HEIR HUNTING.
'And she put on her gown of green,
And left her mother at sixteen,
To marry Peter Bell!'--WORDSWORTH.
In the shrubberies of Monks Horton were walking a lady somewhat past
middle age, but full of activity and vigour, with one of those bright
faces that never grow old, and with her a young man, a few years over
twenty, with a grave and almost careworn countenance.
More and more confidential waxed the conversation, for the lady was
making fresh acquaintance with a nephew seldom seen since he had been
her pet and darling as almost a baby, and he was experiencing the
inexpressible charm of tone and manner that recalled the young mother
he had lost in early boyhood.
'Then your mind is made up,' she said; 'you are quite right to decide
on having a profession; but how does your father take it?'
'He is quite convinced that to repeat my uncle's life, dangling on as
heir, would be the most fatal mistake.'
'Assuredly, and all the legal knowledge you acquire is so much in
favour of your usefulness as the squire.'
'If I ever am the squire, of which I have my doubts.'
'You expect Mr. Egremont to marry?'
'Not a future marriage, but one in the past.'
'A private marriage! Do you suspect it?'
'I don't suspect it--I know it. I have been hoping to talk the matter
over with you. Do you remember our first governess, Miss Headworth?'
'My dear Mark, did I not lose at Pera the charms of your infancy?'
'Then neither my mother nor my grandmother ever wrote to you about her?'
'I do remember that it struck me that immunity from governesses was a
compensation for the lack of daughters.'
'Can you tell me no details,' said Mark anxiously. 'Have you no
letters? It was about the time when Blanche was born, when we were
living at Raxley.'
'I am sorry to say that our roving life prevented my keeping old
letters. I have often regretted it. Let me see, there was one who
boxed May's ears.'
'That was long after. I think it was that woman's barbarity that made
my father marry again, and a very good thing that was. It was wretched
before. Miss Headworth was in my own mother's time.'
'I begin to remember something happening that your mother seemed unable
to write about, and your grandmother said that she had been greatly
upset by "that miserable affair," but I was never exactly told what it
had been.'
'Miss Headworth came when I was four or five years old. Edda, as we
used to call her in May's language, was the first person who gave me a
sense of beauty. She had dark eyes and a lovely complexion. I
remember in after times being silenced for saying, "not so pretty as my
Edda." I was extremely fond of her, enough to have my small jealousy
excited when my uncle joined us in our walks, and monopolised her,
turning May and me over to play with his dog!'
'But, Mark, Mr. Egremont is some years older than your father. He
could not have been a young man at that time.'
'So much the worse. Most likely he seemed to her quite paternal. The
next thing I recollect was our being in the Isle of Wight, we two
children, with Miss Headworth and the German nurse, and our being told
of our new sister. Uncle Alwyn and his yacht were there, and we went
on board once or twice. Then matters became confused with me, I
recollect a confusion, papa and grandmamma suddenly arriving, everybody
seeming to us to have become very cross, our dear Miss Headworth
nowhere to be found, our attendants being changed, and our being
forbidden to speak of her again. I certainly never thought of the
matter till a month ago. You know my uncle's eyes have been much
affected by his illness, and he has made a good deal of use of me. He
has got a valet, a fellow of no particular country, more Savoyard than
anything else, I fancy. He is a legacy, like other evils, from the old
General, and seems a sort of necessity to my uncle's existence.
Gregorio they call him. He was plainly used to absolute government,
and viewed the coming down amongst us as an assertion of liberty much
against his will. We could see that he was awfully jealous of my
father and me, and would do anything to keep us out; but providentially
he can't write English decently, though he can speak any language you
please. Well, the man and I came into collision about a scamp of a
groom who was doing intolerable mischief in the village, and whom they
put it on me to get discharged. On that occasion Mr. Gregorio grew
insolent, and intimated to me that I need not make so sure of the
succession. He knew that which might make the Chanoine and me change
our note. Well, my father is always for avoiding rows; he said it was
an unmeaning threat, it was of no use to complain of Gregorio, and we
must digest his insolence. But just after, Uncle Alwyn sent me to hunt
up a paper that was missing, and in searching a writing-case I came
upon an unmistakable marriage certificate between Alwyn Piercefield
Egremont and Alice Headworth, and then the dim recollections I told you
of began to return.'
'What did you do?'
'I thought I had better consult my father, expecting to hear that she
was dead, and that no further notice need be taken of the matter. But
he was greatly disturbed to hear of the certificate, and would hardly
believe me. He said that some friend of my grandmother had written her
word of goings on at Freshwater between his brother and the young
governess, and that they went off at once to put a stop to it, but
found us left with the German maid, who declared that Miss Headworth
had gone off with Mr. Egremont in the yacht. No more was heard of my
uncle for six weeks, and when he came back there was a great row with
the old General, but he absolutely denied being married. I am afraid
that was all the old sinner wished, and they went off together in the
yacht to the West Indies, where it was burnt; but they, as you know,
never came to England again, going straight off to the Mediterranean,
having their headquarters at Sorrento, and cruising about till the
General's death ten years ago.'
'Yes, I once met them at Florence, and thought them two weary pitiable
men. One looked at the General as a curious relic of the old buck of
the Regency days, and compassionated his nephew for having had his life
spoilt by dangling after the old man. It was a warning indeed, and I
am glad you have profited by it, Mark.'
'He came back, after the old man died, to club life in London, and
seldom has been near the old place; indeed, it has been let till
recently, and he wants to let it again, but it is altogether too
dilapidated for that without repairs. So he came down to see about it,
and was taken ill there. But to return to what my father told me. He
was shocked to hear of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed
his brother's denial of the marriage, and he said Miss Headworth was so
childish and simple that she might easily have been taken in by a sham
ceremony. He said that he now saw he had done very wrong in letting
his mother-in-law take all the letters about "that unhappy business"
off his hands without looking at them, but he was much engrossed by my
mother's illness, and, as he said, it never occurred to him as a duty
to trace out what became of the poor thing, and see that she was
provided for safely. You know Mrs. Egremont says laissez faire is our
family failing, and that our first thought is how _not_ to do it.'
'Yes, utter repudiation of such cases was the line taken by the last
generation; and I am afraid my mother would be very severe.'
'Another thing that actuated my father was the fear of getting his
brother into trouble with General Egremont, as he himself would have
been the one to profit by it. So I do not wonder so much at his
letting the whole drop without inquiry, and never even looking at the
letters, which there certainly were. I could not get him to begin upon
it with my uncle, but Mrs. Egremont was strongly on my side in thinking
that such a thing ought to be looked into, and as I had found the paper
it would be best that I should speak. Besides that there was no
enduring that Gregorio should be pretending to hold us in terror by
such hints.'
'Well, and has there been a wife and family in a cottage all this time?'
'Aunt Margaret, he has never seen or heard of her since he left her at
Dieppe! Would you believe it, he thinks himself a victim? He never
meant more than to amuse himself with the pretty little governess; and
he took on board a Mr. and Mrs. Houghton to do propriety, shady sort of
people I imagine, but that she did not know.'
'I have heard of them,' said Lady Kirkaldy, significantly.
'She must have been a kind friend to the poor girl,' said Mark. 'On
some report that Lady de Lyonnais was coming down on her, wrathful and
terrible, the poor foolish girl let herself be persuaded to be carried
off in the yacht, but there Mrs. Houghton watched over her like a
dragon. She made them put in at some little place in Jersey, put in
the banns, all unknown to my uncle, and got them married. Each was
trying to outwit the other, while Miss Headworth herself was quite
innocent and unconscious, and, I don't know whether to call it an
excuse for Uncle Alwyn or not, but to this hour he is not sure whether
it was a legal marriage, and my father believes it was not, looking on
it as a youthful indiscretion. He put her in lodgings at Dieppe, under
Mrs. Houghton's protection, while he returned home on a peremptory
summons from the General. He found the old man in such a state of body
and mind as he tries to persuade me was an excuse for denying the whole
thing, and from that time he represents himself as bound hand and foot
by the General's tyranny. He meant to have kept the secret, given her
an allowance, and run over from time to time to see her, but he only
could get there once before the voyage to the West Indies. The whole
affair was, as he said, complicated by his debts, those debts that the
estate has never paid off. The General probably distrusted him, for he
curtailed his allowance, and scarcely let him out of sight; and he--he
submitted for the sake of his prospects, and thinking the old man much
nearer his end than he proved to be. I declare as I listened, it came
near to hearing him say he had sold his soul to Satan! From the day he
sailed in the Ninon he has never written, never attempted any
communication with the woman whose life he had wrecked, except one
inquiry at Dieppe, and that was through Gregorio.'
'What! the valet?'
Yes. I believe I seemed surprised at such a medium being employed, for
Uncle Alwyn explained that the man had got hold of the secret
somehow--servants always know everything--and being a foreigner he was
likely to be able to trace her out.
'I daresay he profited by the knowledge to keep Alwyn in bondage during
the old man's lifetime.'
'I have no doubt of it, and he expected to play the same game with me.
The fellow reminds me, whenever I look at him, of a sort of incarnate
familiar demon. When I asked my uncle whether he could guess what had
become of her, he held up his hands with a hideous French grimace. I
could have taken him by the throat.'
'Nay, one must pity him. The morals of George IV.'s set had been
handed on to him by the General,' said Lady Kirkaldy, rejoicing in the
genuine indignation of the young face, free from all taint of vice, if
somewhat rigid. 'And what now?'
'He assured me that he could make all secure to my father and me, as if
that were the important point; but finally he perceived that we had no
right to stand still without endeavouring to discover whether there be
a nearer heir, and my father made him consent to my making the search,
grinning at its Quixotism all the time.'
'Have you done anything?'
'Yes. I have been to Jersey, seen the register--July 20, 1859--and an
old French-speaking clerk, who perfectly recollected the party coming
from the yacht, and spoke of her as tres belle. I have also
ascertained that there is no doubt of the validity of the marriage.
Then, deeply mistrusting Master Gregorio, I went on to Dieppe, where I
entirely failed to find any one who knew or remembered anything about
them--there is such a shifting population of English visitors and
residents, and it was so long ago. I elicited from my uncle that she
had an aunt, he thought, of the same name as herself; but my father
cannot remember who recommended her, or anything that can be a clue.
Has any one looked over my grandmother's letters?'
'I think not. My brother spoke of keeping them till I came to London.
That might give a chance, or the Houghtons might know about her. I
think my husband could get them hunted up. They are sure to be at some
continental resort.'
'What's that?' as a sound of singing was heard.
'"Auld Langsyne." The natives are picnicking in the ravine below
there. They used to be rigidly excluded, but we can't stand that; and
this is the first experiment of admitting them on condition that they
don't make themselves obnoxious.'
'Which they can't help.'
'We have yet to see if this is worse than an Austrian or Italian
festival. See, we can look down from behind this yew tree. It really
is a pretty sight from this distance.'
'There's the cleric heading his little boys and their cricket, and
there are the tuneful party in the fern on the opposite side. They
have rather good voices, unless they gain by distance.'
'And there's a girl botanising by the river.'
'Sentimentalising over forget-me-nots, more likely.'
'My dear Mark, for a specimen of young England, you are greatly
behindhand in perception of progress!'
'Ah! you are used to foreigners, Aunt Margaret. You have never
fathomed English vulgarity.'
'It would serve you right to send you to carry the invitation to go
round the gardens and houses.'
'Do you mean it, aunt?'
'Mean it? Don't you see your uncle advancing down the
road--there--accosting the clergyman--what's his name--either Towers or
Spires--something ecclesiastical I know. We only waited to reconnoitre
and see whether the numbers were unmanageable.'
'And yet he does not want to sit for Micklethwayte?'
'So you think no one can be neighbourly except for electioneering! O
Mark, I must take you in hand.'
'Meantime the host is collecting. I abscond. Which is the least showy
part of the establishment?'
'I recommend the coal cellar--'and, as he went off--'poor boy, he is a
dear good fellow, but how little he knows how to be laughed at!'