THE SQUIRE’S TRIBULATION
What more thankless office is there than to be the bearer of ill news
to those we love or regard? Not often in the course of his life had
such a duty fallen to the lot of Tom Bristow, and never had the burden
seemed so heavy as on this present occasion. He would gladly have given
a very fair share of all that he was worth could he but have turned his
ill news into good news, or else have imposed upon some one else the
telling of those evil tidings of which he was the bearer. From London
he had sent a carefully-worded telegram to the Squire, which the latter
would know how to interpret, hoping thereby to break in some measure
the force of the blow which nothing could much longer avert.
When, on his return to Pincote, Tom was ushered into the Squire’s room,
he found the old man, to all appearance, very much better in health
than when he had left him. Mental anxiety had gone a long way towards
curing, for the time being, the physical ills from which he had been
suffering. He held out his hand, and gave a long, searching look into
Tom’s face.
“All gone?” he whispered.
“Yes—all gone,” answered Tom.
He gripped Tom’s hand very hard. “I did not think it was quite so bad
as that,” he said. “Not quite. My poor Jenny! My poor little girl! What
is to become of her after I’m gone? And Bird, too! The confidence I had
in that villain!” He sighed deeply, dropped Tom’s hand, and shut his
eyes for a few moments, as if in pain.
“You will stay to dinner,” he said, presently.
“If you will excuse me to-day——” began Tom.
“But I won’t excuse you, sir. Why on earth should I?” he answered, with
a flash of his old irritability. “The old house is not good enough for
you, I suppose, now you know it holds nothing but paupers.”
“Thank you, sir: I will stay to dinner,” said Tom, quietly.
“It will be a charity to Jenny, too,” added the Squire. “She’s been
moped up indoors, without a soul to speak to, for I don’t know how
long. And it’s more than a month since she heard from young Cope—his
letters must have miscarried, you know—and I’m afraid that’s preying on
her mind; and so you had better keep her company to-day.”
Tom needed no further pressing, we may be sure. He smiled grimly to
himself at the idea of Edward Cope’s long silence being a matter of
distress to Jane. He rose to go.
“Just ring that bell, will you?” said the Squire. “And sit down again
for another minute or two. There’s something I wanted to say to you,
but I can’t call to mind what it is just now.”
Jane answered the bell in person. She gave Tom her hand in silence, but
there was a world of meaning in her eyes as she did so.
“My dear, I wish you would see whether Ridley is anywhere about, and
send word that I want to see him. What do you think the villain has
done?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, papa.”
“Why, he’s planted a lot of white hyacinths along with the purple ones
in your poor mother’s favourite bed opposite the dressing-room window,
when he knows very well that I never have any but purple ones there.
She never had any but purple ones, and I never will. The scoundrel
deserves to be well horsewhipped. I’ll discharge him on the spot I
swear I will!”
“I will tell him to come and see you,” said Jane, calmly. She knew of
old that her father’s bark was worse than his bite, and that he had no
more real intention of discharging Ridley than he had of flying to the
moon.
“And now, if you will just give orders to have the basket-carriage
brought round, I shall be glad, dear. I feel wonderfully better to-day,
and I think a drive would do me good.”
“But would Dr. Davidson approve of your going out to-day, papa?”
“Hang Dr. Davidson I’m not his slave, am I? I tell you that I feel very
much better; and, to get out, if only for half an hour, will make me
better still.”
“Then you will let me go with you?” said Jane.
“Nothing of the kind. I’ve a great deal to think about while I’m out,
and I want to be alone. Besides, I’ve asked Bristow to stay to dinner,
and you must do your best to entertain him.”
“If you go out, papa, I shall go with you,” said Jane, in her
straightforward, positive way. “Besides which, Briggs is ill to-day,
and there’s nobody to drive you—unless you will let Mr. Bristow be your
coachman for once, and then we shall all be together.”
With some difficulty the Squire was induced to consent to this
arrangement. It was evident that he would have preferred to go out
alone, but that was just what Jane would by no means allow him to do.
Her woman’s instinct told her that they were in the midst of a
thunder-cloud, but where and when the lightning would strike she could
not even guess. In any case, it seemed to her well that for some time
to come her father should be left alone as little as possible.
So they drove out together, all three of them. The Squire was unusually
silent, but did not otherwise seem different from his ordinary mood,
and neither Tom nor Jane was much inclined for talking. On the road
they found a child of six, a little girl who had wandered away from
home and lost herself, who was sitting by the roadside crying bitterly.
The Squire would have the child on his knee, although she was neither
very neatly dressed nor very pretty. He kissed her, and soothed away
her tears, and made her laugh, and found out where she lived. Then, in
a little while, still sitting on his knee, she fell asleep, and the old
man wrapped the thickest rug around her, and sheltered her from the
cold as tenderly as though she had been his own child. And when the
girl’s mother was found, and the girl herself had to be given up, he
made her kiss him, and put half-a-crown into her hand, and promised to
call and see her in a day or two. Tom, watching him narrowly all the
time, said to himself, “I don’t understand him at all to-day. I thought
my news would have overwhelmed him, but it seems to have had far less
effect upon him than it had upon me. I’m fairly puzzled.” But there are
some troubles so overwhelming that, for a time at least, they numb and
deaden the feelings by their very intensity. All the more painful is
the after-waking.
“I think, dear, that I will go and lie down for a little while,” said
the Squire, when they had reached home. “You will wake me up in time
for dinner.”
But there was Blenkinsop, his steward, waiting by appointment, who
wanted his signature to the renewal of a lease.
“Yes, yes, to be sure, Blenkinsop,” said he Squire, in his old
business-like way, as he sat down at his writing-table and spread out
the paper before him and dipped his pen in the ink. Then he paused.
“Just your name, sir, nothing more—on that line,” said the steward,
deferentially, marking the place with his finger.
“Just so, Blenkinsop, just so,” said the Squire, tremulously. “But what
is my name? Just for the moment I don’t seem as if I could recollect
it.”
A look of horror flashed from Jane’s eyes into the eyes of Tom. She was
by her father’s side in a moment. He looked helplessly up at her, and
tried to smile, but his lips quivered and tears stood in his eyes.
“What is it, dear?” she said, as she stooped and pressed her lips to
his forehead.
“I want to sign this lease, and for the life of me I can’t recollect my
own name.”
“Titus Culpepper, dear,” she whispered in his ear.
“Of course. What an idiot I must be!” he exclaimed with a laugh, as he
dashed off the name in his usual rapid style, and ended with a bigger
flourish than usual.
“Won’t you go to bed, papa?” said Jane, insinuatingly, as soon as
Blenkinsop was gone. “You will rest so much better there, you know.”
“Go to bed at this time of day, indeed! What are you thinking about?
No, I’ll just have a little snooze on the sofa—nothing more. And be
sure you wake me up in time for dinner.”
In less than two minutes he had gone off to sleep, as calmly and
quietly as any little child. Jane rejoined Tom in the drawing-room.
“I am afraid that papa has heard some very bad news, Mr. Bristow,” she
said.
“Yes, and I was the unfortunate bearer of it,” answered Tom.
“He sent you to London the other day to make certain private inquiries
for him?”
“He did.”
“And the ill news you brought this morning is the result of those
inquiries?”
“It is.”
There was a pause, which Tom was the first to break. “I think it only
right, Miss Culpepper,” he said, “that you should be made acquainted
with the nature of the business which took me to London. You have no
brother, and I know that you have had the practical management of many
of your father’s affairs for a long time. It is only right that you
should know.”
“But I would rather not know, Mr. Bristow, if you think that papa would
prefer, in the slightest degree, that I should not be told.”
“I think it highly desirable that you should be told,” said Tom. “No
doubt Mr. Culpepper himself will tell you everything before long.”
“I am not so sure on that point,” interrupted Jane. “As regards his
pecuniary affairs, I know little or nothing, although I have long had
my suspicions that there was something wrong somewhere.”
“In such a matter as this there should be nothing hidden from you—at
least not now; and I will take on myself the responsibility of telling
you all that I know. Should Mr. Culpepper himself tell you
subsequently, there will be no harm done, while you will have had time
to think the affair over, and will be better able to advise him as to
what ought to be done under the circumstances. Should he not choose to
tell you, I still maintain that it will be better, both for himself and
for you, that you should rest in ignorance no longer.”
Tom then told her all about his visit to London, its object, and its
result.
“Thank heaven that it’s nothing more serious than the loss of a few
thousand pounds!” said Jane, with an air of relief, when Tom had done.
“Papa will soon get over that, and we shall be as happy again as ever
we have been.”
“I am by no means certain that Mr. Culpepper will get over it as easily
as you imagine,” said Tom, gravely. “I suspect that the entire savings
of many years have gone in this crash; and that alone, to a man of your
father’s time of life, is something very serious indeed.”
“Don’t think, Mr. Bristow, that I want to make too light of the loss,”
said Jane, earnestly. “Still, after all, it is nothing but money.”
Her spirits had risen wonderfully during the last few minutes, and she
could not help showing it. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour,” she
added. “I will go and see whether papa is awake.”
Presently she came back. “He is still fast asleep,” she said.
“I think I would not disturb him if I were you,” said Tom. “Sleep, just
now, is his best medicine.”
As the Squire still slept on, they dined alone, and alone they spent
the evening together. They talked of a thousand things, and they seemed
to have a thousand more to talk about when the time for parting had
come. This evening Tom seemed to care no longer about hiding his
feelings. He sat nearer to Jane, he bent more closely over her at the
piano; once or twice his lips seemed to touch her hair lightly, but she
was not quite sure on the point, and consequently did not care to
reprove him. His eyes sought hers more persistently and boldly than
they had ever done before, and beneath those ardent glances her own
eyes fell, troubled and confused.
When it was time to go, Jane went with him to the door. Said Tom, as he
stood on the threshold, hat in hand, “Should Mr. Culpepper speak to you
about what I have told you this evening, and should he seem at all
troubled in his mind about it, will you kindly suggest that he should
send for me? It may seem rather conceited on my part to ask you to do
this, but as your father has honoured me by taking me into his
confidence so far, there can be no harm in my expressing a hope that he
will do so still further. It may be in my power to help him through his
difficulties or, at least, through part of them.”
“You are very kind,” said Jane, with tears in her eyes, as she pressed
his hand, gratefully.
“And now—good-night,” said Tom.
Still holding her hand, he looked earnestly into her face. They were
standing together just under the hall lamp, and every shade of
expression was plainly visible. Her eyes met his for a moment. He read
something there—I know not what—that emboldened him. His arm stole
round her waist. He pressed her unresisting form to his heart. His lips
touched hers for one brief instant. It was the first kiss of love.
“Good-night, my darling,” he whispered; and almost before Jane knew
what had befallen her, he was gone.
Her father being still asleep, Jane, all in a sweet confusion, took her
work upstairs, and sat down by the dressing-room fire to wait till he
should awake. But he still slept on, and by-and-by it grew late, so she
sent the servants to bed, and made up her mind to sit by his side till
morning. Just then nothing could have been more grateful to her. No
thought of sleep would be possible to her for hours to come. She wanted
to think over the events of that wonderful evening—to think over them
in silence and alone. The time to analyze her feelings had not yet
come: she did not care to make the attempt: she only wanted to realize
quietly to herself the one sweet blissful fact, that she was loved, and
by the one person in the whole world to whom her own love could be
given in return. What happy thoughts nestled round her young heart in
the midnight quietude of the old house! “He loves me!” she whispered to
herself. But the night wind, listening at the window, caught the
syllables and whispered them back, and then rushed gleefully away to
tell the trees and the flowers, that began already to feel the warmth
of spring in their veins, and the little birds sleeping cosily in their
nests beneath the winter moon, and Jane’s secret was a secret no
longer.
It was nearly three o’clock when the Squire woke up from his long
sleep. It was a minute or two before he could collect his thoughts, and
call to mind all that had happened.
“You are no better than a little simpleton for sitting up,” he said,
gruffly. “As if I couldn’t take care of myself when I awoke!” Then he
drew her on to his knee and kissed her tenderly. “Get me some bread and
cheese and ale,” he said. “I’ll have supper and breakfast in one.”
“Won’t you have something different from bread and cheese, papa?” she
asked. “There is some game pie and——”
“No, nothing but bread and cheese,” he said, gloomily. “That seems
about the only thing I shall be able to afford in time to come.”
So Jane went down into the lower part of the house, and brought up some
bread and cheese and ale; but she brought some game pie also, and when
she put a plateful of the latter article before her father, he ate it
without a word, and without seeming to know what it was he was eating.
He did not speak another word till he had done.
“Jenny, you are a clever girl,” he said abruptly, at last, “but do you
think you are clever enough to earn your own living?”
Jane laughed. “Your question is rather a strange one,” she said. “I
will answer it as a woman answers most questions—by asking another. Why
do you ask me?”
“Because if I were to die to-morrow, or next month, or next year, that
is certainly what you would have to do.”
“And I don’t doubt my ability to do it,” said Jane, with spirit. “Only,
papa, you are not going to die either next month, or next year, so that
the subject is one which we need not discuss further.”
“But it is a subject that must be discussed, and discussed very fully,
too. Jane, my girl, you are a pauper, neither more nor less than a
pauper!” He spoke in a dry harsh voice, as if he had made up his mind
that his emotion should on no account over-master him.
“Well, papa dear, even if such be the case, I don’t suppose that either
you or I will love each other any the less on that account.”
“That is not the question, girl. It was always a happiness to me to
know that I should be able to give you fifteen or twenty thousand on
your wedding day. In trying to turn that fifteen into fifty thousand, I
have lost every penny of it, and in so doing I have altogether ruined
your prospects in life.”
“I can’t see that at all, papa. What you did you did for the best, and
if I ever do get married, I hope to marry some one who will love me for
myself, and not for any money I might be possessed of.”
“Very pretty, and very sentimental,” said the Squire, gruffly, “but
confounded rubbish for all that. And how hard on young Cope! He will be
quite justified in breaking off the engagement.”
“What a splendid opportunity Mr. Cope will now have for proving the
sincerity of his affection!” said Jane, with a little contemptuous curl
of the lip.
“You are talking rank nonsense, Janet. Edward Cope loves you; there’s
no doubt of that; but his father will never consent to his marrying a
beggar, which is just about what you are at the present moment; and
Edward has been too well brought up to go in opposition to his father.
I confess it will be a great disappointment to me.”
“But none to me, papa dear!” cried Jane, impulsively, as she flung her
arms round her father’s neck and kissed him—“no disappointment to me!
Rather let us call it a happy release.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the old man, as he took her by the
shoulders and gazed into her face. “I thought you loved Edward Cope as
much as he loved you. You don’t mean to tell me that I have been
mistaken.”
“There has been a mistake somewhere, papa,” faltered Jane, as she drew
one of his arms round her neck, and nestled her head on his shoulder.
“I—I almost fancy that it must have been on my side. I allowed myself
to drift into an engagement with Mr. Cope almost without knowing what I
was about. I liked Mr. Cope very well, and I thought that I could be
happy as his wife, but I have found out my mistake since then. For me
to marry Mr. Cope would be to condemn myself to a life of hopeless
misery. I could never love him, papa, as a wife ought to love her
husband.”
“Tut—tut—tut, girl! What romantic rubbish have you got into your head?
Cope’s a nice young fellow, and when you were his wife you would soon
learn to love him well enough, I warrant. All I’m afraid of is that he
won’t have you for a wife—and all through my fault—all through my
fault!”
Jane saw that the present was no time to say more on the point, and
wisely held her tongue. For a little while the silence between them was
unbroken.
“But I haven’t told you the worst yet, Jenny,” he said at last.
“Oh! papa.”
“Five thousand pounds of your Aunt Fanny’s money has been lost in the
crash. She had entrusted me with the money to do the best I could for
her, and that’s the result. She will be at Pincote in less than a week
from now, and the first thing she will do, after she has taken off her
bonnet and changed her boots, will be to ask me for her money. She will
ask me for her money, and what am I to say to her?”
“Good gracious, papa! Aunt Fanny is your own sister, and surely she, of
all people in the world, would be the last to trouble you for her
money.”
“She would be the first,” said the Squire, fiercely. “I’d sooner, far
sooner, be indebted to the veriest stranger than to her. You don’t know
your aunt as I know her. I should never hear the last of it. I should
have no peace of my life. Day and night my turpitude—my vile
criminality, as she would call it—would be dinned into my ears, till I
should be driven half crazy. And not only that: your Aunt Fanny is a
woman who can never keep a secret. To one confidential friend after
another the whole affair would be whispered, with sundry embellishments
of her own, till at last the whole country side would know of it, and I
could never hold up my head in society again.”
“As I understand the case, papa, you want to raise five thousand pounds
within the next few days?”
“That is precisely what I want.”
“Then why not ask Mr. Cope? Surely he would not refuse to lend it to
you.”
“I am not so sure about that,” said Mr. Culpepper, dryly. “Cope has not
been like the same man to me of late that he used to be. The old ship
is beginning to leak, and the rats are deserting it. I suppose I shall
be compelled to ask him, but I would almost sooner lose my right hand
than do it.”
“There’s Mr. Bristow,” suggested Jane, timidly. “Why not speak to him?
He might, perhaps, find some means of helping you out of your
difficulty.”
“How can a man that’s not worth five thousand pence be of any use to a
man who wants five thousand pounds?” asked the Squire, contemptuously.
“No, no; Bristow’s all very well in his way. A decent, good-natured
young fellow, with all his wits about him, but of no use whatever at a
crisis like the present.”
“Is there not such a thing as a mortgage?” asked Jane. “Could you not
raise some money on the estate?”
“When my father lay on his deathbed,” said the Squire, gravely, “he
made me take a solemn oath that I would never raise a penny by mortgage
on the estate, and I would rather suffer anything and everything than
break that promise. But it’s high time we were both in bed. You look
worn-out for want of sleep, and I don’t feel over bright myself. Kiss
me, dearie, and let us say good-night, or rather good-morning. We must
hope for the best, and at present that seems the only thing we can do.”
The following post brought a letter from Mrs. McDermott. After
mentioning on what day and by what train she might be expected to
arrive, she wrote: “You won’t forget the five thousand pounds, brother.
I have bought some house property, and want to remit the money
immediately on my arrival. I suppose it would not be reasonable to
expect more than five per cent. interest on the amount?” The Squire
tossed the letter across the table to Jane without a word.
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY