The sound of the brougham rolling along down the avenue, and of the
closing of the great door upon the departing guest, came to Winifred, as
she sat alone, with a dreary sound. Mr. Babington was no particular ally
of hers, and yet it felt like the going away of a friend. Presently her
father came into the room, talking over his shoulder to old Hopkins
about the hot water and lemons which were to be placed in the library
ready for him. “Ten o’clock will do,” he said. It was only about nine,
and Winifred felt, not with transport, that she was to have her father’s
society for the next hour. It was by this time too warm to have a fire
in the evening, but yet they sat habitually, when the lamp was lighted,
near the fireplace. Mr. Chester came up to this central spot, and drew a
chair near to his daughter and sat down. He brought a smell of wine with
him, and a sensation of heat and excitement. “Why are you sitting by
yourself,” he said, “like a sparrow on the housetop? It seems to me you
are always alone.”
“I shall have to be alone in future, papa. Miss Farrell”--Winifred could
not say any more for the sob in her throat.
“Oh, this is too much!” said Mr. Chester. “Couldn’t she or any one see
that I was a little excited? She must know I don’t mean any harm. That
is all nonsense, Winnie. You shall say something pretty to her from me,
and make an end of it. Why, what’s all this fuss about a hasty word? She
_is_ an old girl if you come to that--But I don’t want any botheration
now. I want everything to be straight and pleasant. We are going to have
company, people staying in the house, and you can’t do without her, that
is clear.”
“Oh, papa,” said Winifred, “I wish you would not have any one staying in
the house. I don’t know what you meant to-night, but if it is anything
about me, I--I don’t feel able for company. It is so short a time since
poor Tom”--
“You had better let poor Tom alone. I want to hear nothing more of him,”
said the father. “Mind what I say. I mean to make a lady of you, Winnie;
but if you turn upon me like the rest, I am just as fit to do the same
to you.”
“I would rather you did than have what should be theirs,” said Winifred.
Her heart was beating wildly in her breast with apprehension and dismay,
and she could not be prudent as she had been bidden to be, nor consent
to be what was so odious to her; but even in the warmth of her protest
Edward’s words occurred to her, and she faltered and stopped, with an
alarmed look at her father. He was flushed, and his eyes were fiery and
red.
“You are going a little too fast,” he said. “It is neither theirs nor
yours, but mine; and I should like to know who has any right to take it
from me. Now that we’ve begun on this subject, we’ll have it out,
Winnie. You’ve been having your own way more than was good for you.
Perhaps, after all, Miss Farrell, who has let you do as you pleased, can
go, and somebody else be got who knows better what is suitable to a
young lady like you. I can have no more flirtations with doctors, or
curates, or that sort. You are old enough to be married, and I want no
more nonsense. That sort of thing, though it means nothing, is bad for
a girl settling in life.”
Winifred had turned from white to red, sitting gazing at him, yet
shrinking from his eyes. “Papa,” she said, “I don’t know what you mean,”
in a voice so low and troubled that he curved his hand over his ear,
half in pretence, half in sincerity, to hear what she had to say.
“What I mean?--oh, that is very easy--you are not a child any longer,
and you must throw aside childish things. I have asked a few people for
the week after next. It’s too early for the country, but I know some
that are soon tired of town; and there is a young fellow among them
who--well, who is very well disposed towards you, and well worth your
catching were you twenty times an heiress. So I hope you’ll mind what
you’re about, and play your cards well, and make me father-in-law to an
earl. That’s all that I require of you, my dear; and it’s more for your
own advantage than mine, when all is said.”
He was very much flushed, she thought, and his eyes almost starting from
his head. Terror seized her, as though some dreadful catastrophe might
happen before her eyes. “Papa,” she said, with an effort, “this is all
very new, and there is so much to think of. Please let it be for
to-morrow. There has been so much to-night--my head is quite confused,
and I don’t seem to understand what you say.”
“You shall understand what I say, and it is better to be clear about it
once for all. Here is the young Earl coming, as I tell you. He would
suit me very well, and I mean him to suit you, so let us have no
nonsense. If Miss Farrell thinks fit to leave you just when you want
her, she is an ungrateful old-- But we’ll find another woman. I mean
everything to be on a right footing when these people turn up.”
“Papa, of course I shall do all I can to--please your friends.”
“Well, that’s the first step,” he said. “And it’s very much for your own
advantage. You would not be my daughter if you did not think of that.”
She made no reply. If this was all, she was pledging herself to nothing,
she thought, with natural inconsistency. But Mr. Chester was not
satisfied. He drew his chair close, so that the odour of his wine and
the excitement in his mind seemed to make a haze in the air around.
“And look here, Winnie. It doesn’t suit me to send Edward Langton away.
He’s been a fool in respect to you, and you’ve been a fool, and so have
I, for not putting a stop to it at once. But the fellow knows what’s
what better than most. And he knows my constitution. I am not going to
part with him as a doctor because he’s been a presuming prig, and
thought himself good enough for my daughter. It’s for you to let him see
that that’s all over. Come, a word is as good as a wink.”
“Father,” Winnie said: she looked at him piteously, clasping her hands
with the unconscious gesture of anguish--“oh, don’t take everything from
me in a moment!” she cried.
“What am I taking from you? I am giving you a fortune, a title probably,
a husband far above anything you could have looked for.”
“I want no one, papa, but you. Let me take care of you. I will ask for
nothing but only to stay at home quietly and make you comfortable.”
Mr. Chester pushed back his chair noisily with a loud exclamation. “Do
you take me for a fool?” he said. “Have I ever asked you to stay at
home and make me comfortable? I can make myself comfortable, thank you.
What I want is that you should do me credit. Your confounded humility
and domesticity, and all that, may be very fine in a woman’s novel.
Taking care of her old father, the sweet girl! a ministering angel, and
so forth. Do you think I go in for that sort of rubbish? I can make
myself a deuced deal more comfortable than you could ever make me. Come,
Winnie, no more of this folly. You can make me father-in-law to a
British peer, and that is the sort of comfort I want.”
His eyes were red with heat and excitement, the blood boiling in his
veins. The girl’s spirit was cowed as she looked at him, not by his
violence, but by the signs of physical disturbance, which took all power
from her.
“Oh, papa,” she said, “don’t say anything more to-night! I am very
unhappy. I will do anything rather than make you angry, rather
than--disturb you. Have a little pity upon me, papa, and let me off for
to-night.”
“To-night?” he said; “to-night ought to be the proudest day of your
life. Who could ever have expected that you would be the heiress of
Bedloe, a little chit of a girl? Most fathers would have married you off
to the first comer that would take you and your little bit of fortune.
But I have behaved very different. I have made you as good as an eldest
son--not that I can’t take it all away again, as easily as I gave it, if
you don’t do your best for me.”
He swayed forward a little as he spoke, in his excitement, and Winifred,
whose terrified eyes were quite prepared to see him fall down at her
feet, rose up hastily, with a little cry. She put out her hands
unconsciously to support him.
“Oh, papa, I will do whatever you please!” she cried.
Mr. Chester pushed the outstretched hands away. “You think, perhaps, I
want something to steady me,” he said. “That’s a delusion. I am as
steady as you are, and more so, and know quite as well what I am saying.
However, as long as you have come to your senses and obey me, that’s all
I care for. Look here, Winnie!” he said, again sitting down suddenly and
pushing her back into her chair; “I don’t want to be hard upon you. If
old Farrell wants an apology I’ll make it--to a certain extent. I meant
no offence. She’s very useful in her way. She’s a lady, I always said
so; and she’s made you a lady, and I am grateful to her--more or less.
You can say whatever’s pretty on my part; or I’ll even say a word
myself, if you insist upon it. To have her go now would be deuced
awkward. Tell her I meant no offence. I was a little elevated, if you
like. You may take away my character, if that will please her,” he
added, with a laugh. “Say what you like, I can bear it. Getting
everything done as I wished had gone to my head.”
“Oh, papa, if you had but wished something else! I am not--good enough.
I am not--strong enough.”
“Hold your tongue. I hope I’m the best judge of my own affairs,” her
father said. Then he yawned largely in her face. “I think I’ll go and
have my whisky and water. It is getting near bedtime, and I’ve had an
exciting day, what with old Bab, and old Farrell, and you. I’ve been on
the go from morning to night. But you’ve all got to knock under at the
last,” he added, nodding his head, “and the sooner the better, you’ll
find, my dear, if you have any sense.”
Winifred sat and listened to his heavy step as he went across the hall
to the library and down the long corridor. It seemed to be irregular and
heavier than its wont, and it was an effort of self-restraint not to
follow him, to see that all was safe. When the door of his room closed
behind him, which it did with a louder clang than usual, rousing all the
echoes in the silent house, another terror seized her. Shut into that
library, with no one near him, what might happen? He might fall and die
without any one being the wiser; he might call with no one within
hearing. She started to her feet, then sat down again trembling, not
knowing what to do. She dared say nothing to him of the terror in her
mind. She dared not set the servants to watch over him or take them into
her confidence--even Hopkins, what could she say to him? But she could
not go to her own room, which would be entirely out of the way of either
sight or hearing. Sometimes Mr. Chester would sit up late, after even
Hopkins had gone to bed. The terror in her mind was so great that
Winifred watched half the night, leaving the door of the drawing-room
ajar, and sometimes starting out into the darkness of the hall, at one
end of which a feeble light was kept burning. The hours went by very
slowly while she thus watched and waited, trembling at all the creakings
and rustlings of the night. She forgot the pledge she had given, the new
life that was opening upon her in the midst of these terrors. Visions
flitted before her mind, things which she had read in books of dead men
sitting motionless, with the morning light coming in upon their pallid
faces, or lying where they had fallen till some unthinking servant
stumbled in the morning over the ghastly figure. It was long past
midnight when the library door opened, and, shrinking back into the
darkness, she saw her father come out with his candle. He had probably
fallen asleep in his chair, and the light glowing upon his face showed
it pallid and wan after the flush and heat of the evening. He came
slowly, she thought unsteadily, along the passages, and climbed the
stairs towards his room with an effort. It seemed to her excited
imagination almost a miracle when the door of his bedroom closed upon
him, and the pale blueness of dawn stealing through the high staircase
window proved to her that this night of watching was almost past. But
what might the morning bring forth?
The morning brought nothing except the ordinary routine of household
life at Bedloe. Mr. Chester got up at his usual hour, in his usual
health. He sent for the doctor, however, in the course of the day,
partly because he wanted him, partly to see how Winnie would behave.
“I have the stomach of an ostrich,” he said, “but still that port was a
little too much. To drink port with impunity, one should drink it every
day.”
“It is a great deal better never to drink it at all,” said the doctor;
but Mr. Chester patted him on the back, and assured him that good port
was a very good thing, and much better worth drinking than thin claret.
“I believe it is that sour French stuff that takes all the spirit out of
you young fellows,” he said.
Winifred was compelled to be present during this interview. She heard
her father give an account to Edward of the expected guests.
“You shall come up and dine one evening,” he said. “You must make
acquaintance with the Earl, who may be of use to you. I shouldn’t wonder
if we had him often about here.”
To Winifred, looking on, saying nothing, but vividly alive to her
father’s offensive tone of patronage, and to the significance of this
intimation, there was torture in every word. But Edward looked at her
with an unclouded countenance, and laughingly assured her father that he
had known the Earl all his life.
“He is a very good fellow; but he is not very bright,” he said.
“He may not be very bright, but he is a peer of the realm, and that is
the sort of society that is going to be cultivated at Bedloe. I have had
enough of the little people,” Mr. Chester replied.
Edward Langton laughed, with the slightest, but only the very slightest,
tinge of colouring in his face. “The little people must take the hint,
and disappear,” he said.
“But, of course, present company is always excepted. That has nothing to
do with you. You’re professional; you’re indispensable.”
Young Langton gave Winifred a look. It was swift as lightning, but it
told her more than a volume could have done. The indignation and
forbearance and pity that were in it made a whole drama in themselves.
“I hope I shall prove myself worthy of the exception in my favour,” was
all he said.
“I have no doubt you will; you were always one that knew your own
place,” said Mr. Chester.
“Father!” cried Winnie, crimson with shame and indignation.
“Hold your tongue!” he cried. “The doctor knows what I mean, and I know
what he means; we want no interference from you.”
It was the first trial of the new state of affairs. She had to shake
hands with him in her father’s presence, with nothing but a look to
express all the trouble in her mind. But Edward on his part was
entirely calm, with a shade of additional colour, but no more. He played
his part more thoroughly than she did--upon which, with the usual
self-torture of women, a cold thought arose in her that perhaps it was
not entirely an assumed part. From every side she had much to bear.