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(Library of the University of Illinois)
A RIGHTED WRONG.
A RIGHTED WRONG.
A Novel.
BY
EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF
"BLACK SHEEP," "THE FORLORN HOPE," "BROKEN TO HARNESS," ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1870.
[_All rights reserved_.]
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAP.
I. Twenty Years after.
II. Robert Meredith.
III. Time and Change.
IV. The Heiress of the Deane.
V. The "Raccroc de Noces."
VI. The First Moves in the Game.
VII. Drifting.
VIII. The Mine is sprung.
IX. The Righting of the Wrong.
A RIGHTED WRONG.
CHAPTER I. ]
TWENTY YEARS AFTER.
An unusually beautiful day, in an exceptionally beautiful summer, and
a grand old mansion, in all its bravery, wearing its best air of
preparation and festivity. Even in the merest outline such a picture
has its charms; and that which the sunshine lighted up on one
particular occasion, about to be described, merited close attention,
and the study of its every detail.
Sheltered by a fine plantation, which, in any other than the land of
flood and fell, might have been called a forest, and situated on the
incline of a conical hill, the low park land, picturesquely planted,
stretching away from it, until lost in the boundary of trees
beneath,--a large, imposing house, built of gray, cut stone, presented
its wide and lofty façade to the light. The architecture was
irregular, picturesque, and effective; and now, with its numerous
windows, some sparkling in the sunshine, others thrown wide open to
admit the sweet air, the Deane had an almost palatial appearance.
Along the front ran a wide stone terrace, from which three flights of
steps, one in the centre, and one at either end, led down to an
Italian garden, intersected by the wide avenue.
Large French windows opened on this stone expanse, and now, in the
lazy summer day, the silken curtains were faintly stirring, and the
sound of voices, and of occasional low laughter, came softly to the
hearing of two persons, a man and a woman, who were seated on a garden
bench, in an angle of the terrace. The countless sounds of Nature,
which make a music all their own, were around them, and the scene had
in it every element of beauty and joy; but these two persons seemed to
be but little moved by it, to have little in common with all that
surrounded them and with the feelings it was calculated to suggest.
They were for the most part silent, and when they spoke it was sadly
and slowly, as they speak upon whom the memory of the past is strong,
and who habitually live in it more than in the present. There was a
deference in the tone and manner of the woman, which would have made
an observer aware that though the utmost kindliness and unrestraint
existed in her relations with her companion, she was not his equal in
station; and her manner of speaking, though quite free from all that
ordinarily constitutes vulgarity, would have betrayed that difference
still more plainly.
She was a tall woman, apparently about forty years old, and handsome,
in a peculiar style. Her face was not refined, and yet far from
common; the features well formed, and the expression eminently candid
and sensible. Health and content were plainly to be read in the still
bright complexion and clear gray Irish eyes. She wore a handsome silk
dress, and a lace cap covered her still abundant dark hair, and in her
dress and air were unmistakable indications of her position in life.
She looked what she was, the responsible head of a household,
authoritative and respected.
We have seen her before, many years ago, on board the ship which
brought Margaret Hungerford to England, Margaret Hungerford, who has
slept for nearly twenty years under the shade of the great yew in the
churchyard, which is not so far from the Deane but that sharp eyes can
mark where the darker line of its solemn trees crosses the woods of
the lower park land. The years have set their mark upon the handsome
Irish girl, who had won such trust and affection from the forlorn
young widow, who had done with it all now, all love and fear, all
sorrow and forlornness, and need of help, for ever. Not only for ever,
but so long ago, that her name and memory were mere traditions, while
the trees she had planted were still but youngsters among trees, and
the path cut through the Fir Field by her directions was still known
as the "new" road.
There, on the spot where she had often sat with Baldwin and talked of
the future, which they were never to see, Margaret's friend, humble
indeed, but rightly judged and worthily trusted, sat, this beautiful
summer's day, in the untouched prime of her health and strength and
comeliness, and talked of the dear dead woman; but vaguely, timidly,
as the long dead are spoken of when they are mentioned at all to one
from whom the years had not obscured her, though they had gathered the
dimness which age brings around every other image of the past and of
the future.
He with whom Rose Doran talked was an old man, but older in mind and
in health than in years, of which he had not yet seen the allotted
number. Of a slight, spare figure always, and now so bowed that the
malformation of the shoulders was merged in the general bending
weakness of the frame, and the stooped head was habitually held
downwards, the old man might have been of any age to which infirmity
like his could attain. Even on this warm day he was wrapped in a cloak
lined with fur, and his white transparent face looked as if warm blood
had never coloured the fine closely-wrinkled skin, on which the
innumerable lines were marked as though they had been cunningly drawn
by needles. He wore a low-crowned, wide-leaved soft hat, and scanty
silver locks showed under the brim; but if the hat had been removed it
would have been seen that the head which it had covered was almost
entirely bald, and of the same transparent ivory texture as the face.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more fragile-looking than
the old man, as he sat, wrapped in his cloak, his bowed shoulders
supported by the angle of the terrace, and his hands, long, white, and
skeleton-like, placidly folded on his knees. The only trace of vigour
remaining in him was to be found in the eyes, and here expression,
feeling, memory yet lingered and sometimes gave forth such gleams of
light and purpose as seemed to tell of the youth of the soul within
him still.
A crutch stood against the wall by his side, and a thick stick, with a
strong ivory handle, lay upon the bench. These were unmistakable signs
of the feebleness and decay which had come to the old man, but they
would not have told a close observer more than might have been learned
by a glance at his feet. They were not distorted, none of the ugly
shapelessness of age and disease was to be seen there. They were slim,
and shapely, and neatly attired, in the old-fashioned silk stocking
and buckled shoe of a more polite and formal period, but they were
totally inexpressive. No one could have looked at the old man's feet,
set comfortably upon a soft lambskin rug, but remaining there quite
motionless, without seeing that they had almost ceased to do their
work. With much difficulty, and very slowly, by the aid of the crutch
and the stick, they would still carry him a little way from the sunny
sitting-room on the ground floor to the sunny corner of the terrace,
for the most part--but that was all.
He was not discontented that it should be all, for he suffered little
now in his old age--perhaps he had suffered as much as he could before
that time came; and was no more irritable or peevish. A little tired,
a little wondering betimes that he had so long to wait, while so many
whose day had promised to be prolonged and bright in its morning had
passed on, out of sight, before him: but a happy old man, for all
that, in a quiet, musing way, and "very little trouble to any one."
Yes, that was the general opinion of Mr. Dugdale, old Mr. Dugdale, as
the household, for some unexplained reason, called him, and few things
vexed the spirit of Gertrude Baldwin so nearly beyond bearing, as the
assurances to that effect which her aunt, Mrs. Carteret, was in the
habit of promulgating to an inquisitive and sympathising
neighbourhood. For Mrs. Carteret (she had been the eldest Miss Crofton
a great many years ago) was not of a very refined nature, and it is
just possible that when she commented on Mr. Dugdale's reduced and
sometimes almost deathlike appearance, to the effect that any one "to
see him would think he could die off quite easily," she rather
resented his not availing himself of that apparent facility without
delay. He did not, however; and Mrs. Carteret was the only person who
ever found the gentle, kindly man in the way, and she never dared to
hint to her husband that she did so.
Her niece inherited from her dead mother all the quick-sightedness
which made her keen to see and to suffer, where her affections were
concerned, and the first seeds of dissension had been sown some years
before, between the aunt and the niece, by the girl's perceiving that
"old" Mr. Dugdale was not considered by Mrs. Carteret as such an
acquisition to the family party at the Deane as its fair and gentle,
but high-spirited, young mistress held him to be. It was on that
occasion that Gertrude had contrived, very mildly and very skilfully,
but still after a decided and unmistakable fashion, to remind her aunt
of the fact that she, and not Mrs. Carteret, was the lady of the house
in which the old man had been found _de trop_; and thence had
originated a state of things destined to produce most unforeseen
consequences.
The immediate result, however, had been an increased observance in
manner, and an additional dislike in reality, to Mr. Dugdale, on the
part of Mrs. Carteret, which the old man perceived--as indeed he
perceived everything, for his powers of observation were by no means
enfeebled--but which it never occurred to him to resent. What could it
possibly signify to him that Mrs. Carteret did not like him, and
wished it might be in her power to get rid of him? It was not in her
power; it was not within the compass of any earthly will to separate
him from Margaret's child; and as for Mrs. Carteret herself, it is to
be feared that old Mr. Dugdale, after the saturnine fashion of his
earlier years, cherished a quiet contempt for that lady, while he
readily acknowledged that she was a good sort of woman in her way. It
was not in his way, that was all.
Mrs. Doran was especially devoted to Mr. Dugdale, to whom she owed the
prosperous position which she had held in the household at the Deane
for so many years now, that she was as much a part of the place to the
inhabitants as the forest trees or the family portraits. Consequently
she was not particularly attached to Mrs. Carteret, and presumed
occasionally to criticise that lady's proceedings after a fashion
which, had she been aware of it, would have gone far to fortify her in
one of her favourite and most frequently-expressed opinions, that it
was a great mistake to keep servants too long. "They always presume
upon it, and become impertinent and troublesome."
But Mrs. Carteret would never have ventured to include Mrs. Doran
among the "servants" otherwise than in her most private cogitations.
Rose was a privileged person there, by a more sacred if not a stronger
right than that of Mrs. Carteret herself.
But on this bright, beautiful day, when the old man had come out upon
the terrace to bask awhile in the genial sunshine, why was Rose Doran
with him? Ordinarily he had younger, fairer companions, in whose faces
and voices there were many happy, sad memories for him, and whose love
and care brightened the days fast going down to the last setting of
the sun of his life. They were absent to-day, and the two to whom, of
all the numerous household at the Deane, the day had most of
retrospective meaning were alone together.
"It's wonderful how well I remember her, sir," Rose was saying;
"sometimes that is. There's many a day I disremember her entirely, but
when I do think about her--as to-day--I can see her plain. And I'm
glad, somehow, I never saw her in her grandeur; for if I did, an'
all the years that have gone by since then, I couldn't but think no
one else had a right to it."
"I understand what you mean, Rose, and when I remember her, sometimes,
as you say, it isn't in her grandeur, but as she was when you and she
came home first;
"Yes, sir, and you saw us goin' in at the door of the little
inn--who'd ever think there'd be a hotel as big as Morrison's, and a
deal cleaner, in the very same place now?--and you not knowin' us, and
she seein' you in a minute. Isn't it strange, Mr. Dugdale, to remember
it after twenty, ay, more than twenty years? How long is it then, sir,
rightly?"
"Twenty-three years and some months, Rose."
"True for you, sir. And now Miss Gerty's to be her own mistress, and
no one to say by your leave or with your leave to her, the darling!
The master would have been a proud man, rest his soul! this day."
The old man did not notice her remark. But after a little while, as if
he had been thinking over it, he bowed the bent head still lower, and
moved the thin white hands, and sighed.
"Are you chilly at all, sir?" asked his quickly-observant companion.
"The sun is shifting a little; would you like to go in?"
"No," he replied; and then asked, after a pause, "How are they getting
on?"
"Beautifully," Rose answered. "The house is a picture; and as to the
ball-room, nothing could be more beautiful. Miss Eleanor has it all
done out with flowers, and I'm only afraid she'll be tired before the
time comes for the dancing. Do you think you'll be able to sit up to
see it, sir?"
"I don't know, Rose; but I will try. Gerty seems to wish it so much,
foolish child; as if it could make any difference to her that an old
man like me should be there to see her happy and admired."
"An' why shouldn't she?" remonstrated Rose in a tone almost of
vexation. "Do you think the children oughtn't to have some nature in
them? If Miss Gerty was no better nor a baby when the mistress--the
Lord be good to her!--was taken, and Miss Eleanor never saw the smile
of her mother's face at all, sure they know about her all the same,
and it's more and not less they think about her, the older they grow,
and the better they know the want of a mother, through seeing other
people with mothers and fathers and friends of all kinds, and no one
to dare to deny them--not that I'm sayin' or thinkin' there's any one
would harm innocent lambs like them, nor try to put between them--but
the world's a quare world, Mr. Dugdale, and they're beginnin' to find
it out, and the more they know of it, the more they miss the mother
they never knew at all, and the father they did not know much
about--and the more they cling to them that did know, and can tell
them. Many's the time, Mr. Dugdale, that Miss Gerty has said to me,
'Isn't it odd that uncle James remembers mamma much better than uncle
Carteret or aunt Lucy remember her, and can tell us much more about
our father?--and yet they were all young people together, and near
relations, and he wasn't.' And it was only the other day, when you
told Miss Gerty she was to have the poor mistress's picture for her
comin' of age, she says to me, 'There's uncle and aunt Carteret
couldn't tell me whether it's like her or not; and there's uncle James
knows all about it, and can tell when I'm like her and when Nelly is,
and yet they say old people forget everything.' Beggin' your pardon,
sir, for saying you're old, but the dear child said the very words.
An' so, if she didn't want you to-night to see her in her glory, and
to be like the smile of the father and mother that's in heaven upon
her, I wouldn't think much of her, Mr. Dugdale, 'deed I wouldn't
then."
"Well, well. Rose, it seems the children are of your opinion, for they
have made me promise to sit up as late as possible; and I have heard
as much about their dresses as either their maids or yourself, I'll be
bound."
"An' beautiful they'll look in them, Mr. Dugdale, particularly Miss
Gerty. Don't you think she grows wonderfully like her mother? Not that
I ever saw her look bright and happy like Miss Gerty; but I think she
must have been just like her, after she was married to the poor
master. You know I went away before that, sir; but perhaps you
disremember."
"No, no, Rose, I remember. I remember it all very well, because she
told me if she wanted you and could not send for you herself I was to
do so, because Mr. Baldwin did not know you. No, no; it is a long time
ago, a very long time, but I don't forget, I don't forget."
"An' you see the likeness, sir?"
"Yes, I see the likeness, I see it very plainly; as we grow old, time
seems so much shorter that it does not appear at all strange to me
that I should remember her so well. There were many years during which
I could hardly recall her face even when I was looking at the picture,
but all that dimness seems to have cleared away now, and all my memory
come back. Gerty is wonderfully like her, only more placid; her manner
is more like her father's."
They were silent for a time, during which Rose Doran knitted
diligently,--her fingers were never idle, and her subordinates in the
household said the same of her eyes and ears,--and then she began to
talk again.
"It'll be a fine ball, sir. They say the beautifulest, except the
Duke's, that ever was in this part of the country. And sure, so it
ought, for where's there the like of Miss Baldwin of the Deane for
beauty or for fortune either? An' what could be too good in the way of
a ball for _her?_"
There was a note of challenge in the Irishwoman's voice. Mr. Dugdale
observed it with amusement, and replied,
"I daresay it will go off very well. Mrs. Carteret is a good hand at
this kind of thing."
"She is," said Rose shortly; "and as it's Miss Gerty's money it's all
to come out of, she'll have no notion of saving anything."
This was the nearest approach to a frank expression of her
not-particularly-exalted opinion of Mrs. Carteret on which Rose had
ever ventured, and Mr. Dugdale did not encourage her to pursue it by
any remark; but, observing that the girls had said they would come out
to him, and were after their time, and that he would go and look for
them, he began to make slow preparations for a change of place.
Rose's steady arm aided him, and he was soon proceeding slowly along
the terrace, his crutch under his left arm and his stick in his right
hand, while Rose walked by his side. As he slowly and apparently
painfully dragged himself along--only apparently, for he rarely
suffered pain now--Mr. Dugdale presented a picture of decrepitude
which contrasted strangely with a picture which any observer, had
there chanced to be one upon the terrace that day, might have seen,
and which he and Rose stood still to look at with intense pleasure.
Through the open windows of a large room upon the terrace the interior
was to be seen. The apartment was of splendid dimensions, and the
richly-decorated walls and ceiling were ornamented with classical
designs appropriate to the festive purposes of a ball-room. A bank of
flowers was constructed to enclose a space designed for an orchestra,
and several musical instruments were already arranged in their places.
A grand piano was in the middle, and a lady was seated before it,
whose nimble fingers were flying over the keys, producing the strains
of a brilliantly provocative and inspiriting valse. The lady was not
alone. In the centre of the room, whose polished floor was almost as
bright and slippery as glass, stood two young girls, the arms of each
around the waist of the other, their heads thrown back, their eyes
beaming with laughter, and their hearts beating with the exertion of
the wild dance they had just concluded.
As Mr. Dugdale and Rose drew near the window, the pause for breath
came to a conclusion, the music gushed forth, more than ever inviting,
and the dancers were off again, spinning round and round in their
girlish glee in a boisterous exaggeration of the figure of the dance,
irresistibly merry and attractive. They flew down the length of the
room, crossed to its extremity, and came whirling up to the central
window. There stood Mr. Dugdale with uplifted threatening stick, and
Rose, with her knitting dropped, fascinated with admiration. Then they
checked their headlong career, and, with some difficulty, came to a
stop opposite the pair on the terrace, laughingly shaking their heads
in imitation of the pretended rebuke they were conveying.
"A rational way to rehearse for your ball, Gerty," said Mr. Dugdale,
as he stepped, with the assistance of the young girl's ready hand,
into the room, followed by Rose. "And a capital plan for you, Nelly,
who are so easily tired. You silly children, don't you think you will
have enough dancing to-night?"
"Not half enough," replied one of the girls, "not quarter; none of the
people will stay after five or six at the latest."
"I should hope not, indeed," said Mr. Dugdale. "And you are resolved
to begin punctually at ten; you _are_ unconscionable."
"And then you know, uncle James," said the girl whom he had called
Gerty, "we cannot dance together to-night; we are grown up, you know,
hopelessly grown up; it's awful, isn't it? and besides--besides aunt
Lucy tempted us with her beautiful playing--and the floor is so
delightful; and now don't you really, really think it will be a
delightful ball?"
"I have not the smallest misgiving about it, Gerty, though I don't
know much of balls. But I am sure Mrs. Carteret will join me in urging
you not to tire yourselves any more just now."
Mrs. Carteret left the piano, and joined the girls, who immediately
entered on a discussion of the measures already taken for the
beautification of the ball-room, and the possibility of still farther
adorning it, which was finally pronounced hopeless, everything being
already quite perfect, and the party adjourned to luncheon.
So the years had sped away, and all the fears, and hopes, and sorrows
they had given birth to had also come to their death, according to the
wonderful law of immutability, and were no more. The mother in her
marble tomb beneath the yew-tree, the father in his unmarked grave in
the desert, but united in the country too far off for mortal ken or
comprehension, were well-nigh forgotten here; and their children were
women now.
The little party assembled at the Deane on this occasion--the
twenty-first anniversary of Gertrude Baldwin's birth--had but little
sadness among them, and were visited with but slight recollections of
the far distant past. Twenty years is a long time. No saying can be
more trite and more true; yet there are persons and circumstances,
and, more than all, there are feelings which are not forgotten,
ignored, killed in twenty years.
There were two unseen guests that day at the table--at whose head Mrs.
Carteret, who was in a gracious, not to say gushing mood, insisted on
Gertrude's taking her place for the first time--whose presence Mr.
Dugdale felt, though he was an old man now, and his fancy was no
longer active. He had his place opposite to Gertrude, and from it he
could see, hanging on the wall behind her chair, her father's
portrait. It was a fine picture, the work of a first-rate artist,
and the face was full of harmony and expression. The graceful lines,
the rich colouring of youthful manhood were there, and the sunny
blue eyes smiled as if they could see the gay girls, the handsome,
self-conscious, self-important woman, the wan and feeble old man. From
the portrait Mr. Dugdale's glance wandered to the girlish face and
figure before him and just under it; and a pang of exceeding keen and
bitter remembrance smote him--ay, after twenty years.
Gertrude Meriton Baldwin was a handsomer girl than her mother had
been, but wonderfully like her. No trouble, no care, no touch of
degradation, humiliation, concealment, bitterness of any kind, had
ever lighted on the daughter's well-cared-for girlhood, which had been
permitted all its natural expansion, all its legitimate enjoyment and
careless gladness. No passion, unwise and ungoverned, had come into
her life to trouble and disturb it too soon--to fill it with vain
illusions, and the sure heritage of disappointment. A happy childhood
had grown into a happy girlhood, and now that happy girlhood had
ripened into a womanhood, with every promise of happiness for the
future.
She was taller than her mother, and had more colour; but the features
were almost the same. The brow was a little less broad, the lips were
fuller, but the eyes were in no way different, so far as they had been
called upon for expression up to the present time; they had looked
like Margaret's, and no doubt would so look in every farther
development of life, circumstance, and character.
Eleanor, who amused herself during the luncheon,--at which Mr. Dugdale
was unusually silent, and Mrs. Carteret occupied herself rather
emphatically, on the plea that dinner was a doubtful good when a ball
was in preparation,--was not in the least like her father, her mother,
or her sister. She was very small, delicately formed, and fragile in
appearance, with a clear dark complexion, large black eyes, and a
profusion of glossy black hair, which, especially when in close
contrast with the clear gray eyes and soft brown hair of her sister,
gave her a foreign appearance, of which she was quite conscious and
rather proud.
Hitherto there had been no difference in the lot of the sisters. The
childish joys and sorrows of the one had been those of the other, and
girlhood had brought to them no separate fortune. Nor were things
materially altered now. The independence of action which Gertrude
attained upon this day would be Eleanor's in a very short time, and in
point of wealth they were nearly equal. For each there had been a long
minority. Eleanor Davyntry had not long survived her brother, and all
her disposable fortune was her younger niece's. Apart from their
orphanhood, no girls could have had a more enviable lot than the two
who were in such wild spirits on that summer's day, which invested one
of them with all the dignity of legal womanhood, and all the
responsibility of a great heiress.
Eleanor was of a different temperament from that of Gertrude, more
vehement, more passionate, less self-reliant, less sustained. Hitherto
the difference had shown itself but seldom and slightly, and there had
been little or nothing to develop it. But a shrewd observer would have
noticed it, even in the manner in which each regarded the promised
pleasure of the evening, in the easy joyousness of the one, and the
passionate eagerness of the other.
When luncheon had nearly reached a conclusion, the sounds of wheels
upon the drive sent Eleanor rushing to the window. A stylish dog-cart,
in which were seated a tall, fine-looking, rather heavy middle-aged
man and an irreproachable groom, was rapidly approaching the house.
"It is uncle," said Eleanor; "now we shall know for certain who's
coming from Edinburgh. What a good thing you thought of the telegraph,
aunt!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Carteret. "When one has to put people up for the
night, it is better to know exactly how many to expect."
In a few minutes Haldane Carteret was in the room, and had handed an
open telegraphic despatch to Gertrude.
"They're all coming, you see," he said good-humouredly; "and _you'll_
be glad to hear, Lucy, there's no doubt about Meredith. He has got
that troublesome business settled, as he always does get everything
settled he puts his mind to, and he will be down by the mail, and here
by eleven."
"That is delightful," said Gertrude, with frank outspoken pleasure.
"You have brought nothing but good news, uncle."
"And the programmes--isn't that what you call them? I hope they're all
right."
"I'm sure they are.--Aunt, what room are you going to give Mr.
Meredith?"
Then ensued a domestic discussion, in which Gertrude and Mrs. Carteret
took an active share; but Eleanor stood looking out of the window, and
did not utter a word.