There is, among the members of many families, a frank familiarity which
dispenses with all those forms which keep life on a level of courtesy
with persons not related to each other. Tom did not think it necessary
to ask his sister how she was, or to show any anxiety about her health.
He drew his chair forward and seated himself near her, without any
formulas.
“You know how to make yourself comfortable,” he said, with a glance
round the room, which indeed was very luxuriously furnished, like the
rest of the house, and with some taste, which was Winifred’s own. The
tone in which he spoke conveyed a subtle intimation that Winifred made
herself comfortable at his expense, but he did not say so in words. He
stretched out his feet towards the fire. Perhaps he found it a little
difficult to come to the point.
“I am sorry,” said Winifred, “to have been shut up here. If I had been
stronger--but you must remember I have had an illness, Tom; and to feel
that you were both against me”--
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about that,” said Tom, with a wave of his hand.
Then, after a pause, “In that you’re mistaken, Winnie. I’m not against
you. A fellow could not but be disappointed to find what a different
position he was in, after the telegram and all. But when one comes to
hear all about it, I’m not against you: I’m rather--though perhaps you
won’t believe me--on your side.”
“Oh, Tom!” cried Winifred, laying her hand upon his arm; “I am too glad
to believe you. If you will only stand by me, Tom”--
“Oh yes,” he said, “I’ll stand by you. I’ve been thinking it over since
last night. You want some one to be on your side, Winnie. When I saw the
airs of--But never mind, I have been thinking it all over, and I am on
your side.”
“If that is so, I shall be able to bear almost anything,” said Winifred
faintly.
“You will have George to bear and his wife. They say women never can put
up with other women. And, good heavens, to think that for a creature
like that he should have stood out and lost his chances with the
governor! I never was a fool in that way, Winnie. If I went wrong, it
was for nobody else’s sake, but to please myself. I should never have
let a girl stand in my way--not even pretty, except in a poor sort of
style, and fat at that age.” Here Tom made a brief pause. “But of
course you know I shall want something to live on,” he said.
“I know that you shall have everything that I can give you,” Winifred
cried.
“Ah! but that’s easier said than done. We must not run against the will,
that is clear. I’ve been thinking it over, as I tell you, and my idea
is, that after a little time, when you have taken possession and got out
of Mr. Babington’s hands and all that, you might make me a present, as
it were. Of course your sense of justice will make it a handsome
present, Winnie.”
“You shall have half, Tom. I have always meant you should have half.”
“Half?” he said. “It’s rather poor, you’ll allow, to have to come down
to that after fully making up one’s mind that one was to have
everything!”
“But, Tom, you would not have left George out--you would not have had
the heart!”
“Oh, the heart!” said Tom. “I shouldn’t have stood upon ceremony,
Winnie; and besides, I always had more respect for the poor old governor
than any of you. It suits my book that you should go against him, but I
shouldn’t have done it, had it been me. Well, half! I suppose that’s
fair enough. You couldn’t be expected to do more. But you must be very
cautious how you do it, you know. It’s awfully unbusiness-like, and
would have made the governor mad to think of. You must just get the
actual money, sell out, or realise, or whatever they call it, and give
it to me. Nothing that requires any papers or settlements or anything.
You will have to get the actual money and give it me. You had better do
it at different times, so many thousand now, and so many thousand then.
It will feel awfully queer getting so much money actually in one’s
hand--but nice,” Tom added, with a little laugh. He got up and stood
with his back to the fire, looking down upon her. “Nice in its way, if
one could forget that it ought to have been so much more.”
“Tom, you will be careful and not spend too much--you will not throw it
all away?”
“Catch me!” he said. “I’ll tell you what I mean to do, Winnie. I’ll go
on the Stock Exchange. The governor’s old friends will lend me a hand,
thinking mine a hard case, as it is. And then it’s easy to make them
believe I’ve been lucky, or inherit (as I believe I do) the governor’s
head for business. It would be droll if some of us hadn’t got that, and
I am sure it’s neither George nor you. Well, then, that’s settled,
Winnie. It will be easy to find out from Babington what the half is: a
precious big figure, I don’t doubt,” he added, with a triumph which for
the moment he forgot to disguise. Then he added after a moment, in a
more indifferent tone, “There is no telling what may happen when a man
is once launched. If you give me your share to work the markets with,
you can do anything on the Stock Exchange with a lot of money. I’ll
double your money for you in a year or two, which will be as good as
giving it all back.”
“I don’t know anything about the Stock Exchange, Tom; only don’t lose
your money speculating.”
“Oh, trust me for that!” he said. “I tell you I am the one that has got
the governor’s head.” Then it seemed to strike him for the first time
that it would not be amiss to show some regard for his sister. He
brought his hand down somewhat heavily on her shoulder, which made her
start violently.
“Come,” he said, “you must not be down-hearted, Win. If I was a little
nasty at first, can’t you understand that? And now I’ve made up my mind
to it, there’s nothing to look so grave about. I’ll stand by you
whatever happens.”
“Thank you, Tom,” she said faintly.
“You needn’t thank me; it’s I that ought to thank you, I suppose. I
might have known you would behave well, for you always did behave well,
Winnie. And look here, you must not make yourself unhappy about
everybody as you do. George, for instance: I would be very careful of
what I gave him, if I were you. Let them go out to their own place
again, they will be far better there than here. And don’t give them too
much money: enough to buy a bit of land is quite enough for them; and
when the boys are big enough to help him to work it, he’ll do very
well.” This prudent advice Tom delivered as he strolled, pausing now and
then at the end of a sentence, towards the door. He was, perhaps, not
very sure that it was advice that would commend itself to Winnie, or
that it came with any force from his mouth; nevertheless he had a sort
of conviction, which was not without reason, that it was sensible
advice. “By the bye,” he added, turning short round and standing in the
half dark in the part of the room which was not illuminated by the
lamp--“by the bye, I suppose you will have to sell Bedloe, before you
can settle with me?”
“Sell Bedloe!” Winifred was startled out of the quiescence with which
she had received Tom’s other proposals. “Why should there be any
occasion to do that, Tom?”
“My dear,” he said, with a sort of amiable impatience, “how ignorant you
are of business! Don’t you see that before you halve everything with me
as you promise, all the property must be realised? I mean to say, if you
don’t understand the word, sold. That is the very first step.”
“Sell Bedloe?” she repeated. “Dear Tom, that is the very last thing my
father would have consented to do. Oh no, I cannot sell Bedloe. He hoped
it was to descend to his children, and his name remain in the county; he
intended”--
“Do you think he intended to preserve the name of the Langtons in the
county, Winnie? You can’t be such a fool as that. And, as I suppose your
children, when you have them, will be Langtons, not Chesters”--
She interrupted him eagerly, her face covered with a painful flush. “I
am going to carry out my father’s will against his will, Tom; and, oh, I
feel sure where he is now he will forgive me. He has heirs of his own
name-- I mean them to have Bedloe. Where he is he knows better,” she
said, with emotion; “he will understand, he will not be angry. Bedloe
must be for George.”
Tom came forward close to her, within the light of the lamp, with his
lowering face. “I always knew you were a fool, but not such a fool as
that, Winnie. Bedloe for George! a fellow that has disgraced his family,
marrying a woman that--why, even Hopkins is better than she is; they
wouldn’t have her at table in the housekeeper’s room. I thought you were
a lady yourself, I thought you knew--why, Bedloe, Winnie!” he seized her
by the arm; “if you do this you will show yourself an utter idiot,
without any common sense, not to be trusted. If you don’t sell Bedloe,
how are you to pay me?” he cried, with an honest conviction that in
saying this righteous indignation had reached its climax, and there was
nothing more to add.
“Tom,” said Winifred, “leave me for to-night. I am not capable of
anything more to-night. Don’t you feel some pity for me,” she cried,
“left alone with no one to help me?”
But how was he to understand this cry which escaped from her without any
will of hers?
“To help you? whom do you want to help you? I should have helped you if
you had shown any sense. Bedloe to George! Then it is the half of the
_money_ only that is to be for me? Oh, thank you for nothing, Miss
Winnie, if you think I am to be put off with that. Look here! I came to
you thinking you meant well, to show you a way out of it. But I’ve got a
true respect for the governor’s will, if no one else has. Don’t you know
that for years and years he had cut George out of it altogether, and
that it was just Bedloe--Bedloe above everything--that he was not to
have?”
Winifred shrank and trembled as if it were she who was the criminal.
“Yes,” she said almost under her breath, “I know; but, Tom, think. He
is the eldest, he has children who have done no wrong.”
“I don’t think anything about it,” said Tom. “The governor cut him out;
and what reason have you got for giving him what was taken from him?
What can you say for yourself? that’s what I want to know.”
“Tom,” said Winifred, trembling, with tears in her eyes, “there are the
children: little George, who is called after my father, who is the real
heir. His heart would have melted, I am sure it would, if he had seen
the children.”
“Oh, the children! that woman’s children, and the image of her! Can’t
you find a better reason than that?”
“Tom,” said Winifred again, “my father is dead, he can see things now in
a different light. Oh, what is everything on the earth, poor bits of
property and pride, in comparison with right and justice? Do you think
_they_ don’t know better and wish if they could to remedy what has been
wrong here?”
“I don’t know what you mean by _they_,” said Tom sullenly. “If you mean
the governor, we don’t know anything about him; whether--whether it’s
all right, you know, or if”--Here he paused for an appropriate word,
but, not finding one, cried out, as with an intention of cutting short
the subject, “That’s all rubbish! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you go
on with this folly, to drag the governor’s name through the mud, by
Jove! I’ll tell Babington. I’ll put him up to what you’re after. Against
my own interest? What do I care? I’ll tell Babington, by Jove! to spite
you if nothing more!”
“I think you will kill me!” cried Winifred, at the end of her patience;
“and that would be the easiest of all, for you would be my heirs, George
and you.”
He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the suggestion, then,
saying resentfully, “Always George,” turned and left her, shutting the
door violently behind him. The noise echoed through the house, which was
all silent and asleep, and Winifred, very lonely, deserted on all sides,
leaned back in her chair and cried to herself silently, in prostration
of misery and weakness. What was she to do? to whom was she to turn? She
had nobody to stand by her. There was nothing but a blank and silence on
every side wherever she could turn.