RUPERT GODWIN
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “AURORA FLOYD”
“VIXEN,” “ISHMAEL,” “WYLLARD’S WEIRD”
ETC. ETC.
Stereotyped Edition
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.,
LIMITED,
STATIONERS’ HALL COURT
1890.
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PUBLISHERS’ ANNOUNCEMENT.
_Rupert Godwin_ was written for, and first appeared in, a cheap
Weekly Journal. From this source the Tale was translated into the
French language, and ran as the leading story in the _Journal pour
Tous_. It was there discovered by an American, who re-translated
the matter back into English, and who obtained an outlet for the
new translation in the columns of the _New-York Mercury_. These and
other versions have been made without the slightest advantage to
the Author; or, indeed, without the faintest approach to any direct
communication to her on the subject. Influenced by the facts as
here stated, the Author has revised the original, and now offers
the result for what it is, namely, a Tale of Incident written to
amuse the short intervals of leisure which the readers of popular
periodicals can snatch from their daily avocations.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. A SAD FAREWELL 1
II. RUPERT GODWIN THE BANKER 7
III. AN IMPORTUNATE CREDITOR 16
IV. A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS 23
V. LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM 33
VI. THE STORY OF THE PAST 38
VII. THE STOLEN LETTER 47
VIII. THE DAY OF DESOLATION 54
IX. A PITILESS CLAIMANT 58
X. HIDDEN IN THE YEW-TREE 62
XI. HOMELESS AND FRIENDLESS 71
XII. MATERNAL MANŒUVRES 76
XIII. A DAUGHTER’S TRIAL 86
XIV. LOVE AT SIGHT 89
XV. VIOLET RESOLVES UPON ENTERING A NEW SPHERE 93
XVI. BEHIND THE SCENES 101
XVII. CRUEL KINDNESS 105
XVIII. WILMINGDON HALL 112
XIX. A RECOGNITION AND A DISAPPOINTMENT 119
XX. THE MARQUIS OF ROXLEYDALE 123
XXI. BENT BUT NOT BROKEN 131
XXII. JULIA’S PROTÉGÉ 134
XXIII. ON THE THRESHOLD 139
XXIV. MISS VANBERG IS MALICIOUS 143
XXV. FALCON AND DOVE 150
XXVI. IN THE LABYRINTH 160
XXVII. A DARK JOURNEY 164
XXVIII. THE HOUSEKEEPER’S STORY 170
XXIX. “SHE WEPT, DELIVERED FROM HER DANGER” 177
XXX. UNDERGROUND 185
XXXI. ON THE TRACK 191
XXXII. ESTHER VANBERG HAS HER WAY 202
XXXIII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE MINIATURE 208
XXXIV. FEVER-STRICKEN 214
XXXV. AN ALARMING DISCOVERY 222
XXXVI. DISCOMFITED 225
XXXVII. PUT TO THE TEST 237
XXXVIII. RIDING TO HER DOOM 238
XXXIX. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 247
XL. A FATAL LESSON 251
XLI. SILENCED 259
XLII. GIRT WITH FIRE 267
XLIII. THE CLERK’S STORY 272
XLIV. THE DUKE OF HARLINGFORD MAKES A DISCOVERY 278
XLV. THE FACE OF THE LOST 286
XLVI. SUSPENSE 291
XLVII. RESURGAM 298
XLVIII. “VENGEANCE IS MINE” 306
RUPERT GODWIN.
CHAPTER I.
A SAD FAREWELL.
In a charming residence, half cottage, half manor-house, embosomed
in the woodland scenery of Hampshire, lived a family who might
have formed the model for a poet’s ideal of domestic happiness.
The home-circle was not a large one. It consisted of only four
persons--Captain Harley Westford, of the merchant service, his wife,
son, and daughter. The Captain and his wife were both in the fairest
prime of middle age. Life for them seemed at its brightest and best.
Clara Westford’s girlish beauty might, indeed, have vanished with
the snows of departed winters, the blossoms of bygone spring-times;
but another kind of beauty had succeeded--the calm loveliness of the
matron whose life has been cloudless as one long summer’s day, pure
as the untrodden snows of some far Alpine region.
Yes; she was very lovely still. Beauty has its Indian summer, and
the glory of that later splendour is scarcely less than the early
freshness of spring-time. Mrs. Westford possessed even a rarer charm
than mere perfection of face or figure. Every look, every movement,
was instinct with that indefinable grace for which we can find no
better name than good breeding. She had that winning manner the
French call graciousness. Those who were intimate with the Captain
and his wife whispered that Clara Westford came of a nobler race than
that of her husband. It was said that she had left the house of a
wealthy father, to begin the battle of life with the frank, genial,
handsome merchant sailor, and that she had thus made herself for ever
an outcast from the family to which she belonged.
No one knew the real story of that runaway marriage. The Captain and
his wife kept the secrets of the past locked in their own breasts.
Mrs. Westford could very seldom be induced to speak of her marriage;
but when she did speak, it was always in words that expressed the
pride she felt in her husband.
“I know that his family has no place amongst Burke’s landed gentry,
and that his grandfather was a trader on the high seas, like
himself,” she would say; “but I also know that his name is honoured
by the few to whom it is familiar, and that in his native town,
Westford and honesty are synonymous terms.”
Only one shadow ever darkened that rustic dwelling among the verdant
woods and fair spreading pastures of Hampshire; and that shadow was a
very terrible one.
It came when the husband and father was obliged to leave the dear
ones who made his home a kind of paradise for him. Partings were very
frequent in that simple household. The Captain’s professional duties
called him often away to scenes of peril and tempest, far from that
happy nook in peaceful England.
To-day the June sunshine is bright on the lawn and flower-beds in
the Captain’s garden; but the shadow comes with the sunshine, and
the bright midsummer noontide is an hour of sadness for the seaman’s
household.
The Captain and his wife are walking slowly, arm in arm, under the
shelter of a long alley of hazel and filbert trees. It is a lovely
day at the close of June; the roses are in their fullest splendour;
the deep blue sky is unshadowed by a cloud; the hum of bees and
carolling music of birds make all the air melodious with nature’s
simple harmonies; a thousand butterflies are fluttering above the
flower-beds on the smooth lawn before the windows of the old Grange.
Every quaint diamond-paned casement and broad mullioned window winks
and blinks in the warm sunlight, till the old house seems full of
eyes. The yellow stone-crop on the gabled roof, the deep crimson of
the brickwork, are sharply defined against an ultramarine sky, and
make a picture that would gladden the eyes of a pre-Raphaelite. The
sunshine steeps every leaf and every flower in its warm radiance--it
floods the trees with silvery light, it transforms and glorifies the
commonest objects, until the earth seems unfamiliar and beautiful as
fairyland.
On such a day as this, it seems almost impossible to believe that
sorrow or heartache can have any existence upon this glorified earth;
we almost forgot that hearts can break amid beauty and sunshine.
Clara Westford’s noble face is pale and wan this sunny morning. Dark
circles surround her eyes--earnest eyes, from whose clear depths
the very soul of truth looks out. All through the past night this
true-hearted wife has watched and wept on her knees before Him who
can alone protect the wanderer.
“Oh, Harley,” she exclaimed, in a low, tremulous voice, while her
slender fingers tightened their grasp upon the Captain’s arm, “it is
so bitter--so bitter; almost too bitter to bear. We have parted often
before to-day; and yet to-day, for the first time, the anguish of
parting seems more than I can endure.”
There was a look of agony in the wife’s pale face, as she turned it
towards her husband, that expressed even more than her passionate
words. There were no tears in the large violet-hued eyes; but there
was a quivering motion about the compressed lips that betrayed a
world of suffering.
At sea, or in any hour of peril and contest, Harley Westford
possessed the courage of a lion; but the aspect of his wife’s grief
transformed him into the veriest coward. He strove manfully, however,
to conceal his emotion, and it was in a tone of affected gaiety that
he replied to Mrs. Westford.
“My darling,” he exclaimed, “this is really foolish, and quite
unworthy of a seaman’s wife, who should have a soul above fear. This
parting ought not to be a hard one; for is not this to be my last
voyage? After this one trip to China, by which I hope to make a
sackful of golden guineas for you and the dear ones, I mean to settle
down for the rest of my life in this dear old Grange, a regular
landsman, a gentleman farmer, if you like; going in for pigs, and
prize cattle, and monster turnips, and all that kind of thing, like a
country squire to the manner born. Why, Clara, you ought not to shed
a tear, this time!”
“There are no tears in my eyes, Harley,” his wife answered, in the
same low, faltering voice, so terribly expressive of mental anguish;
“there is something in my sorrow too deep for tears. I have shed
tears always on the day of our parting, and I know that my cowardly
weakness has often unmanned you, Harley; but I can shed no tears
to-day. There is an awful terror in my heart. My dreams for the last
week have been full of trouble and foreboding. My prayers last night
brought no consolation. It seemed to me as if Heaven was deaf to my
cries. I feel like some unhappy wretch who wanders blindfold upon
the brink of a precipice--every step may plunge me into an abyss of
darkness and horror. O, Harley, Harley, have pity upon me! I know
there is danger in this voyage--deadly, unseen peril. Do not go! Have
mercy upon my anguish, Harley, and do not go!”
Again the slender hands tightened convulsively upon the sailor’s arm.
It seemed as if the agonized wife would have held her husband despite
himself in that passionate grasp.
Captain Westford smiled sadly.
“My darling,” he said, “foolish as I know your fears to be, I might
perhaps indulge them if my word were not pledged to this voyage;
but my word is pledged. And when did Harley Westford ever break his
promise? There is not a sailor amongst my crew who does not look
forward to this trip as a means of taking home comfort to his wife
and little ones. They all confide in me as if I were their brother
as well as their captain; and I know their plans, poor fellows, and
the disappointment they would feel if anything prevented the voyage.
No, darling, you must be bold and brave, like a true-hearted sailor’s
wife as you are. The _Lily Queen_--your ship, Clara; christened after
you, the queen of all earthly lilies--the _Lily Queen_ sails from
London Docks at daybreak to-morrow, and, if he lives, Harley Westford
sails with her!”
The wife knew that all further remonstrance was useless. She knew
that her husband valued his word and honour more than his life--more
even than her happiness. She only breathed one long sigh, which
sounded like the last murmur of a despairing heart.
“And now listen to me, my dearest one,” said Harley Westford, in
tones which he strove to render cheerful. “Listen to me, my own
brave, true-hearted wife; for I must talk to you of serious business
before the Winchester coach turns the sharp corner yonder by the
village pond.”
He looked at his watch as he spoke.
“Only one more half-hour, Clara, and then good-bye!” he exclaimed.
“Now, darling, listen. You know that, thanks to Providence, I have
been enabled to save a very decent little fortune for you and yours.
Close against my breast I carry a pocket-book containing bank-notes
to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, the entire bulk of my
fortune, withdrawn from different foreign investments, by the advice
of friends, who have given me warning of an approaching crisis in the
money-market. There seems to be always something or other wrong in
the money-market, by the way. Directly I return from China I shall
invest this money, with the earnings of my present enterprise, in the
best and safest manner I can. In the mean time, I shall place the
money in the hands of the present head of the banking firm in which
my father had the highest confidence and in whose house he kept an
account for thirty years of his life. In such hands the money will be
safe until my return And, to guard against any chance of accident, I
shall send you the banker’s receipt for the twenty thousand pounds,
and for the title-deeds of this house and land, which I shall also
lodge in his hands. You will receive these from me before I set
sail; and then, as my will is in the hands of my lawyer, you and the
children will be safe, come what may.”
“O, Harley,” murmured Clara Westford, “every word you say makes me
more and more wretched. You talk as if you were going to certain
death.”
“No, darling, I only talk like a prudent man, who knows the
uncertainty of life. But I will say no more, Clara. With twenty
thousand pounds, and the freehold of this old Grange, with fifty
acres of the best land in Hampshire spreading round it, you and the
dear ones cannot be ill provided for. And now, dearest, nearly half
my time has gone, and I must go and say good-bye to my children.”
The Captain stepped from the shady alley to the broad sunshine of
the lawn. Opposite him were the windows of a pretty morning-room,
sheltered by a long verandah, half hidden under honeysuckle and
roses. The cages of the pet birds hung under this verandah, and a
Skye terrier was lying on the silky white mat stretched before one of
the long French windows, blinking his lazy eyelids in the meridian
sun.
A girl of about seventeen appeared in this window. As the Captain
stepped out upon the lawn she came running towards him.
Never, perhaps, had the June sunlight shone upon a lovelier creature
than this white-robed girl who came to meet the Captain. Her beauty
had a sunny freshness which seemed in harmony with the summer
morning. Her features were small and delicately-formed; the nose,
forehead, and chin of the purest Grecian type. Her eyes, like her
mother’s, were of the deepest violet hue, large, lustrous, and
earnest, fringed by long auburn lashes. Her hair was of that golden
tint, so rare in nature, and which art has been wont to simulate,
from the age of Roman Lydias and Julius down to our own enlightened
era.
This was Violet Westford. They had called her Violet because of those
deep-blue eyes, which were only to be matched by the hue of the
modest hedgerow flower that hides its beauty under sheltering leaves.
They had called her Violet; and well did the sweet romantic name
harmonize with the nature of Clara Westford’s daughter, for the girl
was almost as unconscious of her exquisite loveliness as the timid
blossom after which she had been christened.
“Dearest father,” she exclaimed, passing her little hand through the
Captain’s arm, while Mrs. Westford sank faint and exhausted upon a
garden-seat on the lawn, “mamma has been very cruel to detain you so
long, while your poor Violet has been longing for a chance of saying
good-bye. I have been counting the minutes, papa, and the coach will
be at the gate almost immediately. O, papa, papa, it seems so hard to
lose you!”
The beautiful blue eyes filled with tears as the girl clung to her
father; but in Violet Westford’s face there was no trace of that
awful shadow which blanched the cheeks and lips of her mother to
a death-like whiteness. Violet only felt a natural grief at this
parting with a father whom she idolized. There was no presentiment of
impending peril weighing down her heart.
“Lionel has gone to get Warrior saddled,” she said; “he is going to
ride by the cross-road to Winchester. He will be there to meet you
when the coach arrives, and will only part from you when the train
leaves the station. How I envy him that half-hour at the station!
Men are always better off than women,” murmured the petted beauty of
seventeen, with the most bewitching _moue_.
“My darling, hark! There is the coach.”
The guard’s horn playing a joyous polka made itself heard among
the trees as the Captain spoke. At the same moment Lionel Westford
rode out of an old-fashioned ivy-covered archway, which formed
the entrance to the stables. The coach stopped at the low wide
gate opening into the Grange gardens, and the guard’s horn had an
impatient sound in the ears of Violet Westford.
Mrs. Westford rose from the rustic bench, calm and tearless, but
deadly pale. She advanced to her husband, and put her icy hands in
his.
“My beloved,” she murmured, “my all in all, I can only pray for you.
I must ask you one question, Harley. You spoke just now of a banker;
tell me his name, dearest. I have a particular reason for making this
inquiry.”
“My father’s bankers were Godwin and Selby,” answered the Captain;
“the present head of the firm is Rupert Godwin. My own darling,
good-bye.”
The horn playing that cheerful dance-music sounded louder and more
clamorous than ever, as Harley Westford pressed one kiss upon his
wife’s white lips and tore himself away. So hurried, so agitated,
had the Captain been in that sad parting, that he had been utterly
unconscious of the one low agonized cry which broke from his wife’s
lips at the sound of Rupert Godwin’s name.
But as the coach drove away, bearing with it the husband and father,
Clara Westford tottered forward a few paces, and then fell back
swooning on the grass.
Violet returned from the garden-gate to see her mother lying upon the
ground, white and motionless as a corpse. The girl’s terror-stricken
shriek brought a couple of women servants running from the house.
Mrs. Westford was no puling sentimentalist; and deeply as she had
always felt the pain of parting from the husband she so fondly loved,
she had never before been known to lose consciousness. She had,
indeed, been distinguished for the heroic calmness with which she
had always endured her sorrow setting a noble example to her son and
daughter.
The servants, assisted by Violet, carried the unconscious wife into
the house, and laid her on a sofa in the cool drawing-room, carefully
darkened by the Venetian shutters.
One of the women then ran to fetch the village doctor, while Violet
knelt by her mother’s side, bathing the pale forehead with toilet
vinegar.
Presently the dark-blue eyes were slowly opened and turned towards
Violet with a fixed and almost awful stare.
“Rupert Godwin! Rupert Godwin!” cried Clara Westford in tones of
anguish. “O, not to him, Harley! O, no, no, no! Not to him! Rupert
Godwin! I knew that there was peril, deadly peril, in store for you;
but I never dreamt of that danger.”
Again the eyes closed; the head fell back upon the sofa-pillows.
The doctor came; but neither he nor any other doctor upon this earth
could have ministered to her, whose disease was of the mind rather
than of the body.
Mrs. Westford fell from one fainting-fit into another. She was
conveyed to her own room, where she was tenderly watched by her
daughter, and by her son Lionel, who returned from Winchester after
having seen his father start by the London train.
The young man adored his mother, and was both grieved and alarmed by
her sudden illness. He insisted upon taking up his post in a pretty
little boudoir adjoining Mrs. Westford’s bedroom, and he sat there
hour after hour, listening to every sound in the sick chamber.
The old Grange, so gay with happy voices only a few days before, was
now silent as the house of death. The doctor ordered his patient to
be kept in unbroken quiet, and his orders were implicitly obeyed.
But though Mr. Sanderson, the village surgeon, was a man of
considerable experience, he found his patient’s illness of a nature
to baffle his best care, his highest skill.
“The mind is ailing, Miss Westford,” he said, in answer to Violet’s
anxious questions; “the parting of to-day has affected your mother
very keenly, and hers is an illness that time alone can heal. In
the meanwhile I can only recommend perfect repose. The mind has
been over-excited by painful emotions, and we must allow time for
recovery. A night’s rest may restore the brain to its normal state.
To-morrow all may be well.”
CHAPTER II.
RUPERT GODWIN THE BANKER.
The express-train from Winchester bore Harley Westford quickly
across the fair expanse of country between the old cathedral city
and the smoky roof-tops of the metropolis. Past swelling hillside
and sunlit meadow, past winding river and secluded village, rushed
the mighty monster. London, black, grimy, but with a certain rugged
grandeur of its own, like some dusty Cyclops, mighty in his gigantic
stature,--London, the commercial centre of the world,--loomed in
sight of the merchant Captain, whose heart was divided between the
dear ones he had left in the rustic Grange at Eastburgh, and the
scenes of adventure, and perhaps peril, that lay before him on the
high seas.
Harley Westford was in heart and soul a sailor. He had the spirit of
a Columbus, and would gladly have gone forth in search of new worlds
wherewith to enrich his Queen and country, if fate had permitted him
so noble an adventure. His heart warmed at the thought of his Chinese
expedition--an expedition which promised to make a noble addition to
his fortune. For himself, no man could have been more indifferent
about money. He had the true sailor’s recklessness of spirit, and
would have flung his gold right and left, had he been alone in the
world, as carelessly as the untutored salt, who, from sheer bravado,
puts a bank-note between his bread-and-butter and eats it, in order
to demonstrate his contempt for the sordid pelf. But for his children
he was eager to earn the means of comfort and independence, so that
no hard battle of life might await those pampered children, that
idolized wife, who as yet had known only the sunshine of existence.
He reached London at about half-past one o’clock, and drove straight
to Lombard-street, in which noble commercial thoroughfare the
banking-house of Messrs. Godwin and Selby was situated.
The name of Selby had long ceased to be anything more than a name.
The last Selby had expired placidly in a comfortable mansion at Tulse
Hill, some little time after the battle of Waterloo. The firm was now
solely represented by Rupert Godwin, the only son of the late head of
the firm, Anthony Godwin, and of a noble Spanish lady, who had given
supreme offence to her family by marrying a wealthy British trader,
rather than one of the penniless hidalgos who were eager to unite
their unimpeachable pedigrees and quarter their knightly arms with
hers.
The lady was proud, passionate, and self-willed. She preferred the
British trader to the descendants of the Cid, and left the shadowy
glories of her native land for the comfort and splendour of her
husband’s noble old mansion, where she ruled him with despotic power
till the day of her death.
Two sons and three daughters were born to the proud Castilian beauty;
but those children of the South languished under the cold English
sky. The youngest son, Rupert, was the only one of the family who
lived to attain manhood. He inherited his mother’s Spanish beauty,
together with her wilful and passionate nature.
This Rupert Godwin was a man of five-and-forty years of age, who
had inherited a noble fortune from his father, and who had obtained
another fortune with the hand of his wife, the only daughter of
a city millionnaire, an amiable but not over-wise damsel, who had
worshipped her husband as a kind of demigod, and who had faded
quietly out of existence soon after the birth of her second child,
not by any means passionately lamented by Rupert Godwin.
He was a man who had begun the world very early, and had exhausted
the common round of life’s pleasures and dissipations at an age when
other men are still enjoying the freshness of youth’s morning. He had
been his own master from the age of sixteen, for the simple reason
that neither his father nor his tutors had ever been able to conquer
his indomitable spirit, or restrain his determined will.
His father had been much shaken by the early deaths of his children
and the loss of his wife, who died when Rupert was fifteen. He
allowed this last surviving son to do as he pleased, and dawdled
through his lonely existence at his country-house, in the company of
his medical attendant and a valet who had grown grey in his service.
While the father’s placid days glided by at the country seat in
Hertfordshire, the son travelled from one place to another, sometimes
abroad, sometimes at home, spending money lavishly, and seeing a
great deal of life, more or less to his own satisfaction, but not
very much to his moral improvement.
At three-and-twenty he married; but those who knew him best augured
little happiness from this marriage. He accepted his wife’s
devotion as a matter of course, allowed her to live her own life
at the noble old house in Hertfordshire, while he followed the
bent of his inclinations elsewhere, honouring his household by his
presence during all seasons of gaiety and festivity, but studiously
avoiding the delights of domestic retirement. The business of the
bank always afforded Mr. Godwin an excellent excuse for absence.
There were branch-houses in Spain and in Spanish America, and these
branch-houses were under the personal supervision of the banker.
For many years the name of Rupert Godwin had been in the minds of
City men a tower of strength. But within the last few weeks there
had come a crisis in the fortunes of great commercial firms, and all
at once there were strange whispers passing from lip to lip amongst
the wise men of the Stock Exchange. It was well known that for some
years Rupert Godwin had been a great speculator. It was now whispered
abroad that he had not been always a fortunate speculator. He had
been bitten with the mania of speculation, men said, and had plunged
wildly into all manner of schemes, many of which had ended in ruin.
Such whispers as these are fatal in their influence upon the credit
of a commercial man. But as yet these dark rumours had not gone
beyond the narrow circle of wiseacres; as yet no hint of Rupert
Godwin’s losses had reached those whose money was lodged in his
keeping; as yet, therefore, there had been no run upon the bank.
The banker sat in his private room, with his books spread open
before him, while with a white face and a heavily-beating heart he
examined the state of his affairs. Daily, almost hourly, he expected
a desperate crisis, and he tried in vain to devise some means of
meeting it.
There was only one human being who was admitted to Rupert Godwin’s
confidence, and that was his head clerk, Jacob Danielson.
Ever since Rupert’s earliest manhood this Danielson had been in his
employment, and little by little there had grown up a strange bond of
union between the two men.
It could not be called friendship, for the banker was of too reserved
a nature to form a close friendship with any one--least of all with
an inferior; and whatever the confidences between him and his clerk,
he was always haughty and commanding in his tone and manner towards
his dependent.
But Jacob Danielson was the depository of many of his employer’s
secrets, and seemed to possess an almost superhuman power of reading
every thought that entered the brain of Rupert Godwin.
It may be that the banker knew this, and that there were times when
he felt a kind of terror of his shabby, queer-looking dependent.
Nothing could be wider than the contrast between the outward
appearance of the two men.
Rupert Godwin had one of those darkly splendid faces which we rarely
see out of an old Italian picture--such a face as Leonardo or Guido
might have chosen for a Herod or a Saul.
He was tall and broad-chested, his head nobly poised upon his
shoulders. His dark flashing eyes had something of the falcon in
their proud and eager glance; but beneath the calm steady gaze of
more honest eyes those falcon glances grew shifting and restless.
Jacob Danielson was strangely deficient in those physical perfections
which had so furthered his master’s fortunes.
The clerk was a wizen little man, with high shoulders, and a queer,
limping walk. His small but piercing gray eyes looked out from under
the shelter of a protruding forehead, fringed by two shaggy eyebrows.
His thin lips were apt to be disturbed by a twitching motion, which
at times was almost painful to witness.
Jacob Danielson was one of those walking mysteries whose thoughts,
deeds, and words are alike beyond the comprehension of other men. No
one understood him; no one was able to fathom the secrets hidden in
his breast.
He lived in a dingy little lodging on the Surrey side of the Thames,
a lodging which he had occupied for years, and where he had never
been known to receive the visit of any human being.
It was known that he drank deeply, but he had never been seen in a
state of intoxication. There were those amongst his fellow-clerks
who had tried to make him drunk, and who declared that there was no
spirit potent enough to master the senses of Jacob Danielson.
To his employer he was a most indefatigable servant. He _seemed_ also
a faithful servant; yet there were times in which the banker trembled
when he remembered the dangerous secrets lodged in the keeping of
this unsympathetic, inscrutable being.
While Rupert Godwin sat in his private apartment meditating over the
books of the house, and dreading the bursting of that storm-cloud
which had so long brooded above his head, Harley Westford was
hurrying towards him, eager to deposit in his hand the savings of
twenty years of peril and hardship.
A hansom cab carried the Captain to the door of the banking-house. He
alighted, and made his way into the outer office of the firm, where
he addressed himself to the first person whom he found disengaged.
That person happened to be no other than Jacob Danielson, the chief
clerk.
“I want to see Mr. Godwin,” said the Captain.
“Impossible,” Jacob answered coolly. “Mr. Godwin is particularly
engaged. If you will be good enough to state your business, I shall
be very happy to--”
“Thank you. No; I won’t trouble you. My time is very precious just
now; but as my business is important, I’ll wait till Mr. Godwin is
disengaged. When a man comes to place the savings of a lifetime
with a banking firm in which he has confidence, he feels a sort of
satisfaction in depositing his money in the hands of the principal.”
Jacob Danielson’s thin lips twitched nervously. The savings of a
lifetime! A stranger eager to place his money in Rupert Godwin’s
hands at a time when the banker expected only the frantic demands of
panic-stricken depositors, eager to snatch their treasures from a
falling house!
Jacob looked with keen scrutinizing eyes at the honest sailor, half
suspecting that there might be some trap hidden beneath his apparent
simplicity; but no one looking at Harley Westford could possibly
suspect him of cunning or treachery.
“The poor fool has walked straight into the lion’s den,” thought the
clerk; “and he’ll be tolerably close-shaved before he walks out of
it.”
He sat at his desk for some minutes, scratching his head in a
reflective manner, and looking furtively at handsome hazel-eyed
Harley Westford, who was swinging his cane, and rocking himself
backwards and forwards on his chair in a manner expressive of
considerable impatience.
Presently the clerk dismounted from his high stool. “Come, I see
you’re in a hurry, sir,” he said, “so I’ll go into the parlour and
ascertain what Mr. Godwin’s engagements are. Shall I take your card?”
“Yes; you may as well do so. My father was a customer of the firm,
and Mr. Godwin may have heard my name before to-day.”
He _may_ have heard your name, Harley Westford! That name is written
in letters of fire on the heart of Rupert Godwin, never to be erased
on this side of the grave.
Jacob Danielson carried the card into the banker’s sitting-room, and
threw it on the table before his master, without once deigning to
look at the name inscribed upon it.
“Some unfortunate fool has come to deposit a lump of money in your
hands, sir,” he said coolly; “he’s very particular about placing it
in _your_ hands, so that he may be sure it’s safe. I suppose you’ll
see him?”
“Yes,” answered the banker haughtily; “you can show him in.”
The cool insolence of his clerk’s manner galled him cruelly. He
had borne the same insolence without wincing in the hour of his
prosperity; but now that he felt himself upon the verge of ruin,
Jacob Danielson’s familiarity stung him to the quick. A deposed
sovereign is quick to feel insolence from his lackeys.
It was only when the clerk had left the room that Rupert Godwin
looked at the card lying on the table before him.
His glance was careless at first; but in the very moment when he
recognized the name inscribed upon the slip of pasteboard, his face
changed as few faces have power to change.
The sallow skin darkened to a dull leaden tint; a kind of electric
flame seemed to kindle in the dark eyes.
“Harley Westford!” he muttered. “And it is to me, his bitterest
enemy, that he brings his wealth; and at such a time as this! There
is a Nemesis who plans these things.”
The banker crushed the card in his sinewy hand, and after that one
passionate gesture controlled his emotion by a strength of will
which was like iron in its unyielding nature. His face, so suddenly
distorted, became as suddenly calm and placid, and he looked up with
a friendly smile as Harley entered the room.
No warning presentiment restrained the sailor at this last moment. He
handed the pocket-book to the banker, and said quietly, “That, Mr.
Godwin, contains the hard-won earnings of twenty years. Be so good
as to count the notes. You’ll find a thousand for every year--not so
bad, take it all in all. I had the money invested in foreign loans,
and it brought me very handsome interest, I can assure you. But some
wise friends of mine have taken fright. There’s to be war here, and
war there--two or three thrones expected to topple over during the
next six months, and three or four glorious republics on the point
of intestine war. ‘Sell out,’ say my friends. ‘What! and give up ten
per cent.?’ say I. And then they remind me of the cautious old Duke’s
axiom: ‘The better your interest, the worse your security.’ So I
‘cave in’ at once, as the Yankees say; and here I am, safe out of the
lion’s claws, and ready to accept the current rate of interest for my
capital.”
“I congratulate you on your escape,” answered the banker. “There’s
more than one storm brewing on the Continent, and foreign stock is
dropping every day.”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve done right. You see, I’m going to risk my life
upon one more journey before I settle down in the pleasant harbour
of home. I don’t know anything about this house, myself, but I know
my father trusted your father to his dying day. I shall feel quite
comfortable when my money is safely lodged in your hands. You find
the amount correct, I suppose?”
Rupert Godwin was counting the little packet of notes which he held
in his hand as the Captain spoke. Harley Westford did not see that
the banker’s hand trembled slightly as it grasped the fluttering
pieces of tissue paper.
Twenty thousand pounds! Such a sum trusted in his keeping at such a
moment might be the salvation of his credit.
“I have one charge more to confide in your hands,” said the Captain,
“and then I can leave England in peace. This sealed packet contains
the title-deeds of a small estate in Hampshire, on which my wife and
children reside; with your permission, I will lodge the packet in
your hands.”
As he spoke, Harley Westford laid a sealed packet on the table.
“I shall be happy to accept any charge you may confide in me,” the
banker answered with a courteous smile.
“And you’ll allow me decent interest on my money?”
“On deposits placed with us for a year certain we allow five per
cent.”
“I think that settles everything,” said the sailor; “and now I can
face danger, or death, without fear. Come what may, my wife and
children are provided for. Let my fate be what it will, they are
beyond the power of evil fortune.”
Rupert Godwin, bending over the papers before him, smiled to himself
as Harley Westford uttered these words--a strange, almost satanic
smile.
“Stay!” exclaimed the Captain, “you ought to give me some kind of
receipt for that money, and those deeds, ought you not? I don’t
pretend to be a man of business; but you see in these affairs a
family man is bound to be precise--even if he happens to be a sailor.”
“Most decidedly; I was waiting the opportunity of giving you your
receipt,” replied the banker coolly.
He touched a little hand-bell on the table before him, and the next
minute Jacob Danielson appeared in answer to the summons.
“Bring me some blank forms of receipt, Danielson.”
The clerk obeyed; and Rupert Godwin filled-in the receipt for twenty
thousand pounds.
To this he affixed his own signature, and then handed the paper to
Jacob Danielson, who signed his name below that of his master, as
witness. The banker also filled-in and duly signed an acknowledgment
of the sealed packet containing the title-deeds of the Grange.
With these two documents in the breast-pocket of his light
outer-coat, Harley Westford departed, delighted with the idea that he
had rendered the fortunes of his wife and children thoroughly secure.
The same hansom cab that had driven him from the railway station to
the bank in Lombard-street drove him to the Docks, where he alighted,
and made his way on board his own vessel, the _Lily Queen_.
Her freight had been taken on board some days before, and all was
ready for departure. A bright-faced, good-looking man of about five
and twenty was pacing up and down the deck as the Captain came
alongside the vessel.
This young man was Gilbert Thornleigh; first mate of the _Lily
Queen_, and a great favourite of Harley Westford’s. He had been down
to the Grange with his Captain, and had fallen desperately in love
with Violet in the course of a three days’ visit to that rustic
paradise: but it is needless to say that the sailor kept the secret
of his inflammable heart. The Captain’s beautiful daughter seemed as
high above him as some duchess crowned with a diadem and robed in
ermine might appear to some young captain of household troops.
Captain Westford greeted Gilbert with a hearty grasp of the hand.
“True to my time, you see, my lad,” he said.
“Yes, Captain; always true.”
“And this time I can leave England with a light heart,” said
Harley; “for I have made all secure for my wife and children. No
more foreign loans and Otaheite railway debentures and Fiji Island
first-preference bonds, my lad, which bewilder a plain man’s brains
when he tries to understand them. I have placed the whole lump of
money in the hands of an old-established English banker, and in my
pocket here I have Rupert Godwin’s receipt for the cash.”
Gilbert Thornleigh stared aghast at his Captain.
“Rupert Godwin!” he exclaimed. “You can’t mean that, Captain? You
can’t mean that you have placed your money with the firm of Godwin
and Selby?”
“Why not, lad? Why shouldn’t I place it with them?”
“Because it is whispered that they are on the verge of ruin. I had a
few hundreds in their hands myself until yesterday; but my uncle, an
old City man, gave me a word of warning, and I drew every farthing
of my money before the bank closed last night. But don’t be uneasy,
Captain, the rumour may be a false one. Besides, it’s not too late;
you can withdraw your money.”
Harley Westford’s face grew suddenly white. He reeled like a drunken
man, and clung to the bulwark for support.
“The villain!” he exclaimed; “the infernal scoundrel! He knew that
the money belonged to my wife and children, and he smiled in my face
while he took it from me!”
“But there is time enough yet, Captain,” said Gilbert Thornleigh,
looking at his watch; “the bank will not close before four o’clock,
and it’s now only three. You can go ashore and get your money back.”
“Yes,” cried Harley Westford, with a terrible oath, “I will have
my money--or the life of that villain! My children! My wife! The
scoundrel could look me in the face and know that he was robbing two
helpless women! No, no, my darlings, you shall not be cheated!”
“Captain, there is not a moment to lose.”
“I know, lad; I know,” answered Harley, passing his hand across his
brow as if to collect his scattered senses. “This news upset me a
bit at first, but I shall be all right presently. See here, my lad;
you know how I have always trusted you, and now I must place a still
greater trust in your hands. Come what may, the _Lily Queen_ sails at
daybreak to-morrow. If I am on board her by that time, well and good.
If not, she must sail without me, and you, Gilbert Thornleigh, go as
her Captain. Remember that. I will have no delays; the men are all on
board her, her cargo is expected and waited for out yonder. There has
been too much delay as it is, and it’s a point of honour with me not
to lose another hour. I trust you, Gilbert, as if you were my son.
Heaven only knows when I may see blue water again. If this man Rupert
Godwin is indeed on the verge of ruin, he will scarcely relinquish
twenty thousand pounds without a struggle. But, come what may, I will
have the money from him, by fair means or foul. In the mean time
Gilbert, I trust the command of the vessel to you in case of the
worst. Remember, she sails to-morrow morning.”
“Without fail, Captain, and you with her, please Providence!”
“That,” answered Harley Westford solemnly, “is in the hands of
Heaven.”
He placed all the necessary papers in the young man’s custody, and
after a few instructions, hurriedly but not carelessly given, he
wrung Gilbert’s extended hand, and then sprang into the boat which
was to take him ashore.
He called the first cab that was to be found outside the Docks, and
told the man to drive at a gallop to Lombard-street.
The bank was closing as the Captain alighted from the vehicle. Mr.
Godwin had just left for his country-house, the clerk told Harley,
and no further business could be transacted that day.
“Then I must follow him to his country-house,” answered the Captain.
“Where is it?”
“Wilmingdon Hall, on the North road, beyond Hertford.”
“How can I get there?”
“You can go by rail to Hertford, and then get a fly across to the
Hall. It’s only a mile and a half from the station.”
“Good,” answered Harley Westford. Then, after directing the cabman
to drive his fastest to the Great Northern Terminus, he stepped once
more into the vehicle.
“Neither Rupert Godwin nor I shall know peace or rest until that
money has been restored to its rightful owner!” cried the Captain,
raising his clenched hand, as if he would have invoked the powers of
Heaven to witness his oath.
He little knew how terribly that oath was to be fulfilled.
CHAPTER III.
AN IMPORTUNATE CREDITOR.
While Harley Westford was making his way to Hertford by
express-train, Mr. Godwin sat over his wine in one of the splendid
apartments of Wilmingdon Hall.
Wilmingdon Hall was no modern villa erected by a wealthy speculator,
one of the merchant princes of the commercial age. It was a noble
relic of the past; one of those stately habitations which we find
here and there embosomed in woods whose growth is of a thousand
years. For centuries the Hall had been the residence of a grand old
race; but reckless extravagance had driven the lords of the mansion
away from its ponderous gates, to give place to the rich commoner
whose wealth made him master of the old domain.
The Hall was built in the form of a quadrangle, and was large
enough to have accommodated a regiment of soldiers. One side of the
quadrangle had been built in the early Tudor period, and had been
disused for many years. The stone mullions of the windows darkened
the rooms, and the tapestry hung rotting on the walls of the gloomy
bedchambers and the low-roofed saloons of a bygone age.
There were few of the banker’s household who would have been bold
enough to enter this northern wing of the mansion, which was, of
course, reported to be haunted; but Mr. Godwin himself had been often
known to visit the silent chambers, where the dust lay thick upon the
mouldering oaken floors. The banker had indeed caused an iron safe to
be placed in one of the lower rooms; and it was said that he kept a
great deal of old-fashioned plate and jewellery, intrusted to him by
his customers, in the cellarage below this northern wing.
Very few persons living in this present day had ever descended to
these cellars; but it was reported that they extended the whole
length and breadth of the northern side of the quadrangle, and even
penetrated into the adjoining wings. It was also said that in the
time of the civil wars these cellars had been used as prisons for the
enemy, and as hiding-places for the faithful adherents of the good
cause.
The servants of Mr. Godwin’s numerous household often talked of
those gloomy underground chambers, but not one among them would have
been courageous enough to descend into the dark and unknown vaults.
Nor were the cellars ever left open to any hazardous intruder, as
the ponderous old keys belonging to them, and to all the rooms in
the deserted northern wing, were lodged in the safe keeping of Mr.
Godwin himself, and no doubt stowed away in one of the numerous iron
safes which lined the walls of his study. There was some legend of
a subterranean passage leading from some part of the grounds to the
cellarage; but no one now in the household had ever ventured to test
the truth of this legend. Was there not also the legend of a White
Lady, whose shadowy form might be met at any hour in those darksome
chambers,--a harmless lady enough while in the flesh, a poor gentle
creature, who had broken her heart and gone distraught for love of
an inconstant gentleman in the military line; but a very troublesome
lady in the spirit, since she appeared to devote her leisure to
sighing and wailing in passages and cupboards, and to the performance
of every variety of scratching, and knocking, and scraping, and
tapping known to the most ingenious of ghosts.
In the neighbourhood of Wilmingdon Hall Mr. Godwin was looked upon as
the possessor of almost fabulous wealth. He was regarded as a kind of
modern magician, who could have coined gold out of the dead leaves
which strewed Wilmingdon woods in the autumn, if he had chosen to do
so.
The June evening was as beautiful as the June morning had been. The
western sky was one grand blaze of crimson and orange, as Rupert
Godwin sat over his wine in his spacious oak-panelled dining-room. He
was not alone. On the opposite side of the table appeared the wizen
face of the clerk, Jacob Danielson.
Crystal decanters, diamond cut, and sparkling as if studded with
jewels, glittered in the crimson sunset, and fragrant hot-house
fruits were piled amongst their dewy leaves in dishes of rare old
Sèvres china. Luxury and elegance surrounded the banker on every
side; but he had by no means the air of a man who enjoys the delights
of the Sybarite’s _dolce far niente_. A dark frown of discontent
obscured his handsome face, and the violet-perfumed Burgundy, which
his clerk was sniffing with the true epicurean gusto, had no charm
for the master.
Rupert Godwin had felt himself compelled to conciliate his clerk. Did
not Jacob know of the twenty thousand pounds--that twenty thousand
pounds respecting which dark plots were now being woven in the
banker’s mind?
That sum might have restored Mr. Godwin’s shaken credit for a time;
but what would he be able to do when the Captain returned from his
Chinese voyage, and demanded the restoration of his money?
Rupert Godwin hated Harley Westford with a deeply-rooted hatred,
though he had never looked upon the sailor’s face until that day. The
hatred which had long smouldered in the banker’s breast arose out of
a dark mystery of the past--a mystery in which Clara, the Captain’s
wife, had been concerned.
Under these circumstances, Rupert Godwin, ever selfish, false, and
unscrupulous, resolved on appropriating the sailor’s fortune. Ruin
stared him in the face. He had speculated wildly, and had lost
heavily. He resolved on leaving Europe for ever, and carrying with
him the twenty thousand pounds intrusted to him by Harley Westford.
He had spent some of the pleasantest years of his youth in South
America, where a member of his family occupied a position of some
importance as a merchant.
“Under a feigned name, and in that distant land, no one will be able
to discover the whereabouts of Rupert Godwin, the runaway banker,”
he thought; “and with twenty thousand pounds for my starting-point,
I may make a second fortune, larger than my first. Julia shall
accompany me. My son may remain in England and shift for himself;
there has never been much love between us, and I do not want to be
hindered at every turn by some Quixotic scruple of his. Chivalry and
commerce won’t go in harness together. Bayard would have made a bad
thing of it on the Stock Exchange.”
Thus ran the banker’s thoughts as he sat brooding over his wine; but
every now and then his restless eyes glanced furtively towards the
face of his clerk.
He feared Jacob Danielson. The fear as yet was shadowy and
unreasoning; but he felt that the clerk knew too many of his secrets,
and might become a hindrance to his schemes. He felt this, and in
the meantime he was anxious to conciliate, and if possible hoodwink,
Jacob Danielson.
“Yes, Jacob,” he said presently, taking up the thread of a former
conversation, “this twenty thousand may enable us to weather the
storm. If the first calls made upon us are promptly paid, confidence
must be restored, and the rumour against us will die away.”
“Very likely,” answered the clerk, in that cool dry tone of voice
which was peculiarly unpleasant to Rupert Godwin; “but when the
sea captain comes home and wants his money--what then?”
“By that time we may be again in a strong position.”
“Yes, we _may_! But how?”
“Some of the speculations in which my money has been risked may
improve. My eggs are not all in one basket. Some of the baskets may
prove to be sounder than they appear just now,” answered the banker,
who tried in vain to appear at his ease under the piercing scrutiny
of Jacob’s sharp grey eyes.
“Do you believe that, Mr. Godwin?” asked the clerk, in a tone that
was strangely significant.
“Most decidedly.”
“Humph!” responded Jacob, rubbing the iron-grey stubble upon his chin
with his horny palm, until the harsh rasping noise produced by that
action set his employer’s teeth on edge. “I am glad you have so much
confidence in the future.”
Rupert Godwin winced as he felt the sting contained in these simple
words. He felt that to throw dust in the eyes of Mr. Danielson was by
no means an easy operation. But he was no coward. He was a bold bad
man, whose heart was not likely to fail him in any desperate venture.
“Bah!” he thought, as his strongly-marked brows contracted over his
dark eyes, “what have I to fear from this man? True, that he knows
of the twenty thousand pounds; but what harm can his knowledge do me
when I am far away from England and my creditors? In that money lies
the means of new wealth.”
His head drooped forward upon his breast, as he abandoned himself to
a reverie that was not altogether unpleasant, when suddenly a voice,
solemnly impressive in its tone, sounded in the quiet of the June
twilight.
“Mr. Godwin,” said the voice, “I come to demand from you the twenty
thousand pounds which I lodged in your keeping to-day.”
A thunderbolt descending from heaven to shatter the roof above him
could scarcely have affected the banker more terribly than did the
sound of that unceremonious demand.
He looked up, and saw Harley Westford standing in one of the long
French windows which opened upon the lawn. The Captain stood on the
threshold of the central window, exactly opposite Rupert Godwin;
and in the dim declining light the banker could see that Harley
Westford’s face was deadly pale. It was the fixed and resolute
countenance of a desperate man.
For the first few moments after those words had been spoken Rupert
Godwin was completely unnerved; but, with an effort, he shook off
that feeling of mental paralysis which had taken possession of him,
and assumed his usual ease of manner.
“My dear Captain Westford,” he said, “your sudden appearance actually
alarmed me; and yet I am not generally subject to any nervous
fancies. But this place is supposed to be haunted; and I give you my
word you looked exactly like a ghost just now in the June gloaming.
Pray be seated, and try some of that Chambertin, which I can
recommend. Danielson, will you be good enough to ring for lamps? The
darkness has crept upon us unawares.”
“Yes,” answered the clerk, “we have been so deeply interested in our
own thoughts.”
There was something like a sneer in Jacob Danielson’s tone as he said
this; and the banker felt as if his inmost thoughts had been read by
his clerk.
“Well, Captain Westford,” said Mr. Godwin in his most careless tone,
“to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? You wish to make some
new arrangement about the investment of your money; perhaps you are
not satisfied with the rate of interest allowed by our house. You
want to dabble in some speculative investment.”
“Mr. Godwin,” exclaimed the sailor, “I am a plain-spoken man, and I
don’t know how to beat about the bush. In a very few words, then, I
want my money back.”
“You are afraid to trust it in my hands?”
“I am.”
“You have heard some false rumour, no doubt; some story got up by
notorious City scoundrels. Some anonymous circular has reached
you, perhaps, intended to undermine the credit of one of the best
considered banking-firms in the City of London. I have heard of such
stabs in the dark; and if I had my will the anonymous slanderer
who destroys his neighbour’s credit should be hung as high as the
assassin who takes his neighbour’s life.”
“The rumour which I have heard may be true or false,” replied the
Captain quietly. “I trust for your sake, Mr. Godwin, that it is
false. I think it very likely that it may be so. But I am dealing
with that which is dearer to me than my own heart’s blood. I am
dealing with the money which represents the future comfort and safety
of my wife and children. There must be no risk, not the shadow
of risk, about that money. Ask me to trust you with my life, and
I will trust you freely; but I will not leave that money in your
hands. At the risk of giving you mortal offence I come to demand its
restoration.”
“And you shall have it in due course, my dear Captain Westford,”
answered the banker, throwing himself back in his chair and laughing
aloud. “Pray, excuse me, but I cannot help being amused by your
simplicity. You sailors are as bold as lions on the high seas, but
the veriest cowards when you come into the neighbourhood of the Stock
Exchange. I really can’t help laughing at your fears.”
“Laugh as much as you please, Mr. Godwin; only, give me back my
money.”
“Most decidedly, my dear Captain Westford; but as I don’t happen to
carry your fortune about with me in my waistcoat-pocket, you must
wait till business hours to-morrow.”
The sailor’s countenance darkened.
“I relied on catching you in Lombard-street before the bank closed,”
he said, “and I have given orders for the sailing of my vessel
to-morrow at daybreak. If I am not aboard her, she sails without me.”
The banker was silent for some moments. The lamps had not yet been
brought into the room, and in the darkness a sinister smile passed
over Rupert Godwin’s face.
“Your vessel sails without you,” he said presently; “but of course
your officers will await fresh orders from you?”
“No, they have no occasion to wait,” answered the Captain; “they have
received all necessary instructions. If I am not on board my vessel
before daybreak to-morrow, my first mate will assume the post of
Captain, and the _Lily Queen_ will leave the Pool without me.”
Two men-servants entered the room with lamps at this moment. In the
brilliant yet subdued light of the moderator-lamps, Rupert Godwin
looked like a man who was on good terms with himself and all the
world. And yet Heaven alone knew the intensity of the struggle going
forward in this man’s mind.
“My dear Danielson,” he exclaimed, after glancing at the clock upon
the chimney-piece--“my dear Danielson, have you any notion of the
time? It is now past nine, and unless you start at once, you’ll
scarcely catch the 10.30 train from Hertford.”
“It is like you, to be so kind and thoughtful, Mr. Godwin!” the clerk
said, looking searchingly at his employer. “Yes, my time is up, and I
must be thinking of getting off.”
“I’ll order one of my grooms to drive you to the station,” said Mr.
Godwin; and before Jacob could remonstrate, he rang the bell and gave
his directions to the servant who answered it.
Meanwhile Harley Westford stood a little way from the table, pale and
silent, and with a resolute look upon his frank handsome face.
During all this time he had not once seated himself; during all this
time he had not once removed his gaze from the countenance of the
banker. He wanted to discover whether or not Rupert Godwin was an
honest man.
“I am waiting to hear your decision about that money, Mr. Godwin,” he
said quietly; “remember, that to me it is a matter of life and death.”
“If you will step into my study. I shall be at your service
immediately, Captain Westford,” answered the banker; “I have only a
few words to say to my clerk, and then I will join you.”
A servant entered at this moment to announce that the dog-cart was
ready to take Mr. Danielson to the station.
“Show this gentleman into my study,” said Rupert Godwin, “and take
lights there immediately.”
Harley Westford followed the servant. When he entered the dining-room
he had carried his light overcoat upon his arm: this coat he now left
hanging loosely upon a chair.
“Now, my dear Jacob,” said the banker, with every appearance of
unconcern, “let me see you off, and then I will go and settle with
this importunate sea-captain.”
“But how will you settle with him?” asked Danielson in a low
suppressed voice.
“Very easily. I will persuade him that the rumour he has heard
against our credit is entirely false, and shall by that means prevail
upon him to leave his money in my hands until his return from China.”
“But he seems determined upon having the money back immediately. I
fancy you’ll find him rather a tough customer.”
“Trust my diplomacy against his determination. Come, Jacob, you will
certainly lose your train.”
The banker almost pushed his clerk towards the dog-cart which was
waiting before the Gothic porch of Wilmingdon Hall. Jacob mounted the
vehicle, and the groom drove off at a smart pace.
Then, for the first time, Rupert Godwin sighed heavily, as he stood
alone in the porch, and a dark cloud fell over his face.
“It is difficult work,” he muttered to himself; “awful work, let me
plan it which way I will. But let me remember Clara Ponsonby--my love
and her disdain. Let me remember the past, and _that_ memory may give
me nerve and resolution to-night.”
He stood for some minutes in the porch, looking out into the summer
darkness. No star had yet risen in the June heavens, and the lawn
and gardens of Wilmingdon Hall were as dark as the deepest recesses
of the forest. After those few minutes of silent thought, the banker
breathed one more sigh, profound as the first, and turned to re-enter
the house.
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS.
Rupert Godwin went at once to the library, where Harley Westford was
waiting for him.
“Come, my dear Captain,” he said, as he entered the spacious room,
the walls of which were lined with books, whose costly and artistic
bindings announced alike the wealth of a millionnaire and the
perfect taste of an accomplished bibliopole,--“come, Captain, let us
understand each other fully. You want this money to-night?”
“I do. My demand may perhaps be unreasonable, as this house is not
your place of business, nor this an hour in which you are accustomed
to transact business; but the peculiar circumstances of the case must
plead my excuse. I tell you again, Mr. Godwin, to me this is a matter
of life or death.”
“And if I refuse to give you the money to-night you will apply for it
to-morrow, as soon as the bank opens?”
“Unquestionably.”
“And if then there was any delay in the production of your money,
what would you do?”
“I would dog your footsteps day and night; I would haunt you like
your own shadow; I would stand upon the steps of your banking-house
in Lombard-street and proclaim you as a thief and a scoundrel, until
that twenty thousand pounds was produced. _My_ money!” cried the
Captain in passionate accents; “it is not my money; it is my wife’s
money, my children’s money; and you had better try to take my life
than to rob me of that.”
“Come, come, my dear sir,” said the banker, with his blandest smile,
“pray do not excite yourself. I was only putting a case. I daresay
if I were a dishonest man you would be what is vulgarly called
an ugly customer; but as I have no intention of withholding your
money for an hour longer than is necessary, we need not discuss the
matter with any violence. I told you just now that I was not in the
habit of carrying twenty thousand pounds about me. Under ordinary
circumstances, therefore, I should not be able to give you your money
to-night. You say your vessel sails at daybreak to-morrow?”
“She does.”
“And you will be a loser if you cannot sail with her?”
“A very considerable loser.”
“Very well, then, Captain Westford,” answered the banker; “you have
not behaved very generously to me. You have intruded yourself upon
my domestic privacy, and have insulted me by most unjust suspicions.
In spite of this, however, I am prepared to act generously towards
you. As the circumstances of the case are exceptional, I will strain
a point in your favour. It happens, strange to say, that I have in
this house a sum of money amounting to more than the twenty thousand
pounds which you lodged in my hands.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. It is a strange coincidence, is it not?”
The banker laughed as he made this remark. Had Harley Westford been
a suspicious man, skilled in reading the darker secrets of the human
heart, something strained and unnatural in that laugh might have
struck upon his ear, awakening a vague terror. But he suspected
nothing. He was quite ready to believe that he had wronged Rupert
Godwin by his impetuous demand for the return of his money.
“I happen to have an eccentric old lady amongst my customers, whose
fortune of some seven-and-twenty thousand pounds was, until a few
days since, lodged in the hands of different railway companies,”
said the banker, in his most business-like tone. “But a week or so
ago she wrote to me in a panic, caused by some silly report she had
heard, desiring me to sell out of these companies, and to keep her
money in my hands until she gave me further directions respecting the
disposal of it. But the best part of the business is, that she begged
me to keep the money at my country-house, for fear, as she said, of a
robbery in Lombard-street. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd?”
Again Mr. Godwin laughed, the same forced unnatural laugh as before.
“However, Captain Westford,” he continued, “the old proverb very
truly tells us, ‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.’ You shall
profit by the old lady’s eccentricity. If you will come with me to
the other side of my house, where I keep all valuables intrusted to
me, I will give you Bank of England notes to the amount of twenty
thousand pounds.”
“I thank you very much,” answered the Captain.
“No thanks, I am glad to do as much for the sake of----your wife.”
The banker made a long pause before uttering those two last words.
He opened an iron safe, artfully disguised by doors of carved oak,
and took from it a heavy bunch of keys, all labelled with slips of
parchment. These keys belonged to the northern wing of the Hall.
As the two men were about to leave the room, the door was opened, and
a woman appeared upon the threshold.
Never had Harley Westford looked upon beauty more splendid than that
which now greeted his sight.
A girl of some nineteen years of age, whose darkly-flashing eyes and
Spanish style of beauty proclaimed her the daughter of Rupert Godwin,
stood before him. But all that was stern and cold in the banker’s
face was softened into beauty in that of his daughter.
The eyes were oriental in their dark lustre, and there was a
dewy softness mingled even with the eager brightness of their
gaze. A crimson glow relieved the pale olive of the clear skin;
and half-parted lips, whose vermilion recalled the hue of the
pomegranate, displayed two rows of small white teeth that glittered
in the lamp-light.
The girl’s figure was tall and commanding, but she was graceful as an
Andalusian countess.
Such was Julia Godwin, the only daughter of the banker and of the
poor neglected lady who had been his wife.
“I have been looking for you everywhere, papa!” exclaimed Julia;
“where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?”
The banker turned upon his daughter with a frown.
“Have I to tell you again, Julia, that this is a room which I devote
to business, and that I will not be intruded upon here?” he exclaimed
sternly. “This gentleman is with me on an affair of vital importance,
and I must beg that you will retire to your own apartments, and leave
us undisturbed.”
“O, very well, papa,” said Julia, pouting her rosy under-lip in
evident vexation, and lingering on the threshold with the privileged
pertinacity of a spoiled child; “but it is dreadfully weary work
sitting alone a whole evening in this melancholy old house, where one
expects to see a ghost walk out of the panelling at any moment after
dark. Mrs. Melville has gone to town to dine with some old friends,
and will not come back till to-morrow morning; so I am all alone. And
I looked forward to such a pleasant evening with you. However, I’m
going, papa; only I do think you’re very unkind, and I----”
The dark frown upon Mr. Godwin’s face silenced his daughter’s
complaining voice, and she retired, murmuring to herself about her
father’s unkindness.
Even the sternest men are liable to some weaknesses; and it must
be confessed that Julia Godwin was a spoiled child, the favourite
companion of a doting father.
Between Rupert Godwin and his son there was neither affection nor
companionship. A strange and unnatural dislike divided the father
and his only son; and it was in his daughter that the proud man had
centred all his hopes.
“Come, Captain Westford,” said the banker, when Julia had vanished,
“it is growing late. The last train from Hertford leaves at a little
before midnight. Will you be able to walk as far as the station?”
“Three times that distance, if necessary,” answered the seaman
heartily.
“Come, then.”
Rupert Godwin took the lamp in one hand and the bunch of keys in the
other. He went into the hall, followed by Captain Westford.
“There will be no vehicle required for this gentleman,” the banker
said, to a servant whom they met in the hall; “he will take a short
cut across the park, and walk back to Hertford.”
Rupert Godwin led the way along corridors carpeted with velvet pile,
and adorned with pictures and statues, and great china vases of
exotic flowers, whose rich perfumes filled the air. All was luxury
and elegance in this part of the house, and through the open doors
Harley Westford caught glimpses of exquisitely-furnished apartments,
in which the carved oaken wainscots and richly-adorned ceilings of
the Elizabethan age contrasted with the most graceful achievements of
modern upholstery.
But suddenly the scene changed. At the end of a long corridor the
banker unlocked a ponderous oaken door, and led the way into a dark
passage, where the atmosphere seemed thick with dust, and where there
was a faint musty smell that seemed the very odour of decay.
They were now in the northern wing of Wilmingdon Hall, amongst
those disused chambers to whose dull solitude it pleased the banker
sometimes to betake himself.
Harley Westford looked round him with a shudder.
“We seamen are rather superstitious fellows,” he said; “the air of
this place chills me to the bone, and I should expect to meet a ghost
in these dark passages. The place feels like a grave.”
“Does it?” exclaimed the banker; “that’s strange!”
Again, if Harley Westford had been a suspicious man, he might have
detected something sinister in the tone in which those words were
spoken.
The banker unlocked a door leading into a small low-roofed chamber
which bore the aspect of being sometimes occupied by a business man.
There were iron safes along one side of the room, and a desk and a
couple of chairs stood in the centre of the bare oak floor. There was
a long narrow window, guarded by iron bars and by heavy shutters on
the outside. At one end of the room there was a door, also heavily
barred with iron.
Nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of this apartment, dimly
illuminated by the lamp which Rupert Godwin placed upon the desk.
“It is in this room that I keep any objects of special value
intrusted to me for any length of time,” he said, as Harley
Westford’s eyes wandered slowly round the apartment. “Those safes
contain money and securities. That door leads to a cellar in which I
keep plate.”
He opened one of the safes and took out an iron box.
“This is Miss Wentworth’s fortune,” he said, “twenty thousand pounds
of which I am about to deliver to you.”
He set the box upon the desk; and while the Captain was looking at it
with an almost respectful gaze, as the casket which contained so much
wealth, Rupert Godwin turned once more to the safe.
This time Harley Westford did not see the object which he took from
that iron repository.
It was something that flashed with a blue glitter in the light of the
lamp--something which the banker concealed in the sleeve of his coat
as he turned towards the sailor.
“Come,” he said, with his most careless manner, “you must see my
mysterious cellar before you leave this old haunted wing of the Hall.
You are not afraid of the ghosts, I suppose, in my company?”
“Neither in yours nor alone,” answered Harley; “a sailor is never
afraid. He may believe in the appearance of strange visitants upon
this earth, but he does not fear them.”
The banker unlocked the iron-barred door, and pulled it open.
It revolved very slowly on its ponderous hinges, revealing a flight
of steep steps that led downwards into impenetrable darkness.
“So that is where you keep your treasures!” cried the sailor; “a
regular Aladdin’s cave!”
“Yes,” answered Rupert Godwin; “if you are an amateur of old silver,
you would find plenty to interest you in that vault--candelabras that
have lighted the banquets of the Tudors, tankards that Cromwell’s
thick lips have touched, tea-pots and salvers made by Queen Anne’s
favourite silversmith, the tarnished treasures of some of the best
families in England. Take the lamp and look down.”
Harley took the lamp from the table, and approached the threshold of
the door.
He stood for some few moments looking thoughtfully down into the
gloomy vault below.
“A queer place!” he said; “darker than the hold of a slave-ship off
the African coast.”
As he uttered the last few words, the arm of the banker was suddenly
raised, and that mysterious something which flashed with a blue
glitter in the lamp-light descended upon the sailor’s back.
Harley Westford uttered one groan, staggered forward, and fell
headlong down the steep flight of steps leading to the cellar.
There was a crash of broken glass as the lamp fell from his hand;
then a dull heavy thud, which was re-echoed with a hollow sound in
the vault below--a sound that prolonged itself like the suppressed
roar of distant thunder.
The banker thrust his hand into his breast, then pushed the heavy
door upon its hinges, and turned the key in the lock.
“I do not think he will come to Lombard-street to demand his money,
or stand upon the steps of my house to denounce me for a thief and a
scoundrel,” muttered Rupert Godwin, as he dropped the bunch of keys
into his coat-pocket.
Then he groped his way from the room, and crept cautiously along the
narrow passage leading to the occupied portion of the house.
He had left the door of communication ajar, and he saw the light
shining through the aperture.
He seemed to breathe more freely as he emerged into the carpeted
corridor, and locked the door behind him.
As he was turning the key in the lock, Julia Godwin came out of one
of the rooms near at hand.
“Where is your friend, papa?” she asked, with a look of surprise.
“He has gone back to London.”
“But how did he go? I saw you both go into the northern wing just
now, and I have been sitting in my own room with the door open
listening for your footsteps ever since. I am sure he has not passed
along this passage.”
For a moment the banker was silent.
“How inquisitive you are, Julia!” he said at last. “I let that
gentleman out of the side-door in the northern wing, as he wanted to
get across the park by the shortest way.”
“Ah, to be sure. But what could take you into that horrible northern
wing?”
“Business. I have important papers there. Go back to your room,
Julia; I cannot stay to be questioned.”
The girl looked at her father with an expression of mingled wonder
and anxiety.
“Papa!” she exclaimed, “you are as pale as death. I never saw you
look like this before. And it is not like you to be so cross to me.
I am sure that something has happened to vex you, something very
serious.”
“I had rather unpleasant business with that man; but it is all over
now, and he has gone. Let me pass, Julia; I have important letters to
write before I go to bed.”
“Good-night then, papa,” said Julia, holding up her face to be
kissed. But before the kiss could be given, she recoiled from her
father, with a sudden movement, and a low cry of terror.
“See there!” she exclaimed, pointing to his breast.
“What is the matter, child?”
“Blood, papa! A spot of blood upon your shirt.”
The banker looked down, and saw a little splash of blood upon the
spotless whiteness of his cambric shirt-front. “How silly you are,
Julia!” he said. “My nose bled a little just now, as I was stooping
over some papers. My brain is overloaded with blood, I think. There,
there--good-night, child.”
He pressed his lips upon the girl’s uplifted brow. Those cold
bloodless lips sent a chill through her veins.
“What is the matter with papa, to-night?” she thought, as she
returned to her own apartment; “I’m afraid something must have gone
wrong in the City.”
The banker walked slowly to the dining-room, where Harley Westford
had first broken in upon his reverie.
The lamps were still burning on the long table of polished oak; the
wines still glowed with ruby lustre in the diamond-cut decanters.
But the room was not empty. Seated by the table, with the _Times_
newspaper in his hand, Rupert Godwin beheld Jacob Danielson, the man
who of all others he would have least wished to encounter at that
moment.
The banker had buttoned his coat across his breast after that meeting
with his daughter, and the blood-stain was no longer visible. But he
could not repress a sudden start at sight of his clerk.
“You here, Danielson!” he exclaimed; “I thought you were on your way
to London.”
“No; I was too late for the train, and so walked back to ask a
night’s hospitality. I might have gone by the midnight train, of
course; but then, you see, my landlady is a very particular sort of
person, and it wouldn’t do for me to go back to my lodgings in the
dead of the night; so I venture to return here. I hope I shall not be
considered an intruder.”
“O, not at all,” answered Rupert, dropping suddenly into an
arm-chair. “Will you be good enough to touch the bell?”
“Certainly. You are looking very pale.”
“Yes, I was seized with a spasm of the heart just now. I am subject
to that sort of thing,” replied the banker, coolly. Then he added to
the servant who entered the room, “Bring me some brandy.”
The man brought a decanter of brandy. Rupert Godwin half filled a
tumbler with the spirit, and drained it to the last drop.
“And so you lost the train, and walked over here?” he asked of
Danielson, presently.
“Yes; I dismissed your man with the dog-cart before I discovered that
the train had started, so I had no alternative but to walk back.”
“You must have walked uncommonly fast,” said the banker, thoughtfully.
“Yes, I’m rather a fast walker. But where’s our friend the Captain?”
“Gone, half an hour ago.”
“You contrived to pacify him, then?”
“O, yes. He agreed to let me have the use of his money till his
return from China. I shall pay him rather a high rate of interest.”
“Ah, to be sure,” answered the clerk, rubbing his chin in that
slow and meditative manner which was peculiar to him, and staring
thoughtfully at his employer, who drank another half-tumbler of
brandy. “And so the Captain walked to the railway station. You
directed him to go by a cross cut through the park, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“By the grotto and fernery, eh?”
“Yes; I sent him that way,” answered the banker, rather abstractedly.
“Strange!” said the clerk. “I ought to have met him, for I came that
way.”
“Very likely he took the wrong path; these sailors never are very
good hands at steering their course on shore.”
“No; to be sure. And the careless fellow has left his coat behind
him, I see,” said Danielson, pointing to Harley Westford’s light
overcoat, which hung on the back of a distant chair.
“Very careless,” answered the banker. “And now, as I am rather tired,
I will wish you good-night, Danielson. The servants will show you to
your room. Try some of that cognac. It is quite a liqueur.”
“It ought to be rather mild,” answered the clerk; “for I never saw
you take so much brandy as you’ve drunk within the last five minutes.”
Rupert Godwin left the dining-room, and went up the broad oak
staircase to his own apartment--a lofty and spacious chamber,
furnished with dark carved oak, relieved by hangings of green velvet.
Here the mask fell from the assassin’s face; here the guilty man
dared to be himself.
He dropped heavily into a chair, and covering his face with his
hands, groaned aloud.
“It was horrible,” he muttered, “very horrible; and yet they say
revenge is sweet. Years ago I hungered for vengeance as some famished
animal may hunger for his prey. And now it is mine. I am avenged,
Clara Ponsonby. You will never look upon my rival again.”
The banker plunged his hand into his waistcoat, and drew from thence
a long Spanish dagger of bright blue steel.
From the point half-way towards the hilt, the blade was stained with
blood.
“His blood!” muttered Rupert Godwin; “the blood of the man I have
hated for twenty years, and only met for the first time to-day! The
ways of destiny are strange.”
The banker rose from his chair, and went to an old-fashioned ebony
cabinet, in a secret drawer of which he placed the dagger.
“No living creature but myself knows the secret of that spring,” he
said to himself. “They must be clever who find the weapon that killed
Harley Westford.”
Then after a pause, he murmured:
“The weapon that killed him! Can I be certain that he is dead?”
And again, after a pause, he muttered:
“Bah! How should he survive to-night’s work? The stroke of the dagger
was sure enough; and then the fall down the steep flight of steps.
Can there be any doubt of his death? And again, if he survived the
dagger-stroke and the fall, he must perish from loss of blood, cold,
or even famine.”
There was something demoniac in the face of Rupert Godwin as he
contemplated this horrible alternative.
“And the twenty thousand pounds are mine!” he exclaimed triumphantly,
after a long pause: “mine--for ever; to deal with as I please. That
sum may help me to sustain the shattered credit of my house. Fresh
speculations may float me back to fortune. I may surmount all my
difficulties, as I have surmounted the difficulty of to-night. What
is it, after all?--this crime, which is so hideous to contemplate, so
awful to remember? One bold, sudden stroke, and the thing is done.
This man’s life comes to an end, as it might have come to an end a
few days hence in some squall at sea. What is the world the worse for
his loss, or how am I the worse for what I have done?”
This was the argument which this man held with himself in that first
pause after the commission of the dread act which must separate him
for evermore in thought and feeling from men with clean hands and
sinless hearts.
He was not sorry for what he had done. He was disturbed by no feeling
of compassion or regret for his victim. But he felt that he had done
a deed the weight and influence of which upon his future existence he
had yet to discover.
It seemed to him as if some physical transformation had been worked
upon him since the doing of that awful deed. He no longer breathed,
or moved, or spoke, with a sense of ease and freedom. His respiration
was troubled, his limbs seemed to have lost their elasticity; when he
spoke, his voice sounded strange to him.
“It is a kind of nightmare,” he said to himself, “and will pass away
as quickly as it came. I have lived in lands where men hold each
other’s lives very lightly. Am I the man to play the coward because
this insolent sailor’s days have been cut shorter by so many months
or years? Why did he come here to brave and defy me in my own house?
He did not know what a desperate man he came to defy. He did not know
what good cause I had to hate him.”
Excited by such thoughts as these, the banker paced up and down his
spacious room, with his arms folded, and his head bent upon his
breast.
Suddenly he stopped, and a look of terror passed across his face.
“The receipt!” he exclaimed. “Powers of hell! the receipt for the
twenty thousand pounds! What if that should have fallen into other
hands?”
Then, after a pause, he muttered:
“No, it is scarcely possible. The man would have kept it in his own
possession. It is buried in the dark vault where he lies, never to
rise again upon this earth.”
But in the next moment the banker remembered the coat which Harley
Westford had left in the dining-room.
“If by any chance the receipt should be in one of the pockets of
that coat!” he thought, as he stood motionless in the centre of the
room. After a moment’s hesitation, he snatched a candle from the
dressing-table, left his room, and went down to the hall below.
He went into the dining-room. There all was deserted. The lamps were
out; Jacob Danielson was gone; but the Captain’s coat still hung on
the chair where he had left it.
Rupert Godwin ransacked the pockets; but there was no shred of paper
to be found in any one of them.
“What if Danielson should have examined them before me, and should
have secured the receipt!” exclaimed the banker. “That would indeed
be destruction. But no; surely, careless as these seafaring men
may be, Harley Westford would never have carried the only document
representing his fortune in the pocket of a loose overcoat.”
CHAPTER V.
LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM.
Slowly, very slowly, did Mrs. Westford recover from that attack of
brain-fever which had been brought on by the grief and excitement
of her parting with her husband. It was no ordinary grief which had
reduced her to this alarming condition--she had succumbed beneath
the influence of a strange and unconquerable presentiment which had
oppressed her during the long night of watching that preceded Captain
Westford’s departure.
Long and patiently through those bright midsummer days did Violet
watch in the sick-chamber, while Lionel, scarcely less devoted, was
faithful to his post in the pretty boudoir adjoining his mother’s
room. Never had a mother been blessed by more affectionate children;
never had more loving eyes kept watch by a sick-bed.
But sometimes in the pleasantest hour of the June evening, when the
western sky was rosy with the last glory of the setting sun, Lionel
Westford would insist upon Violet going out for a constitutional
walk, while he took her place beside his mother’s bed.
“It is no use talking, Violet,” he said; “if you don’t get a little
fresh air after a long day’s watching and fatigue, you will make
yourself as ill as poor mamma, and it will be small comfort for her
to find you an invalid when she recovers. Go, dear, and take a nice
long ramble in the forest, and come back fresh and blooming to get a
good night’s rest. Remember, Miss Vio, in the absence of papa I am
your responsible guardian. So no disobedience, miss. Put on your hat
and depart.”
If the light-hearted young man had been a close observer, he would
have wondered, perhaps, at the blushes which dyed Violet’s cheeks
whenever these evening rambles were discussed.
Hesitating and confused in her manner, she would seem one minute
as if she most earnestly wished to go, and in the next would plead
almost piteously to be allowed to stay in the peaceful sanctuary of
her mother’s room.
But Lionel was obstinate where he thought Violet’s welfare was
concerned, and insisted on these evening rambles.
“I should go with you and see that you took a regular constitutional,
miss,” he would say; “but I am determined that our mother shall
never be left entirely to hired service, however faithful and devoted
that service might be. If you don’t like going alone, you can take
one of the servants with you; but you need scarcely go out of earshot
of the house.”
All this time Clara Westford lay feeble and helpless, her mind
disordered by feverish visions, in which she always saw her husband
surrounded by peril and tempest.
The doctor reported favourably, but he owned that her recovery might
be slow and tedious.
The mind had been very much shaken, he said, by the shock of that
parting with Harley Westford.
So when the sun was low in the west, Violet was wont to leave her
mother’s room and to go out alone into the forest glades that
stretched beyond the gardens of the Grange.
No English scenery could be more lovely than that Hampshire woodland,
with its rich undergrowth of fern and hazel, its glimpses of sunshine
and depth of shadow.
And surely no lovelier nymph ever adorned a classic forest than she
who now wandered forth in the quiet evening, with wildflowers twisted
in the ribbon of her broad straw hat.
So she went forth one evening about a week after that interview
between the banker and his victim at Wilmingdon Hall.
She crossed the broad lawn, went along the narrow path that led
through the shrubbery, and left the Grange gardens by a little
wooden gate that opened at once into the forest. Her face was pale
now, though it had been rosy with bright blushes when she left her
brother. She did not keep within earshot of the house, as Lionel had
supposed she would do, but struck at once into a narrow footpath
that wound in and out amongst the grand old trees, and wandered on,
sometimes slowly, sometimes at an almost rapid pace, till she came
to a grassy patch of land shut in by a tall screen of elm and beech,
with here and there the spreading branches of an oak. It was a most
lovely spot, an enchanted circle wherein Vivien might have hushed the
magician to his charmed sleep. The fern grew tall amongst the broad
brown trunks of the old trees, and in the distance a glassy sheet of
water reflected the evening sky.
It was a lovely spot; and it was not untenanted. A young man sat on a
low camp-seat, with an artist’s portable easel before him.
He was not working at the water-colour sketch on the easel. He was
sitting in rather a melancholy attitude, and his eyes were fixed upon
that opening in the forest in which Violet appeared.
He was very handsome; dark, with deep grey eyes fringed by long
black lashes--eyes which more often looked black than grey. He was
very handsome, and his appearance was that of a man upon whom the
stamp of gentle blood had been indelibly fixed. The air of high
breeding was a part of himself, and not borrowed from the clothes
he wore; for no costume could be more indefinite in its character
than his velveteen shooting-jacket and grey waistcoat and trousers,
which might have been alike suitable to a gamekeeper, a pedlar, or a
gentleman on a pedestrian tour.
No sooner had the first glimpse of Violet Westford’s white dress
appeared in the forest pathway than the young artist sprang from his
seat and ran to meet her.
“My own darling!” he exclaimed; “how late you are, and how long the
time has seemed--how cruelly long!”
Now, when a gentleman addresses a lady as “his own darling,” it must
be presumed that the lady and gentleman have met very often, and are
on very good terms with each other.
“I could not come earlier, George,” the girl said gently; “and even
now I feel as if I were very wicked to come at all. O, if mamma were
well, and I could tell her of our engagement! If I could take you to
her! O, George, you do not know her, if you think that your poverty
would stand in your way. She would never ask me to marry a man I did
not sincerely love. And if she liked you, I’m sure she’d be the last
person to consider whether you were rich or poor.”
The young man sighed heavily, and did not immediately answer this
maidenly speech.
But after a pause he said:
“Your mother may be a very generous woman, Violet, but there are
others who are not so generous. There are some who worship only one
god, the Golden Calf; some there are who bow themselves down before
that modern Moloch, and would offer up the hearts’ blood of their own
children as mercilessly as the Carthaginians cast their offspring
into the furnaces that burned beneath the feet of Belsamen. You do
not know the world, my Violet, as I know it, or you would never talk
of poverty being no barrier between us.”
“But neither my father nor my mother are money-worshippers,” pleaded
the loving girl. “Papa is the most simple-hearted of men, and I have
only to confess to him that I have been foolish enough to fall in
love with a poor unknown artist, whose sole fortune consists of a
sheaf of brushes, a palette, a portable easel, and a camp-stool, and
he will give his consent immediately--that is to say, as soon as he
knows you, George; for, at the risk of making you very conceited, I
must confess that he can’t know you without liking you.”
“My dear foolish girl!”
“Wasn’t mamma charmed with you last Christmas, when we met you at
the ball at Winchester? only she mistook you for a man of fortune,
and little knew that you were a poor wandering artist, lodging at a
cottage in the forest. You have really such an aristocratic air, that
one would imagine you had twenty thousand a year.”
A dark shade passed over the young man’s face.
“If I had five hundred a year, my darling, I should have contrived to
get an introduction to your father before he left England, and should
have boldly asked for this dear little hand. But I am a pauper,
Violet. I am a dependant, and the lowest of dependants, for I am a
dependant on a man I cannot esteem.”
Violet Westford looked at her lover’s gloomy face with an air of
mingled distress and bewilderment.
“But it will not be always so, George,” she said. “You will be a
great painter some day, and then all the world will be at your feet.”
The young man’s moody expression vanished as he looked down at the
bright face lifted to his.
“My beautiful young dreamer!” he exclaimed. “No; I have no such
ambitious visions of triumph and greatness; but I hope some day to
win a name that will at least give me independence. To that end I
work; and you know that I work hard, my darling.”
“Yes, indeed, I am sometimes afraid your health will suffer.”
“There is no fear of that, Violet. See here. You must see the
result of my day’s labour, and approve, or I shall not rest happily
to-night. You are all the world to me now, Violet.”
The young painter led the girl to the easel, and she stood by his
side for some minutes gazing in silent rapture upon the water-colour
drawing before her.
She had no artistic knowledge--no experience; and yet she felt
somehow that the work before her bore upon it the divine impress of
genius.
It was only the picture of that forest glade, with the deep fern, the
broad sheet of unrippled water, the rosy glow of the sunset, and the
figure of a deer drinking.
But the soul of a poet had inspired the hand of the painter, and
there was a quiet beauty about the picture that went home to the
heart.
“O, you will be great, George!” exclaimed the girl, after that long
silent gaze upon the picture. “I feel that you will be great.”
She looked up at him with her earnest eyes of darkest deepest blue,
and clasped two little loving hands about his arm.
He needed no higher praise than this. Glory might come to him
by-and-by, and gold with it; but this one passionate thrill of
delight was the thing neither glory nor gold could buy for him.
For some little time the lovers wandered together in the forest
glade, supremely happy, forgetful for a while of all the earth,
except that one verdant spot hidden in the heart of the woodland.
Then, as long streaks of crimson dyed the grass, Violet hurried
homewards, with her lover still by her side. It was only when they
were near the gate opening into the gardens of the Grange that the
young painter reluctantly withdrew.
Heaven knows, their meetings were pure and innocent as if they had
been denizens of the fairy realms of Oberon and Titania; but Violet
felt a pang of something like guilt as she returned to the sick-room,
and seated herself once more by her mother’s bed.
“How hard to keep a secret from such a darling mother!” thought the
girl, with a sigh. “I will tell her all directly she recovers. George
cannot refuse me that privilege. I will tell her all, and she will
smile at our folly and sympathize with our hopes, and believe, as I
do, in that bright future when George Stanmore will be the name of a
great painter.”
Comforted by such thoughts as these, a sweet smile crept over Violet
Westford’s face as she watched her mother’s slumbers, which to-night
were more peaceful than they had been since the Captain’s departure.
The story of Violet’s acquaintance with the wandering artist is a
very simple one.
The lovers first met at a ball at Winchester--a grand county ball,
where only people of unblemished respectability were admitted. Here
Mrs. Westford and Violet met Mr. Stanmore, who came with one of the
officers stationed there, an old school-fellow, as he said. The young
stranger made a very favourable impression upon both ladies, and
danced several times with the younger.
After this, Lionel and his sister frequently encountered the
stranger in their winter walks and drives in the forest. He made
no secret of his profession, but told them at once that he was a
landscape-painter, and that he was living in very humble lodgings in
the forest, in order that he might study nature face to face.
Sometimes they found him seated in a little canvas tent, buttoned to
the chin in a thick greatcoat, and working hard at a study of some
grand old oak, gaunt and brown, against the wintry sky.
Little by little, therefore, the young people grew very intimate with
Mr. George Stanmore, the artist. Lionel was much pleased with his
new acquaintance. But during the warm spring months Lionel Westford
had been away at the University, and Violet had been obliged to walk
alone in the forest, for Mrs. Westford’s active charities engaged
the greater part of her time, as she devoted herself much to visiting
the poor in the villages within a few miles of the Grange.
Sometimes Violet accompanied her upon these missions of charity; but
there were many days upon which the young girl went alone into the
forest, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding a pet pony, that had been
honoured with the name of Oberon.
But, whether she rode Oberon or went on foot, and whichever pathway
she took, Violet Westford was sure to meet George Stanmore.
The rest is easily told. They had seen and loved each other. From the
very first, unknown to either, that Divine lamp of love had shone
in the breast of each--innocent unselfish love, which the trials of
life, the cruel tempests of the world, might distress and torture,
but could never wholly quench. It was true love, which knows no base
alloy of selfish fear or mercenary caution. Violet Westford would
have united her fortunes to George Stanmore though he had been a
beggar and would have blindly trusted Providence with her future; and
the only prudential motive that withheld the young man from pressing
his suit was the fear that she whom he so tenderly loved might suffer
by his impetuosity.
“Not till I have won independence will I ask her to be my wife,” he
thought. “No, not till I can look the world in the face, reliant upon
my own right hand for support.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY OF THE PAST.
Clara Westford recovered slowly, but she did recover; a faint flush
came back to the wan cheeks, a new brightness lit up in the eyes that
had been so haggard.
That process of recovery was very painful. When the invalid’s weary
hours of delirium and stupor wore over--when unreal afflictions,
visions of horror and dread, had ceased to torture the agonized and
bewildered mind, real sorrow, stern and cruel, awaited Clara Westford.
The first syllables that fell from her lips, when reason returned,
formed a question about her husband.
“Was there any letter?” she asked. “Had any letter come from Harley?”
Alas, for that anxious wife, the answer was in the negative; no
letter had arrived from the Captain.
Neither Violet nor Lionel had been rendered uneasy by their father’s
silence. They fancied that if he had not written, it was because he
had had no opportunity of sending a letter.
But the wife was distracted by a thousand fears. Her husband had left
her declaring his intention of depositing the entire amount of his
savings in a banker’s hands, and immediately sending her the receipt
for the money.
The fortune itself was a secondary consideration in Clara Westford’s
mind; yet she knew her husband’s anxiety upon that point, and she
could not but wonder that he had omitted to write to her on the
subject before leaving England; or failing to write before setting
sail from London, she wondered that he had not contrived to send a
letter ashore before losing sight of the English coast.
She was distracted by fears, so shadowy in their nature that she
could scarcely give utterance to them. Her children perceived her
uneasiness, and endeavoured to set her fears at rest.
“My dearest mother,” exclaimed Lionel, “do you think, if there were
really cause for fear, that _I_ should not also be uneasy? Do you
forget the old proverb, which tells us that ill news flies fast? If
anything had been amiss with my father before the _Lily Queen_ lost
sight of England, Gilbert Thornleigh would have been sure to write
to us. You know how devoted he is to my father; and, indeed, to all
of us,” added the young man, looking with peculiar significance at
Violet, who blushed, and moved to an open window near her to avoid
that searching gaze.
Everybody at the Grange had perceived the impression made by Violet
on the simple-hearted first mate of the _Lily Queen_.
Clara Westford tried to smile upon the loving son and daughter, who
watched her every look with anxious eyes. She smiled, but it was the
smile of resignation, not of peace. Her heart was racked by hidden
torture, yet she suffered no cry of despair to escape her lips. For
the sake of Lionel and Violet she tried to suppress all outward
evidence of her anguish, and waited, hoping day after day that ere
the sun set a letter might reach her, sent by some homeward-bound
vessel, to assure her of Harley Westford’s safety.
“He knows how much I suffer when he is away,” she thought. “He will
not fail to write whenever the opportunity occurs.”
It was a fearful time--a long, dreary interval of suspense and
anxiety. Lionel was happy; for, with the careless, light-hearted
confidence of youth that has never been clouded by sorrow, he trusted
blindly in the future. All his father’s previous voyages had been
prosperous, why should not this voyage be like the rest?
And Violet, she too was happy, with the wondrous happiness of a first
love--true, pure, and boundless. Now that her mother was restored
to health, it seemed to her as if there were no cloud upon the
brightness of her life. What if George Stanmore were poor? Her father
would return, and poverty would be no disgrace in the eyes of that
most generous of fathers.
So the summer time passed happily for the lovers, who met often in
the beautiful woodland, sometimes alone, sometimes in the presence
of Lionel, who saw that the painter admired his sister, but had no
suspicion of any deeper feeling existing between the two. This is
a subject upon which brothers are very slow of understanding. They
think their sisters very nice girls, but are rather surprised than
otherwise when some masculine friend declares that the nice girl is
something akin to an angel.
If Lionel had suspected the truth, he would scarcely have interfered
to cross the path of that true love. He had no mercenary ambition,
either for his sister or himself; and the hard schooling of adversity
had not yet taught him prudence.
The summer waned; bright hues of crimson and amber mingled with
the verdant green of the forest, the fern grew brown, the country
children came whooping through the echoing glades, bent on the
plunder of aloe and hazel, beech and chestnut; the days grew shorter,
and the little family at the Grange spent long quiet evenings in the
lamp-lit drawing-room.
But still there was no letter from Harley Westford--no tidings of the
_Lily Queen_.
Mrs. Westford and her son and daughter had many friends amongst the
neighbouring county families; but they saw little company during
this period, for Clara had always held herself very much aloof from
society during her husband’s absence.
All who were intimate with her admired and loved her: but there were
some who knew little of Clara Westford, and who pronounced her proud
and exclusive.
She was proud, because her husband’s position as a merchant captain
was beneath that of the county gentry, who had never dabbled in trade
or speculation, and who could not quite realize the fact that the
owner of a trading-vessel might be a gentleman.
Clara was proud for his sake; not for her own.
“I will go to no house where my husband is not esteemed an honoured
guest,” she said.
She was exclusive, because her affection was concentrated into one
focus. She loved her husband and children with a deep and devoted
love, and she had little affection left for the world outside that
happy household.
Three months had passed since the sailing of the _Lily Queen_; and
yet there were no tidings of the Captain.
To Clara, and to Clara alone, this was a cause of alarm. Lionel and
Violet still trusted blindly, almost too happy to believe in the
existence of misfortune.
One bright autumn day Clara Westford sent her son and daughter on
a shopping expedition to Winchester. She was pleased to see them
employed and happy; for she had no wish that any part of her burden
should be borne by them. It was a relief to her to be alone, so that
she might give way to her own sorrow, free from the loving scrutiny
of those watchful eyes.
She sat in the Grange drawing-room, a large low-ceilinged apartment,
with long windows opening on to the lawn.
The day was warm and bright; and the open windows admitted the
pure air from the gardens and woodland. Clara Westford sat in a
half-reclining position in a low arm-chair near one of the windows. A
little table loaded with books was by her side; but the volumes lay
there unopened and unheeded. She could not read; her thoughts were
far away--on those terrible and unknown seas where the _Lily Queen_
was sailing.
Never, perhaps, in the earliest bloom of her girlhood, had Clara
Westford looked lovelier than she did to-day.
It was the subdued beauty of womanhood, calm and quiet as the mellow
light of the moon compared with the full glory of the noontide sun.
She was exquisitely dressed, for she was too completely high-bred
to neglect her toilette on any occasion. She was not a woman who
made sorrow or anxiety an excuse for slovenly attire. Her chestnut
hair was coiled in thick plaits at the back of her small classical
head, and fastened with a simple tortoiseshell comb. Her silk dress
was of a golden brown, which harmonized exquisitely with the fair
clear complexion and chestnut hair--the brown which Millais has
immortalized in the dress of his red-coated squire’s fair-haired
daughter. A large turquoise, set in a rim of lustreless gold, clasped
the small white collar, and a stud of exactly the same fashion
fastened each simple cuff of spotless cambric. A few costly rings,
all of turquoise and gold, adorned the tapering white hands, and
these were the only ornaments worn by the Captain’s wife.
She sat alone, thinking--O, how fondly, how mournfully!--of her
absent husband, when suddenly the curtains of the window farthest
from her were pushed aside with a jangling noise, and a man entered
the room.
Clara Westford looked up, startled by that sound, and a half-stifled
shriek burst from her lips.
“You here!” she cried. “_You_ here!”
The intruder was no other than Rupert Godwin, the Lombard-street
banker.
He advanced slowly towards the spot where Clara Westford sat. His
dark face was just a little paler than usual, and there was a stern
resolute look in his eyes.
“Yes,” he answered quietly, “it is I, Clara Westford. After twenty
years we meet face to face for the first time to-day, and I look
once again upon the woman who has been the curse and torment of my
life.”
Clara Westford shrank back into the cushioned chair almost as if she
had been recoiling from a blow.
“O, merciful Heaven!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands passionately;
“after twenty years of happiness am I to hear that hated voice again?”
“Yes, Clara,” answered the banker; “for twenty years there has been
a truce. To-day the war begins again, and this time it shall not end
until I am conqueror.”
The Captain’s wife clasped her hands before her face; but she uttered
no further appeal. She sat shivering, as if chilled to the very heart
by some sudden blast of freezing wind.
“Ah, Clara, you are as beautiful as ever, but you have lost some of
your old haughty spirit,” said the banker. “The merchant captain’s
wife is not so proud as the baronet’s daughter.”
“A hundred times more proud!” cried Clara, dropping her hands from
her face, and looking suddenly at Rupert Godwin. “A hundred times
more proud! For she has her husband’s honour to protect as well as
her own.”
“Bravely spoken, Clara--nobly spoken! You are the same imperious
beauty still, I see, and the conquest will be a noble one. This time
I will not fail!”
“Why are you here?” cried Mrs. Westford. “How did you discover this
place?”
“From your husband. But you shall know more of that by-and-by.”
“From my husband? Ah! he came to you, then?--you saw him before he
sailed?”
“Yes; I saw him.”
“He deposited money to a large amount in your hands?”
The bunker looked at Clara Westford with an insolent smile.
“My dear Clara, you must surely be dreaming!” he exclaimed. “Your
husband deposited no money in my hands, nor was he in a position to
do so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply, that when Harley Westford came to me he was a beggar.
He came to borrow money to pay for some part of the cargo of his
ship, and he deposited with me the title-deeds of this estate, as a
security for the amount advanced to him.”
“He borrowed money from you!” cried Clara, clasping her hands upon
her forehead with a convulsive gesture. “Why, he told me that he
meant to lodge twenty thousand pounds in your hands!”
“He told you a falsehood, then; for the whole of his earnings were
lost in some foreign speculations in which he had involved himself,
and it was only with the help of borrowed money that he could start
upon this new venture. Do not look at me with that incredulous
stare, my dear Clara; I do not ask you to accept this fact on the
simple evidence of my word. I have documents bearing your husband’s
signature to prove the truth of what I state. When you hold those
papers in your hands you may be able to believe me.”
“O, it’s too terrible!” exclaimed the wretched wife; “it is too
bitter. Harley, my husband, under an obligation to you--to you, of
all other men upon this earth!”
“Yes,” answered the banker, with a smile. “It was strange that he
should come to me, was it not? Very strange! It was one of those
startling accidents which go to make the drama of social life.”
There was a pause. Clara Westford was silent. She was thinking of her
last interview with her husband, and recalling the words he had then
spoken.
Could it be that he had deceived her as to the state of his affairs?
Could it be, that, with the weakness and cowardice of intense
affection, he had sought to hide from her the approach of ruin?
It might be so; such things had been. Love shrinks, with a cowardly
weakness, from inflicting pain upon the thing it loves.
“He might have trusted me,” she thought sadly. “Did he think I should
fear poverty that was to be shared with him? After twenty years of
union can he know me so little as to think that?”
Clara Westford hated and despised Rupert Godwin, and she would
have been inclined to disbelieve any assertion made by him to the
detriment of the man she loved; but she ceased to doubt him when he
boldly offered to produce her husband’s signature in confirmation of
his words.
“Let me see Harley’s own handwriting in support of this statement,”
she said presently; “then, and not till then, can I believe you.”
“All in good time, my dear Clara. You shall see your husband’s
signature, believe me; perhaps only too soon for your own comfort.
But we need not forestall that time. In the meanwhile, let us look
back upon the past. After twenty years of truce the war is to begin
again; and this time it shall be a duel to the death. Let us look
back upon the past, Clara Westford--let us recall that old story.”
“What, Mr. Godwin!” cried the Captain’s wife indignantly. “Are you
not ashamed to recall the hateful part you played in that story?”
“I only want to prove to you how well I have remembered. Let me
recall that story, Clara.”
There was no answer. Mrs. Westford turned from him and covered her
face with her hands once more, as if she would fain have shut out
sight and sound; but, in a cold merciless voice, Rupert Godwin began
thus:
“Twenty-two years ago, Clara Westford, I spent the autumn at a
fashionable watering-place on the south coast. The place was crowded
that season with all that was most elegant, most distinguished,
most aristocratic. But even amongst that highborn crowd I did not
find myself an intruder. The reputation of my father’s wealth went
with me, and there was a kind of golden glory about my untitled
name. I had been educated in the greatest cities of the world, and
was completely a man of the world, with no vulgar prejudices as to
religion or morals. My youth had been somewhat stormy, and those who
pretended to know most about me whispered dark histories in which my
name was mingled--not pleasantly. In a few words, Clara, I was not a
man to be trifled with, or fooled, by a girl of seventeen.”
There was a brief pause, and then the banker continued:
“There were many beautiful women at that pleasant seaside town; but
the loveliest of them all, the acknowledged belle, the observed of
all observers, was the only daughter of Sir John Ponsonby, a rich
Yorkshire baronet of very old family. Need I tell you how lovely she
was, Clara? She is lovely still; with a more subdued beauty, but
with as great a charm as she bore in her brilliant youth. She was a
dazzling creature. I met her at a charity-ball--on the sands--in the
reading-rooms--on horseback with her father, a thoroughgoing Tory
of the old school, and as proud as Lucifer or a Spanish hidalgo. I
met her constantly, for I haunted all the places where there was any
chance of seeing her. The very sight of that girl dazzled me like the
sudden glory of the sun. I loved her, with a mad, wild, unreasonable
passion; and I determined that she should be my wife.”
For a moment Clara Westford uncovered her face, and looked at the
banker with a quiet scornful smile.
“Ah, I understand the meaning of that smile, Clara,” said Rupert
Godwin. “I was presumptuous, was I not, when I determined to win this
woman for my wife? But remember, she had fooled me on; she had smiled
upon me, and encouraged me by her sweetest words, her brightest
glances. She was surrounded by a crowd of admirers; but I was one of
the most distinguished amongst them; and it seemed to me that she
singled me out from the rest, and took more pleasure in talking to
me than to the others. There were strangers who thought so too; and
the likelihood of our speedy marriage was soon the public talk of the
place.”
“She was a weak, frivolous girl,” murmured Clara; “but she meant no
wrong.”
“She meant no wrong!” echoed the banker. “There are men who commit
murder, and then declare they meant no wrong. This woman did me a
deep and bitter wrong. She fed my mad passion, she encouraged my wild
devotion; and then, when I went to her, confident, hopeful, blindly
believing that I was beloved again--when I went to her and told her
how dearly she was loved, she turned upon me, and slew me with a
look of cold surprise, telling me that she was the promised wife of
another man.”
The banker paused for a few moments; then, in a suppressed voice, a
voice which was low and hoarse with stifled passion, he proceeded:
“I was not the man to take this quietly, Clara Westford. I was not
one of those puling creatures who avow their power to forget and
forgive. In my heart there was no such thing as forgiveness; in
my nature there was no such thing as forgetfulness. I left Clara
Ponsonby with a tempest of passion raging in my breast. That night,
after roaming alone for hours on the broad open sands, far away
from the glimmering lights of the town, where no living creature
but myself heard the long roar of the ocean--that night, with my
clenched hand lifted to the stars of heaven, I swore a terrible oath.
I swore that, sooner or later, Clara Ponsonby should be mine--not
as my honoured wife, but mine by a less honourable tie. The cup of
degradation she had offered to me--to _me_, the proud descendant of a
proud race--_her_ lips should drain to the lowest dregs. I was not a
man to work in the dark. I saw my lovely Clara next day, and told her
of the oath that I had sworn. She too came of a proud race, and she
defied me.”
“She did,” answered the Captain’s wife, “as she defies you now.”
“For six months the contest lasted,” continued the banker. “For six
months that silent warfare was waged. Wherever Clara Ponsonby was
seen, I was seen near her. I followed her from place to place. Her
father liked and trusted me, so she could not banish me from her
presence without betraying her secret engagement to another--a man
who was her inferior in station, and whom her father would have
refused to admit as a claimant for his daughter’s hand. Clara was
dumb, therefore; and, however odious my presence might be, she was
compelled to submit to its infliction. I stood behind her chair in
her opera-box. I rode beside her carriage when she drove in the
Park. I did _not_ succeed in ousting the low-born rival for whose
sake I had been rejected; but I _did_ succeed in humiliating Miss
Ponsonby in the eyes of the world. Before that season was over the
fashionable circle in which Clara lived was busy with slanderous
rumours against her fair fame. I had managed very cleverly. I had
friends--sycophant followers--always ready to do my bidding. An idle
jest, a significant shrug of the shoulders, a little damaging gossip
at a club-dinner, and the business was accomplished. Before that
season came to its close Clara Ponsonby’s reputation was blighted.
The poisonous whispers reached her father’s ear--I took care they
should; and the proud old man, believing in his daughter’s disgrace,
cast her from his household, declaring that he would never look on
her face again.”
A convulsive sobbing shook Clara Westford’s frame; but she uttered no
word--no cry.
“In that hour I fancied myself triumphant,” continued Rupert Godwin.
“Abandoned, desolate, ruined in reputation, I thought that Clara
Ponsonby would have sought the luxurious home which she knew I had
prepared against this day. My letters had told her of my hopes,
my plans; the new home that awaited her; the passionate devotion
that might still be hers. My emissaries watched her as she left her
father’s house; but--O, bitter anguish and disappointment!--it was
not to me that she came. She went to Southampton, and embarked on
board a steamer bound for Malta; and a month afterwards I read in the
_Times_ an announcement of the marriage of Harley Westford, captain
of the merchant vessel _Adventurer_, to Clara Ponsonby. At Malta
she had joined the man to whom she was engaged. His life had been
spent far away from the circles in which she moved, and no breath of
scandal against her had ever reached his ear. That, Clara, is the
end of the first act of the drama. The second act began three months
ago, when Harley Westford, your husband, the man for whose sake you
insulted and scorned me, came into my office in Lombard-street.”
Clara Westford suddenly rose from her seat and turned towards the
banker, proud and defiant of look and gesture.
“Leave this house!” she exclaimed, pointing to the door. “It is
disgraced and degraded by your presence. Twenty years ago, when
you intruded yourself upon me, you found me in my father’s house,
from which I had no power to dismiss you. This house in my own,
Rupert Godwin. I command you to leave it, and never again darken its
threshold by your hated shadow!”
“Those are strong words, Clara, and I cannot do otherwise than obey
them. I go; but only for a time. The time will come when I may have a
better right of entrance to this house. In the meanwhile, I depart;
but before I do so, let me show you a paragraph in this newspaper,
which may perhaps have some interest for you.”
As he said this, Rupert Godwin handed Mrs. Westford a copy of the
_Times_, in which one paragraph was marked by a heavy black line
drawn against it with a pen.
The paragraph ran as follows:--
“The underwriters of Lloyd’s are beginning to have serious fears
about the trading vessel _Lily Queen_, which sailed from London Docks
on the 27th of last June, bound for China, and has not since been
heard of.”
The paper dropped from Clara Westford’s hands; she could read no
farther, but with a long shriek of agony fell senseless on the floor.
“Ah, Clara!” exclaimed the banker, looking down at that prostrate
form with a cruel smile upon his face, “I said truly that the second
act of our life-drama has begun.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE STOLEN LETTER.
The banker took no measures for reviving Clara Westford from the
fainting-fit into which she had fallen after the perusal of that
paragraph in the _Times_.
She had fallen backwards, and her pale still face was turned towards
the ceiling.
Rupert Godwin knelt beside her, and examined that white statuesque
face with a long and earnest scrutiny.
“Quite unconscious!” he exclaimed, as he lifted Mrs. Westford’s
unresisting hand, and watched it fall inert and lifeless. “Death
itself could scarcely be less conscious of surrounding events.
Nothing could be better.”
The banker rose from his knees, and with a soft and cautious footstep
walked slowly round the room.
It was charmingly furnished, and it bore the traces of constant
occupation. There was an open work-table, an open piano, a box of
water-colours, and upon a table by one of the windows there was
an elegant little walnut-wood easel. In a comfortable corner near
the fireplace stood a desk in different coloured woods, with an
easy-chair before it. The lid of the desk was closed, but a bunch of
keys hung from the lock.
“It looks like her desk,” muttered the banker, “and if so I can
scarcely fail to find what I want.”
He glanced once more at the figure lying on the sunlit floor.
Clara Westford had not stirred.
Then, with careful fingers, Rupert Godwin lifted the lid of the desk
and looked within.
In a row of pigeon-holes before him he saw numerous packets of
letters, some tied with common red tape, others with blue ribbon.
“Those are _his_ letters,” muttered the banker, with a sneer. “I
would wager a small fortune that those are _his_ letters which she
has tied with that dainty blue ribbon. Sir John Ponsonby’s haughty
daughter can be as sentimental as a school-girl, I daresay, where her
dashing Captain is concerned.”
He took out one of the packets.
Yes, upon the uppermost envelope was written--“From my husband.”
“Let me see how the fellow signs his name,” said Rupert Godwin.
“Perhaps he uses only initials, and I shall be balked that way. I
must have his full signature.”
The banker drew one of the letters from the packet, and took it from
its envelope.
It was a very long letter, and it was signed in full--“Harley
Westford.”
“Yes, the Fates favour my schemes,” muttered Rupert Godwin, as he put
the single letter in his waistcoat-pocket, and replaced the packet in
the pigeon-hole from which he had taken it.
Then, after one last look at Clara Westford, he left the room.
He went to the hall, where he rang a bell violently. A female servant
hurried to answer his summons, and started back in alarm at the sight
of a stranger.
“I am an old friend of Mrs. Westford’s,” said Rupert Godwin; “but
unhappily I am the bearer of very ill news. Your mistress has
fainted; you had better run to her at once. Stay; what is the name of
your doctor?”
“Doctor Sanderson, sir, in the village. He lives at the house with
the green blinds, please sir. The first on the left as you pass the
Seven Stars, please, sir.”
“I’ll send him, then, immediately.”
“Thank you, sir; thank you.”
The girl ran away, eager to be with her mistress; and the banker
left the ill-fated house, whose peace had fled before his ill-omened
coming.
He went to the village, and found the house where the surgeon lived.
He left a message for that gentleman, and then walked to a little inn
where he had left his dog-cart and groom.
He stepped into the vehicle and drove towards Winchester, whence he
had come that day. On the road, a little pony-carriage passed him,
driven by a girl with bright golden hair, set off by a coquettish
little turban hat. A young man was lolling by her side.
That bright happy-looking girl was Violet Westford.
The banker started as if he had seen a ghost, and looked back after
the vehicle with an eager gaze.
“Yes, that girl must be her daughter,” he thought. “How the sight of
her recalls the past!--the very day when I met Clara Ponsonby riding
by her father’s side--the day when sudden love sprang up in my heart,
an ‘Adam at his birth.’ And from that hour to this I have loved her.
Yes, I have loved her, though hatred and vengeful thoughts have
mingled strangely with my love. I love her; but I would bring her to
my feet. I worship her; and yet I would humiliate her to the very
dust.”
With such thoughts as these in his mind, Rupert Godwin drove back to
Winchester, and alighted at the chief hotel in the old city.
He had come to Winchester; but not alone. Crime has terrors and
penalties which even the cleverest criminal cannot escape. Rupert
Godwin knew that he was to some extent in the power of his old clerk
Jacob Danielson, and he determined to make that clerk his accomplice.
“If the old man is with me in my schemes, and accepts a reward for
his service, he can never betray me,” he argued with himself.
The banker knew that Jacob Danielson was the slave of two
passions--two fatal passions, which render a man the easy prey of any
tempter.
These two passions were avarice and the love of strong drink. Jacob
Danielson was, in his pettifogging way, a miser; and he was an
habitual brandy-drinker.
To get brandy, or to get money, he would have been tempted to sell
his soul to the legendary fiend of mediæval times, who seems to have
been always on the look-out for that kind of bargain.
The banker had watched his clerk almost as closely as the clerk had
watched him, and he knew the weak points of Danielson’s character.
“He would like to be my master,” thought Rupert Godwin, “and he
possesses knowledge that might give him a powerful hold over me; but,
in spite of that, I will make him my slave.”
In the mean time the banker had determined upon conciliating his
clerk in every way. The hand of steel in the velvet glove was
exemplified by Mr. Godwin’s policy. He had brought Danielson to
Winchester with him; and that gentleman was enjoying free quarters at
the hotel, and drinking as much brandy as he pleased to call for.
The banker’s policy was very simple. He wanted to destroy the only
creature he feared, and he thought that he should be able to effect
that work of destruction through the agency of Danielson’s own vices.
He found the clerk sitting in a parlour at the hotel--a very pleasant
apartment, looking into a garden. A decanter half full of brandy
stood on the table; but the clerk was sitting in a moody attitude,
with his arms folded, and he was not drinking.
The banker looked at his subordinate with a suspicious glance. Rupert
Godwin did not care to see his clerk thus deeply absorbed in thought.
Sharp and rapid in all his habits and manners as Danielson ordinarily
was, he seemed this afternoon almost like a creature absorbed in a
dream. He turned his eyes slowly towards the banker, and looked at
him with a strange unseeing gaze, almost as a blind man might have
looked at the sun with his dull sightless orbs.
“Why, Jacob,” cried Rupert Godwin, “what’s the matter with you? You
look like a man who has newly awakened from a trance.”
“I have been in a trance,” answered the clerk in a dreamy tone. “I
was out in the street just now, and I saw a ghost pass by.”
“A ghost?”
“Yes; a ghost, such as men often see in the broad sunlight--the ghost
of my dead youth. I saw a woman--the living image of the only one
creature I ever loved; and she seemed to me like a phantom.”
The clerk sighed as he stretched out his tremulous hand to the
decanter and refilled his glass.
“But there’s comfort here,” he muttered; “there’s always comfort in
this. There’s not many sorrows that this won’t drown, if a man can
only get enough of it.”
Never had the banker seen his clerk so deeply moved. “Why, Jacob,” he
exclaimed, “this does indeed surprise me! I thought you were a man of
iron--hard as iron, pitiless as iron, strong as iron; I never knew
you had a heart.”
“No more I have,” answered the clerk; “not now--not now. I had a
heart once, and it was broken. I was a fool once, and I was made to
pay for my folly. But that’s long gone by. Come, Mr. Godwin, I’m
myself again. You don’t pay me to dream; you pay me to work, and I’m
ready for your work, whatever it is. You didn’t bring me down to
Winchester for my pleasure, or for yours. You brought me because you
had something for me to do. What is it? that’s the question.”
“A question not to be answered just yet, Jacob,” replied the banker.
“We’ll dine first, and go to business afterwards. The evenings are
chilly, so I’ll order a fire.”
The order was given, and the fire lighted; a well-chosen little
dinner was served presently, and the two men seated themselves at the
table, which glittered with cut glass and massive plate.
“Strange,” thought Rupert Godwin, as he looked furtively at the wizen
face of the clerk, “this man talks of the ghost of his dead youth!
Have not I too, seen the phantom of the past--that girl with the
violet eyes and the golden hair? She seemed to me like the ghost of
the Clara Ponsonby I fell in love with two-and-twenty years ago.”
The clerk was by this time quite himself again, and he had resumed
that half-servile, half-ironical manner which he generally had with
his master.
“This is indeed luxury,” he said, rubbing his dry withered palms,
as he looked from the handsomely furnished room to the glittering
dinner-table. “It is not every day that I dine like this. You are a
good master, Mr. Godwin.”
“I mean to be a liberal one,” answered the banker; “and I will
pay you well, if you serve me faithfully. I make no pretence of
generosity, but I will pay handsomely for handsome service.”
“Good, Mr. Godwin; the wisest men are those who pretend the least.”
The banker knew that it was useless to play the hypocrite with Jacob
Danielson. Clever as Rupert Godwin was, he always felt that the
clerk’s sharp rat-like eyes could fathom the remotest recesses of his
mind.
There was only _one_ secret that he believed to be hidden from Jacob
Danielson. That was the secret of Harley Westford’s disappearance.
Little more was said during dinner, for the waiters of the hotel were
in attendance throughout the repast. Mr. Godwin kept his clerk’s
glass filled with a succession of expensive wines; and the waiters
opened their eyes to their widest extent as they saw the little
wizened man pour the sparkling liquids down his throat as fast as
they could supply them.
The banker himself did not drink; and this fact did not escape Jacob
Danielson, who smiled a cunning smile as he perceived his employer’s
abstinence.
At last the cloth was removed, and dessert was placed upon the
table--the conventional dessert peculiar to provincial hotels,
flanked by a decanter of tawny port, and a jug of claret which the
head-waiter declared to be genuine Lafitte, and which figured in the
wine-carte at eighteen shillings a bottle. The head-waiter hovered
about the table for a few minutes after that noted claret had been
set before Mr. Godwin, poked the fire with a profoundly studious
air, as of a man who had given a lifetime of study to the science
of poking fires, looked meditatively at the two gentlemen as if
deliberating upon the possibility of their wanting something else,
and anon silently departed.
Then, with the curtains closely drawn, and the waxen lights gleaming
from their tall silver branches, the two men drew their chairs closer
to the hearth, and settled themselves for the evening.
“Now then for business,” exclaimed the clerk, as the sound of the
head-waiter’s boots died away in the distance.
The banker was not quick to reply to this address. He was sitting
looking at the fire, brooding darkly. His task was not an easy one,
for he was about to ask Danielson to become his accomplice in a crime.
At last he spoke.
“Danielson,” he said, gravely, “you and I have been involved in many
transactions, some of which the world would scarcely call honest.”
“Some of which the world would call decidedly dishonest,” answered
the clerk, with a sinister grin.
“But, then, is it an honest world?” asked the banker.
“O yes; a very honest world, until it is found out.”
“Ay, there’s the difference. The detected villain is a scoundrel only
fit for the gallows; the undetected villain may pass for a saint.”
There was a pause, and then the banker said, in a tone which he
endeavoured to render indifferent:
“You remember that merchant captain--the man called Harley
Westford--who came to Wilmingdon Hall to demand the return of that
money which he had deposited with me?”
“O yes; I remember him perfectly.”
“I am sorry to tell you that the poor fellow is dead.”
“Indeed!”
Jacob Danielson looked very steadfastly at the face of his employer,
but there was no surprise in the tone in which he uttered that one
word “indeed.”
“Yes; the _Lily Queen_ has been lost, and all hands with her.”
“But how do you know that Harley Westford was on board the _Lily
Queen_?”
“How do I know it? Why, because he was captain and owner of the
vessel, and because he declared his intention of sailing with her,
without fail. Why should he not sail in the _Lily Queen_?”
“I can’t imagine any reason,” answered the clerk, with his steadfast
gaze still fixed on the banker’s face, which had grown suddenly
pallid. “I really can’t imagine any reason; but then, you know,
such singular things happen in this life. There may have been
something--some accident, to prevent Captain Westford’s departure.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Rupert Godwin. “Utterly impossible! I tell you,
man, Harley Westford sailed in the _Lily Queen_, and has gone down to
the bottom of the sea with her and her cargo.”
“And in that case Harley Westford’s heirs may come upon you at any
moment for the twenty thousand pounds deposited in your hands.”
“They might come upon me for it, if they had any evidence that it was
ever placed in my hands,” replied the banker. “But what if they have
no such evidence?”
“There is the receipt which you gave Harley Westford.”
“Yes; and which has no doubt gone down with him to the depth of the
ocean.”
“What if he lodged that receipt in other hands before sailing on his
Chinese expedition?”
“_That_ is scarcely likely. No man ever foresees his own doom. At any
rate, I speculate upon the chance that Harley Westford carried the
receipt with him, and that it perished with its owner. In that case,
there is only one person who knows of the twenty thousand pounds--and
that person is yourself. Can I trust you?”
“You have trusted me before.”
“Yes; and with important secrets, but never with such a secret
as this. Will the gift of a thousand pounds, to be paid in ten
instalments at intervals of six months--will such a gift as that buy
your fidelity?”
“It will,” answered Jacob Danielson.
“Then I will execute any deed you choose to draw up, engaging myself
to pay you that money. And now, I want something more than your
silence. I want your service.”
“You shall have both.”
“Good!” replied the banker. “Now, then, listen to what I have to
say. When Harley Westford deposited his fortune in my hands, he also
deposited the title-deeds of a small estate in this county. Those
deeds and that estate must be mine.”
“But how so?”
“By virtue of a deed executed by Harley Westford before his
departure--a deed, giving me sole possession of the estate if a
certain sum, lent by me to him, was not repaid within six months of
the date of his signature.”
“O, indeed! The estate will be yours by virtue of such a deed as
that!”
“Yes; a document formally drawn up by a lawyer, and signed by you as
witness.”
“But I never witnessed any such deed,” answered the clerk.
“Your memory fails you to-night, my dear Danielson; you will have a
better memory to-morrow, especially if I give you fifty pounds on
account of our bargain.”
The banker said this with a sinister smile. The clerk fully
understood him.
“Make it a hundred,” he exclaimed, “and you will find that I have an
excellent memory.”
“So be it. And now I want you to try and remember if you have any
friend--a lawyer’s clerk, we’ll say--who knows how to draw up a
legal document in which there shall be no flaw, and who is also
clever at imitating the handwriting of other people.”
“Let me think a little before I answer that question,” replied
Danielson.
He sat for some minutes thinking deeply, with his sharp eyes fixed
upon the fire.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I do know such a man.”
“And you will have the deed prepared and executed at once?”
“I will. The man will want money for his work.”
“He shall be paid handsomely,” answered the banker.
“And how about the signature which he is to imitate?”
Rupert Godwin took the stolen letter from his pocket, and tore off
the Captain’s autograph. This he handed to Jacob Danielson.
“You understand what you have to do?” he asked.
“Perfectly.”
No more was said. The clerk’s brains seemed no more affected by the
wine that he had taken than if he had been drinking so much water. He
sat looking, sometimes at the fire, sometimes at the thoughtful face
of his employer; and every now and then he refilled his glass from
one of the decanters standing near him.
But, drink as deeply as he might, his mind seemed entirely unaffected
by what he drank. Rupert Godwin, watching him furtively even in the
midst of his own reverie, perceived this.
“The man is made of iron,” he thought, as he went to his own room,
after bidding Jacob Danielson good-night. “With many of my secrets in
the possession of such a man as this, how can I ever know rest?”
And then, after a pause, he muttered:
“Rest!--rest! When have I ever rested since--”
Only a groan finished that broken sentence.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DAY OF DESOLATION.
Bitter, most bitter, was the anguish which awaited Violet and Lionel
Westford when they returned from their pleasant little excursion to
Winchester.
They had gone forth that morning in all the light-hearted
carelessness of youth, pleased with the beauty of the fair world in
which they lived, scarcely able to believe that sorrow, deep and
lasting sorrow, could exist in so lovely a universe.
But now the blow, the first most cruel blow which crushes out the
warm life of youth, had fallen.
Never again could these two bright young creatures feel as they had
felt; never again could they almost doubt the existence of sorrow.
The cup of anguish was offered to their young lips--the bitter
draught was to be drained to its uttermost dregs.
Violet found her mother lying once more on the bed to which she had
been so long a prisoner. The doctor had attended her; but he could
do nothing. The miserable woman lay in a stony stupor, with her face
turned towards the wall. No passionate sob relieved the anguish of
her aching heart. She suffered in silence. It seemed as if her heart
was changed to stone.
The surgeon, who had known Violet and Lionel from their childhood,
was waiting in the drawing-room, and begged to see them before he
left the house. They went to him without delay, and found him seated
near a table, with a newspaper in his hand.
“Mamma has had some bad news,” exclaimed Violet, whose face was wet
with the tears she had shed at the aspect of her mother’s grief. “O,
Mr. Sanderson, I am sure that it is so. This is no common illness.
Some one has brought news, bad news, of papa. For pity’s sake, do not
torture us by this agony of suspense; let us know the worst.”
“Yes,” said Lionel, with forced calmness, “let us know the worst.”
The surgeon looked at them with sad, compassionate eyes.
“Perhaps it is better so,” he said thoughtfully. “The news that has
so affected your poor mother is not of a very certain nature,” he
continued, “and may not be so bad as it seems. We can still hope
for the best, Miss Westford. Providence is very merciful, and joy
sometimes is near at hand when we are in the depths of despair.”
“Tell us the worst,” cried Lionel passionately; “you are trifling
with us, Mr. Sanderson.”
The surgeon placed the newspaper in the young man’s hand.
“Read that,” he said, pointing to the marked paragraph respecting the
_Lily Queen_; “and may God grant that it is only a false alarm!”
Lionel read the paragraph--not once only, but three separate times;
and a deadly chill crept to his heart as he read. Presently he felt
a little hand trembling on his shoulder. He turned and saw Violet’s
white face staring blankly at the fatal newspaper.
“O, no; no, no!” she cried piteously; “not lost--not lost! My
father--my dear, dear father!”
“Let us hope not, dear Miss Westford,” answered the surgeon, in the
most cheering tones he could assume. “These business men are always
very quick to take alarm. Let us trust, my dear friends--let us trust
in Heaven that all may be well.”
“No,” cried Lionel vehemently, “I will trust no longer. Something
tells me that my father is lost. Can I forget my mother’s illness?
That illness was caused solely by a presentiment that harm would
come to my father upon this voyage. For twenty years she had been a
sailor’s wife, yet never before had she felt such a presentiment of
evil. I was a presumptuous fool, and I laughed at my mother’s fears.
I know now that they were well founded. My father’s ship has been
wrecked; she and all her crew have perished.”
The young man was interrupted by a hysterical shriek from Violet, who
fell sobbing into his arms.
“You will kill your sister, if you talk like that, Mr. Lionel
Westford,” exclaimed the doctor angrily.
Lionel was silent. He carried Violet to her own room; and that night
Mr. Sanderson had to attend two patients at the Grange.
As for the young man himself, a terrible despair seemed to have
fallen upon him. All through that long miserable night he paced up
and down the empty rooms absorbed in melancholy thoughts.
“Why was I not a sailor like him?” he thought. “Why was I not with
him in the hour of trial and danger? It might have been my fate to
save him, or at the worst to perish with him! I feel myself a base
coward when I think of my idle luxurious existence, and remember
how my father has hazarded his life to earn the money I have been
squandering at University wine-parties and boating excursions. And
now that noble life has been lost in the last effort to increase the
fortune of his children.”
Miserable and dreary were the days and weeks that succeeded that
fatal visit of Rupert Godwin to the Grange.
For a long time Clara Westford and her daughter lay in their darkened
rooms, victims to a kind of low fever.
During this weary time Lionel was something more than an ordinary son
and brother to the mother and sister he adored.
Night after night when the hired nurses had grown weary of their
task--when the servants of the household, sincerely as they were
attached to their mistress and her daughter, had from mere exhaustion
been compelled to abandon their watch, the devotion of the young man
still sustained him. There was something wonderful in this patient
self-abnegation in one who, until the day of calamity, had seemed so
light-hearted and frivolous.
Lionel Westford’s task was not confined to watching in the sick-room.
He made many journeys to London during that weary time. Again and
again he visited every place where there was any hope of obtaining
tidings of the missing vessel; but no good news rewarded his
patience, and before the time of his mother’s recovery he had learned
the worst.
A fragment of the lost vessel had been found floating near a rocky
coast--a fragment which bore the name of the _Lily Queen_.
With a broken heart Lionel Westford returned to the Grange. Bitter as
this loss was to him, the thought of his mother’s anguish was almost
a deeper grief.
He returned to her, and watched once more by her sick-bed. This time
he could watch and tend her day after day, night after night. He had
no longer need to leave her, for he knew the worst.
At last, after the long intervals of stupor and delirium were past,
Clara Westford was pronounced well enough to be removed from her bed
to a chair near the fire.
The windows were closed. Without all was dark and dreary. The trees
were leafless; and the December wind sighed mournfully amongst
the bare branches. The sky was of a dull iron grey--no glimmer of
sunshine relieved its coldness.
But Clara Westford’s room was no comfortless apartment, even in the
depth of winter. Voluminous curtains half shrouded the windows, and
the invalid was propped up by pillows in a luxurious easy-chair, that
had been wheeled close to the low fireplace of polished steel, in
which the red flames were reflected with a cheerful dancing motion
that was very pleasant to see. The broad marble mantelpiece was
crowded with valuable Oriental china, rare old Japanese monsters,
and curious specimens of crackle, brought home by the Captain for
the gratification of the wife to please whom had been the chief
delight of his existence. A portrait of Harley Westford smiled with
the sailor’s own bright genial smile above the chimney-piece; and a
tapestry screen, of Violet’s workmanship, protected the invalid from
the heat of the fire.
Clara had not been seated long in that comfortable chimney-corner
when the door was opened, and Lionel came into the apartment,
half-leading, half-carrying, his sister. Violet had also risen to-day
from her sick-bed, but not for the first time. Her illness had not
been quite so long nor so severe as that of her mother, and she had
been the first to rise.
But she was still very feeble, and in her loose white robes she
looked wan and phantom-like. She was no longer the brilliant
sunny-haired girl who had fascinated the young painter at the
Winchester ball.
“Violet,” exclaimed Mrs. Westford, “how pale and changed you are! O,
my darling girl, you too have been ill?”
“Yes, dear mother.”
“And I was never told of your illness!” murmured Clara, reproachfully.
“Why should you have been made more wretched by any such knowledge,
dear mother?” said Lionel. “Violet has been taken care of.”
“Yes, indeed, dear Lionel,” exclaimed the girl, lifting her eyes
with a grateful glance to her brother’s face; for she knew that
during that bitter time Lionel had been the good genius of the
household.
“My poor Violet,” murmured the mother, clasping her daughter’s hand
with quiet tenderness,--“my poor Violet, the sunshine of life has
been clouded very early for you. I have had twenty years of unsullied
brightness, but for you the storm-cloud has come very soon. My poor
children--my beloved children!”
The mother laid her weary head on her son’s shoulder. Lionel drew
his arm round her with a caressing gesture. Violet had sunk upon a
low ottoman at her mother’s feet; and, grouped thus, the three were
silent for some moments.
Lionel was pale as death. The dreaded question would be asked
presently, and the answer must be given.
He wondered that his mother had not questioned him long before this.
Alas for her broken heart, the reason of her silence was her
instinctive consciousness that all hope was past. If there had been
joyful tidings, her son would have only too gladly imparted them.
And then Clara Westford had watched the young man’s face, and she
had seen the traces of despair imprinted there only too plainly. She
clasped the strong hand that was supporting her feeble frame.
“Lionel,” she murmured, “why do you try to hide the truth from me?
Do you think I cannot understand my children’s looks, and read my
sorrows in their sad faces? There is no news of your father!”
“No, mother; there is no news of--my father.”
“But there is news,” gasped Clara, “of his ship!”
“Only the saddest tidings,” exclaimed the young man, sinking on his
knees beside his mother’s chair. “O, mother--mother! for our sakes
try to endure this calamity. Look up, dear mother, and be comforted.
Remember, _we have only you_.”
Those last words told all. Clara Westford knew that she was a widow.
CHAPTER IX.
A PITILESS CLAIMANT.
After that sad scene in Mrs. Westford’s bedchamber, peace seemed to
reign in the household of the Grange.
Bitter and profound was the grief felt by each member of that little
household; but the heroic hearts battled bravely with their sorrow.
Very little was said of the lost husband and father. Those who had so
dearly loved him, who now so deeply lamented him, dared not speak
that familiar name; but he reigned supreme in the thoughts of all.
In Clara Westford’s bedchamber a black curtain hung before the
sailor’s portrait. Another portrait in the drawing-room was also
shrouded in the same manner.
Violet looked very pale and fragile in her deep mourning robes. Her
golden hair gleamed with all its old brightness under the black crape
bonnet; but there was a settled sadness in the dark blue eyes which
had once beamed with such bewitching smiles.
Everyone in the neighbourhood of the Grange now knew that Harley
Westford’s ship had been lost, and many friends gathered round the
widow to condole with her in the hour of her affliction.
But, alas, their presence only tortured her. She wanted to be
alone--alone with her despair, alone with the image of her lost
husband. If she had been of the old Catholic faith, she would have
gladly fled to the quiet shelter of some convent; where the remainder
of her joyless days might have been devoted to charitable works and
pious meditations, and where no sound of the clamorous outer world
might have reached her weary ears.
She endured her grief in silence, but the anguish was not the less
keen. The thought of her loss was ever present to her--not to be put
aside even for a moment. She spent days in wandering listlessly from
room to room, recalling the happy hours which had been spent with
_him_ in each familiar chamber. Everything reminded her of him, every
association was torture. Even the society of her children afforded
no consolation to her. Their burden was not like hers, she said to
herself. The future might bring them new hope; for her all hope, all
joy, was buried with the past.
Amongst the friends who came to the Grange was a Mr. Maldon, a
retired attorney, who had made a large fortune in Chancery practice,
and who was a person of some importance in the neighbourhood.
This gentleman questioned Clara about her husband’s property. What
proceedings was she about to take? What was the extent of her
children’s fortune?
Then Clara related to him Rupert Godwin’s extraordinary statement
about the money advanced by him to Harley Westford, and the
title-deeds lodged in his hands as a security for that loan.
“Strange!” exclaimed Mr. Maldon. “I always thought your husband had
saved a comfortable little fortune.”
“I thought the same,” answered Clara, “and I think so still. Upon the
day of his departure my dear husband told me he was about to deposit
a sum of twenty thousand pounds in the hands of Rupert Godwin.”
“And Mr. Godwin denies having received that money?”
“He does; and he further declares my husband to be his debtor. But
I will never believe it, unless I see the proof in Harley’s own
handwriting.”
“My dear Mrs. Westford, this is all very mysterious,” exclaimed the
lawyer. “I don’t see how we can possibly doubt such a man as Mr.
Godwin. His position is that of one of the commercial princes of this
country. He would not be likely to advance any false assertion with
regard to his claims upon your husband.”
“I do not know that. I have a very bad opinion of Rupert Godwin,”
Mrs. Westford answered coldly.
“You know him, then?”
“I knew him once, very long ago; and I knew him then to be one of the
meanest and worst of men.”
The lawyer looked at Clara with a bewildered stare. “That is very
strong language, my dear Mrs. Westford.”
“This matter is one upon which I feel very strongly. I believe that
my husband lodged twenty thousand pounds in Rupert Godwin’s hands;
and I believe also that Rupert Godwin is quite capable of cheating
myself and my children out of that money.”
“Well, well, my dear Mrs. Westford,” exclaimed the bewildered
attorney, “I think you allow your prejudices to mislead you in this
matter. But in any case, I will make it my business to go up to
town and see Mr. Godwin immediately. You shall be protected from
any attempted wrong. I liked and respected your husband. I love and
admire yourself and your children. And you shall not be cheated.
No, no, you shall not be cheated; old Stephen Maldon must indeed be
changed, if he can be done by the sharpest banker in London.”
The lawyer lost no time in paying a visit to the City, where he had
a long interview with Rupert Godwin. The result of that interview
was that the banker showed Stephen Maldon a deed signed by Harley
Westford, and duly witnessed by Jacob Danielson, and by John Spence,
a lawyer’s clerk. The document bore the date of June 26th, in the
previous year.
This deed gave Rupert Godwin full power to take possession of the
Grange estate, pictures, plate, furniture, and all appertaining to
house and homestead, on or after the 25th March in the present year,
unless the sum of six thousand five hundred pounds was paid to him in
the interim.
It was now late in January. For only two months more would the widow
and orphans be secure in their once happy home.
Mr. Maldon was a very clever lawyer; but he could see nothing in the
deed shown him by Rupert Godwin that would justify any dispute of the
banker’s claim.
The catastrophe seemed very terrible, but none the less inevitable
because it was a hard thing for the widow and orphans. The law does
not take widows and orphans into any special consideration. The
estate must be abandoned to Mr. Godwin, unless the six thousand five
hundred pounds could be paid on or before the ensuing quarter-day.
Mr. Maldon searched amongst the Captain’s papers at the Grange, but
he could not find any document calculated to throw the smallest light
on the sailor’s affairs. He called upon the Winchester attorney who
had made Captain Westford’s will, and carefully studied the wording
of that document.
The will left all property, real and personal, to Clara, who was
appointed sole executrix. But the will was dated a year earlier than
the deed in the possession of Mr. Godwin, and there was no evidence
that the sailor was possessed of any property except his Hampshire
estate, when he sailed on his fatal voyage.
The lawyer knew that men have often deceived their wives as to their
pecuniary position. Might not Harley Westford have invented that
story of the twenty thousand pounds, in order to lull those he loved
with a false sense of peace and security?
“A generous, impulsive sailor would be the worst possible man of
business,” thought Stephen Maldon. “What more likely than that Harley
Westford was a ruined man, while all the world fancied him a rich
one?”
Meanwhile, the weeks sped by. Soon, very soon, the 25th of March
would be at hand.
Clara Westford knew full well that she must expect no mercy from
Rupert Godwin.
The heroism of her nature asserted itself, and she prepared herself
with calm resignation to leave the home where she had been so
unspeakably happy.
She had no money of her own--positively none; for she had fled from
her father’s roof to become the wife of Harley Westford, and had
been disinherited by him in favour of a grandchild, the daughter of
an only son, who died at two-and-twenty years of age, leaving a baby
girl, on whom stern Sir John Ponsonby doted with senile fondness.
Never had the sailor heard a hint or a whisper of that cruel slander
which had blighted Clara Ponsonby’s youth--never had he heard the
association of her name with that of the notorious young _roué_,
Rupert Godwin.
From the moment of her marriage, Sir John Ponsonby’s daughter
disappeared entirely from the circles in which she had been once a
star of some magnitude.
She had gone to her husband quite penniless, and he had loved her
more fondly than if she had been dowered with a million.
Now, when she examined into the state of her affairs, now that she
was widowed and alone, and had no longer Harley’s strong arm to lean
upon, she found that her circumstances were indeed desperate.
The yearly bills of the tradespeople who supplied the Grange were
all unpaid, and amounted to some hundreds. The servants’ wages must
also be paid; and to meet these claims Clara Westford had no money
whatever.
The little stock of ready-money which her husband had left with her
was entirely spent. He had promised to send his wife remittances from
time to time, as it had been his habit to do; but he, and any money
he possessed, had gone down to the fathomless depths of the ocean
with the good ship _Lily Queen_ and all on board her.
Only one resource remained to the widow. Her jewels, the costly gifts
of a generous husband, these alone remained, and these must be sold
in order that the tradespeople and servants might be paid.
There was a bitter pain in parting with these trinkets, every one of
which had a tender association of its own.
But Clara Westford bore this sharp pain with quiet resignation.
She arranged her jewel-box, and delivered it to her old friend
Mr. Maldon, with instructions for the sale of the jewels at some
London auction-room. They were sold, amongst others, at Debenham and
Storr’s, as the property of “a lady going abroad.”
She was, indeed, going abroad--abroad into a world that to her
inexperienced steps must needs be a trackless wilderness, full of
pitiless thorns and brambles.
The valuables thus disposed of realized about four hundred pounds.
With this sum Mrs. Westford discharged every claim upon her; leaving
a balance of some thirty pounds.
Thirty pounds! And with this pitiful sum the widow and orphans, who
had never known what it was to have a wish unfulfilled that money
could gratify, were to begin the battle of life!
CHAPTER X.
HIDDEN IN THE YEW-TREE.
It was the eve of the 25th of March--that day whose approach had been
so dreaded by Clara Westford and her children,--the day on which they
were to be banished for ever from their happy home.
As yet the banker had given no notice of his intentions with regard
to his victims. But Clara knew how little mercy she had to expect
from him, and she had determined on saving herself and her children
the agony of humiliation.
She would not wait for Rupert Godwin to act. She would not be turned
out of her happy home by the man whose blighting influence had
darkened her youth. She determined therefore, to leave the Grange
early on the morning of the 25th.
But when she announced this determination to Violet, the girl
expressed considerable surprise.
“Why should we be in such a hurry to leave the dear old place?”
Violet exclaimed. “This Mr. Godwin may not press his claim upon the
Grange. They say he is enormously rich, and surely he would be happy
to let us stay here till he has a tenant for the place. We may be
allowed to live here for some time to come, dear mother, till you are
better and stronger, and more fit to face the world.”
Mrs. Westford shook her head.
“No, Violet,” she answered firmly; “I will not remain one hour under
this roof when it becomes the property of Rupert Godwin.”
“Mamma, you speak as if you knew this Mr. Godwin?”
“I know that he is one of the vilest of men,” answered Mrs. Westford.
“Do not question me further, Violet; my resolution is not to be
shaken upon this point. Believe me when I assure you that I am acting
for the best. And now, write to your brother, dear, and ask him to
meet us at the Waterloo Terminus to-morrow at one o’clock.”
Lionel had been in London for the last few weeks, endeavouring to
obtain a situation in some office.
But the young man, highly educated though he was, found it extremely
difficult to procure any kind of employment, however humble.
His University education availed him little. London seemed to swarm
with clever young men, all engaged in the struggle for daily bread.
Lionel Westford’s heart sank within him as he made application after
application, only to fail alike in all.
For every situation that offered there seemed a hundred competitors.
And ninety-nine out of this hundred must endure the misery of failure.
Lionel had secured a very cheap and humble lodging on the Surrey side
of the Thames, and had made arrangements for the reception of his
mother and sister as soon as they left the Grange.
O, what a dreary change was that darksome London lodging, after the
luxurious country-house, the lovely gardens, the horses and grooms,
the dogs and guns, and all those things which are so especially dear
to a young man!
On his own account, however, Lionel Westford never once complained.
His only thought was of his mother and sister; his most earnest
desire that he might be enabled to shield _them_ from all the
bitterest ills of poverty.
He thought very seriously of his future career. His classical
learning seemed unlikely to be of the smallest use to him;
unless, like Goldsmith and Johnson, he accepted the slavery of a
schoolmaster’s drudge. How bitterly he regretted his careless youth,
his want of a profession, which would give him at least something!
He asked himself whether there was yet time for him to adopt a
profession. There was the Church. Yes; but he must waste two or three
years before he could hope for a curacy worth from fifty to a hundred
per annum. There was the law; but, alas, he was too familiar with the
proverbial miseries of briefless youth idling in the garrets of the
Temple.
It was a living he wanted, an immediate living, and in search of this
he tramped the streets of London with untiring feet; but day by day
went by, and he seemed no nearer to the object of his desire.
The afternoon of the 24th of March was dull and cheerless. The wind
howled among the branches of the old trees about the Grange; the grey
sky was cold and sunless.
Yet upon this afternoon, cheerless and cold though it was, Violet
Westford opened the little garden-gate leading out into the forest,
for the first time for many months.
Never since her illness had she seen or heard of the artist, George
Stanmore.
She had fully expected that he would have come to the Grange to
inquire about her during that long illness; and she had contrived
to ask Lionel, in an apparently careless manner, if he had heard
anything of his friend Mr. Stanmore.
But the answer had been in the negative. George had therefore taken
no steps to discover the cause of Violet’s absence from her favourite
forest haunts. This seeming neglect and indifference had cruelly
stung the girl’s heart.
“His pretended attachment to me was only a passing fancy, perhaps,”
she thought; “and I daresay he was amused by my sentimental folly in
believing all his protestations of regard. I can understand now why
he shrank from seeing my mother, and making an open avowal of his
love.”
The idea that she had been the dupe of a sentimental delusion was
very bitter to the girl’s sensitive mind. Her pride was outraged, and
from the time of her recovery she had shunned the forest pathways,
with an obstinate determination to avoid all meetings with her false
lover.
But now that she was going to leave the Grange for ever, an
irresistible impulse took possession of her, and she felt that she
could not quit the neighbourhood of the forest without making some
endeavour to ascertain the cause of George Stanmore’s neglect.
Might not he, too, have been ill? Or might he not have been
compelled to leave the forest? It was almost easier to believe
anything than that he could be false.
Thus it was that Miss Westford’s love overcame her pride; and once
more she opened the little gate leading to her beloved woodland--the
sweet scene which had been familiar and dear to her from infancy.
The forest pathways looked dreary this cold March afternoon, but
the change in the aspect of the woodland was not so striking as the
change in her who now passed through that rustic gateway.
The brilliant girl, whose smiling face was once like the sunlight,
looked now wan and pale as some misty shape that glides about the
mountain-tops in the evening dimness.
She walked with feeble steps along the grassy path, for the beating
of her heart seemed to paralyze her strength. She went straight to
the cottage where the landscape-painter had lodged; but the walk was
a long one, and the twilight was gathering fast when she reached the
modest little habitation, nestling amongst grand old trees.
The firelight from the cottage window streamed out upon the chill
gray twilight, and there was a look of homeliness and comfort in the
aspect of the simple place.
A sudden pang pierced through Violet’s heart as she looked at that
cosy little cottage, with the neat, well stocked garden, and the red
firelight in the window.
“If my mother and I had such a home as that, we might think ourselves
very happy,” she thought; “and yet I daresay the people who live here
have often envied our wealth and luxury.”
A woman was standing at the open door of the cottage as Violet
approached the gate, and she came out into the pathway to welcome her
visitor.
“Lor, Miss Westford!” she exclaimed, “you a’most frightened me,
standing there so dark and ghostly like. Do step in, miss, and rest
yourself a bit by the fire. It’s quite chilly these March afternoons.
How sad it do seem to see your black dress, and to think of the poor
dear kind free-spoken gentleman that’s gone! Ah, deary me, deary me,
he were a good friend to all us poor folks, and there’s many will
miss him in these parts. Take a chair close to the fire, miss. I am
so glad to see you getting about once more, though you’re looking but
sadly yet. I was at the Grange many times to ask after you during
your illness.”
Violet’s heart beat convulsively. She began to think that George
Stanmore had employed this woman as his messenger.
“It was very good of you to inquire after me,” she faltered.
“Lor, miss! wasn’t it likely I should be wishful to know how you was?
Haven’t I known you ever since you was a little bit of a child? and
hasn’t your dear ma been a good friend to me times and often? and
didn’t your pa send me a bottle of his own old East-Indy Madeery,
last Christmas was a twelvemonth, when he heard I was ailing?”
In all this there was no mention of Mr. Stanmore. Violet’s heart
sank. She could not bring herself to question the simple dame,
and she was not sufficiently skilled in diplomacy to extort the
information she was so eager to obtain without direct questioning.
She looked hopelessly round the comfortable little cottage chamber,
wondering what she could say next. She was very pale; but the red
light of the fire gave a false glow to her face, and the good-natured
cottager did not perceive her visitor’s agitation.
“How neatly you keep your cottage, Mrs. Morris!” Violet said at last,
feeling that she must say something. “It’s quite pleasant to see your
place, it looks such a picture of comfort.”
“You’re very good to say so, miss, I’m sure,” answered Mrs. Morris.
“But talking of pictures, and talking of comfort, we ain’t half as
comfortable now, since we’ve lost our lodger.”
Violet’s heart gave a great bound. He was gone, then! But how--and
where?
“You’ve lost your lodger?” she said. “You mean Mr. Stanmore?”
“Yes, miss. Mr. Stanmore, that painter gentleman. He left us all of a
sudden, the very first week as you was taken ill; and, what’s more,
it was against his own wishes as he went.”
“Against his own wishes! How so?”
“Why, you see, miss, this is how it was. I was ironing in that window
one afternoon, when I saw a dark, foreign-looking gentleman standing
at our gate, and with such a frown upon his face that he set me all
of a tremble like, which I scorched one of my good man’s shirt-fronts
as brown as a coffee-berry for the first time this ten years, having
had an aunt, Rebecca Javes by name, which was brought up to the
clear-starching and laundry-maid at Sir Robert Flinder’s, three miles
on this side of Netley Abbey, and has shown me to iron a shirt-front
with her own hands more times than I could count----”
“But the foreign-looking gentleman----”
“Yes, miss. That’s just what I was a-saying. There he stands as large
as life. In he walks, right into our place, as cool as you please.
‘Is my son at home?’ he asks. ‘Your son, sir!’ I answered. ‘Lor,
bless me, no; I don’t know any such person.’ ‘O yes you do,’ he
says. ‘The person who painted that picture yonder is my son, and he
lodges in your house.’ With that he points to one of Mr. Stanmore’s
landscapes, that’s been set to dry on my little table yonder. ‘Mr.
Stanmore your son!’ I cried out. And I assure you, miss, you might
have knocked me down with a feather. ‘He is capable of calling
himself Stanmore, or any other false name,’ answered the dark
gentleman; ‘but whatever he calls himself, the man who painted that
picture is my wicked and undutiful son.’
“Before he could get out another word, Mr. Stanmore walked in, with
his hat on, and his drawings and things under his arm. He’d just come
in from the forest.
“‘I am here, father,’ he said, ‘to answer for my sins, whatever they
may be;’ and he said it as proud-like as if he’d been a prince of the
royal family.
“So then the two gentlemen walked upstairs to Mr. Stanmore’s
sitting-room, and our walls being thin, you know, miss, I could hear
a good deal of what was said; not the words exactly, but the tones
of voice like, though I’m sure as to bemean myself by listening, I
wouldn’t do it, there, not if you was to lay me down twenty pound;
and I could hear as the two gentlemen seemed at variance, as you
may say; and at last down comes Mr. Stanmore’s father, as stiff as
a poker, and as black as any thunderstorm as I ever see, and walks
out of the house without so much as a word to me; but I could see
by his face that he was regularly upset. And then, about an hour or
so afterwards, down came Mr. Stanmore, looking very pale, but very
quiet-like. He’d packed all his things, he said, and he wanted my
husband to carry them over to Winchester Station in his cart, in
time for the mail-train, which he did. I was regular cut up at the
young gentleman leaving me so sudden like, for never was there a
better lodger, and he paid me very handsome, and was altogether the
gentleman. He seemed quite broken-hearted like at going away, miss;
and, lor bless me, if that don’t remind me of something!”
The dame stopped suddenly, looking at Violet.
“Something about you, too, miss!”
The blood rushed into Violet’s pale face.
“Did Mr. Stanmore mention me?” she asked.
“Yes, miss; indeed he did. Just as he was going out of the house he
stopped all of a sudden, and said, ‘If you should see Miss Westford,
tell her that I have painted the old yew-tree she was so fond of;
and I want her to look once more at the tree, in order that she may
remember it when she sees my picture.’ Wasn’t that a funny message,
miss?”
“Yes,” Violet answered, with pretended carelessness. “I suppose Mr.
Stanmore means an old yew near the lake, which my brother and I
very much admired. I sha’n’t have many opportunities of looking at
the tree, Mrs. Morris, for we are going to leave this neighbourhood
to-morrow.”
The woman expressed her regret at the departure of Violet and her
mother; but, in the country, news travels fast, and she had heard
some days before that the Grange was to be deserted. The change
of fortune that had befallen the Westfords had been talked of and
lamented by rich and poor.
Violet left the cottage with a heavy heart. George Stanmore had gone,
leaving no trace behind him--not even a letter for the woman he had
sworn to love and cherish for ever.
It was all a mystery, which Violet strove in vain to understand.
The moon had risen when she left the cottage, and every branch and
leaf stood sharply out against the silvery light. Violet looked at
the peaceful scene with inexpressible sadness.
“It may be the last time that I shall ever see it,” she thought; “the
last time! And I have been so happy here!”
Then she thought of George Stanmore’s message about the old yew-tree.
It seemed a very absurd and meaningless message--a message which to
any one not in love would have appeared the very extreme of maudlin
sentimentality. But Violet was by no means inclined to regard it in
that light. She looked upon it rather as a solemn and mysterious
mandate which it was her duty to obey to the very letter.
Madame Laffarge, of unpleasant notoriety, wrote to her husband
entreating him to eat certain cakes made by her own fair hand, and
to contemplate the moon at a certain hour, when she too would be
absorbed in sentimental meditation upon that luminary. The idea
was poetical, but, unfortunately for M. Laffarge, the cakes were
poisoned, and he died, the victim of obedience.
Violet was in that state of mind in which she found it pleasanter
to loiter in the forest than to go home, and there was a kind of
consolation in the idea of doing anything that her lover had asked
her to do. It seemed to bring him nearer to her for the moment. He
might be thinking of that favourite spot at the very moment she
stood there thinking so sadly of him. He might even see her in her
loneliness and despondency by some subtle power of second-sight given
to lovers. Was anything impossible to true love?
So Miss Westford turned aside from her homeward path, and vent
fearlessly through the solitary avenue that led towards the lake.
That forest lake looked very lovely under the still evening sky. The
broad branches of the yew made patches of black shadow on the grass;
the fallen leaves made a faint rustling noise as the wind stirred
them--a kind of ghostly murmur.
Around the trunk of the tree there was a rustic bench of roughly-hewn
wood; and on this Violet seated herself, exhausted by her long walk,
and glad to linger on a spot so associated with her lost happiness.
As she sat there, the beauty of the scene impressed her with an
almost painful sense of its splendour. For the first time throughout
that sorrowful day the tears, passionate tears of regret, rushed
down her pale cheeks.
She turned her head aside, and rested her forehead against the rugged
bark of the yew.
As she did so, she perceived a hollow in the tree--a great hollow, in
which George Stanmore had often hidden his colour-box and brushes.
The remembrance of this suddenly flashed upon her. It had been her
lover’s habit to hide things in that old tree. What if he had hidden
a letter there, and had directed her attention to the fact by means
of that message left with Mrs. Morris! In the next moment Violet
Westford was on her knees before the hollow, groping in it with her
hands.
She found it half-filled with moss and withered leaves; but, after
dragging these out, she saw something white gleaming in the moonlight.
Ah, how eagerly she picked up that scrap of white from among the
scattered leaves and moss!
It was a letter. Miss Westford could just make out the words “For
Violet,” written on the envelope. Impatient as she was to see the
contents of that precious envelope, she was fain to wait until she
reached home; for brightly as the moon shone above forest and lake,
that poetic radiance was not sufficient to throw light upon the
mysteries of a modern gentleman’s penmanship.
Never in her happiest day had Violet Westford’s feet tripped more
lightly along those forest pathways. She reached the Grange panting
and exhausted, took a candle from the hall, and hurried to her own
apartment--the bright airy room, so prettily decked to suit her
girlish tastes, so soon to pass into the hands of strangers.
She seated herself close to the light, and tore open George
Stanmore’s envelope. The letter it contained was brief, and had
evidently been written in extreme haste.
It consisted of only these words:
“MY DEAREST GIRL,--Circumstances which I cannot explain in this
letter compel me to leave England immediately. I do not know when I
may be able to return; but when I do return, it will be to claim you
as my wife. In the mean time, I implore you to write to me at the
Post-office, Bruges, Belgium. Write to me, dearest, and tell me that
you do not doubt my fidelity: tell me also that your faith will be as
constant and unshaken as that of your devoted
“GEORGE.”
No words can express the comfort which Violet Westford derived
from this brief letter. To a woman of the world, George Stanmore’s
assurance of unalterable affection might have seemed of very little
value; but to this girl, who did not know what it was to deceive,
that assurance was all in all.
“He loves me! He is true to me!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands in
a rapture of delight. “And when he comes back, it will be to seek me
as his wife. But what will he do when he finds the Grange deserted,
and our circumstances so cruelly changed? Will he change too?” This
was the question which Violet asked herself very sadly, as she sat in
the familiar room that was so soon to be hers no longer.
There was little sleep or rest for the dwellers in that pleasant
country-house during the last sad night. The servants sat late in the
cosy housekeeper’s-room, bewailing the misfortunes of their mistress
over a very comfortably-furnished supper-table--for even a funeral
table must be provided with “baked meats;” and faithful retainers,
weighed down by the sadness of approaching farewell, require to be
sustained by extra beer. They were unanimous in their praises of the
family they had served so long, and in their dread of the unknown
ills to be encountered in strange households, and from masters and
mistresses whose “ways” would be new to them. But the old-fashioned
type of servant, who appears so frequently in Morton’s comedies and
in old novels, seems to be almost as extinct as the dodo. The Grange
retainers were honestly sorry for Mrs. Westford’s misfortunes, but
they had no idea of volunteering to follow the family in exile and
poverty without wages, and, if need were, without food. Nor did cook
or housemaid rush into the parlour to lay her savings at the feet of
mistress, in the pathetic manner so familiar in the fairy world of
romance. They sighed over the sorrows of the house as they ate their
cold meat, and shook their heads dolefully over the old housekeeper’s
famous pickles; but their boxes were all packed, and their plans all
made for an early departure from the ruined house.
All through that long dreary night Mrs. Westford sat at her desk,
sorting and destroying old letters and documents, the records of her
happy womanhood. Of all the friendly notes, the pleasant gossiping
letters, she kept none, except those written by her husband and her
children.
Ah, how happy she had been in that simple country-house! What a calm
life it had been!--and how brief the years seemed as she looked back
to the early days in which her husband had brought her into Hampshire
house-hunting, in a happy summer holiday, when their honeymoon was
scarcely waned, and there was still in the minds of both the sweet
strange sense that it was a new thing to be thus together!
She remembered her first year in that quiet haven. The glorious
summer time, in which every sunny day had brought the discovery
of some new treasure in shrubbery or garden. She remembered the
warm midsummer night, in which she had lain, faint and weak, but
unspeakably happy, looking up at the stars, with the perfumed air of
the June night blowing in upon her from the wide window, and her baby
Lionel on her breast.
CHAPTER XI.
HOMELESS AND FRIENDLESS.
Very early in the chill spring morning Violet and her mother drove
away from the Grange in a hired fly that was to convey them to
Winchester.
They took nothing with them but their own personal property and the
two portraits of Harley Westford. These Mrs. Westford knew she had no
legal right to possess, but she stooped to infringe the letter of the
law rather than leave her dead husband’s likeness in the hands of his
hateful rival.
Thus it was that the widow and her daughter left their happy home,
with all its luxurious belongings undisturbed, to fall into the hands
of strangers.
It was still early when they reached Winchester; and it was just one
o’clock when the train entered the Waterloo terminus, where Lionel
Westford was waiting on the platform, very pale and very grave, and
altogether different from the light-hearted, careless young Oxonian
who had brought life and gaiety to his home whenever he had come to
it, and whose greatest trouble was the fear of being disappointed in
his hope of University honours.
The young man bore his reverses nobly. He greeted his mother and
sister with one of his old smiles, and then ran off to attend to
their luggage, which he saw conveyed to a cab.
In this cab they speedily drove away from the station, and went
through two or three small streets in the neighbourhood of the
Waterloo-road.
The cab stopped at a shabby but clean-looking house in one of the
smallest of these streets.
Lionel Westford watched his mother’s face with an anxious expression.
He was thinking how horrible this dingy street, that shabby,
poverty-stricken house must appear, when contrasted with the dear old
Grange, and its lovely lawns and flower-beds, its avenue of stately
elms, and spreading meadows sheltered with old oaks and beeches.
“It is very poor, very common, dear mother,” said the young man; “but
the landlady seems a decent sort of person, and this place was the
best I could get at present. However, this time of poverty and trial
shall not last long, if any effort of mine can shorten it.”
He pressed his mother’s hand as he spoke, and she answered him by a
look of the deepest gratitude and affection.
“My treasures!” she exclaimed, looking fondly at her two children,
“should I not be a wretch to repine while you are still left to me?”
Lionel had done all in his power to impart an appearance of
cheerfulness to the shabby sitting-room which had been prepared for
the new-comers. A fire burned in the little grate; a bunch of early
spring-flowers adorned the table.
Only true and pure affection supported the banker’s victims during
these first days of poverty and trial.
The trial was very bitter; for poverty was new to them, and
everything around seemed to send a fresh chill to their hearts.
But they were none of them people to waste time in idle complaints.
Every morning, as soon as he had eaten his frugal breakfast, Lionel
Westford set out upon his weary travels in the great desert of London.
What desert can be more lonely than that wealthy and crowded city to
the wanderer who has neither friends nor money?
Every morning Violet and her mother also left their dingy lodgings,
and went out into the world by separate ways to seek for bread. Yes,
for bread! For now only a very slender hoard remained between them
and absolute starvation.
Violet was no more fortunate than her brother. She was accomplished;
but there were many portionless girls in London, all more or less
accomplished, and all eager to earn the merest pittance. Who could
hope that there would ever be enough employment for all of them?
Mrs. Westford also sought to turn her talents to some use; but she
too sought for a long time most vainly. She offered herself as a
morning governess, and spent what to her was a large sum in the
postage of letters replying to advertisements in the morning papers.
But no answers came to these letters. Education seemed to have
become the most valueless drug in the London market. The Captain’s
widow was troubled by none of those ultra-refined compunctions which
restrain the actions of some among the ranks of the shabby-genteel.
When she found her educational powers would not obtain her the merest
pittance, she fell back upon her mechanical skill in all kinds of
elegant fancy-work. She visited half the Berlin-wool shops and fancy
repositories in London and the suburbs, and at last succeeded in
finding a speculative trader, who agreed to give her a starvation
price for her work.
At last, however, when a kind of heart-sickness had seized upon both
mother and daughter, a faint glimmer of sunshine broke through the
dense black clouds that darkened the horizon. It was only a chilly
April radiance at best, but still it was the sun.
Violet was amongst the crowd of clever and accomplished women
who answered an advertisement inserted in the _Times_ by a lady
who required a morning governess for her young daughters--two
pretty-looking, half-educated girls of seventeen and nineteen.
Mrs. Montague Trevor was a frivolous woman, whose heart and intellect
were alike absorbed in the delights of the fashionable world. She had
been a beauty, and had flourished for her brief hour as belle of a
second-rate watering-place, where she had been fortunate enough to
win the affections of a popular Queen’s Counsel, who fell in love
with her pretty face, and was too busy ever to have leisure in which
to find out how empty the head was behind it. Mr. Montague Trevor had
therefore been very well content with his choice, and in due course
had worked himself to death, leaving the watering-place beauty a
widow with a handsome fortune. On the strength of this fortune, and
her late husband’s professional celebrity, Mrs. Trevor had obtained
an extended circle of acquaintance, and amongst these she still
played off some of the airs and graces which she had cultivated as a
belle of nineteen.
She was intensely vain; and she fancied that every man who laid
her a compliment was desperately in love with her. She had no
disinclination to part with her freedom to a new lord and master; but
she wanted a rich husband, for her habits were terribly extravagant,
and, in spite of her excellent income, she was always more or less in
debt.
Unfortunately, though her admirers were numerous, they were not many
of them rich, and the vain and frivolous Annabella sighed in vain for
a wealthy husband, whose boundless purse should supply money for all
her whims and fancies.
It was this lady whose advertisement Violet Westford saw in the
_Times_ newspaper, and it was in Mrs. Trevor’s fashionably-furnished
drawing-room in the Regent’s Park that the young girl sat amongst a
crowd of other applicants, waiting the nervous moment when she should
be summoned before the lady who was to decide her fate.
She knew that poverty, dire and terrible, was fast approaching that
miserable lodging near the Waterloo-road, and she felt a painful
anxiety to be of some use to her mother, and to her brave young
brother, on whose brow she already saw the impress of despair.
At last the moment arrived, and a smartly dressed maid conducted
Violet to Mrs. Trevor’s morning-room, or boudoir, as it was always
called by elegant Annabella.
Mrs. Trevor was reclining on a sofa, dressed in an elaborately
beflounced muslin morning-dress, dotted about with infantine bows of
sky-blue ribbon, her hair arranged _à la vierge_, an expensive fan
in her hand, and a tiny Maltese dog in her lap. On a table near her
there was a scent-bottle with a gold stopper and an elegant little
Dresden chocolate-service. The two Miss Trevors were lounging near
the windows, and staring idly out into the Park.
As Violet entered the room, nervously anxious, Mrs. Trevor uttered an
exclamation of surprise.
“What a sweet face!” she cried. “My dear Theodosia, my darling
Anastasia, did you ever see a sweeter face?”
Violet had no idea that this speech could possibly apply to her.
She stood opposite the one lady on the sofa, almost trembling with
anxiety, for repeated failure had depressed her spirits, and she had
a morbid apprehension of disappointment.
“You were so good as to send for me madam,” she faltered.
“Yes, my love; I sent for you, and I am absolutely charmed with you.
I like to see everything lovely about me--my rooms, my flowers, my
china; and you are lovely! Beauty is almost as necessary to me as the
air I breathe, and you are beautiful! I am sure we shall suit each
other delightfully. Such _objects_, such _creatures_, such absolute
Gorgons as I have seen this morning, my dear!--really enough to give
a sensitive person the horrors; and I am so excruciatingly sensitive.
Anastasia, my love, don’t you think there is something of a likeness
between Miss--Miss----”
“Westford, madam,” interposed Violet.
“Between Miss Westford and me? About the nose, Anastasia? Miss
Westford has exactly that delicate style of nose which your poor papa
used to call a perfect Grecian.”
Miss Anastasia Trevor did not take the trouble to answer her mother’s
question. Nor was there any occasion that she should do so, as the
volatile Annabella rarely gave any one time to reply to her remarks.
“I am sure you will suit me, my love!” she exclaimed. “You play and
sing, of course?”
“O yes, madam.”
Mrs. Trevor waved her jewelled hand towards an open piano.
“Let me hear you, my dear.”
Violet seated herself, and after a brilliant prelude which displayed
her execution and expression as a pianiste, she sang a simple little
Italian barcarole, in which her mezzo-soprano voice rang out soft and
clear.
“Charming!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor. “You draw and paint in
water-colours, I suppose?”
Violet blushed as she answered this question, for she remembered how
her artist-lover had admired her sketches, and how much her taste had
been cultivated in his society.
She opened a little portfolio which she had brought with her, and
showed Mrs. Trevor some water-colour sketches of the forest.
“Delicious!” exclaimed the fashionable widow. “There is a taste, a
lightness, a warmth, an atmosphere, a _chiaro-oscuro_ which is really
charming. You speak French, German, and Italian, of course, as those
were mentioned as requisite in the advertisement?”
Violet replied that she was familiar with all three languages.
“And your references are irreproachable, I conclude?”
“I can refer you to Mr. Morton, the clergyman of the parish in which
we lived in my dear father’s lifetime.”
Violet’s eyes filled with tears as she referred to that happy past,
which contrasted so cruelly with the present.
“Nothing can be more satisfactory,” said Mrs. Trevor, as Violet
handed her the address of the Hampshire rector. “I shall write
to this gentleman by to-day’s post. I take it for granted that
the answer will be favourable, therefore we may as well conclude
arrangements at once. This is Wednesday. On Friday I can receive the
rector’s answer, and on Monday morning you can commence your duties.
Good morning.--Anastasia, my love, the bell.”
Violet rose; but she lingered hesitatingly.
“There is one question,” she murmured; “the salary, madam?”
“Ah, to be sure!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor. “What a forgetful creature
I am! You will want a salary, I suppose--though really, as it is
your first engagement as a governess, there are many people who
would object to giving you a salary. However, I am not one of those
illiberal persons.--You know, Anastasia, your poor dear papa used to
call me ridiculously generous.--The salary, Miss Westford, will be
half-a-guinea a week.”
Violet had expected a great deal more; but poverty stared her in the
face, and even this pittance would be something.
“And the hours?” she asked.
“The hours will be from nine till two, which will enable you to dine
comfortably at home with your own family,” Mrs. Trevor answered, with
a benevolent smile.
From nine till two--six days a week--for half-a-guinea! Four-pence an
hour was the value set upon accomplishments the acquirement of which
had cost a small fortune!
Violet sighed as she thought of her expensive masters, her handsomely
paid governess, and the time and trouble which had been bestowed upon
her education.
“Perhaps the situation will not suit you?” said the sweet Mrs. Trevor
rather sharply.
“O, yes, madam; it will suit me very well.”
“And you accept the terms?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Then in that case I shall expect you on Monday. You can then begin
your duties; that is, of course, in the event of the reference
proving satisfactory.”
“I do not fear that, madam. Good morning.”
And Violet left the richly furnished boudoir comparatively happy;
for half-a-guinea a week was at least some small provision against
absolute starvation.
Half-a-guinea a week for the salary of an accomplished governess!
And this from Mrs. Montague Trevor, who thought nothing of paying a
five-pound note for a cup and saucer of Sèvres china.
As the door closed upon Violet, the diplomatic widow turned with a
look of triumph to her eldest daughter.
“Well, I think I managed that business admirably!” she exclaimed.
“Half-a-guinea a week! Why, my dear Anastasia, the girl is worth a
hundred guineas a year at the very least. Look at the salary that
elderly Gorgon with the blue spectacles had the presumption to ask
me. This girl is worth as much again as the Gorgon, whose voice was
like a screech owl’s.”
The younger Miss Trevor, who bore no resemblance to her mother either
in person or disposition, lifted her eyes reproachfully to the
flighty widow’s face.
“But if this young lady is worth so much, is it not very cruel, and
almost dishonest, to offer her so little, mamma?” she asked gravely.
“Cruel! dishonest!” ejaculated Mrs. Trevor. “Why, child, you’re a
perfect idiot! You’ll never make a bargain as long as you live.”
CHAPTER XIL.
MATERNAL MANŒUVRES.
Five minutes before the clocks in the neighbourhood struck nine, on
the appointed Monday morning Violet Westford knocked at the door of
the villa in the Regent’s Park. She was admitted by a maid-servant,
who at once conducted her to an apartment near the top of the
house--a cold, cheerless looking room, very shabbily furnished,
and commanding an agreeable view of the backs of the houses in
Albany-street,--altogether a very different apartment from Mrs.
Montague Trevor’s silken-curtained boudoir, with its somewhat stagey
decoration in modern buhl and marqueterie.
Here Violet’s duties began; and very tedious they promised to be; for
one of her pupils was idle, frivolous, and flippant, and the other
was naturally slow of apprehension.
Anastasia Trevor was a clever girl; but her natural idleness
was excessive, and she could only be induced to study those
accomplishments which could be paraded before the admiring of
curious eyes of her acquaintance.
Theodosia was not a clever or brilliant girl; but she was something
better, for she was truthful and conscientious. She exerted herself
to the utmost under the direction of her new governess.
“I fear you’ll find me very stupid, Miss Westford,” she said; “but I
hope you’ll believe that I shall do my best.”
“I am sure you will,” Violet answered gently.
From that moment it seemed as if a friendship arose between the
governess and her pupil. Theodosia had been accustomed to find
herself neglected by the masters and governesses whom her mother
engaged, and who speedily discovered that the lively Anastasia was
Mrs. Trevor’s favourite, and that attention bestowed upon her would
be better rewarded than if given to the quiet Theodosia.
Theodosia and her mother were never very likely to agree, for the
girl’s high sense of truth and honour was continually being wounded
by the widow’s conduct; and as Theodosia was too candid to conceal
her sentiments, perpetual disputes arose between them.
Anastasia, on the contrary, was the exact counterpart of her mother,
and the two agreed admirably, except when their interests clashed,
which was not a rare event.
Day after day Violet toiled in the dull schoolroom at Mrs. Trevor’s
villa. Her duties were excessively fatiguing, but no murmur of
complaint ever crossed her lips. When Saturday came she was able to
carry home her hard-earned half-guinea, and that in itself was a
recompense for all her trouble.
In the mean time affairs had brightened a little for Lionel, who
had at last succeeded in getting some work as a copyist of legal
documents.
It was very hard work, very poorly paid; but for the sake of his
mother and sister the young man would even have swept a crossing.
For some little time matters went on tolerably smoothly in the humble
lodging. Mrs. Westford bent over an embroidery frame with untiring
patience; Lionel laboured for long hours at his wearisome penmanship;
and Violet attended daily at Mrs. Trevor’s villa. So that, comforted
by affection, which brightens even the dullest home, the widow and
her orphans were comparatively happy.
But that period of peace was destined to be very brief. The storm was
near at hand; and Violet, the gentle Violet, who until the last few
months had never known sorrow, was the first to be stricken by the
thunderbolt.
She had been teaching Mrs. Trevor’s daughters for nearly six weeks,
when one day the widow sent her a very condescending message
inviting her to a small evening-party, which was to take place during
the week.
Of course Violet accepted the invitation. Painful as it would be to
her to appear once more amongst careless and happy people, she feared
to offend her employer by a refusal. She knew full well that she was
invited to this party in order that she might be useful in showing
off her pupils; and that any refusal on her part would inevitably be
resented.
Anastasia sang Rossini’s and Verdi’s music very brilliantly, and
Violet would be required to accompany her on the piano. Theodosia had
a fine contralto voice, and sang simple ballads with a great deal of
expression; but it was a question if she would be allowed to sing
before company. Mrs. Trevor did not care to see her younger daughter
admired. She was jealous of all praise that was not bestowed upon
herself or her favourite Anastasia. But Violet was determined that,
if possible, Theodosia should sing one of her simple ballads in the
course of the evening. She had taken a great deal of trouble with her
younger pupil’s voice, and was anxious that Mrs. Trevor should be
made aware of Theodosia’s rapid improvement. But it was no pride in
her own teaching that made Violet anxious for this,--it was because
she had really grown attached to her pupil.
With Anastasia it was quite different. That young lady was resolved
to display her accomplishments to the uttermost, and had perfect
confidence in her own powers.
The eventful evening arrived. Violet was dressed very simply; in
deep mourning. But her fair face and golden hair were set off by her
sombre dress, and she looked very lovely. Anastasia Trevor was by no
means pleased to see the notice which the governess attracted as she
made her way quietly and shyly through the crowd in the endeavour to
reach her hostess. Miss Trevor was of the order of fast young ladies,
and she had regarded Violet with a kind of benignant pity, as a
creature utterly without “dash” or “style.”
To be dashing was the chief desire of Miss Trevor’s heart. She
studied the _Court Circular_ and the Parisian fashion-books; she
formed herself and dressed herself after the model of the latest
celebrity in the _haut monde_, and did not even blush to borrow a
grace or a piquant eccentricity from some brilliant leader of the
_demi monde_.
To-night she had taken more than usual pains with her costume,
complaining loudly as she did so, of the extravagance and selfishness
of her mother, who had ordered her own dress from a Parisian milliner
in Wigmore-street, while expecting her daughters to be satisfied with
the achievements of a clever young person in Somers-town.
“I hate white tarlatane!” exclaimed Miss Trevor, as she stood before
her mother’s cheval glass, putting the finishing touches to her
dress. “It is all very well for mamma to lay down the law about
girlish elegance and simplicity when she gives twenty guineas for a
moire, and wears lace worth hundreds, in order to set herself off to
the best advantage.”
The young lady looked very discontentedly at the airy puffings of
her dress, which was dotted all over with dew-spangled rosebuds,
and which was very becoming to the dark-haired beauty, but by no
means the costume she would have chosen had she been permitted to
consult Madame Forchère, of Wigmore-street. Nor was her temper at all
improved when she saw the glances of admiring surprise which greeted
Violet Westford as she made her way through the crowded room.
Mrs. Montague Trevor’s drawing-room blazed with the light of a
hundred wax candles. The elegant widow would not admit anything so
vulgar and commonplace as gas into her apartments, so they were
lighted entirely by wax candles, in branches of crystal and ormolu.
The rooms were crowded to suffocation when Violet arrived. When
Mrs. Trevor talked of giving a small evening-party, her friends
always knew very well that her rooms and staircase would be made
insufferable by the crowd assembled at the villa, and that the
elegant supper would be a kind of lottery in which many speculators
would draw blanks.
Such a moment as this was the pride and delight of Mrs. Trevor’s
life. Radiant in a train of pink moire, the rustling folds of which
were almost covered with flounces of point-lace, the handsome widow
smiled upon her guests.
Among them she knew that there were several eligible men in a
matrimonial point of view, and two of those eligible beings she had
marked as her intended victims.
One of these was Rupert Godwin the banker, whom Mrs. Trevor hoped to
win as a husband for herself.
She had been to a garden-party at Wilmingdon Hall, and had been
agreeably impressed by the splendour of that old mansion and its
surroundings, as well as by the extravagance of the arrangements.
The other was Sir Harold Ivry, the wealthy descendant of a family
of ironfounders; a young man who was the possessor of a million of
money, and whom the widow fancied she might secure for her favourite
daughter.
Anastasia was handsome and accomplished; Sir Harold was young and
independent. Why should not a match be brought about between them?
This was what Mrs. Trevor thought; and she looked with peculiar
favour on the wealthy scion of the Birmingham ironmaster.
The manœuvring mother and the husband-hunting widow had a difficult
part to play this evening, but the lady proved herself quite equal
to the occasion. While engaged in a sentimental flirtation with the
eligible banker, Mrs. Trevor contrived to keep a watchful eye upon
Anastasia and the young Baronet.
Nothing could exceed her mortification when she saw that Sir
Harold paid very little attention to Anastasia, and that he seemed
peculiarly attracted by the beautiful but pensive-looking governess,
whose mourning dress and lovely pale face were very conspicuous amid
that gaily attired crowd.
Mrs. Trevor bit her lower lip with suppressed rage and mortification,
even while she appeared to be smiling her sweetest smiles at Rupert
Godwin.
“It is too provoking,” she thought, as she kept a furtive watch
upon the admiring glances which Sir Harold Ivry bestowed upon the
governess. “I quite forgot that the creature is really remarkably
pretty; and that mourning dress happens to suit her insipid
complexion, and is, of course, worn on purpose to attract attention.
What a fool I was to allow the artful minx to make her appearance
amongst us to-night! But then I only thought of the use she would
be to Anastasia, who always sings out of time when she accompanies
herself.”
While Mrs. Montague Trevor was enduring all these secret tortures,
poor Violet Westford was quite unconscious of the Baronet’s admiring
glances. She had seated herself in the quietest corner of the back
drawing-room, in a sheltered little nook between the grand-piano and
a stand of hot-house flowers, and she was waiting patiently until her
services should be required.
Sir Harold had approached her, and had made an attempt to enter into
conversation with her, of course trying to break ground with some of
the usual feeble truisms about the weather; but her brief and timid
answers gave him little encouragement.
Violet Westford could not be at her ease in this crowded assemblage,
where she felt instinctively that she was looked down upon as a poor
dependant--a well-bred and accomplished drudge, whose very presence
was forgotten, except at the moment when her services were required.
She could not help thinking a little sadly of the last party at
which she had been a guest,--a carpet-dance at the house of some
old friends in Hampshire, people considerably above Mrs. Trevor in
position. She remembered the attention, the kindness, the praises
that had been lavished upon her; and now she sat alone amongst a
crowd, in which there was not one familiar face, except those of her
employer and her two pupils.
At last, the eventful moment of the evening arrived for the
manœuvring mother and her favourite daughter.
Violet took her place at the piano, and Anastasia prepared to
commence an Italian bravura.
Miss Trevor cast a glance of triumph round the room. She was the
heroine of the moment, and she knew that she was looking very
handsome. Sir Harold was standing near the piano, and he was watching
her with a thoughtful look in his candid eyes.
Anastasia fancied that thoughtful gaze could not be other than an
admiring one; but she did not know very much of Sir Harold Ivry, who
was a very peculiar young man, naturally reserved, and not given to
displaying his real feelings.
A murmur of admiration ran through the crowded drawing-rooms as
Violet finished the symphony, so crisp and brilliant was her touch,
and so correct her expression; and then Anastasia began her scena.
Her voice was a soprano, very brilliant in quality, and highly
cultivated; but though she sang well, the charm of feeling was
wanting, and her singing seemed cold and colourless.
Mrs. Trevor had been seated in the front drawing-room, talking to the
banker; but she rose as Anastasia’s voice rang out in the opening
notes of the scena.
“You must hear my daughter sing, Mr. Godwin,” she said. “I think you
will acknowledge that her voice is fine, and her style perfection.”
She led Rupert Godwin towards the archway between the two
drawing-rooms. There were no folding-doors, and only curtains of the
airiest lace divided the two apartments.
Mrs. Trevor and the banker stood in the archway between the festoons
of drooping lace.
The piano was at the other end of the room, and the faces of the
singer and the accompanist were turned towards the archway.
Rupert Godwin’s cheek grew paler than usual as he looked at the
pensive face of the young governess. He had started at the first
sight of that beautiful but melancholy countenance; but the gesture
of surprise had been so slight as to escape the attention of Mrs.
Trevor, who was gazing admiringly at her handsome daughter.
“Who is that young lady?” whispered the banker; “the young lady at
the piano--the young lady in deep mourning?”
He asked the question with an eagerness that startled Mrs. Trevor,
who was not a little offended at his inattention to her daughter’s
singing.
“That young lady who absorbs your attention so entirely is my
daughters’ morning governess,” answered the widow, with considerable
asperity of tone.
“And her name?” demanded the banker.
“Her name is Westford--Violet Westford. She is in mourning for her
father, a merchant captain, who was lost at sea.”
A slight shudder stirred Rupert Godwin’s frame, but it passed as
quickly as the transient breath that ruffles the forest-leaves on a
calm summer day.
Then a dark frown obscured his face.
“No child of Clara Westford’s shall succeed where I have power
to hinder her success. When I bear a grudge, it is the great
vendetta--war to the death against body and soul.”
This was the gist of Mr. Godwin’s thoughts as he looked with a
strange, menacing gaze at the fair face of the girl at the piano.
“Westford!” he exclaimed. “And so your daughters’ governess is the
daughter of Captain Westford. I am sorry for it.”
“Why so?” asked Mrs. Trevor, with a look of alarm.
“Because I am sincerely interested in the welfare and happiness of
you and your daughters, my dear Mrs. Trevor; and I am sorry that
the education of those charming girls should be intrusted to such a
person as the daughter of Mrs. Westford.”
All this was said in the blandest tone. Mr. Godwin could appear the
best and most benevolent of men when it suited his purpose to do so.
“You really terrify me out of my senses!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor.
“What can you mean? I had excellent references with Miss Westford.
Pray explain yourself.”
“Not now; there are people about who may overhear what we say.
To-morrow, my dear Mrs. Trevor, or to-night even, if I find an
opportunity, I will explain myself more fully.”
Anastasia’s Italian scena wound up with a brilliant cadence,
whereupon her mother’s guests fell into the usual ecstasies. And yet
there were very few present who cared for showy Italian music except
at an opera-house.
Some one asked Theodosia to sing. The girl would have refused; but
before she could do so Violet whispered to her, “I know you will
consent, dear, to please me;” and in the next moment the brilliant
fingers flew over the keys in the sparkling symphony of an old
English ballad.
Theodosia was truly attached to her new friend, and she drew near the
piano, determined to do her best, however painful the task might be.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor; “can I believe my eyes?
Theodosia going to sing! She has a decent voice, poor child; but no
style--no style whatever.”
Nothing could be more contemptuous than the tone in which the mother
said this. She did not like that Theodosia should attract attention
which might have been bestowed upon Anastasia.
The first notes of the rich contralto voice were low and tremulous,
but they swelled out presently in a burst of melody. The song was
a very simple one--an old familiar ballad, “Auld Robin Gray;” but
before Theodosia had finished the last verse, tears had bedewed the
eyes of many listeners.
Anastasia’s brief triumph was entirely eclipsed. The praises which
had been bestowed upon her had sounded cold and unreal compared
to those now lavished on her sister. The vain girl could scarcely
conceal her mortification, and her mother seemed almost equally
annoyed.
“I should have been glad if you had asked my permission before you
allowed Theodosia to sing, Miss Westford,” she said to Violet,
in her sharpest tones. “I consider her too young to display her
accomplishments in a crowded room; and that old-fashioned ballad is
better suited for a nursery ditty than for a drawing-room.”
Sir Harold Ivry overheard this speech, and replied to it eagerly.
“Pray do not say that, my dear Mrs. Trevor!” he exclaimed. “Your
youngest daughter’s singing has drawn tears from our eyes, and has
made us forget what hardened worldly creatures we are!”
He glanced admiringly at Theodosia as he spoke; but the next moment
his eyes wandered to the beautiful face of Violet Westford, and with
a still more admiring gaze.
“I am sure that Miss Theodosia Trevor owes a great deal to her
governess,” he said. And then in a lower voice he added to Violet,
“Pray let us hear you sing.”
Mrs. Trevor’s brow darkened: but she could not oppose the wishes of
the Baronet, who was a privileged person in that house.
“Will you persuade her, Mrs. Trevor?” he said. “I feel that my
entreaties will be useless. Pray ask Miss Westford to sing.”
The widow complied, and resumed all her accustomed sweetness of
manner, as she requested Violet to grant the Baronet’s request.
Poor Violet was much too single-hearted to understand the sudden
anger raging in Mrs. Trevor’s breast. She was entirely without
affectation, and she consented to sing directly she was asked.
She sang one of Thomas Moore’s sweetest and most pensive ballads,
“Oft in the stilly night;” and again the eyes of almost every
listener were wet with tears.
Her own eyes filled, as she remembered how often she had sung that
ballad in her happy home, in the pleasant summer twilight, after
dinner, or in the winter dusk, when her lost father was near to
listen and admire. Sir Harold Ivry saw those dark blue eyes fill with
tears, and he saw that it was only with a struggle that Violet could
control her emotion.
He bent over her chair to thank her at the conclusion of the song.
“But I fear the ballad has melancholy associations,” he added in a
lower voice.
“It has indeed; for it recalls the dear father I have lost, and the
memory of a home that is deserted.”
“It is for your father, then, you wear that mourning dress? O,
forgive me, if I appear inquisitive. I am so deeply interested in all
that concerns you.”
Violet looked up at the Baronet with a glance of innocent surprise.
She was entirely without vanity, and she could not imagine why Sir
Harold should be interested about her.
“Yes,” she answered sadly; “I am in mourning for my father--the best
father who ever made his children’s life happy.”
No more was said; for Anastasia was about to sing again, and Violet
was required at the piano.
Half an hour afterwards the crowd began to grow thin, and Violet
obtained permission to retire. It was already past two o’clock; for
Mrs. Trevor’s little party had not begun until eleven, and the poor
girl was anxious to return to the cheerless lodging where her mother
was doubtless waiting up to receive her.
Violet noticed a peculiar stateliness in Mrs. Trevor’s manner as that
lady wished her good-night; but she was too tired even to wonder
about that altered manner. She left the room very quietly, and went
down to the hall, where she had left her cloak and bonnet in the care
of one of the servants. She had refused to incur even the expense
of a cab to bring her to Mrs. Trevor’s house, for the luxury of
that plebeian vehicle would have cost half a week’s salary. She had
preferred to hide her simple evening toilette under a heavy black
cloak, and to make her way to the villa on foot.
She had just put on her bonnet and cloak when a light footstep
sounded on the stairs, and in the next moment Sir Harold Ivry stood
before her.
“I hope you will allow me to see you safely home, Miss Westford,” he
said, with profound respect in his tone and manner. “I know you are
alone here, and it will give me unbounded pleasure to conduct you
safely to your home.”
Violet blushed; for in the happy days that were gone she had been
accustomed to be handed to her carriage after a party or a ball.
She could not help feeling some touch of shame--false shame, if you
will; but after that one instant of confusion, she answered boldly,
“You are very kind, Sir Harold; but I am going to walk home, and I
believe my brother will be waiting outside to take care of me.”
“Your brother!” exclaimed the Baronet, who was unable to conceal his
disappointment. “Then in that case I must surrender you to one who
has the best possible right to protect you. But at least you will
allow me to conduct you to your brother.”
He offered Violet his arm as he spoke, and she felt that she could
not refuse to take it.
Sir Harold did not escort her very far, for Lionel was waiting at
the end of the terrace, and to his care the Baronet was compelled to
resign his precious charge.
We often hear and read of love at first sight, and certainly Sir
Harold Ivry seemed to have fallen a victim to that sudden fever.
Violet could not do less than introduce him to her brother: and for
some little way they all three walked on together, Sir Harold doing
his best to make himself agreeable to Lionel.
It was a bright summer night, and a full moon was shining high in the
cloudless heaven. Even London, so dingy in its usual aspect, looked
romantic when seen by that soft silvery light.
But as Violet looked at her brother, a pang shot through her heart as
she compared his worn and shabby attire with the costume of the rich
young Baronet.
Lionel Westford still retained his gentlemanly bearing, but the awful
stamp of poverty was upon him; and Violet’s heart was wrung as she
remembered the gay, dashing young Oxonian, to whom life had been one
long summer holiday, disturbed by no harder toil than the study of an
obscure passage in Euripides, or a week’s training for the University
boat race.
It seemed as if that moonlight walk through the streets of London was
a most delightful thing to Sir Harold, for he went on, and on, until
they were drawing near to Waterloo Bridge, when he stopped to say
good-night, feeling that his companions might not wish him to know
the humble quarter of the town in which they lived.
He had seen enough to understand that Violet and her brother had sunk
from prosperity to poverty--poverty of the sharpest and bitterest
kind, the poverty that must conceal itself under the mask of
gentility.
He lingered, as he wished Violet good-night. It seemed as if he could
scarcely tear himself away from her.
“I shall never forget your song,” he said; “it is ringing in my ears
still--I shall never forget it; but I hope to hear you soon again.”
And then he was compelled to say good-night, for Lionel Westford’s
manner repelled any approach to intimacy. Poverty had made the young
man proud. He, to whom pride had once been an unknown sentiment, was
now almost haughty in his manner to strangers.
“How lovely she is!” thought Sir Harold, as he walked through the
moonlit streets towards his chambers in the Albany. “How lovely she
is! And what an air of high breeding there is in her every tone and
gesture! And to think that such a woman should be poor, compelled to
walk through the streets at three o’clock in the morning--compelled
to put on her cloak at the bottom of a staircase, with half-a-dozen
grinning flunkeys staring at her while she does it. It’s too
bad--it’s shameful.”
Then, after a pause, the Baronet murmured, “While I am so rich;
while I have thousands lying idle at my banker’s, and half-a-million
in the public funds! But I will call on Mrs. Trevor to-morrow, and
find out Miss Westford’s address. I will send her a thousand pounds
anonymously. I will do something, no matter how desperate, even at
the risk of being kicked as an intrusive snob by that priggish young
brother of hers, who was very stand-offish just now as he bade me
good-night.”
CHAPTER XIII.
A DAUGHTER’S TRIAL.
Late though it was when she returned home after Mrs. Trevor’s party.
Violet knew that she must be punctual in her attendance on her pupils
on the following morning. At eight o’clock she was walking westwards,
after having taken her scanty breakfast at home. No refreshment had
ever been offered to her at Mrs. Trevor’s house, for the widow knew
how to make the best of a good bargain; and liberal though she was
in the matter of fine words and elegant compliments, she would have
grudged her hard-working slave a cup of tea or a class of indifferent
sherry.
Nine was striking as Violet was admitted into the hall. She was about
to proceed to the back-staircase, which led to the schoolroom, when
the man-of-all-work stopped her.
“My missus wants to see you in her _boodore_,” he said, with the
cool insolence with which a well-paid footman addresses an ill-paid
governess; “which it’s very important, and you wos to go upstairs
immediate, and to look sharp about it.”
Violet was surprised at this summons, as Mrs. Trevor rarely rose
until nearly mid-day, when it was her habit to sit sipping her
chocolate and reading a novel until it was time to go out upon
a round of fashionable visits; but, although the governess was
surprised at this unexpected summons, she was in no way apprehensive
of any unpleasantness in an interview with her employer.
Never had she looked brighter or prettier than when she presented
herself before Mrs. Trevor, who had not long risen from her bed, and
who sat untidily dressed in a loose morning-gown, at a well furnished
breakfast-table. The barrister’s widow had acquired the tastes of an
accomplished _gourmet_ from her late husband, and was selecting the
daintiest morsels out of a raised pie for her own consumption as Miss
Westford entered the room.
Her favourite daughter Anastasia was sitting on the other side of the
table, and a dark frown obscured that young lady’s handsome face.
She had perceived the impression made by Violet Westford on Sir
Harold Ivry, and she felt something nearly akin to hatred for the
innocent girl whose charms had outrivalled her own.
Violet saw at a glance that something had happened to alter her
position in the estimation of Mrs. and Miss Trevor; but, as her
conscience was entirely free from blame, she met the changed looks of
the two ladies with a frank and fearless countenance.
“Miss Westford,” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor in the affected and high-flown
manner which was peculiar to her, “when you first entered this room,
you entered the presence of a woman who is as confiding as a child.
I saw you, and I liked you. You are beautiful; and I am a sensitive
creature, to whom the presence of beautiful things is almost a
necessity. You sought to enter my employment; I accepted your offer
with confidence; I admitted you into my household; I trusted you with
the care of my innocent girls; and now--now, when I had lulled myself
to rest, believing in your truth and purity, I find that I have
nourished a viper.”
Violet started and turned deadly pale. Never before had Captain
Westford’s daughter known what it was to receive an insult.
“Madam!” she exclaimed, with a sudden pride, which contrasted
strangely with her usual gentleness, “you are mistaken in the person
you address in this extraordinary manner.”
“I wish I were,” answered Mrs. Trevor, shaking her head solemnly. “I
wish I were indeed mistaken, and that I could awake from my delusion
to find you worthy of my confidence.”
“In what way have I proved myself unworthy of that confidence,
madam?” asked Violet, with the same proud and fearless manner.
“O, Miss Westford,” ejaculated the widow, raising her lace-bordered
handkerchief to her eyes, with a sniff that was meant for a sob, “it
is a sad case--a most painful case. It is not yourself against whom
I have anything to say--except, indeed, that you have withheld the
truth from me.”
“I have withheld the truth, madam?” exclaimed Violet. “What truth
have I withheld from you?”
“You entered my house under false pretences; you concealed from me
the character of--your--unhappy mother.”
At this point Mrs. Trevor made a pretence of being almost overcome by
her emotion.
“The character of my mother!” cried Violet. “What should I tell you
of her, madam, except that she is the best and dearest of mothers,
and that I love her better than my life?”
“Unhappy girl! Do you pretend to be ignorant of your mother’s
character prior to her marriage with your father?”
“Ignorant, madam! What should I know of my dear mother? Who is it
that dares sully her name by so much as a whisper?”
“One who knows her only too well,” answered Mrs. Trevor. “Alas, poor
child! I begin to think you may indeed be ignorant of the truth. And
yet surely you must know the maiden name of your own mother?”
A vivid blush suddenly dyed Violet’s pale cheeks. For a moment a
deadly fear--shadowy, shapeless, but terrible--took possession of her.
She had never been told the maiden name of her mother. More than
this, she remembered that she had never heard that mother allude to
any one circumstance of her early life. A dark veil of mystery had
seemed to shroud that portion of Mrs. Westford’s existence.
But the daughter’s love was stronger than the base feeling of
suspicion, that poisonous and fatal weed which at times twines itself
about the purest and truest heart.
“I beg to resign my situation here this instant, Mrs. Trevor,” Violet
exclaimed, indignantly. “If any one has dared to slander my mother
in your hearing, I declare that person to be the falsest and basest
of mankind. But, be it as it may, I will not stop an hour in a house
where my mother’s name has been sullied by the breath of suspicion.”
“The person who told me your mother’s sad story--sad and shameful
also, alas!” sighed Mrs. Trevor, “is a person far too high in
position to become the promoter of any idle slander. He spoke of
facts--facts which I thought you might have been able to disprove;
but you cannot do so. You cannot even tell me your mother’s maiden
name. But I can tell you that name, Miss Westford. Your mother’s name
was Ponsonby, and she was turned out of doors by her father, Sir John
Ponsonby, when his heart had been almost broken by the disgrace which
had fallen upon his daughter.”
“What disgrace, madam?”
Mrs. Trevor was silent. Rupert Godwin had not chosen to tell her that
he was the lover whose conduct had caused a cruel slander to blacken
the name of Clara Ponsonby.
“What was that disgrace, madam?” repeated Violet. “I have a right to
know the extent of the falsehoods that some wretch has dared to utter
against the best and purest of women.”
“Nay, child,” answered Mrs. Trevor, with affected sympathy; “enough
has been said--more than enough! I pity your misfortune, for no
misfortune can be greater than that of being the daughter of a
worthless woman. I pity you, Miss Westford. But I am a mother myself;
I have my own daughters to consider, and I cannot possibly allow you
to enter this house again.”
“You cannot allow me, madam!” cried Violet, with passionate
indignation. “Do you think my own feelings will allow me ever again
to cross the threshold of a house in which my mothers name has been
so cruelly and pitilessly slandered? No, Mrs. Trevor! I wish you good
morning; and I can only trust that we may never again meet. You may
have been deceived by your informant, but I cannot forgive you for
being so ready to think ill of my dear mother.”
Having said this, Violet left the room, calm and dignified in outward
seeming, though her heart was almost bursting with the agony that
tortured it.
Mrs. Trevor sat for some moments staring at the door by which the
young girl had left her apartments, as if she could scarcely collect
her scattered senses.
“Did you ever see such assurance, Anastasia?” she exclaimed at last.
“If this penniless girl had been the Queen of England she could
scarcely have answered me more proudly. However, we’ve got rid of
her, that’s one comfort. It’s very lucky Rupert Godwin told me what
he did, for I’m sure that designing creature would have set her cap
at Sir Harold Ivry, and tried to supplant you, my pet. I had my eye
upon her last night, though she little knew it, and I saw her artful
manœuvres.”
Anastasia Trevor bit her lips with vexation as she remembered the
events of the previous evening--the evening which was to have been
one long triumph to herself, and which had only resulted in bitter
disappointment and humiliation. Hypocritical though we may be in our
conduct to the world, we cannot deceive ourselves; and Anastasia
knew only too well that Sir Harold’s admiration had been freely and
spontaneously given, and that Violet had been even unconscious of the
impression she had made.
“There’s one blessing,” exclaimed the fashionable Mrs. Trevor, after
some minutes of meditation, “we save half a week’s salary by this
quarrel--though where we shall get such another governess for the
same money, goodness only knows!”