The expected heir, for whom conspicuous preparations had been
made--bonfires laid ready for the torch, name and sponsors solemnly
selected--turned out to be a girl. This was a severe and unconcealed
disappointment to Blagdon, and he allowed his wife to feel the full
brunt of his indignation, and displeasure. The estate and all the
property was strictly entailed, and, after Hugo, it passed to a distant
cousin (naturally detested), a man who farmed a small sheep ranch in
New Zealand, and was reported to be barely able to write his name.
Old Mrs. Blagdon who had come to Sharsley for the auspicious event,
dissembled her dissatisfaction with well-bred dignity, and took a
certain amount of notice of the unwelcome infant (her namesake), a fair
little waxen creature, adored by her mother from the moment she was
laid in her arms.
The great bonfires remained unlit, the charitable doles were withheld,
the grand dinner to the tenantry was cancelled; and Blagdon, like a
sulky schoolboy, left home to be consoled by his usual associates.
* * * * *
Three years had slipped by since the sensational and still-talked-of
wedding at Thornby, and although a good deal of water had flowed under
the bridge, it had brought no pleasant flotsam to the feet of Letty
Blagdon. Her husband deserted her for months at a time; he had taken
to racing, owned a stable and rented rooms at Newmarket, as well as
a hunting-box in the shires, declaring that Sharsley, as a hunting
centre, was obsolete. He frequently went abroad _en garçon_, assuring
inquisitive friends, that “his wife loathed the Continent, and that
nothing would induce her to leave the child.”
During the first months of Letty’s married life the Court had opened
its long-closed doors, and maintained something of its ancient state;
there had been dinners, shoots, and visitors; more than once Aunt
Dorothy had adventured over from Thornby, put up her horses, and
accorded to her miserable niece, a critical and inquisitive ‘day’;
but a twenty-mile drive is a serious undertaking, and Mrs. Fenchurch
contented herself with boasting to her friends of Mrs. Blagdon’s
enviable happiness, and the beauties, and luxuries, of her home.
Not so Uncle Tom! He missed--sorely missed--the light of his eyes, the
joy of his heart, and felt guiltily anxious with regard to her future.
Mounted on Kitty, a notable Irish mare, he rode over to Sharsley every
few weeks; when the master of the house happened to be at home these
excursions had the effect of emphasising his apprehensions. The tone in
which Blagdon addressed his wife, his rudeness, and the ferocity of
his sarcasms made the thin blood of the old soldier mount to his face;
and yet the host mended his manners when Letty’s uncle was present.
Fenchurch was such a starched-up old cock;--and that a man of his age
would ride forty miles just to see a relative, awakened Blagdon’s
amusement and surprise.
“The old boy looks bad--he’s breaking!” he abruptly remarked to his
wife one afternoon after her uncle had ridden away.
Letty had observed a change; the hale little officer now looked worn
and grey; he had grown thin, and lost his cheery manner; when Hugo
noticed anything of that sort, it must be woefully apparent! However,
she made no answer, and winked back her tears, and her husband resumed:
“I’m surprised Mrs. Fen has not done for him long ago, with her jaw and
her managing, and her damned hatchet face. Thank God she doesn’t show
it here!” and with this congratulation on his lips, Blagdon departed.
By and by the forty-mile ride proved too much for Kitty; so said her
master; he sent her a night before to a half-way village inn (where,
according to the landlady, Queen Elizabeth had slept the night before
her head was cut off!), drove there himself next day, and rode her on
to Sharsley.
These visits seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure, though it was
evident to Letty that they entailed an extraordinary effort. Each time
she saw her uncle, she noted, with a sinking heart, a waning of his
spirits and a wasting of his frame. He would never admit that he was
ailing--and in this make-believe he was nobly supported by his wife.
He had a horror of not being able to do what he had always done, and
the iron will of his Dorothy, and his own frantic clinging to activity,
compelled the poor, frail body to shoot and hunt as usual. The few
hours he spent with Letty when he found her alone, were truly a joy
and comfort to both. On these occasions, they never spoke of Hugo; but
Cara the baby was exhibited, praised, and played with, and her mother
made amazing efforts to seem gay. She realised, that Uncle Tom believed
her to be unhappily married, and that this conviction was breaking his
heart; and she strove very anxiously to play the part of a gay and
contented young woman, who does not object to being a grass widow, or
to be left by herself for months (to him she spoke of weeks), but the
farce was a failure; the unsuccessful actress read this in her uncle’s
haggard eyes, and in the long, significant pressure of his hand, ere he
wished her good-bye, and sadly rode away.
And one June afternoon Kitty and the Colonel rode away, never to
return, for a week later Colonel Fenchurch was found sitting in his
chair in the smoking-room, with Letty’s last letter in his stiffening
hand, quite dead. The poor little Colonel had not much to bequeath,
but by a recent will he left forty pounds a year to his beloved niece
Lettice Blagdon--and not all the Fenchurch pictures, diamonds, and
heirlooms, could console his bereaved widow for this unnecessary
legacy.
“So cruel to _me_!” she imparted in confidence to her intimates; “and
so preposterous--as if Letty had not more money than she can spend!”
But possibly the dead man had his reasons; perhaps he had been granted
the far-sighted vision which is given to those who are nearing the
border-land.
His relict affected not only overwhelming grief, but the direst
poverty. After the funeral, and when matters were being wound up, she
endeavoured to sell a couple of hunters to Hugo.
“No, by Jove!” he exclaimed, as he tossed down the letter; “I think I
see myself--the bay has a spavin, the black is touched in the wind.
Your aunt did me _once_,” glaring over at Letty with unpleasant
significance; “but never again--once bitten, twice shy!”
The thrifty lady was more successful in her transactions with her
niece; to whom she submitted two tea-gowns, a driving-coat, and an
opera mantle; the lot one hundred pounds.
“You see,” she wrote, “I shall be in black for such an age, and I’m
frightfully hard up” (she had eighteen hundred a year and expectations)
“so, Letty, you really must take them off my hands. Think of all I’ve
done for _you_!” and Letty was, as usual, obedient.
She felt her uncle’s death acutely; he and the baby were all she had to
love and to love her--for Hugo had told her a thousand times that he
hated the sight of her--and except Maude Hesketh and Frances Lumley,
she had no friends.
Frances Lumley was a clever, bright, energetic young woman, whose
brother, she declared, had stolen her good looks. “By rights the boy
should be the plain one of the family--and it is _I_ who am ugly.”
But this was an extreme statement; Miss Lumley’s figure was the
embodiment of slim grace, her hair soft and beautiful; her eyes,
though sparkling and intelligent, were too small; her mouth, on the
other hand, was too large; perhaps had their dimensions been reversed,
Blagdon, who found her amusing and outspoken, might have asked her
to marry him! The Rector’s daughter was popular with all degrees of
society; a first-rate musician, an entertaining companion, and a
capable nurse. The cottagers adored her, “Miss Frances was so funny,
and told them such queer tales, all the while she was working over a
case, you scarcely could tell you had a sore leg or a boil, or a burn,
she was that clever with her fingers, and her tongue.” She was also her
father’s right hand, copied out his sermons, wrote his letters, read to
him, and cared for him like a guardian angel.
Miss Lumley was pathetically anxious to extend her sheltering wing over
the poor lonely girl at the big house, and did her utmost to entice her
to the Rectory, to tea, to tennis, to visit among the cottagers--in
short, to make some break in that solitary monotonous existence.
“When Aunt Denton used to fill her letters with _you_,” she said, “I
little expected that her Letty would be the great lady here, that she
would go on my errands, and mend my gloves, and that I should see so
much of her.”
“Too much, I’m afraid--this is the third time I am here in a week!”
“Can’t have too much of a good thing! and you come to be useful--you
are always ornamental--and help me with the Sewing Club, you know you
have nothing to do in that big rambling place. Fraser won’t let you
touch the garden, the rouged and rustling Bates runs the house--all you
may do is to practise your singing and play patience.”
“But I never play cards,” protested Letty.
“There are other games of patience, my dear--_pied de la lettre_! Your
husband has old-fashioned ideas about his partner’s duties, but is up
to date about his own.”
“I don’t understand you, Francie.”
“No? well then I’ll explain. The wife creed is in his blood, and
belongs to the prehistoric race that treated women as beasts of burden,
and beat them with clubs; later on, women were domestic slaves, and
more recently--say a hundred years ago--mere nurses and upper servants,
kept at home all the year round making samplers and pickles, and
shirts, and jam--and having babies!”
“Frances!”
“Am I raising the standard of revolt? I declare you are looking quite
scared. Lady Rashleigh holds _my_ views--modern and emancipated--no
shirts or pickles for _her_--only jam, and lots of the best! When
I was in Town the other day I saw her at the theatre; she has grown
enormous, and was simply bulging out of her box. Lord Robbie was with
her--displaying a wonderful expanse of shirt front, and a dazzling
diamond stud that hit you in the eye--he looked _such_ a dog! He is
rather fond of me, and runs down here after tea; when you think he is
snug in the smoking-room, he is sitting, figuratively, at my feet.
I wouldn’t marry him for--let me see--three millions! There, I’ve
finished the last, and _my_ herring-boning, is a work of art.”
During her frequent visits to the Rectory, Mrs. Blagdon was liable to
encounter the ‘small fry’; at first they stiffened, and looked at the
lady with cold, unrecognising eyes; but when they discovered that this
pretty, shy girl was guiltless of airs, and rather afraid of _them_,
they suffered her acquaintance, and although they never entered one
another’s houses, spoke to her when they met, offered the names of new
books and new roses, and gave her, in the immediate neighbourhood, an
excellent character, as an inoffensive nonentity.
By this time the County had almost forgotten the existence of Mrs.
Blagdon. She did not hunt or go to balls, seemed to be perpetually
in mourning, and was said to suffer from ‘nerves,’--and nerves in
this century stand for so _much_! Occasionally she was to be met on
the roads, driving her baby in a little governess-car, and looking
ridiculously like some shy animal, that hoped to escape the notice of
mankind!
Letty was lonely. She had never felt at home at Sharsley, but as if she
were on a visit to some stiff, country house; it still seemed to hold
the spirits of the dead and gone Scropes, and the great drawing-room,
with its portraits of staring ancestors (long-waisted, long-faced, and
long-fingered), black Indian cabinets, and book-cases of neglected
books, gave her a chill.
At distant intervals Mrs. Hesketh came over to Sharsley (craftily and
stealthily in the master’s absence), to dine and sleep, and her brief
visits were Letty’s greatest pleasure. On the last of these occasions,
Blagdon returned unexpectedly, and in a black humour--one of his most
promising two-year-olds, had gone wrong.
The afternoon before his arrival, Letty and her friend had wandered
about the grounds, talking of everything but what was uppermost in
their hearts--the misery of one, the sympathy of the other. As they
paced along the elder understood how empty the life of her companion
was; she might not garden--the gardens were let; she had not even a
dog--the nursery and the piano were her sole resources.
At tea Mrs. Hesketh realised that she was not a welcome guest. Her host
did not find it necessary to conceal his sentiments; nor did she fail
to remark, the abominable way in which he addressed his wife, and how
he ordered her about, and pushed out of the room before her.
Dinner was a truly sombre meal: the fish was cold, and Mr. Blagdon had
one of his worst attacks of temper. Vainly did the visitor endeavour to
make light and airy conversation; he was so violent and abusive after
the servants had withdrawn, that Letty, unable to restrain her tears,
fled out of the room; but brave Mrs. Hesketh remained to remonstrate
and do battle with the tyrant.
“If no one else is going to speak to you, Mr. Blagdon, I will,” she
began intrepidly. “Everyone is crying shame on you for the way you
neglect your young wife.”
“I don’t care a damn what they say!” he roared. “Let everyone mind
their own business. She is jolly well treated--too well.”
“Is it too well, that she should be shut up here alone for months at a
time? That she is cut off from all associates of her own class--that
she is never taken into society?”
“She has everything she wants,” he blustered; “a fine house, and
servants--and a baby. Why, my mother’s mother who lived here, and never
stirred beyond the village, and was a woman of family--hadn’t half such
a good time!”
“That must have been more than a hundred years ago, and the world has
improved, and become enlightened since then. Letty is a girl who has
been educated.”
“And you mean to say my mother’s mother wasn’t? Thank you!”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“I’m damned if I know what you mean, by taking me to task in this way,
and calling me over the coals in my own house,” and his expression was
murderous.
“I am Letty’s friend.”
“Yes, and no doubt she has been whining to you, and telling you fine
tales?” he demanded with blazing eyes, “and posing as a martyr.”
“She has never breathed a word of her troubles to me; but anyone can
see that she is unhappy. I can’t think why in the world you married
her?”
“I can’t think why I did, either! I was deadly sick of her at the end
of a week. Upon my soul, I was! Marriage is like a trap--you can’t have
a wife on approval--when you are in, there’s no way of getting out!
By Jove, I envy the Americans their divorce laws--then she could go
her way--and I mine. If some smart young fellow would take a fancy to
Letty, and run off with her I should say ‘Wah-wah!’”
Mrs. Hesketh looked as she was--horrified.
“There are no smart young men about here,” he added; “so Letty is all
right--virtue is the absence of temptation.”
Mrs. Hesketh rose slowly, turned her back upon her host, walked to the
door very quietly, opened it and went out, leaving it wide. She found
Letty in her own room, sitting with her face in her hands,--a frequent
attitude.
“My child,” she began, “I have been talking to the dreadful man
downstairs that ill-fortune has given you for a husband. He is--well, I
won’t say any more, but this--that I wish I could take you away with
me, and let you make a home with me--you and the baby!”
“How I wish you could!” said Letty, pushing back her hair as she spoke.
“But there is no use in wishing. I often wish I was dead--and it’s no
good.”
“Well, remember, my dear, if ever you are at the end of your tether,
you must come to me.”
Letty gave her a glance of despair, then she rose and said:
“I shall have to go down at once, for Hugo always expects me to be in
the drawing-room when he is there--he likes me to sing the new musical
comedies. He says my voice sends him to sleep.”
“My dear, if I were you, for once I would disappoint your Saul! _I_
do not intend to go downstairs again to-night, and I shall leave you
immediately after breakfast to-morrow. Mr. Blagdon was outrageously
rude to you at dinner--apparently he imagined that he can make you
miserable with impunity, that you will ignore his insults, and
entertain him in the drawing-room all smiles and songs. Believe me, you
are making a fatal mistake; possibly if you had resisted in the first
instance, things would never have come to such a pass. You are not his
wife, but his doormat!”
Again Mrs. Hesketh had sown a little seed. Letty for once did resist,
and the two friends remained together talking until bed-time. Blagdon,
finding the drawing-room empty, glared round it, then stalked into the
smoking-room, where he smoked cigars and drank whiskies and sodas in
solitary state, and a condition of volcanic indignation.
“Of course, the old woman was at the bottom of Letty’s sulks--a damned
meddlesome hag!” He rang the bell and said to the footman:
“Tell Mrs. Hesketh’s maid to let her mistress know, that her carriage
is ordered to take her home at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.”