CUPID AT PINCOTE
With the departure of Lionel Dering from Pincote in disguise, and the
subsequent removal of Edith and Mrs. Garside to London, it would
naturally have been thought that Mr. Tom Bristow’s business in Duxley
was at an end, that he would have bidden the quiet little country town
a long farewell, and have hastened back gladly to the busier haunts of
men. But such was not the case. He still kept on his lodgings in
Duxley. Although he had given notice to leave them three or four times,
when the day came for him to go he had always renewed his tenancy for
another short term; and he still lingered on in a vague, purposeless
sort of way, altogether unusual in one who rather prided himself on his
decisive and business-like mode of conducting the affairs of his
everyday life.
Truth to tell, he could not make up his mind to sever the thread of
connection which bound him to Miss Culpepper; which, frail though it
might be, still continued to hold together; and would, in all
probability, so hold as long as he chose to remain at Duxley, but which
must inevitably be broken for ever the moment he and his portmanteau
bade a final farewell to the pleasant little town. And yet, what folly,
what wild infatuation, it was! as he said to himself a score of times a
day. There was not the remotest prospect of his being able to win Jane
Culpepper for his wife—at least, not during the lifetime of her father.
He had read his own heart and feelings by this time, and he knew that
he loved her. He knew that he, the cool, calculating man of business,
the shrewd speculator, who had never been overmuch inclined to believe
in the romance of love; who had often declared that if he ever were to
marry it would be for money and money only; he who had walked unscathed
under the flashing fire of a thousand feminine eyes, had succumbed at
last, like the most weak-minded of mortals, to the charms of a
country-bred squire’s daughter, who was neither very beautiful, very
wise, very witty, nor, as he believed, very rich.
Yes, he certainly loved her. He owned that to himself now. He knew,
too, that he couldn’t help himself, and that, however foolish his
passion might be, he could not bear to break himself away from it
entirely, as he ought to have done, and put two hundred miles of
distance between himself and her. He preferred to still linger on in
love’s pleasant paradise. Not with his own hands would he consent to
shut the golden gates that would bar him for ever from that sunny
precinct.
That Miss Culpepper was engaged to young Cope he knew quite well. But
Tom Bristow was not a man to set much store by such an engagement. He
felt, instinctively as it were, that Jane had drifted into her present
position almost unconsciously and without being sure of her own
feelings in the matter. That Edward Cope was quite unworthy of being
her husband he had no manner of doubt: who, indeed, was worthy of
holding that position? Not much less doubt had he as to the real state
of Jane’s feelings toward the banker’s son; and holding, as he did,
that all is fair in love and war, he would have seen Mr. Edward Cope
jilted, and he himself installed in his place, without the slightest
feeling of compunction.
“He’s an unmitigated cad,” said Tom to himself. “He’s altogether
incapable of appreciating a girl like Jane.” This, reversing the point
of view, was exactly Edward Cope’s own opinion. In his belief it was he
who was the unappreciated one.
But a far more serious impediment than any offered by Jane’s engagement
to young Cope lay before Tom, like a rock ahead from which there was no
escape. He knew quite well that unless some special miracle should be
worked in his behalf, it was altogether hopeless to expect that the
Squire would ever consent to a marriage between himself and Jane; and
that any special miracle would be so worked he had very little faith
indeed. He knew how full of prejudices the Squire was; and,
notwithstanding his bonhomie and rough frankness of manner, how
securely wrapped round he was with the trammels of caste. He knew, too,
that had the Squire not owed his life in years gone by to Mr. Cope’s
bravery, from which act had sprung their warm friendship of many years,
not even to the son of a rich banker would Titus Culpepper, the proud
commoner, who could trace back his family for ten hundred years, have
ever consented to give his daughter. While as for himself, he, Tom
Bristow, however rich he might one day perhaps become, would never be
anything more in Mr. Culpepper’s eyes than the son of a poor country
doctor, and, consequently, to a man of old family, a mere nobody—a
person who by no stretch of imagination could ever be looked upon in
the light of a family connection.
And yet, being in possession of all this bitter knowledge, Tom Bristow
made no really determined effort to break away, and to try the cure
which is said to be often wrought by time and absence even in cases as
desperate as his. Metaphorically speaking, he hugged the shackles that
bound him, and gloried in the loss of his freedom: a very sad
condition, indeed, for any reasonable being to fall into.
It was curious what a number of opportunities Tom and Jane seemed to
find for seeing each other, and how often they found themselves
together, quite fortuitously as it were, and without any apparent
volition of their own in the matter. Sometimes Tom would be mooning
about the High Street in the middle of the forenoon at the very time
that the Pincote pony-carriage drew up against one or another of the
shops, and then what more natural than that Jane and he should have
three minutes’ conversation together on the pavement? Sometimes Jane
would walk into Merton’s library at the very moment that Tom was
critically choosing a novel which, when borrowed, he would carefully
omit to read. How quickly half an hour—nay an hour—would pass at such
times, and that in conversation of the most commonplace kind!
Sometimes Jane, wandering absently with a book in her hands, through
the Pincote woods and meadows, would find herself, after a time, on the
banks of the carefully preserved stream—river it could hardly be
called—which wandered at its own sweet will through Squire Culpepper’s
demesne. There, strange to relate, she would find Mr. Bristow whipping
the stream; very inartistically it must be admitted; but trying his
best to make believe that he was a very skilful angler indeed.
What wings the sunny minutes put themselves on at such times! How
quickly the yellow afternoons faded and waned, and Jane would look
round at last, quite startled to find that twilight had come already.
Then Tom would accompany her part of the way back towards the house,
his fishing-basket empty indeed, but his heart overbrimming with the
happiness of perfect love.
Once every now and again the Squire, meeting Tom casually in the
street, would ask him to dinner at Pincote. Memorable occasions those,
never to be forgotten either by Tom or Jane, when, with the
drawing-room all to themselves, while the Squire snoozed for an hour in
his easy-chair in the dining-room, they could sit and talk, or pretend
to play chess, or make believe to be deeply interested in some
portfolio of engravings, or to be altogether immersed in a selection
from the last new opera, turning over the leaves and strumming a few
bars experimentally here and there; while, in reality, rapt up in and
caring for nothing and nobody but themselves.
Yet never once was a single word of love whispered between them,
whatever mutual tales their eyes might tell. Jane still held herself as
engaged to Edward Cope; but she had made up her mind that as soon as
that young gentleman should return from America she would see him, and
tell him that she had discovered her error—that she no longer cared for
him as a woman ought to care for the man she is about to marry; and she
would appeal to his generosity to relieve her from an engagement that
had now become utterly distasteful to her. His letters from abroad were
so infrequent, so brief, and so utterly unlover-like, that she did not
anticipate much difficulty in obtaining her request. But, as she was
well aware, there was a certain amount of mule-like obstinacy in the
character of Edward Cope, and it was quite possible that when he found
she no longer cared for him, he might cling to her all the more firmly.
What if he should refuse to release her? The contemplation of such a
possibility was not a pleasant one. What she should do in such a case
she could not even imagine. But it would be time enough to think of
that when the necessity for thinking of it should have arisen.
But even if released from her engagement to Edward Cope, Jane knew that
she would still be as far as ever from the haven of her secret hopes,
and that without running entirely counter to her father’s wishes and
prejudices, the haven in question could never be reached by her. But
although it might never be possible for her to marry the man whom she
secretly loved, she was fully determined in her own mind never to marry
any one else, however strongly the world might consider her to be bound
by the fetters of her odious engagement. Edward Cope, although he might
refuse to release her from her promise, should never force her into
becoming his wife.
The fact of having been appealed to by Tom. Bristow to find a shelter
for his friend, when that friend was in dire trouble, seemed to draw
him closer to Jane than anything else. From that hour her feelings
towards him took a warmer tinge than they had ever assumed before.
There was something almost heroic in her eyes in the friendship between
Lionel and Tom, and that she should have been called upon to assist, in
however humble a way, in the escape of the former was to her a proof of
confidence such as she could never possibly forget. She never met Tom
without inquiring for the last news as to the movements of Lionel and
his wife; and Tom, on his side, took care to keep her duly posted up in
everything that concerned them. A week or so after the departure of
Lionel for Cumberland, Jane had been taken by Tom to Alder Cottage and
introduced to Edith. How warmly the latter thanked her for what she had
done need not be told here. In that hour of their meeting was laid the
foundation of one of those friendships, rare between two women, which
death alone has power to sever.
However deeply Mr. Tom Bristow might be in love, however infatuated he
might be on one particular point, he in nowise neglected his ordinary
business avocations, nor did he by any means spend the whole of his
time in Duxley and its neighbourhood. He was frequently in London; nor
was either Liverpool or Manchester unacquainted with his face, for
Tom’s speculative proclivities expended themselves in many and various
channels. The project to bring Duxley, by means of a branch railway
from one of the great trunk lines, into closer connection with some of
the chief centres of industry in that part of the country, was one
which had always engaged his warmest sympathies. But the project, after
having been safely incubated, and launched in glowing terms before the
public, had been quietly allowed to collapse, its promoters having
taken alarm at certain formidable engineering difficulties which had
not presented themselves during the preliminary survey of the route.
This put Tom Bristow on his mettle. He had been familiar from boyhood
with the country for twenty miles round Duxley, and he felt sure that a
much more favourable route than the one just abandoned might readily be
found if properly looked for. Taking a practical surveyor with him, and
the ordnance map of the district, Tom went carefully over the ground in
person, trudging mile after mile on foot, in all sorts of weather,
seeing his way after a time, little by little, to the elaboration of a
project much bolder in idea and wider in scope than any which had ever
entered the thoughts of the original projectors.
A month later Tom found himself closeted with the heads of a certain
well-known financial firm, who were celebrated for their far-seeing
views and their boldness in floating large schemes of public
importance. With this firm was also mixed up another well-known firm of
eminent engineers and contractors: but how and in what way they were
mixed up, and where one firm began and the other ended, was more than
any outside person could ever ascertain, and was popularly supposed to
be a mythical point even with the parties chiefly concerned. But be
that as it may, Tom Bristow’s scheme met with a very favourable
reception both from a financial and an engineering point of view. While
still kept a profound secret from the public at large, its details were
laid before some five or six well-known members of the House, whose
opinions carried much weight in such matters and were a tolerably safe
criterion as to whether any particular bill would be likely to pass
unslaughtered through the terrible ordeal of Committee. So favourable
were the opinions thus asked for, that Mr. Bristow went at once to a
certain metropolitan land agent, and instructed him to buy up and hold
over for him certain fields and plots of land, which happened to be for
sale just then at different points exactly on or contiguous to the
proposed line of railway. Such property would rise immensely in value
from the moment the prospectus of the line was made public, and by the
time the first sod was turned Tom calculated that he ought to be in a
position to clear cent. per cent. by his bold speculation.