LADY MILL HAS BUSINESS ON HAND.
“Did you in all your life ever see anyone so changed as that pretty Mrs.
Beacham? Not less pretty, I don’t mean that; but she looks pale and
serious, and to my thinking still more like a lady than she did when she
was married!”
The words were Kate Vavasour’s--bright, cheerful, merry Kate--who was
walking home on Christmas-day from church with her brother Horace--a
“public man” now, and a very occasional and not over-willing visitor to
his old home.
Several events of importance, events influencing more or less the
well-being of certain individuals connected with this story, had
occurred during the swiftly-passing months which had changed the year
from midsummer to winter.
To begin with: Arthur Vavasour (who after his farewell meeting in
Danescourt grounds had not again seen Honor Beacham) had, according to
expectation, been made one with Sophy Duberly before the altar. In less
than a month from his coming of age, the marriage ceremony was
celebrated with becoming pomp in London, the “happy pair” departing
immediately afterwards for the Continent, bent--according to the
newspapers--on a “lengthened tour abroad.”
Nor did any long period elapse before Horace Vavasour also broke the
weary chain that bound him to home. He had yearned for the
long-hoped-for emancipation; but he experienced--a good deal to his
surprise--when the time came for bidding adieu to Gillingham, very
little of the exultation which he might naturally have expected to have
been his portion. All unknown to himself, the home-raised lad had grown
attached to the old place. The grumblings and complainings, the
discontent, and the longing for change, were more a habit with him than
the result of conviction; and when the hour of parting came, and he
looked back on the tearful faces of his two sisters, standing gazing
after him on the steps of the marble portico, Horace would gladly have
given up all his cherished hopes to remain with those dear
fellow-victims in the old home that he was leaving.
As was only natural, however, those regrets were not of long duration.
Lady Millicent had not made home so sweet to the children committed to
her care, that they should continue for a lengthened period to pine for
the few blessings which that home afforded. By swift degrees, regret for
the past ceased to have a place in the memory of the absent one; whilst
the recollection of the many privations, the dulness, and the tyrannous
rules of far-away Gillingham, remained fixed, as with a sculptor’s
chisel, on his heart for ever.
Kate was during that, to her, dull Christmas time, the only daughter of
the house at home, for Rhoda (an extremely unusual proceeding) had been
allowed to accept of a pressing invitation from the Guernseys to spend a
month with them in Paris.
“Two women were grinding at the mill,” Kate said merrily to her brother,
“and a jolly grind it was too! And it’s just as well that one was taken,
and a great bore that the other--meaning me--was left behind.”
Horace, who had very good-naturedly given up several far pleasanter
engagements for his sister’s sake, and who purposed spending a dull week
at the Chace with the kind purpose of enlivening poor Kate’s worse than
solitude, pinched her cheek playfully.
“All the same a hundred years hence,” he said; and forthwith there
commenced on both sides a series of questions and answers necessitated
by the separation of several months which had taken place between them.
There was much to say. They were on their way to church when the
conversation about Arthur and his wife began--about Arthur, who was said
to be by no means cured of his reckless habits of extravagance, and whom
Horace had parted with only a week before under the portico of the Grand
Hotel in Paris.
“I didn’t think Sophy improved in looks; but then there is a reason, I
believe, for that; and besides, she had been making lion-seeing a toil
instead of a pleasure. She is a jolly girl, though; and I consider
Arthur to be one of the luckiest fellows I know.”
“I wonder if he thinks so himself,” mused Kate.
“I daresay not. Do we ever value any of our blessings till we lose them?
Do you think I cared much about this dear old place till I found myself
tied to that precious office as a paid clerk? Sounds pretty considerable
mean, as the Yankees say, doesn’t it, when one’s mamma has something
about sixty thousand per annum?”
“But you like it, Racy. It’s better than _this_, I’m sure. Ah, how I
should like to be you! and how I envy--no, I don’t envy Rhoda, because
I’m glad she’s happy, poor dear; but I often think what fun she’s
having, and I wonder whether it will ever be my turn to go away.”
“Your turn? God knows, my poor Kitty! It takes a longer head than mine
or yours to fathom my lady’s projects. I heard from old Randolph the
last thing before I left town yesterday that she was after some
underhand work about the entail. She’ll never rest, I feel certain, till
she upsets that clause, or whatever they call it, in my grandfather’s
will which gives the reins of power to Arthur after he attains the age
of twenty-five. Poor old Atty! I foresee no end of worry and bother for
him if the news of this gets about; but we must hope the best, as
Randolph says, while we prepare ourselves for the worst.”
Old Josh Randolph, as he was familiarly called, had been for very many
years the trusted solicitor and man of business of the Vavasour family.
A better-hearted and a more truly honest man--as all who knew him
allowed--never existed than Joshua Randolph, as one proof of which it
may be recorded in his favour that he had made no large fortune out of
the quarrels and cantankerousness of his clients. Neither--to his credit
be it recorded--had he ever taken undue advantage of their necessities.
Young Vavasour, who had known “Josh” from the time when the
heir-apparent was a lad at Eton, had had recourse to the old man’s
advice in many a boyish scrape, and later, when the handsome youth had
grown to be a man, and his “entanglements” were of a more complicated
and less venial character, old Josh was still the attorney to whose
counsels he turned, and who had never (all praise to him) been detected
in that unfeeling act of pilfering, namely, that of _making_ occasions
for the swelling of his lawyer’s bill.
This rarely excellent individual had heard with regret and shame that
work for the long-robed gentlemen was likely, through Lady Millicent’s
bitter discontent, to be ere long cut out. He made no secret of his
opinion on the subject, and Lady Millicent, finding that the family
lawyer was not the “man for her money,” soon removed the light of her
countenance from the steady, old-fashioned firm of which Mr. Randolph
was the senior partner. Her ladyship’s first visit in the Lincoln’s-inn
chambers (where old Josh received her with a slow and respectful
courtesy, but without a grain of subservience either in his speech or
manner) was also the last. Far too _slow_, perhaps indeed too rigidly
honest, for the requirements of the _maîtresse femme_ was the
steady-going anti-progress solicitor. There was something in the very
air of that business-room of his, an air redolent of musty
respectability, that was utterly out of harmony and keeping with Lady
Millicent’s grand manner, her rapid energetic movements, and the
authoritative mode of speech which she habitually adopted. The
experiment had been duly tried of taking the old man by surprise and
startling him into acquiescence; but never--it did not greatly grieve
the faithful Josh that so it was--did the great lady of Gillingham give
a second thought to the inhabitant of that dingy room piled high with
japanned deed-boxes and with ancient faded folios. The lawyer’s absence
of sympathy in her ladyship’s cause was evidenced in every response he
made to her questions and suggestions. A cautious man he was and a
composed--one not to be lightly moved from his opinions, and who deemed
the will of the late Earl of Gillingham a document almost sacred in its
character. When Lady Millicent astonished the clerks at Messrs. Randolph
and Bretts’ by the apparition of her stately person, she was far indeed
from imagining that anything short of the most obsequious compliance
with her wishes, and the most thorough and flattering approbation of her
views and projects, would be the result of her condescension; and to a
certain degree there was justification for her expectations. On the face
of it, and at the first cursory view of the unmotherly mother’s purpose,
there was certainly something that was, at the least, plausible, to
justify her undertaking. The late earl’s will had been made very late
in life, and long after Lady Millicent had been taught (no difficult
task) to consider herself the future possessor, during her natural life,
of that rich inheritance. In causing the important clause which deposed
after a certain period the mother _regnante_ in favour of the grown-up
son, Lord Gillingham had, in his daughter’s opinion, departed in a most
unjustifiable manner from the ways of his forefathers. Manifestly (as it
was her purpose to prove) it was flagrantly unjust that such a will
should stand. Long ago she had taken (privately) high legal opinions on
the subject. She had consulted law-books, and entered largely into the
question of precedents; the result of all which exertion and study was
the visit to Lincoln’s-inn, which had been productive of nothing save
anger and mortification. But because Lady Millicent could “make nothing”
of the old lawyer, who was staunch in his adherence to Arthur Vavasour’s
interests, it by no means followed that she felt any doubt either as to
the rectitude of her project, or the advisableness of pursuing it to the
end. She was a woman--as we know--of determined character, and,
moreover, one in whom difficulty and opposition only increased in a
tenfold degree the desire to succeed; so, without any unnecessary delay,
she opened negotiations with another legal adviser, who took a different
and more satisfactory view of the matter than that adopted by the
uncompromising Josh; and one consequence of this proceeding was the
remark made by Horace Vavasour to his sister Kate, on the ill
consequences likely to accrue to Arthur from the bare rumour even of the
proceeding in question.
“But how can it hurt Atty so very much?” Kate asked. She was puzzled,
and not without reason, by the anomaly, that Arthur, who had married
that “immense” heiress, and of whom the millionaire Mr. Duberly was said
to be so fond, could be injured in any way by the report of Lady
Millicent’s law-proceedings.
“How!” Horace repeated hesitatingly, and then broke out: “How! Why
because from the time he was sixteen--from my poor father’s death
almost--poor Atty has played the fool. And such a fool! Not having the
most remote idea either of the value of money or of the wickedness of
men and women; with our good father in his grave, and with--but we won’t
talk of _her_. Poor old Atty! How often in those times that seem so long
ago now, and so miserable--and yet what almost children we both were--he
and I have crept at night into each other’s rooms to consult in our
blind ignorance on what could by any possibility be done! Such a heap of
silly ideas as we propounded then; such methods as we turn by turn
proposed to keep the knowledge of poor Atty’s bills and foolishness from
my mother!”
“I daresay that it would have been much better had she known it all
then,” suggested Kate.
“Of course it would have been a thousand times better,” rejoined Horace,
who was beginning to show some deference to his sister’s opinions; “but
how were we to find courage enough to be open? I ask you, Kate--and no
one could answer the question better--whether milady is the kind of
mother to whom the most morally courageous lad in existence could,
without a good deal of winding-up, confess that he had run-up bills, had
betted on the great boat-race, had been to the Jews, and, in short, was
no more worthy to be called her son?”
“Poor dear Atty! I don’t wonder he couldn’t do it; and I suppose (I can
guess now, when I remember all the trouble he so often seemed to be in)
that those bills never were paid, and that--”
“Not only not paid, but _more_, to the tune of thousands upon thousands,
added to their amount. And then the Jews! But what’s the use of telling
you, child, about such things? Here we are at the church-door, and we
shall find milady--God forgive her!--saying her prayers with as much
devotion as if--”
“Hush,” remonstrated Kate, feeling the indecorum, especially standing as
they two did, on God’s-acre, of speaking harsh truths concerning their
only remaining parent; “hush, Racy dear, she is our mother; let us try
to remember it, however much she may do to put the fact out of our
heads.”
* * * * *
“Did you ever see any one so changed as that pretty Mrs. Beacham? Still
more like a lady even than she used to be--I mean, she hasn’t the same
fresh _country_ look that everyone admired so before. Mr. Delmaine
thinks her both out of health and out of spirits; he said so yesterday
afternoon to me when mamma and I went to the church to see the
decorations. She attends to her class, though, at the school just the
same as ever, and gets the children on wonderfully with their singing.
How well they sang the anthem to-day! and all, Mr. Delmaine says, thanks
to Mrs. John Beacham.”
Rather to Kate’s disappointment, her brother did not enter with much
apparent interest into the question of Honor’s illness or her merits.
And yet he was interested in John’s pretty, pensive-looking wife, more
interested than could well be explained to the young girl walking by his
side. There were many circumstances in Honor’s short life which were
perforce unknown to the high-born and carefully-reared Katherine, whose
secluded life kept her very little _au fait_ of the doings and sayings
of the outer world. Of the former intimacy of her brother at Updown
Paddocks she had heard little or nothing; nor, though it was more than
probable that the “ower true tale” of Honor’s birth had reached Miss
Vavasour’s ears, was the subject one which could well be touched upon
with a discreetly-brought-up young lady. Under these circumstances, it
is only natural that Horace Vavasour should have manifested some
unwillingness to pursue the subject touched upon by his sister.
Concerning one cause, amongst others, of Mrs. John Beacham’s lowness of
spirits he might have entertained his own ideas, but those ideas he, for
the moment, wisely kept to himself.