A BACKWARD GLANCE.
Presently Mr. Drelincourt quitted the library, and, traversing the
entrance hall, went up the fine old oaken staircase at the farther
end. But on reaching the spacious landing at the top, instead of
turning to the right in the direction of his own and his late wife's
apartments, he turned to the left, and after going some way down a
corridor which gave access to sundry rooms, he came to a red baize
covered door--the others were all of oak or walnut--with a bell pull
pendent at one side of it. At this he gave a tug, which was responded
to by a faint tinkle somewhere inside.
Half a minute later a little wicket in the door was drawn back, and a
woman's face appeared at the opening. On perceiving who it was that
had rung the bell, the face, an unusually grave one, for the most
part, brightened perceptibly.
"Will you be kind enough to open the door," said Mr. Drelincourt.
Sometimes he contented himself with asking a question or two at the
wicket, and did not enter.
The woman nodded, and shut the wicket. Then from the bunch of keys at
her waist she selected one, and with it opened the door, which was
shut and relocked as soon as Mr. Drelincourt had crossed the
threshold.
But at this point it may be as well to take leave of the master of
Wyvern Towers for a while, and in order that the reader may have a due
comprehension of what has yet to be told, make him acquainted, in as
brief terms as may be, with certain particulars having reference to
that person's family history, and to the relations which had existed
between his father and himself.
The late Colonel Drelincourt had been twice married, and had left
behind him two children--Felix, his son by his first wife, and Anna,
his daughter by his second. At the time of the colonel's death the
former was twenty three years old, and the latter thirteen. His second
wife had predeceased him by a few years.
As a young man, Felix had serious differences with his father, whose
pet project it was that his son should follow his own profession.
This, however, Felix resolutely declined to do.
He had no taste whatever for soldiering; nor, on the other hand, did a
political career hold out any attractions for him. He was a studious
and bookishly inclined man, addicted to experimental chemistry, and
with a strong liking for travel and exploration. Of sport, in the
common acceptance of the term, he knew nothing and cared as little;
but he had a fondness for horses, and was an intrepid rider.
The colonel, a military martinet of the old school, who held a blind
obedience to one's superiors to be one of the main rules of conduct,
never forgave his son's refusal to follow in the course he had
prescribed for him. At his death it was found that, outside the
entailed property, he had left everything he was possessed of to his
daughter, to whom he had been passionately attached.
He had married her mother for love (like many another man, he had
never touched even the fringe of romance till he was past his fortieth
year), whereas he had married his first wife for her dowry. Thanks to
certain arrangements made by his mother, Felix was in a measure
independent of his father even before he became of age.
About three years prior to the colonel's death a terrible mischance
befell his daughter, at that time in her tenth year.
It was Christmas week, at which season a certain amount of license is
often winked at among the servants in country houses. In the dusk of
afternoon, and in the gallery at the head of the stairs, Anna
encountered what she took for an apparition, but which, in point of
fact, was merely one of the servants dressed up in a sheet, and having
her face whitened, on her way to join in some mummeries below stairs.
The child, who from her birth had been of a highly excitable
temperament, with hysterical tendencies, gave one piercing scream, and
fell to the ground in a fit, which was followed by several others, and
for some days her life was despaired of.
Gradually, however, she regained her health, and everybody hoped--her
father, of course, most of all--that the shock her system had
undergone had left no ill effects behind it.
One of the colonel's first acts after his daughter's seizure had been
to send for Mrs. Jenwyn, with whose services, only a little while
before, he had seen fit to dispense. It was Mrs. Jenwyn who had nursed
his wife through the long illness which had preceded her death, and it
was in fulfilment of Mrs. Drelincourt's dying request that he had
installed her in the dual position of nurse and governess to his
motherless girl, who, in the course of time, had learned to love her
almost, if not quite, as well as the parent she had lost.
Whether it was a feeling of jealousy that his child should care so
much for any one but himself, or some other whim, which caused him to
give Mrs. Jenwyn notice to leave, was known only to himself. In any
case, Anna took the separation greatly to heart, far more so than her
father was aware of, for the child's deepest moods were silent ones;
of what she felt most she talked least, and the colonel was not
skilled in reading below the surface.
Now, however, he blamed himself with undue severity for having sent
Mrs. Jenwyn about her business. Again and again he told himself, most
unreasonably, that had she been on the spot the mischance would never
have happened. It was some consolation to him to witness the naïve and
touching delight with which Anna welcomed Mrs. Jenwyn's return.
For all that, as he quitted the room, leaving them together, he could
not help saying to himself, with a touch of bitterness, "She loves
that woman better than she loves me."
Unfortunately, the colonel's fondly cherished hope that the shock to
his daughter's system would entail no after consequences was not
destined to be fulfilled. To all appearance, Anna had regained her
health and strength in full measure, and her fright was a matter six
months old, when, without any warning, so to speak, an unaccountable
change came over her which found its physical expression in a state of
irritability and low fever, supplemented by insomnia. Dr. Carew was
called in, and prescribed, but declined to commit himself to any
expression of opinion.
On the fifth day from the beginning of her attack, Anna fell into a
deep, trance-like sleep which lasted eighteen hours. When at length
she awoke, everything that had happened to her during the six months
which had intervened since the date of her fright was lost to her
memory. She went back and took up her life again at the point where
consciousness had left her at the moment of her scare in the gallery.
All Mrs. Jenwyn had taught her in the interim was clean gone. A book
half read at the time she now began afresh and finished, and she
resumed the practice of a piece of music on which she had been engaged
during the forenoon of that unfortunate day. The break in her memory
was absolute and complete.
By Dr. Carew's recommendation, no attempt was made to enlighten her.
Everybody about her accommodated themselves to circumstances as she
believed them to be. The doctor trusted to time. It was all he could
do.
Any attempt at a cure on his part, as he was not slow to recognize,
might have been productive of more harm than good, and possibly have
entailed consequences he would have been loath to face. He watched the
case with the deepest interest, but beyond prescribing a harmless
draft or two, he left nature to work after her own fashion.
At the end of a fortnight Anna fell into another trance-like sleep,
and awoke from it her proper self. The two preceding weeks were
blotted from her memory. She had merely had a longer and sounder sleep
than ordinary, from which she had awaked feeling strangely refreshed.
From that time forward the same thing had happened to her, at
irregular intervals, every three or four months. After certain
preliminary symptoms, which hardly ever varied, she would fall into a
deep sleep, always to awake at that moment of her life which preceded
her meeting with the supposed apparition in the gallery. At the end of
ten days or a fortnight, and after another sleep, she would become her
normal self again.
She had been ten years old at the time of her first attack, and she
was now eighteen. A lovely girl (but with no touch of resemblance to
Felix), and of an affectionate and amiable disposition; bright and
cheerful enough at times, but, for the most part, with a vague shadow
of melancholy brooding over her, as of one who realized in all its
bitterness the fact that there was about her a something which set her
apart from her fellows; for long before now the full measure of her
affliction had become known to her.
Mrs. Jenwyn had given Colonel Drelincourt her promise on his deathbed
that she would never leave Anna while it was the latter's wish that
she should stay with her. In order, however, to make assurance doubly
sure, the colonel had left instructions in his will that the sum of
two hundred guineas per annum should be paid to Mrs. Jenwyn out of his
estate so long as she should retain her position by his daughter's
side.
As already remarked, the colonel had bequeathed to Anna all that it
was in his power to leave her. An ample sum was settled on her, under
the control of trustees, during her minority, and when she should come
of age she would find herself mistress of an income of twelve hundred
a year, with absolute power over ten thousand pounds of the gross sum
capitalized by her father.
About a year before his death, and when he had no prevision of that
event being so near, Colonel Drelincourt had caused to be set aside,
and specially arranged for their use, a suite of rooms in the left
wing of the Towers, to which his daughter and Mrs. Jenwyn could retire
whenever Anna's symptoms gave warning that one of her periodical
attacks was imminent.
He had also caused a considerable space or ground on the same side of
the house to be walled in, so as to form a private garden in which the
two could obtain a sufficiency of fresh air and exercise without being
overlooked or spied upon by any visitors at the house, or by any
casual outsiders, there being a right of public footway through the
park at the back of the Towers, as a consequence of which stragglers
were sometimes found in those parts of the grounds where they had no
business to be.
When, at his father's death, Felix Drelincourt came into the property,
matters, so far as they related to his half sister, were in no wise
changed. All he did was to cut down the staff of servants, and to
request Mrs. Jenwyn to take upon herself the control of the
establishment, he himself having no intention at that time of settling
permanently at the Towers. Not till after his marriage, some three
years later, did he make it his home.
When talking over future arrangements with his prospective wife, he
had given Miss Ormsby clearly to understand that his marriage was to
alter nothing so far as his half sister was concerned. Anna's home, as
heretofore, would still be at the Towers, and the special suite of
rooms in the left wing still be reserved for the occupancy of herself
and Mrs. Jenwyn at certain seasons.