In the month of August Lord Roxhall, who was at Arcachon with his wife,
ostensibly for health, in reality to cut short the expenses of a season
in town, received amongst his correspondence a letter in a black-edged
envelope addressed in a clear firm handwriting which was unknown to
him, and bearing the postmark of his own country town, that town which
William Massarene’s funeral had recently passed through in such pomp
and glory.
The letter astonished him, and he read it twice, incredulous of its
meaning and wondering vaguely if it were genuine.
It was dated from Vale Royal and worded thus:
“MY DEAR LORD ROXHALL,
“_Pardon me that I have not earlier replied to your very kind letter
of condolence on the terrible death of my father. Under his will I
unfortunately become sole owner of all he possessed. He purchased
this estate of Vale Royal of you, and I inherit it with the rest. I
do not think we have done any harm here; we have perhaps done some
material good, but the people on the estate dislike us and despise
us. I quite understand and do not blame their feeling. I like and
respect it. They are as faithful to you as Highlanders to Charles
Edward. I cannot remain here, for neither my mother nor I care to
reside amongst a justly disaffected population. My poor father bought
your estate at a fair price no doubt; but it will never be morally
or righteously ours. There are some things of which no amount of
money can legalize the sale to a sensitive conscience. Will you
do me a favor? Will you buy it back? I should only require half
the purchase-money, and should be much obliged to you to let the
other half remain on mortgage on the estate. I believe the value of
land is decreased since he bought it, and of course you would have
a valuation taken. Or I should be happy to comply with any other
conditions which might be more suitable to you. In any way if you
will take it off my hands as soon as the law permits me to dispose of
it, I shall be greatly indebted and relieved of a heavy burden; for
no one can do any good on a property where all the occupants of the
soil are their enemies. So entirely is my mother, as well as myself,
convinced of this fact that we shall leave the place, never to return
to it, in a few days’ time, and the house will remain closed. I hope
that you will before long go back to it._
“_I remain, sincerely yours_,
“KATHERINE MASSARENE.”
He was breakfasting under the pine trees, his wife was opposite to him
at a small round table. The letter astonished him and affected him,
he discerned the generosity which was ill-concealed under its effort
to make the offer seem to the advantage of the writer. When he had
pondered over it for some minutes he passed it over the table to his
companion.
“She would give it to us if she dared,” he said as his wife took it.
She read it quickly at a glance, as women do read, and looked up, the
color rising in her face, her eyes radiant with hope.
“Oh, Gerald! Can you do it?”
“Do you care so much?” said Roxhall; his own voice was unsteady.
Lady Roxhall leaned her elbow on the table and covered her eyes with
her hand to hide her emotion from the passers-by in the hotel garden.
“I could not tell you all I have suffered; I tried to conceal it; if it
were only to have left the grave of Lillias to strangers----”
“You good little thing, to have been so silent!” said Roxhall, touched
and grateful.
“Shall we go back, Gerald?” his wife murmured, her heart beating with
mingled fear and hope.
“I think I could do it,” answered Roxhall. “At least, if it is fair to
take her offer. One must not come over this young woman because she is
generous. Yes; I think with great pinching we could do it.”
“I would live on bread and water all my life to go back!” said his wife
with a force he had never known in her.
“I ought never to have sold it,” said Roxhall, his thoughts reverting
to his cousin’s wiles. He took up the letter and read it again.
“She would like to give it to us,” he said a second time. “How very
odd that such an unutterable cad as that man Massarene was should have
such a daughter. I think I had better go to London to-night and see our
lawyers. I will get the old place back somehow, if it’s fair to her.”
“Yes, one must be fair to her,” said his wife, and added with remorse,
“And to think how rude I have always been to her! I turned my back on
them all three at the late State concert, just a week before the man
was assassinated.”
Roxhall laughed and got up to go and look at the railway time-table,
and she rose too, and to avoid her many acquaintances went to walk by
herself in the woods and commune with her own heart, and her longing
to return to Vale Royal, and her wistful memories of her little dead
child, Lillias. She was a gentle, brave, tender-hearted woman who had
suffered much and concealed her sufferings courageously from both her
husband and her world.
At the end of that month Katherine Massarene had ceased for a time her
painful self-imposed task and gone down to Bournemouth, where she had
taken a house for the autumn and winter; a villa in a pine-wood which
looked on to the sea. It was a pretty place but to her mother it seemed
a poor nutshell after the spaciousness and splendor of Harrenden House
and Vale Royal. The diminished establishment, the comparatively empty
stables, the loss of Richemont and his satellites, were at once a
relief and an offence to her.
“One would think poor William had been sold up and we was livin’ on my
savings,” she said in indignation.
“My dear mother, you could not keep up this place under three thousand
a year,” said her daughter.
“And what’s that to us as had millions?” asked her mother.
Katherine thought of the primary plank hut at Kerosene City, but she
saw that her mother was in no mood to remember those primitive times.
The Bournemouth residence was really pretty and had a simple elegance
in it which was due to a great painter whose whim and pleasure it had
been; and it was a fitting retreat for two women in deep mourning. But
Margaret Massarene chose to consider it as a mixture of workhouse
and prison. Her fretfulness and incessant lamentation made her
companionship very trying, for it was the kind of obstinate discontent
with which no arguments can struggle with any chance of success. One
fine dim balmy morning, when the smell of the sea blended strongly with
the scent from the pine-woods, Katherine was alone in the large room
which had been the painter’s studio and was now set aside for her own
use, reading the still voluminous correspondence from her agents and
solicitors. A young footman, who had not the perfect training which Mr.
Winter had exacted in his underlings, opened the door and ushered in
unannounced a tall fair man, who stood in hesitation on the threshold.
“Lord Hurstmanceaux, ma’am,” said the young servant, and shut the door
behind the visitor’s back.
Katherine looked up from her heavily-laden writing-table, and was vexed
to feel that she changed color.
“My mother and I do not receive----” she said with some embarrassment.
Hurstmanceaux came across the room and stood on the other side of the
table.
“You have not drawn the check which I sent to you on Coutts’s,” he said
abruptly.
She answered merely “No.”
“And why not?”
“Because I do not choose to take that money.”
Hurstmanceaux’s face grew red and very stern.
“You insult me, Miss Massarene.”
“I do not mean to do so,” said Katherine gently. “I begged you not to
send it to me. My father, I am certain, never expected the duchess to
repay it.”
“That is very singular language. Do you mean that your father was on
terms with my sister which would justify him in making her such gifts?”
She was silent; that was her meaning but she could not say so.
“If you do think it, you must cease to think it,” said Ronald. “If
there were any man in your family----”
Katherine looked him straight in the eyes.
“Pray do not let the fact of my sex influence you. I dare say I have
many male relatives, but they are, I believe, navvies, and colliers,
and laborers, and the like, who would not be foemen worthy of your
patrician steel.”
She spoke with a certain cold and careless contempt which brought the
blood to his cheeks.
“You have full right to condemn my sister, but not to suppose what you
do not know,” he said with some embarrassment. “The debt was a matter
of business, as a matter of business I treat it, and refund the money
to you, who are the sole living representative of the dead creditor.”
“There are many debts due to him. I have cancelled them all. They are
all due from persons of your great world. He thought their suffrages
worth buying. I do not. And I think the people who sell oranges and
apples in the streets are superior to those who sell their prestige,
their patronage, or their company.”
Hurstmanceaux winced as he heard her, like a high-mettled horse flicked
with the whip.
“I am wholly of your opinion,” he said coldly. “But in this instance
the debt is paid so far as a debt ever can be; and you are bound to
take the payment of it. You are not bound to preserve silence on the
matter, but if you do so you will make me grateful.”
“I have told you that you may be certain of my silence,” she said, with
some impatience. “That is elementary honor which even I, low-born as I
am, can understand!”
“Honor does not require silence of you,” said Hurstmanceaux. “But such
silence will be a charity to us.”
“Call it what you will,” she replied curtly, “you may count on it.”
“If you are a gentlewoman, madam,” he added, in his coldest and most
courteous manner, “you must also understand that you render my position
insupportable unless you accept that money.”
She did not immediately reply. She had not thought of the matter from
his point of view. She reflected a little while, not looking at him,
then she said, briefly:
“Very well. It shall be as you wish.”
“I thank you,” he said, with embarrassment; and after a pause added, “I
thank you exceedingly.” Then he bowed distantly, and left her without
any additional words.
She sat in the same place for many minutes looking out over the grey
sea which gleamed between the stems of the pines. Then she rose and
went to a dispatch-box, in which she had placed all his sister’s
letters to her father, all proof of sums received by her, and all
William Massarene’s counterfoils of checks passed to her, and also the
worthless bills of Cocky.
She put all these together in a large envelope, sealed it carefully,
and sent it registered to the Duchess of Otterbourne at the post office
of Bergen, where she knew that the steam-yacht in which that lady had
gone to Norway was at anchor.
She thus put it out of her own power for ever, and out of the power of
any who might come after her, to prove the shame of Hurstmanceaux’s
best-beloved sister. “He will never be dishonored through us,” she
thought.
The voice of her mother startled her and jarred on her.
“That’s a handsome man as is gone out just now,” said Mrs. Massarene.
“’Tis the duchess’s brother, ain’t it?”
Katherine assented.
“He’s his sister’s good looks,” said Mrs. Massarene. “But he never
would know poor William. May one ask what he come about, my dear?”
“Only some business of his sister’s,” replied her daughter.
“He was always mighty high,” said Mrs. Massarene. “I hope you’re stand
off too. Let him feel as you’re your father’s daughter.”
Katherine shuddered in the warm, pine-scented, sea-impregnated air.
Mrs. Massarene, since the tyranny under which she had been repressed
so long had been removed from her, was a more self-asserting and
self-satisfied person. Her deep crape garments lent her in her own eyes
majesty and importance, despite the slur which the will had cast upon
her. She was William’s widow, a position which seemed to her second to
none in distinction. Death did for her lost spouse in her eyes what
it often does for the dead with tender-hearted survivors; it made his
cruelties dim and distant, it made his memory something which his
life certainly had never been. That burial by peers and princes had
been as a cloud of incense which was for ever rising about his manes.
Royalty would not have sent even its youngest and smallest officer of
the Household to represent it at any funeral which had not been the
wake of all the virtues. Those towering heaps of wreaths had been in
her view as a cairn burying out of sight all her husband’s misdeeds and
brutalities.
As ill-luck would have it, Daddy Gwyllian, who was staying at Cowes,
crossed over to Bournemouth that morning to see an invalid friend. He
was sauntering along in his light grey clothes, his straw hat, and his
yachting shoes, when as he passed the garden gateway of the villa which
Mrs. Massarene had hired, he encountered Ronald coming out of it.
“Ah! dear boy,” he cried, in his pleasantest manner. “Making it up
with the heiress, eh? Quite right. Quite right. Pity you’ve been so
stiff-necked about it all these years.”
Hurstmanceaux was extremely annoyed at this undesirable meeting. But he
had nothing that he could say which would not have made matters worse.
“Where did you spring from, Daddy?” he said impatiently. “You are
always appearing like a Jack in a box.”
“I make it a rule to be where my richest and laziest fellow-creatures
most congregate,” replied Daddy. “And that in the month of August is
the Solent. But come, Ronnie, let out a bit; you know I’m a very old
friend. What are you doing down here if you’re not paying court to Miss
Massarene?”
“I am certainly not paying court to Miss Massarene,” replied
Hurstmanceaux, very distantly. “I was obliged to see her on business.”
“Ah! Business is a very good antechamber to marriage,” said Daddy, with
a chuckle.
“It may be. I remain in the antechamber.”
“Tut, tut! Of course you say so. You are really becoming like other
people, Ronnie. I see you have sold your pictures!”
“Is that anyone’s affair but mine?”
“Well, yes, I think so. A sale is everybody’s affair. There’s nothing
sacred about it. I always told you they were wasted at Faldon. Nobody
saw ’em but spiders and mice.”
Hurstmanceaux was silent.
“What an uncommunicative beggar he is,” thought Daddy. “When one thinks
that I’ve known him ever since he was in knickerbockers with his hair
down to his waist!”
“Is it true that Roxhall buys back Vale Royal?” he asked.
“Ask Roxhall,” said Hurstmanceaux, “and I fear I must leave you now and
walk on faster to the station.”
But Gwyllian held him by the lappet of his coat.
“They do say,” he whispered, “that she’s almost given it to him. You
must know. Now do be frank, Ronnie.”
“Frankness does not necessitate the discussion of other people’s
affairs. Ask Roxhall’s wife; she is at Cowes; or go in and ask Miss
Massarene; you know her.”
He disengaged himself with some difficulty from the clinging hold of
Gwyllian’s white wrinkled fingers, and went onward to the station to
go to Southampton, where his yawl was awaiting him. Daddy looked at
the gate of the villa. Should he ring? No, he thought not. She was an
unpleasant woman to tackle, hedgehoggy and impenetrable; she would be
capable of saying to him, as Hurstmanceaux had done, that Roxhall’s
affairs were no business of his. She was one of those unnatural and
offensive persons who, having no curiosity themselves, regard curiosity
in others without sympathy, and even with disapproval. Daddy, feeling
ill-used and aggrieved, turned down a lane bordered by rhododendrons
and eucalyptus, and went to lunch with his sick friend, to whom he
imparted _sotto voce_ the fact that he thought Ronald would come round
and marry Miss Massarene.
“He’s always been such a crank,” added Daddy. “But he’s begun to sell.
That looks like coming to his senses--doing like other people.”
“It is certainly doing like many other people,” said his sick friend
with a sad smile, for he had seen his own collections go to the
hammer. When Gwyllian, a few hours later, went comfortably back over
the water in a steam-launch to East Cowes, he reflected as he glided
along on what he had heard. Being a sagacious person, he connected the
sale of the Faldon pictures with the visit to Katherine Massarene.
“He’s either paying some debt of his sister’s or he’s helping Roxhall
to buy back the place. He’s such a confounded fool, he’d give his head
away; and I dare say the young woman is sharp about money; wouldn’t be
her father’s daughter if she wasn’t.” So he came very nearly to the
truth in his own mind as he sat in the launch, whilst it wound in and
out among the craft in the roads.
It was no business of his, but Daddy Gwyllian had always found that
guessing what hands other people held was the most amusing way of
playing the rubber of life; at least, when you are old, and only a
looker-on at the tables.
“They do say she’s almost given it to him.” The words rang in Ronald’s
ears as he went on board his old yawl, the _Dianthus_, and crossed to
the island. Roxhall had not spoken to him of the matter; he only knew
what was, by that time, table-talk, that Vale Royal was to return to
its original owner so soon as the law permitted Katherine Massarene
to dispose of any portion of her inheritance. Meantime, the house was
closed. Roxhall had not sought him on the subject, and he felt that
if they discussed it, they would probably quarrel, their views would
be so different. It was very bitter to him that any member of his
family should again be indebted to the Massarene fortune. It seemed as
if the very stars in their courses fought against his will. Why had
not Roxhall simply replied to her overtures, as he himself would have
replied, that the sale of the estates, once having been made, could not
be annulled?
As it was, all the world was talking of her generosity. It was
intolerable! She had meant well, no doubt, but Roxhall should have
taught her, as he had taught her, that men who respect themselves
cannot receive that kind of favors.
“Why did you let him accept the return of the property, Elsie?” he
said to Lady Roxhall, whom he saw on the club terrace at Cowes as soon
as he landed there.
Lady Roxhall colored a little.
“Perhaps we ought not to have done so. But, oh, my dear Ronald, I shall
be so rejoiced to go back! It was very good of Miss Massarene to offer
its release,” she added, “so rude as we have all of us been to her.”
“You cannot be rude any more,” said Hurstmanceaux. “You have sold your
freedom of choice for a mess of pottage. You have accepted this lady’s
favors. You must embrace her in return if she exacts it.”
“How irritable Ronald has grown,” thought Lady Roxhall. “He used to
be so kind and sweet-tempered. I suppose it is his having to sell his
pictures that sours him. I wonder why he did sell them?”
Hurstmanceaux, before he went on board to sleep that night, wrote a
letter at the R. Y. S. Club, which it cost him a great effort to write.
“But it’s not fair for all the generosity to be on her side,” he
thought. “We must look like a set of savages to her. We have not even
the common decency to thank her.”
“MADAM,--
“_Circumstances, on which it is needless for me to dwell, make it
impossible for me to have the honor of any intercourse with you in
the future. But do not think that I am, for that reason, insensible
to the nobility, generosity, and kindness which you have displayed
in your dealings with more than one member of my family, and the
forbearance you have shown to one wholly unworthy of it. For the
silence you have kept in the past, and have offered to preserve in
the future, I pray you to accept my sincere gratitude. I beg to
remain, Madam_,
“_Your obedient servant_,
“HURSTMANCEAUX.”
This letter brought tears to the eyes of the woman to whom it was
addressed, although she was but very rarely moved to such emotion.
“Why should we be strangers,” she thought, “because of the sins or the
crimes of others?”
She drew the check which he had sent her on his bankers, but she gave,
at the same time, a commission to a famous art agent in Paris to buy
back the Dutch and Flemish pictures of the Faldon Collection from the
dealers who had purchased them, and on no account to let her name
appear in connection with the purchase.
Why should an honest and gallant gentleman lose heirlooms because his
sister had been as venal as any courtezan of ancient Rome or modern
Paris? How she would be able ever to restore them to him she did not
know; meantime, she saved them from the hammer.
She thought that she would leave them to him by will, in case of her
own death, with reversion to the National Gallery if he refused to
accept them, and to restore them to their places at Faldon.