LORD ETHALWOOD AND HIS SOLICITOR.
“We have been singularly successful, my lord,” said Mr. Chicknell,
after the detective had taken his departure. “We have not succeeded in
finding your beloved daughter, but we have found your grandchild, who
is beautiful, and who is moreover the image of her mother.”
“How do you know? You have not seen her,” observed the earl.
“That I admit, but Wrench has, and we can take his word.”
“What does Mr. Wrench say about her husband?”
“He says he is a fine handsome fellow. Not of high birth, it is true;
but he is a superior man of his class.”
“And what might that be?”
“He is an engineer.”
“Does his wife seem warmly attached to him?”
The lawyer smiled.
“I am a better judge, my lord, of the merits of a law case than of a
lady’s affection,” he returned; “but from what I am given to
understand the union between the two was what is termed a love match.”
“Bah! a love match!” exclaimed the earl, with something like disgust.
“A love match, indeed!”
A silence of some minutes’ duration succeeded this last speech.
The earl glanced at a portrait of one of his ancestors which hung on
the wall of his room.
He sighed, and said, sadly――
“It would seem that the Ethalwoods have fallen very low during my
lifetime; their name is sullied, their honour tarnished. But I am not
unmindful of the respect due to myself and my ancestors. I cannot and
will not receive the husband of my grandchild in this house. A man of
that kind is not fit companion for me or mine.”
“I am sorry for this,” murmured the lawyer, “very sorry, but I suppose
it cannot be helped. What do you propose then, my lord?”
“At present it is not easy to determine upon my course of action, but
I am resolved upon one point. Nothing whatever shall induce me to
recognise this miserable mechanic. But I will adopt my grand-daughter,
I will make her a wealthy heiress――she shall have the large fortune
which I purposed dividing between my two sons, and I will also adopt
her son. He shall be my heir, but this must be conditional.”
“And what is that?”
“She must live apart from her husband. There must be a separation――a
legal one if it can be compassed. If not, they must part by mutual
consent.”
Mr. Chicknell made no reply.
“Do you understand what I have been saying?” asked the earl, testily.
“Oh yes, my lord, I comprehend most fully, but I cannot conceal from
myself that there may be some difficulty in carrying out your views.”
“None whatever. I can see no difficulty.”
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders, but made no answer.
“Really, Chicknell,” observed the earl, “you seem to be offering
imaginary impediments. You must look at this matter from my point of
view, not from your own. I suppose you know enough of me――you ought to
do so by this time――to be perfectly aware that I am not a man to be
dictated to.”
“I would not presume to dictate to you,” observed the lawyer.
“I tell you that I will, under no circumstances, receive this young
woman’s husband here. Let that suffice. It is needless for me to
reiterate this.”
“Yet you would receive his child?”
“He is of my own race, but his father is an alien. The boy has noble
blood in his veins――the father has none. The former has a strong claim
on me――the latter has none whatever. You must see this; nay, I am sure
you do.”
“Yes, I can understand that, but――――”
“Well, sir, but what?”
“For the life of me I cannot see what this young man has done that you
should seek, my lord, to tempt from him the wife he loves.”
Lord Ethalwood uttered an expression of disgust.
“If you are his champion,” he said, bitterly――“if you plead his cause
so pertinaciously, in opposition to my expressed wishes, say so at
once, and I shall know how to obtain the services of another legal
adviser.”
“I much regret you should for a moment imagine that I have not your
interest at heart. Why should I be the champion of a young fellow whom
I have never seen? I have always had the privilege of speaking
plainly, and it is not because I have done so in this case that I
should merit your censure. However, if you have no confidence in me,
my lord, it is competent for you to obtain better advice――or rather
advice more in accordance with your own views.”
“Pardon me, Chicknell, I have been somewhat hasty. What I said was
without due consideration, so let it pass; but you must do your best
for me. Of course I have no desire to place the affair in any other
hands than yours.”
“If you have been hasty, I acknowledge frankly that I have been
mistaken.”
“In what?”
“I thought your delight would have been so great at our success that
you would have for the nonce sunk all considerations as to social
distinction. I find I am mistaken. I do not wonder at the revolt of
the poor against the rich, of the opposition and bitter animosity
displayed by one class of the community against another class.”
[Sidenote: No. 16.]
[Illustration: “YOU COWARDLY SCOUNDREL!” SAID THE NEW-COMER TO PEACE:
“HOW DARE YOU STRIKE A WOMAN?”]
Lord Ethalwood looked at the speaker in some surprise, but his
countenance did not, however, wear an angry expression.
“I don’t think,” he observed with a smile, “that we shall agree upon
this great social question, and it is therefore idle and useless to
discuss it. I have my views, which it would appear are identical with
your own. I do not like you any the less for plain speaking;
nevertheless my opinion remains unchanged. I will receive my
grandchild Aveline and her son, but I will not countenance her
husband.”
“It is my bounded duty to act according to the instructions received
from your lordship,” said the lawyer. “Tell me what you wish me to
do.”
“You had better hasten at once to Wood Green, and let my
grand-daughter know who she is. I should like you to bring her and her
son back with you, if this be possible. I will, in the meantime,
consider over the proposition we will make to her.”
“I will act in accordance with your instructions.”
“But you do not like the commission” said the earl, quickly. “You need
not reply, Chicknell; I see you do not.”
“Gentlemen in our profession are constrained to undertake commissions
which at times may be neither pleasing nor palatable to them. I will
do my best to further your views.”
The earl bowed, and then said, in a quieter tone――
“There is another little matter, Mr. Chicknell. We have to attend to
this picture-frame maker, Mr. Peace. He has been of essential service
to us, and certainly deserves some recompense.”
“Certainly; that was understood.”
“What do you propose?”
“He’s a poor man. Fifty pounds would be deemed a liberal recompense.”
“I will get you to take him a cheque for a hundred.”
“Ah, that will be ample――more than sufficient.”
“You will see what he says――how he receives it.”
The lawyer nodded. The earl drew the cheque, and handed it to
Chicknell.
“You wish me to present him with it before I leave?”
“Certainly; do so at once.”
Mr. Chicknell remained at Broxbridge Hall till the following morning
after the foregoing conversation. He sallied forth, and bent his steps
in the direction of Peace’s workshop.
The frame-maker was hard at work. A few brief words sufficed to
explain the reason for his visit.
He handed the earl’s cheque to our hero, who accepted it, and at the
same time expressed his sense of gratitude, and said it was much more
than he had any right to expect.
This little bit of business having turned out perfectly satisfactory,
Mr. Chicknell took the train up to London, and from thence proceeded
to Wood Green.
Upon his arrival at Gatliffe’s residence he discovered the young wife
in the garden, which ran at one side and in the rear of the house.
Mr. Chicknell raised his hat in a most courtly manner as Aveline
advanced towards the gate at which he was standing.
“Mrs. Gatliffe, I presume?” said the lawyer.
The lady answered in the affirmative, and unlocked the gate.
“I am a stranger to you, madam,” he observed, apologetically; “but the
business I am engaged in makes it a matter of necessity that we should
confer together.”
“Do you wish to see me or my husband? If the latter he is not within,
and will not return home till the evening.”
“It’s you I desire to communicate with, not your husband.”
Mrs. Gatliffe looked surprised, but did not make any reply.
She opened a side door, and conducted her visitor into the front
parlour.
The lawyer was struck by her appearance, as well he might be. She was
dressed in a neat stuff gown, which fitted tight to her graceful and
symmetrical figure, and he thought she was the very personification of
female loveliness without the aid of any meretricious adornment.
He entered the parlour and was handed a chair by the mistress of the
establishment.
“You will, perhaps, be no wiser,” said Mr. Chicknell, with a smile,
when I inform you that I am solicitor to Lord Ethalwood, seeing that
in all probability even the name of his lordship may be unknown to
you.”
“It is.”
“Well, madam, it must remain so no longer, as it is requisite that you
should know who you are.”
A bright flash overspread the beautiful features of Aveline Gatliffe.
“Who I am!” she murmured. “Indeed――indeed, sir, I have yearned to know
this for very many years past.”
“I am not surprised at that, madam. Let me at once inform you that you
belong to the aristocracy of this country.”
“Oh, sir, are you serious? Can this be possible?” inquired Aveline, in
a state of the deepest anxiety.
“I am dealing with facts which are incontrovertible,” said the lawyer,
in a more serious tone. “Listen, madam.”
Slowly, deliberately, and with singular dearness, Mr. Chicknell
proceeded to make his companion acquainted with all those
circumstances connected with his case, as he termed it.
He passed lightly over the elopement of Aveline’s mother with the
Italian; neither did he dwell upon the painful scene in the infirmary
after the accident on the line, but he gave her to understand that the
articles of jewellery taken from the dead body of her parent were in
the possession of Lord Ethalwood. Mr. Chicknell made the young wife
acquainted with every grain of evidence, which taken altogether proved
most incontestably her identity.
As Aveline listened her wonder-struck countenance lost much of its
wonted colour; her lips grew white as lilies, and her eyes dilated
with an expression which was something akin to terror.
He finished his narrative, the last words of which were of serious
import.
A mist seemed to float before her eyes.
“Am I really that great lord’s grandchild?” she gasped forth with
evident effort.
“You are so beyond all question,” returned the lawyer. “You are
undoubtedly the daughter of Aveline Beatrice Ethalwood, who ran away
from home with her music master. You are the grandchild of Lord
Ethalwood, the master of Broxbridge and its rich dependencies. The
child playing there (pointing through the window of the apartment to
the little boy on the grass plot) may be one day an earl, and you
yourself may be a wealthy heiress; but I regret to say that there is
one condition attached to all this.”
“A condition!” she replied, her face recovering its colour, her eyes
flashing light. “I am bound to accept the condition, I suppose? You do
not know how I have always longed to be rich and great.”
The lawyer smiled.
“It is not for me to dictate. I have only to make the proposition,
which it will rest with you to either accept or refuse.”
She looked surprised and said――
“There will be no condition too difficult for me to accept.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Mr. Chicknell. “Lord Ethalwood is a
very proud man――I should say no man living is prouder. He has the
greatest reverence for what he calls the honour of his house. Think
how he valued it when he treated his daughter as one dead because she
married beneath her. I will be explicit and plain-spoken――the
exigencies of the case necessitate my being so. Lord Ethalwood will
receive you as his grandchild; will give you a large fortune; will
make your son his heir; all, upon one condition.
“And what is that?”
“That you will leave your husband, whom he considers low-born, and
promise never to see him again.”
Aveline uttered an expression as of sudden pain.
“These are indeed hard terms, sir,” she exclaimed. “It might be said
cruel proposals.”
“They are what I have been instructed to make to you,” returned the
lawyer, with a shrug.
“Leave my husbund, who is the best and kindest that ever woman had! I
would not do it for any consideration. He loves me, and I will not
consent to break an honest man’s heart.”
“I expected this answer,” said Mr. Chicknell, “and it therefore does
not surprise me; but if I might suggest, madam, it would be that you
take time to consider the matter. This is but just and reasonable.”
“You have no right to tempt me thus by making such an offer,” she
exclaimed, in an angry tone.
“I have simply done my duty,” he answered, “by acting in accordance
with the instructions received from my client.”
“Tell this proud nobleman that I will never give my consent to such a
course of action.”
She looked so lovely in her pride, her anger, and her tears, that the
lawyer wished his client could have seen her at that moment.
He waited patiently till her indignation had in a measure passed
over――then he said――
“There will be no harm in your seeing his lordship,” he said. “On the
contrary, it might have considerable weight with him, and turn him
from his obstinate resolution. He requested me to say that he would be
overjoyed to see you and your little boy at Broxbridge Hall.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. He said I was not to leave until you had consented to accompany
me.”
“I will see him, then. I accept his invitation, but I cannot leave
without first of all consulting my husband.”
“Who, in all probability, will not give his consent.”
“He will not refuse if I tell him I have promised my word.”
Mr. Chicknell inquired of his companion when she would have her
husband’s answer.
“I will speak to him on the subject when he comes home this evening.”
“And if he consents you will accompany me to Broxbridge to-morrow.”
Aveline replied in the affirmative.
The lawyer took his departure, with a promise to see her again on the
following morning.
Tom Gatliffe, when he returned home that evening, was perfectly
bewildered when he had been made acquainted with all the circumstances
connected with his young wife. A foreboding of evil took possession of
him――he was forcibly and painfully impressed with the fact that the
discovery was not unattended with danger. He could, however, refuse
his wife nothing, and therefore gave his consent for her to accompany
the lawyer to Broxbridge Hall.
On the following morning Mr. Chicknell presented himself. Aveline and
her child were arrayed in their best attire, and left their cottage in
Wood Green under the protection of the man at law.
A telegram had been sent to Broxbridge, advising its owner of the
visit. An open landau awaited them upon their arrival at the station.
In this Mr. Chicknell and his two companions were driven to the hall.
As they approached the fine old mansion Peace passed the carriage. His
eyes were rivetted on the face of its female occupant, Aveline; he
thought she looked more lovely than ever.
It was the first time he had seen her since the rejection of his suit
in the garden of Mrs. Maitland’s house.
A host of contending emotions rushed through his brain as he witnessed
the arrival of the carriage at the great gates of the hall.
“She does not condescend to honour me with a passing notice,” he
ejaculated, in a voice of concentrated passion; “the stuck-up, proud
minx, and but for me she would never have been discovered. Curses on
it, I was a fool to give any information――worse than a fool. Much
thanks shall I get from either her or her bumptious husband.”
He turned out of the high road and made for his workshop, but he was
ill at ease. All the worst passions of his nature were in the
ascendant, and he did not care about following his usual avocation.
For a long time he remained moody and thoughtful in his workshop. He
was laying plans for the future.
The sight of Aveline seemed to have produced a sudden revulsion in his
mind. He could not bear to see her under any circumstances; but to
find her in such an exalted position was most intolerable. And yet he
had been mainly instrumental in bringing this about. Now it was done
he bitterly regretted. Such is the strange perversity of the human
character.