was only taken by the year. I have told them it will
not be required next year.”
“Very officious of you!” she said with a chilly smile. “I have a right
to Otterbourne House.”
“Not the smallest right.”
“That is absurd.”
“It is law.”
“Is it true you have let it to Mannheim?”
“Quite true.”
Mannheim was the ambassador of the Russian Emperor.
“All these things are no concern of yours,” said Hurstmanceaux gravely.
“Pray give your attention to what does concern you. Your jointure is
a narrow one. Out of it you should surrender two thousand a year for
twenty years to pay off your personal debts. How can you keep on any
London house on what will be left to you? Of course the children live
with you and bring you in something, but very little, for there is next
to nothing at present; the charges on the estate are so heavy, as we
demonstrated to you the other day. What will you do if you can’t break
yourself in to some sort of economy and sacrifice?”
She deigned no reply. She had really none ready. She was only
intensely, bitterly, furiously angry. If she could not live in the way
she liked she did not care to live at all.
She was very pale, with the pallor of deep anger; her lips were white
and her blue eyes dark and flashing. How she hated everybody! How
above all she hated that little dead beast who had left her tied hand
and foot like this!
“Surely you must see,” her brother said with pain, “that in the
position in which I stand toward you I must be more strict with you, my
sister, than it might be necessary to be with a stranger?”
“How exactly like your priggish humbug!” she cried furiously. “Nobody
else would take such a view. What is the use of connections if they
don’t make things smooth?”
“I am well aware that it is the only purpose of my own existence in
your eyes,” said Hurstmanceaux; “you have taught me that long ago. But
I am afraid you will find others less indulgent than I have been, and I
am sorry to say, whether you understand it or not, I cannot myself be
indulgent to you at the expense of your sons.”
She gave an impatient gesture. “You always get on your moral
hobbyhorse,” she said insolently. “I believe there was never such a
prig in all creation. I wish you would go away. You are wasting for me
all this fine morning.”
There was silence between them. Hurstmanceaux broke it by a question he
was half afraid to put.
“I have to apologize for asking you, but I should be glad to know--I
suppose you mean to marry Brancepeth?”
She threw back her head and looked at him with distended nostrils
breathing defiance.
“Pray why should I marry Lord Brancepeth?”
Hurstmanceaux hesitated; he was astonished and embarrassed.
“Well, everybody expects you to do so; it would be natural and proper
that you should; it is the only thing you can do to--to----”
He paused; he had never spoken to her of Brancepeth, it hurt him to do
so; he grew red with embarrassment for her. He could not have used any
words which could have stung, infuriated and embittered her more than
these unfortunate and far too candid phrases. Coming after the scene of
an hour before, they were like petroleum poured on a leaping flame.
“Lord Brancepeth did me the honor to offer me his hand a few minutes
ago; I refused it,” she said between her teeth. “I am entirely at a
loss to know why you and ‘everybody’ consider that I ought to marry a
penniless guardsman who has nothing to recommend him but a handsome
face.”
“By heaven! That’s cool.”
Hurstmanceaux, as he muttered the involuntary words, stared down on her
too astonished to say more, too completely stupefied and taken aback to
be aware of the indelicacy of his own astonishment.
“Have you any more suggestions to make?” she said with her utmost
insolence.
“Unhappily, I have to speak to you about a very unpleasant thing,” said
Hurstmanceaux and paused.
“You never speak of anything that is not unpleasant by any chance,”
said his sister. “Bray unburden yourself.”
“Well then,” said Hurstmanceaux, not softened by her manner, “briefly,
I must ask you to be so good as to give up the family jewels out of
your keeping; the bank will send for them by our orders on Monday.”
She was prepared for the question.
“I have always had the use of them,” she replied very calmly,
“precedent makes possession.”
“No, it does not. The late duke never gave you by signature, nor before
witnesses, any interest in them or any right of user. He let you wear
them as he might have lent me a horse, but the horse having been lent
to me would not have become mine through that loan. The jewels are tied
up by settlement, and go with the real estate. Your husband renewed
that settlement on his deathbed and the jewels go to Jack with the rest
of the real estate. Do I make myself clear?”
“The little beast!” said Jack’s mother between her teeth.
“I do not know why you should call your child bad names. He is _your_
child, there can be no doubt about that. Failing Jack, his brother
succeeds. It is not Jack personally who causes you this annoyance, it
is the settlement under his father and grandfather’s will. It would be
just the same if you had no sons and if Lord Alberic succeeded.”
Mouse gave a fierce, nervous, impatient gesture.
“Why was I allowed to have the jewels, then, at all if I am to be made
ridiculous by having them taken away from me?”
“It would have been better if you had not had them, no doubt. But the
duke was always good-natured and indulgent, and your husband was of
course perfectly aware that the jewels were protected by settlement;
he renewed the settlement on his deathbed. Besides, the great Indian
diamond is not an ordinary jewel--it is a fortune in itself.”
She was prepared for this or some similar remark and did not flinch.
“It is precisely that which is so annoying,” she replied. “That jewel
is so conspicuous; to appear without it at a drawing-room or any
function of any importance would be absurd--odious. Surely some way can
be found to leave me the usage of them until the boy’s majority?”
“No way at all,” said Hurstmanceaux sternly. “They will go to Coutts’s,
and stay there until his majority. By the way, where are they now?”
“In my jewel-safe,” she answered sullenly.
“What imprudence!”
“It has a Chubb’s lock.”
“Why did you not keep them at the bank? Nobody wears such jewels as
these every evening.”
“I wear them very often.”
Something aggressive in her tone aroused her brother.
“You will not wear them any more,” he said harshly. “You must learn to
realize that they do not belong to you.”
“I shall dispute that fact before the court.”
“What court?”
“I do not know yet, but some court--some court which sees to such
things.”
“Pray be reasonable. You have not an inch of ground to stand on; there
is the settlement renewed every generation; the jewels are chattels and
the chattels are devised to the heir; they go with the dukedom.”
“I shall see Mr. Gregge.”
“Pray do. Mr. Gregge is not a very scrupulous man, but he is a man of
sense, and he will not tell you to run your head against a stone wall.”
“If he do not do his duty, I shall employ someone else.”
“No decent attorney in the three kingdoms would take up such a case.
You have no more title to the Otterbourne jewels than the woman selling
primroses at the corner of the street.”
“So _you_ say.”
“It is not what I say, it is what the law says; what the dead men’s
wills say; what the Lord Chancellor himself would say if he were asked.
You are a person accustomed to do whatever you like and to bewitch
any man who approaches you, but you will find there are some things
stronger than yourself, and one of them is the common law of England,
which in this instance is dead against you.”
With these words he rose.
Then, with one of those audacious inspirations which might have made
her a great general had she been a man, she added between her teeth--
“Perhaps you would like to see them and convince yourself of their
safety? Will you come to my room? The safe is screwed to its stand.”
She spoke without apprehension because she knew that the false diamonds
would defy detection by anyone except an expert. Hurstmanceaux was
reassured by the frankness of the offer.
“No, oh, no!” he said less coldly. “I will of course take your word for
it that they are all there.”
“You are really too confiding,” said his sister very contemptuously.
She rose also with tightened teeth, dilated nostrils, flashing eyes.
“Your conduct is infamous! To insult your own sister!”
“There is no insult,” said Hurstmanceaux. “An honest woman would not
want to be asked twice to give up what is not her own.”
“Out of my presence!” she cried with a shrill sound in her voice like
that of the wind as it rises in storm.
“With pleasure,” said her brother very coldly. “To-morrow is Sunday.
On Monday at ten o’clock in the morning they will come from the bank
for the jewels, and you will consult your own interests best by giving
them up without more of this folly; we shall have them valued afresh by
Hunt and Roskell, for values change with time.”
“Out of my presence, and never dare to enter it again so long as
you live!” she said with fury, whilst she twisted her handkerchief
between her hands as though it were Jack’s little throat that she was
strangling.
Hurstmanceaux shrugged his shoulders, bowed to her slightly, and went
out of the room.
To a more suspicious man the impression that she had some worse motive
for her opposition than a mere vain reluctance to part with these
ornaments would have suggested itself; but he was not suspicious, and
he knew that women of her type would sell their souls to be smarter
than their neighbors.
“Cocky only put me in his will,” he thought ruefully, “because he knew
that I was up to her tricks, and should put the curb on her for the
young un’s sake.”
He did his duty loyally; but the doing of it was extremely disagreeable
to him. He could not help being fond of her; he never could wholly
forget the time when she had been a little, saucy, lovely, bewitching
child, resting her golden curls on his shoulder when he went home from
Eton or Oxford.