IN THE OLD CHÂTEAU.
A draughty old château in Switzerland. Not that it need have been
draughty, for it lay at the foot of a mountain, sheltered from the
east winds. But the doors did not fit, and the windows rattled, after
the custom of most old châteaux: and so the winter air crept in. It
stood in a secluded spot quite out of the beaten tracks of travellers;
and it looked upon one of the most glorious prospects that even this
favoured land of lovely scenery can boast.
That prospect in part, and in part the very moderate rent asked for
the house, had induced Sir Sandy MacIvor to take it for the autumn
months. The MacIvors, though descended from half the kings of
Scotland, could not boast of anything very great in the shape of
income. Sir Sandy's was but small, and he and his wife, Lady Harriet,
formerly Harriet Chenevix, had some trouble to make both ends meet.
The little baronet was fond of quoting the old saying that he had to
cut his coat according to his cloth. Therefore, when Lady Adela went
to them for a prolonged stay, the very ample allowance made for her to
Sir Sandy was most welcome.
Upon the close of Adela's short visit to Court Netherleigh in the
autumn, she returned to her mother. The visit had not been productive
of any good result as regarded her cheerfulness of mind and manner;
for her life seemed only to grow more dreary. Lady Acorn did not
approve of this, and took care daily to let Adela know she did not,
dealing out to her sundry reproaches. One day when Adela was unusually
low-spirited, the countess made use of a threat--that she should be
transported to that gloomy Swiss fastness the MacIvors had settled
themselves in, and stop there until she mended her manners.
A chance word, spoken at hazard, sometimes bears fruit. Adela, a faint
light rising in her eyes as she heard this, lifted her voice eagerly.
"Mother, let me go; send me there as soon as you please," she said.
"It will at least be better for me there than here, for I shall be out
of the world."
"Out of the world!" snapped Lady Acorn. "You can't be much more out of
it than you are down here in Oxfordshire."
"Yes, I can. The neighbours, those who are at their places, come in to
see us, and papa sometimes brings people home from town. Let me go to
Harriet."
It was speedily decided. Lady Acorn, severe though she was with Adela,
had her welfare at heart, and she thought a thorough change might be
beneficial to her. An old friend, who chanced to be going abroad, took
charge of Lady Adela to Geneva: Sir Sandy MacIvor and his wife met her
there, and took her back with them to the château.
That was in October. Adela found the château as isolated as she could
well desire, and therefore she was pleased with it; and she told Sir
Sandy and Harriet she was glad to have come.
They had never thought of staying in this château for the winter; they
meant to go to Rome early in December. But as that month approached,
Adela evinced a great dislike to move. She would not go to Rome to
encounter the English there, she told them; she would stay where she
was. It a little perplexed the MacIvors; Adela had now grown so weak
and low-spirited that they did not like to cross her or to insist upon
it that she must go; neither did they care to give her up as their
inmate, for her money was of consequence to them.
"What if we make up our minds to stay here for the winter, Harriet?"
at length said Sir Sandy, who was as easy-tempered, genial-hearted a
little laird as could be met with in or out of Scotland: though he
stood only five feet high in his shoes, and nothing could be seen of
his face except his small retroussé nose standing out of the mass of
bright yellow hair which adorned it.
"It will be so cold," grumbled Harriet. "Think of all these draughts."
"They won't hurt," said the laird, who was bred to such things, his
paternal stronghold in the Highlands not being altogether air-tight.
"I'll nail some list over the cracks, and we'll lay in a good stock of
wood and keep up grand fires. I think we might be comfortable,
Harriet. It must be as you decide, of course, dear; but Adela can't be
left here alone, and if we say she must go with us to Rome, she may
fret herself into a fever."
"She is doing that as it is," returned Harriet. "We might stay here,
of course--and we should get the place for an old song during the cold
months. Perhaps we had better do so. Yet I should like to have been in
Rome for the Christmas festivities, and for the carnival later."
"We will go next Christmas instead," said Sir Sandy.
As they had no children, they were not tied to their Scottish home,
and could lay their plans freely. It was decided to remain in the
château for the winter, and Sir Sandy began hammering at the doors and
windows.
So they settled down contentedly enough; and, cold though it was, in
spite of the list and the hissing wood fires, which certainly gave out
more sparks than heat, Sir Sandy and his wife made the best of it.
It was more than could be said of Lady Adela. She not only did not
make the best of things, but did not try to do so. Not that she
complained of the cold, or the heat, or appeared to feel either. All
seemed as one to her.
Her room was large; its great old-fashioned sofa and its heavy
fauteuils were covered with amber velvet. Uncomfortable-looking
furniture stood about--mahogany tables and consoles with cold white
marble tops. The walls of the room were papered with a running
landscape, representing green plains, rivers, blue mountains, sombre
pine-trees, castles, and picturesque peasants at work in a vineyard.
In a recess, shut off with heavy curtains, stood the bed; it was, in
fact, a bedroom and sitting-room combined, as is so frequently the
case on the Continent.
In a dress of black silk and crape, worn for Margery Upton, who had
died the day after Christmas-Day, Lady Adela sat in this room near the
crackling wood fire. January was wearing away. She leaned back in the
great yellow armchair in listless apathy, her wasted hands lying on
her lap, a warm cashmere shawl drawn round her, and two scarlet spots
on her once blooming-cheeks. The low fever, that, as predicted by Lady
Harriet weeks and weeks ago, she was fretting herself into, had all
too surely attacked her. And she had not seemed in the least to care
whether or not she died of it.
"If I die, will my death be sudden?" she one day startled the Swiss
doctor by asking him.
"You will not die, you will get well," replied Monsieur Le Brun. "If
you will only be reasonable, be it understood, and second our efforts
to make you so, by wishing for it yourself," he added.
"I do wish it," she murmured; though her tone was apathetical enough.
"But I said to you, '_If_ I die,'--and I want the question answered,
sir. Would there be time to send for any friends from England that I
may wish to see?"
"Ample time, miladi."
"Harriet," she whispered to her sister that same night, "mind you send
for Mr. Grubb when I get into that state that I cannot recover--if I
do get into it. _Will you?_"
"What next!" retorted Harriet. "Who says you will not recover?"
"I could not die in peace without seeing my husband--without asking
for his forgiveness," pleaded the poor invalid, bitter tears of regret
for the past slowly coursing down her cheeks. "You will be sure to
send in time, won't you, Harriet?"
"Yes, yes, I promise it," answered Harriet, humouring the fancy; and
she set herself to kiss and soothe her sister.
Lady Harriet MacIvor, who resembled her mother more than any of the
rest, both in person and quickness of temper, had been tart enough
with Adela before the illness declared itself, freely avowing that she
had no patience with people who fretted themselves ill; but when the
fever had really come she became a tender and efficient nurse.
The sickness and danger had passed--though of danger there had not
perhaps been very much--and Adela was up again. With the passing, Lady
Harriet resumed again her tendency to set the world and its pilgrims
right, especially Adela. January was now drawing to a close.
The fever had left her very weak. In fact, it had not yet wholly taken
itself away. She would lie back in the large easy-chair, utterly
inert, day after day, recalling dreams of the past. Thinking of the
luxurious home she had lost, one that might have been all brightness;
picturing what she would do to render it so, were the opportunity
still hers.
For hours she would lose herself in recollections of the child she had
lost; the little boy, George. A rush of fever would pass through her
veins as she recalled her behaviour at its baptism: her scornful
rejection of her husband's name, Francis; her unseemly interruption
from her bed to the clergyman that the name should be George. How she
yearned after the little child now! Had he lived--why surely her
husband would not have put her away from him! A man may not, and does
not, put away the mother of his child; it could never have been. Would
he have kept the child--or she? No, no; with that precious, living tie
between them, he could not have thrust his wife from him. Thus she
would lie, tormenting herself with deceitful fantasies that could
never be, and wake with a shudder to the miserable reality.
Sufficient of the fever lingered yet to tinge with hectic her white
face, and to heat her trembling hands. But for one thought Adela would
not have cared whether she died or lived--at least, she told herself
so in her misery; and that thought was that, if she died, her husband
might take another wife. A wife who would give him back what she
herself had not given--love for love. Since Miss Upton, perhaps
unwittingly, had breathed that suggestion, it had not left Adela night
or day.
How bitterly she regretted the past none knew, or ever would know.
During these weeks of illness, before the fever and since, she had had
leisure to dwell upon her conduct; to repent of it; to pray to Heaven
for pardon for it. The approach of possible death, the presence of
hopeless misery, had brought Adela to that Refuge which she had never
sought or found before, an ever-merciful God. Never again, even were
it possible that she should once more mingle with the world, could she
be the frivolous, heartless, unchristian woman she had been. Nothing
in a small way had ever surprised Lady Harriet so much, as to find
Adela take out her Bible and Prayer-book, and keep them near her.
She sat today, buried as usual in the past, the bitter anguish of
remembrance rending her soul. We are told in Holy Writ that the heart
of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The heart of woman is
undoubtedly contradictory. When Adela was Mr. Grubb's wife, she had
done her best to scorn and despise him, to persuade herself she hated
him: now that he was lost to her for ever, she had grown to love him,
passionately as ever man was loved by woman. The very fact that
relations between them could never be renewed only fostered this love.
For Lady Adela knew better than to deceive herself with vain hopes;
she knew that to cherish them would be the veriest mockery; that when
Francis Grubb threw her off, it was for ever.
Many a moment did she spend now, regretting that she had not died in
the fever. It would at least have brought about a last interview; for
Harriet would have kept her word and sent for him.
"Better for me to die than live," she murmured to herself, lifting her
fevered hand. "I could have died happily, with his forgiveness on my
lips. Whereas, to live is nothing but pain; weariness--and who knows
how many years my life will last?"
Darvy came in; a tumbler in her hand containing an egg beaten up with
wine and milk. Darvy did not choose to abandon her mistress in her
sickness and misfortunes, but Darvy considered herself the most
ill-used lady's-maid that fate ever produced. Buried alive in this
dismal place in a foreign country, where the companions with whom she
consorted, the other domestics, spoke a language that was barbarous
and unintelligible, Darvy wondered when it would end.
"I don't want it," said Adela, turning away.
"But Lady Harriet says you must take it, my lady. You'll never get
your strength up, if you refuse nourishment."
"I don't care to get my strength up. If you brought me some wine and
water, Darvy, instead, I could take that. Or some tea--or lemonade. I
am always thirsty."
"And what good is there in tea or lemonade?" returned Darvy, who
ventured to contend now as she never had when her lady was in health,
coaxing her also sometimes as if she were a child. "Lady Harriet said
if you would not take this from me, my lady, she should have to come
herself. And she does not want to come; she's busy."
To hear that Harriet was busy seemed something new. "What is she busy
about?" languidly asked Adela.
"Talking," answered Darvy. "Some English traveller has turned out of
his way to call on her and Sir Sandy, my lady, and he is giving them
all the home news."
"Oh," was the indifferent comment of Lady Adela. Home news was nothing
to her now. And, to put an end to Darvy's importunity, she drank the
refreshment without further objection.
Margery Upton had died and was buried; and her will, when it became
known, created a nine-days' wonder in London. Amidst those assembled
to hear its reading, the mourners, who had just returned from the
churchyard, none was more utterly astonished than Mr. Grubb. Never in
his whole life had such an idea--that he would be the inheritor of
Court Netherleigh--occurred to him. Miss Upton's statement of why it
was left to him, as explained by her by word of mouth to Mr.
Cleveland, was read out after the will; and Francis Grubb found a
private letter, written by her to himself, put into his hand.
Lord Acorn was similarly astonished. Intensely so. But, in his
débonnaire manner, he carried it off with easy indifference, and did
not let his mortification appear. Perhaps he had not in his heart felt
so sure of Court Netherleigh as he had allowed the world to think:
Miss Upton's warnings might not have been quite lost upon him. Failing
himself, he would rather Francis Grubb had it than any one; there
might be no trouble about those overdue bonds; though Lord Acorn,
always sanguine, had not allowed himself to dream of such a
catastrophe as this.
Perhaps the most unwelcome minor item in the affair to Lord Acorn was
having to carry the news home to his wife. It was evening when he
arrived there. He and Mr. Grubb had travelled up together: for the
easy-natured peer did not intend to show the cold shoulder to his
son-in-law because he had supplanted him.
"Will you give me a bit of dinner, Frank?" asked the earl, as they got
into a cab together at the terminus, only too willing to put off the
mauvais quart d'heure with my lady as long as might be.
"I will give it to you, and welcome, if there is any to be had,"
smiled Mr. Grubb. "I left no orders for dinner today, not knowing
when I should be back."
Alighting in Grosvenor Square, they found dinner prepared. Afterwards
Lord Acorn went home. His wife, attired in one of Madame Damereau's
best black silk gowns, garnished with a crape apron, was sitting in
the small drawing-room, all impatience.
"Well, you _are_ late," cried she. "What can have kept you until now?"
"It is only ten o'clock," replied the earl, drawing a chair to the
fire. "At work, Gracie!" he added, turning to his daughter, who sat at
the table, busy with her tatting.
"Only ten o'clock!" snapped the countess. "I expected you at five or
six. And now--how are things left? I suppose we have Court
Netherleigh?"
"Well, no; we have not," quietly replied Lord Acorn.
"_Not!_"
"Not at all. Grubb is made the heir. He has Court Netherleigh--and is
to take the name."
Lady Acorn's face, in its petrified astonishment, its righteous
indignation, would have made a model for a painter. Not for a couple
of minutes did she speak, voice and words alike failed her.
"The deceitful wretch!" broke from her at length. "To play the sneak
with Margery in that way!"
"Don't waste your words, Betsy. Grubb knew nothing about it: is more
surprised than you are. Court Netherleigh was willed to him when
Margery first came into it; when he was a young lad. She only carried
out the directions of Sir Francis Netherleigh."
Lady Acorn was beginning to breathe again. But she was not the less
angry.
"I don't care. It is no better than a swindle. How _deceitful_ Margery
must have been!"
"She kept counsel--if you mean that. As to being deceitful--no, I
don't see it. She never did, or would, admit that the estate would
come to us: discouraged the idea, in fact."
"All the same, it is a frightful blow. We were _reckoning_ on it. Was
no one in her confidence?"
"No one whatever except the old lawyer, Pencot. Two or three weeks
before she died she disclosed all to Cleveland in a confidential
interview. As it is not ourselves, I am heartily glad it's Grubb."
"What has she done with all her accumulated money?" tartly went on her
ladyship. "She must have saved a heap of it, living in the quiet way
she did!"
"Yes, there is a pretty good lot of that," equably replied the earl.
"It is left to one and another; legacies here, legacies there. I don't
come in for one."
"No! What a shame!"
"You do, though," resumed Lord Acorn, stretching out his boots to
catch the warmth of the fire. "You get ten thousand pounds."
The words were to the countess as a very sop in the pan. Her fiery
face became a little calmer.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Quite sure," nodded the earl. "You don't get it, though, without
conditions. Only the interest for life; the sum itself then goes to
Grace, here. I congratulate you, Gracie, my dear."
Grace let fall her shuttle; her colour rose. "Oh, papa! And--what do
my sisters have?" she added, ever, in her unselfishness, thinking of
others.
"Mary, Harriet, and Frances have a thousand pounds each; Sarah and
Adela only some trinkets as a remembrance. I suppose Margery thought
they were well married, and did not require money."
"And, papa, who else comes in?" asked Grace, glancing across at her
mother, who sat beating her foot on the carpet.
"Who else? Let me see. Thomas Cleveland has two thousand pounds. And
Mrs. Dalrymple, the elder, has a thousand. And several of Margery's
servants are provided for. And I think that's about all I remember."
"The furniture at Court Netherleigh?" interrupted Lady Acorn. "Who
takes that?"
"Grubb; he takes everything belonging to the house and estate;
everything that was Sir Francis Netherleigh's. He is left residuary
legatee. Margery Upton has only willed away what was her own of
right."
"As if he wanted it!" grumbled Lady Acorn.
"The less one needs things, the more one gets them, as it seems to me.
The baronetcy is to be renewed in him, Betsy."
"The baronetcy! In _him!_"
"Sir Francis wished it. There won't be much delay in the matter,
either. Margery Upton put things in train for it before she died."
Lady Acorn could only reply by a stare; and there ensued a pause.
"The idiot that little minx Adela has shown herself!" was her final
comment. "Court Netherleigh, it seems, would have been hers."
The little minx Adela, wasting away with fever in her Swiss abode,
knew nothing of all this, and cared less. The barest items of news
concerning it came to the MacIvors; Grace wrote to Harriet to say that
Court Netherleigh had been willed to Mr. Grubb, not to her father; but
in that first letter she gave no details. That much was told to Adela.
She aroused herself sufficiently to ask who had Court Netherleigh, and
was told that Margery Upton had left it to Mr. Grubb.
"I knew he was a favourite of hers," was all the comment she made;
and, but for the sudden flush, Lady Harriet might have thought the
news was perfectly indifferent to her: and she made no further
allusion to it, then or afterwards.
But of the particulars, I say, Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet remained in
ignorance, for Grace did not write again. No one else wrote. And their
extreme surprise at Mr. Grubb's inheritance had become a thing of the
past, when one day a traveller, recently from England, found them out
and their old château. It was Captain Frederick Cust, brother to the
John Cust who stuttered. The Custs and the Acorns had always been very
intimate; the young Cust lads, there were six of them, and the Ladies
Chenevix had played and quarrelled together as boys and girls. Captain
Cust knew all about the Court Netherleigh inheritance, and supplied
the information lacking, until then, to Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet
MacIvor. No wonder Darvy had said that Lady Harriet was too busy to go
upstairs: she was as fond of talking as her mother.
And so, the abuse they had been mutually lavishing upon Mr. Grubb in
private for these two or three past weeks they found to be unmerited.
He was the lucky inheritor, it is true, but through no complicity of
his own.
"You might have known that," said Captain Cast, upon Lady Harriet's
candidly avowing this. "Grubb is the most honourable man living; he
would not do an underhand deed to be made king of England tomorrow. I
am surprised you could think it of him for a moment, Harriet."
"Be quiet, Fred," she retorted. "It was not an unnatural thought. The
best of men will stretch a point when such a property as Court
Netherleigh is in question."
"Grubb would not. And he could have bought such a place any day had he
a mind to do it."
"And he is to take up the baronetcy! You are sure that is true?"
"Sure and certain. And I wish him joy with all my heart! There's not
one of us in the social world but would welcome him into our order
with drums and trumpets."
Lady Harriet laughed. "You are just the goose you used to be, Fred."
"No doubt," assented Captain Frederick. "Where's the use of being
anything better in such a silly world as this? Your wife has always
paid me compliments, MacIvor, since the time we were in pinafores."
"Just as she does me," nodded little Sir Sandy. "And how is Mr.
Grubb?--I liked him, too, captain. Does he still keep up that big
establishment in Grosvenor Square all for himself?"
"Yes. Why shouldn't he? He is rich enough to keep up ten of them. By
the way, he is a member of Parliament now--do you know it? They've
returned him for Wheatshire."
And thus the conversation continued. But we need not follow it.
After Captain Cust left at night, for he stayed the day with them,
Lady Harriet sat in silent thought, apparently weighing some matter in
her mind.
"Sandy," she said at length, looking across at him, "I don't think I
shall tell Adela anything about this--I mean that her husband is to
take the baronetcy. It will be better not."
"Why?" asked Sir Sandy.
"It will bring her past folly home to her so severely. It may bring
all the fever back again."
"As you please, of course, dear. But she did not seem to care at all
when told he had inherited Netherleigh."
"That's all you know about it, Sandy!" retorted Lady Harriet. "_I_
saw--all the light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. I tell
you, sir, she is in love with her husband now, though she may never
have been before, and it will try her too greatly, in her weak state.
Her chief bone of contention in the old days was his name; that's
removed now. And she has forfeited that lovely place, Court
Netherleigh!"
"You know best, my dear. Perhaps it will be kinder not to tell her.
But you will have to caution Darvy, and those about her: this is news
that will not rest in a nutshell. Though," remarked Sir Sandy, after a
pause, "with all deference to your superior judgment, Harriet, I do
not think she can care much more for her husband now than she cared of
old."
"Listen, Sandy," was the whispered answer. "Yesterday evening at dusk
I went softly up to Adela's room, and peeped in to see whether she was
dozing. She sat in the firelight, her head bent over that little old
photograph she has of Mr. Grubb. Suddenly she gave a little cry, and
began raining tears and kisses upon it."