The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 3 of 3
"Fancy Sir Alexander not keeping a horse and groom for Maud! He didn't ride of late years, but that is no reason why she should not. She can ride; she told me so. It is too bad to think of the dark seclusion the poor girl has been kept in. I wonder how she lived. Upon my soul it was a shame! There all day long, all the year round, in this gloomy relic of the cold past, with no other change than a few hours in this sleepy place – this humdrum city of Daneford. I am surprised she did not die. It was enough to kill anyone. Fancy passing a whole lifetime away in that old place and this dull town! Monstrous!
"Of course I shouldn't mind it, as I was saying a moment ago, for I have been in the world and seen as much as I want to see. I should feel quite content to live here always. I should never care for anything better than a bed at the 'Warfinger Hotel,' and a stroll now and then about the Midharsts' old place where the Fleureys once lived, a power in the state. But Maud living here! Monstrous!
"I know what I'll do when I come back – I never thought of that before – I'll get the house in St. James's Square put in order, and she and Mrs. Grant shall go up there, and someone will bring out Maud, and she shall be the beauty of the year. All the town will talk of the lovely Miss Midharst. Then I can go and stay at Warfinger and – and see to improvements, and so on; and then if Maud wanted me she can write or telegraph. I can fill up a telegraph-form with only the word 'Come,' and she can keep it in her purse and send it off the moment she wishes to see me. I'll leave word at the telegraph-office in Daneford, that anyone bringing me that telegram in half an hour shall have a sovereign.
"I daresay I could have a wire to the Island, so there need be no delay. But it would look strange. I'll make the messenger's fee five pounds, that will be better.
"I shall keep a portmanteau always ready packed, so that there will be no delay after getting the telegram. Even supposing the telegram does not come for a week or fortnight, I may run up to London to see Maud and Mrs. Grant, and make my mind easy about them.
"While they are away I can have alterations made. I can have all the repairs and alterations done while I am in Egypt overhauled and perfected. Maud may like many things changed; and, of course, anything Maud wants to be done shall be done. Of course. Fancy Maud saying she would like something or other done, and my saying, 'No, Maud; I cannot do that!' Fancy such a thing! I wish she would ask me for something. It is so dull to have nothing to do for Maud.
"Before I knew Maud – it seems a long time, and yet it is only a few days: it is strange to think how long ago my previous life seems – how much time the past ten or a dozen days cover. I have often seen painters, when they had painted-in the solid objects of their pictures, go over parts with thin transparent colour, and, as if by magic, the ruin or the mountain that a moment ago pressed offensively forward retired into its proper place in the composition, and gathered round it mellow repose and forgetfulness. This glaze takes the heat and worry out of the picture. It gives it moist perfume and collected dignity. The few days I have spent here have acted like the glaze on the substantial background of facts in my past life. Why?
"Why? Never mind why; I am content. I like the collectedness that has come upon me. It cannot arise from the title or the estates. I am leaving all the money behind me, and for all practical purposes the title also. When I go away I shall be nothing more than a Government clerk in the foreign service. When I get there, the few Europeans I know may not have heard of Sir Alexander's death. It is not the title or the money. What has done it?
"Before I knew Maud I always fancied anyone called Maud should be young and fragile and exquisitely fair; and my Maud (she is mine, for are we not of the one house?) is young and fragile and exquisitely fair.
"Maud.
"What a musical name it is! The lips and ears never tire of it. The oftener you say it the more beautiful it seems. It is a name you must speak softly. You cannot shout it out or fancy yourself saying it angrily. Imagine for a moment my speaking angrily to my Maud!
"Speaking angrily to Maud! The mere supposition is like a blow. Maud is sanctified to me doubly, as being the last daughter of our family, and as being friendless.
"When I go away I shall leave my fortune and my title behind me. Shall I leave anything else? Yes, everything else. Maud.
"If I leave my fortune and my title and Maud behind me, what do I take with me?
"Nothing worth the carriage.
"Bounteous God, I thank Thee with all my heart, and all my soul, and all the faculties of my nature, for having given love to man, and having given me to love!"
The evening of the day Grey had visited the Island after his return from London, the two cousins sat alone in the little drawing-room after dinner.
"Maud, will you take great care of yourself while I am away?" he asked very earnestly.
She was sitting by a small ebony table in front of the fire. He reclined in an easy-chair at the opposite side of the grate.
She looked up with a childish amused smile, and answered:
"Yes; I will try and take care of myself while you are away. This is a very safe place to live in. No one can get near us without a boat, and everyone knows that a farmer's house would be better for thieves than Island Castle."
"And yet, Maud, though no man come, something very precious might be stolen by a thief while I am away." He spoke gravely, with that old far-away look in his eyes.
"And who is the thief, and what is the thing?" she asked, with a bright smile.
"Ruffian Death," he answered, for a moment overwhelmed by some dark dread and chilling foreboding.
She grew paler in her black dress; the hand resting on the table seemed whiter than life.
"But, William, I am quite well; I never felt better in all my life; and I think, considering what has lately happened, that is very wonderful." She was anxious, and looked into his face with eyes of grave solicitude.
Still he was following up the chain of his thoughts, and for the moment, unaware, he uttered them:
"There is death in every day, danger in every hour; you must encounter the danger. The way in which you meet the danger decides your relations with death. Life is a series of compromises with death. I wish I were not going away."
"So do I, indeed, William," she said earnestly. "But you must not be uneasy on my part; I am quite well, and shall keep quite well while you are away. I should be most unhappy if I thought you went away uncomfortable on my account."
The tone of the girl's voice brought him back to a consciousness of the situation. His manner changed. He looked up at her and smiled.
"Unhappy about you, Maud! Not I. You must not think that. I was talking generalities; I was not alluding to your case. You see, when a man has been a long time in a foreign country, where the speech of the people in the streets is unknown to him, and where, among the few people who speak European languages, there are only a couple for whose society he cares, he falls into one bad habit certainly, that of looking at all things in the abstract; and into another bad habit probably, that of muttering aloud to himself. I am afraid I have been treating you to a small example of both vices." He smiled brightly, and held out his hand to her.
She took the small white hand off the ebony table and placed it in his. The brown fingers closed over the white ones, and looking down at the joined hands he said:
"Like the rough brown sheath of the cocoa-nut, and the snow-white fruit within."
"What?"
"My hand round yours."
She said nothing.
He released her hand.
"You will take care of that hand, Maud, while I am away? Some time someone will value that hand more than the regalia in the Tower. It will be to him above all price. He would like to set guards over it as they set guards over the royal jewels, and yet would allow no one to act as sentinel but himself."
Such talk was new to her. She did not say anything.
"We have grown good friends in the few days we have been meeting one another?"
"Oh, yes."
"The best of friends?"
"The best of friends."
"And all the time I am away you will never cease to think of me as your best friend?"
"Never."
It almost made her cry, she could not tell why, to hear him asking such a question.
"And should you be in any need of aid or advice, you will let me know at once?"
"At once."
There was a pause during which Mrs. Grant entered the room.
The baronet got up, and sitting down beside the widow, said to both the women:
"I had a chat with Mr. Grey to-day apropos of my going, and nothing could have been nicer or more gratifying. He is, without exception, the most straightforward and honourably-minded man I have ever met. He has, Mrs. Grant, not only undertaken to keep his eye on the workmen when they come here, but he has without any hint or suggestion on my part, proposed not to do anything final with Maud's fortune until I return. And, in addition to all this, he will pay all the legacies out of his own pocket and at his own risk. Maud, I cannot say how grateful I am that you have fallen into such excellent hands. You may place yourself wholly under his direction while I am away. You need not consult me on any subject of business; you will be quite safe with him, and he has a thousand times my knowledge of business."
"Did I not tell you so?" asked Mrs. Grant of Miss Midharst.
"Yes," answered Maud softly.
"What was it?" asked the baronet, turning with a gratified smile towards the widow.
"I told dear Maud long ago that she might have full confidence in Mr. Grey," answered Mrs. Grant, with lively self-satisfaction.
"And you told her what was perfectly true. I must go now. I shall not see you again, Mrs. Grant, until I come back from Egypt. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to know how good, how loyal Maud's two friends are – yourself and Mr. Grey."
He had shaken both Maud's hands, and kissed her lips for the first time, and shaken hands with Mrs. Grant, and was gone.
Her cousin William was gone, and she should not see him again for months. What a pity he had to go! When he was by her side, or in Daneford, she felt quite safe; nothing could harm her while he was near. When her father died she had felt alone and cold in the world. She had been susceptible to attack on all sides. She had no confidence in herself; and although Mr. Grey had done everything man could do for her, she owned no claim upon him.
But this cousin, this man of her own family, who, finding her timid and unguarded, sought the privilege of shielding her from the world and the bleak unknown lying beyond Island Castle – was a new experience, a delightful improvement on the present.
But no sooner had she learned to lean upon his reassuring strength than he must hurry away. What a pity!
Her cousin William would come back, no doubt; but Egypt was far off, very far off, and the power of his protection was reduced greatly by distance.
Why should she think she would need protection of any kind? Surely Mrs. Grant and Mr. Grey were protection enough in a quiet well-ordered place like Daneford and its neighbourhood?
Yes; but Cousin William had been more than a protector; he had been a companion as well, and there was something in his talk and manner neither Mrs. Grant nor Mr. Grey possessed. She was always content with what Mrs. Grant said, or what Mr. Grey said. Their words always exhausted the topic; but when he had spoken she felt led on to wonder what lay behind and beyond what he had said.
She had told Mrs. Grant truly he had interested her; and although he always had spoken to her as though there could be no question of the supremacy of his will over hers, she liked that.
When Mrs. Grant told her to do a certain thing, the doing of it was dry and uninteresting. When Cousin William had told her to do a thing, she always did it with the sound of his voice in her ears; or she had thought what mystery of Egypt he had before his eyes when he gave her the command; or she had tried to fathom his mind as to the manner in which he would best like to see the thing done.
But now all was cold and monotonous and dull. Really the place had got so quiet of late that she found her chief delight in her old books of Egypt, and in the geography of that country, and in following on the map the overland route he had taken to Africa.
CHAPTER IV
BETWEEN THE LIGHTS
The day Henry Walter Grey bade good-bye to the young baronet he went home to the Manor House in the best spirits.
That latest stroke of his had proved marvellously successful. In fact, the result completely astonished him. Sir William had been civil, polite, conciliatory to him up to that last interview. During it the young man had thrown aside all reserve and rushed into his arms with enthusiasm. This young man, of whom he had stood in dread a few days ago, had been not only neutralised, but converted into a friend.
And at what cost? The voluntary promise that he, Grey, would take no steps about the will until the return of the head of the house. What a transcendent joke! There was nothing like it on the stage. Nothing approaching it. He had won the young man by undertaking not to invest money already stolen and made away with!
And how had he done it? Not by worrying and sneaking and shivering and anticipating all kinds of evils; not by thinking and attending to his own fears and hopes connected with matters which had been done and could not be undone. No; but by thinking of what other people might do adverse to him, and trying to out-manœuvre them. The general who, upon hearing the enemy is advancing, does nothing but contemplate the horrors of defeat, will inevitably be defeated. It is with matters of business as with a general in the field – to provide against nothing but defeat is to ensure defeat and final disaster. To dread a disease is to open the door for its reception.
Away then for ever with doubts and fears! He was still a player in the game. It was a game of skill, and he must win. The way to win is never to think of yourself or of the result of winning or losing, but to concentrate every human faculty upon the game itself, and the plans for effecting the defeat of your opponents.
And now how did his great game stand? Let him see.
Sir William Midharst would be away in Egypt some while, some months, say three to four months, during which time it was necessary to win, by any means he could employ, this girl Maud. He was the guardian of her fortune and the superintendent of works about to be carried on at the Castle. This gave him not an excuse so much as a command to be frequently there. Thus he should have excellent opportunities of pressing his suit. He was to consult Miss Midharst upon alterations, et cetera; and that supplied the means of obtaining frequent and long interviews with her in which they should often be alone. Good, very good!
He felt strong and healthy and capable. His illness had cleared away the confusion which had been gathering round him; he slept better of nights, and awoke cheerful.
He knew he should be able to interest Maud, and to interest a woman is to win her. Those solemn, lank, poetical men, like the new baronet, took such a time to make up their minds, that a man of sanguine temperament like himself won a woman before one like Sir William determined on the first sigh. Girls don't like sighs; they prefer laughter. Good!
The Bank was all right now, and when he had married Maud there was no one to come and pry into matters. Every one would think by his marriage with her he had acquired upwards of half a million; and for a man in his position to have the reputation of riches is almost as good as to have riches. Splendid!
He had provided against injury arising out of that sale of the lease and furniture and annuity. He had not been in a position to resist his mother. He knew that, having made up her mind to sell, she would sell, no matter what it cost her feelings. She would threaten to denounce him rather than be baulked in doing what he supposed she intended with the money. He did not think she would have gone the length of denouncing him. She had done worse. She had shown herself indifferent to anything he might have to say. She could not know but that letter of his told her he had paid back all the money, or that it contained a plea for a short respite. She had not cared what happened to him; and he – he had taken means to protect himself. He did not feel angry with her in the least. He had simply cut her off from his mind. There was no such person any longer. That returned letter informed him of her death. Those documents he had signed for her were announcements of her decease. That auction bell would ring for the interment of the past and the future which had of late given him trouble. With her went everything he loved. He was alone now, face to face with his fate, and free from any unmanning influence or depressing considerations. This was best of all!
As to the other and greater danger, that was scarcely worth counting. So far there had not been the shadow of menace. Farleg had, no doubt, got out of the country, and was now settled with his wife somewhere out West. No reason existed for supposing Farleg would betray him; for he had taken hush-money, and no reward had been offered, as nothing had been suspected. No; he need not fear that source. Only one thing remained to be done. He had shaken off those superstitious terrors which had haunted him for a while. He was still menaced by the cancelled pages in London; that was the only danger ahead. All his energy for the future should be directed towards avoiding the consequences of his theft.
The day Sir William left Daneford Grey spent at the Bank. His private correspondence and such account-books as he himself kept, to which no one but himself had access, were in arrears, and had to be brought up to the current day. He had to give a long audience to Mr. Aldridge, and several merchants wanted to see him, so that the hours were fully occupied, and when he got home he felt tired; it was dark, and he resolved not to go to the Island until the early part of the next afternoon.
When next day he got to the Castle, he found Mrs. Grant in the great hall about to go out.
"I am lucky to meet you, Mrs. Grant. If you are not in a great hurry I should like a few words with you."
"Certainly, Mr. Grey; I shall be most happy. I am going to town for a few things Miss Midharst and myself want. I have not been out since poor Sir Alexander's death; but I'm in no hurry."
They were now in the open air.
"I hope Miss Midharst is quite well?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"And not pining after her handsome cousin?" with a gay smile.
"Handsome! Do you too think him handsome?"
"Yes. But who else thinks him good-looking?" with a still brighter smile.
"Miss Midharst says he is one of the handsomest men she ever saw."
"Upon my word I am inclined to believe with her." This was accompanied by the brightest smile of all. "It is useful to know what she thinks of her cousin's appearance," thought Grey gravely.
"Well, Mr. Grey, I can see nothing handsome about him. I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman; but I forgive him his looks because of his good behaviour. Nothing could have been better than his conduct from first to last. He makes Miss Midharst stay here; he promises to do up the Castle and grounds; and last of all, Mr. Grey, he speaks of you before he goes away in words which do him credit."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Nothing could have been more manly than the way he spoke his mind to Miss Midharst and myself about you the other evening, the last day you were here. I don't think he liked you at first; but he made up for that at last. Nothing could be better than what he said."
"I am glad to find he does not misunderstand me." These were two useful and significant facts: that Maud thought her cousin good-looking, and that her cousin had been favourably impressed by him. "Mrs. Grant," he said, after a pause, "you said you were going to town to buy some things for yourself and Miss Midharst."
"Yes."
"Will you have the goodness to put this parcel in your purse? It is what you are entitled to under the will of Sir Alexander."
He held out his hand to her with a bundle of notes.
"I really don't want it now, Mr. Grey," she said, remembering what Sir William had told her.
They had already reached the Ferry-slip. He held out his hand to her. She held out the notes to him. He smiled, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said:
"Give me your hand only. I want to help you into the boat. Put that bundle in your pocket. I hope you do not think I want it."
He handed her into the boat, raised his hat, and, when the ferryman had pulled a dozen strokes from the slip, raised his hat again and turned towards the Castle.
As he walked he thought: "That is not the worst investment I ever made. Prompt payment and attention go a long way with women who are no longer young. Now for a woman who is young and charming."
"What an agreeable man Sir William is!" said Grey, when he had been some time seated with Maud. "So affable, good-natured, and amusing. He is one of the most pleasant young men I ever met."
"I am glad you like him," said Maud, a little surprised.
"Like him! Of course I do. He is a man after my own heart. So open-minded and full of go, of animal spirits. You very seldom find a man who has been long out of Europe retain his animal spirits. The inhabitants of Asia and Africa are always afraid of sunstroke or snakes, tigers or tyrants. In the tropics no one ever makes a joke. Life is always serious there. Who ever heard of an Eastern Joe Miller? No; they have proverbs and poetry, but no jokes. When you are always expecting to find a snake coiled round the leg of the table, or an official waiting outside the door with a drawn sword to cut off your head, you are afraid to laugh. Now what I admire most in Sir William is that, although he has been long in Africa, he has kept his animal spirits unimpaired. Isn't it a great blessing?"
"Yes," answered Maud, in amazement.
"I know it is not what very straitlaced people would like, but the views he holds of all serious things are most diverting. I am very sorry I had to go away while he was here. It is such a privilege to meet a man like him – a man of the world who knows everything, and can laugh at the weaknesses and follies of the world, under which heads of weaknesses and follies he classes much of what smug respectability calls the Generous and Noble Aspirations of Men. I will not say I hold his views, but I hold my sides when he tells them. Did you hear any of his stories?"
"No, Mr. Grey," answered Maud, ready to cry. Was there really this other, this light and frivolous side to her cousin's character? She could hardly believe it. Yet here was Mr. Grey telling her about it, and no one could think of doubting Mr. Grey's word.
"Ah! Quite so. Yes. It is likely he thought you might not care for them. They might seem profane to you. I have been most unwise. I felt sure he had told them to you. He might be displeased with me if he knew I had mentioned them to you. Will you promise not to allude to them when you speak or write to him? I daresay he will write to you, and you will write to him."
"He promised to write, and I promised to write to him."
What a revelation was in the banker's words! Could it be her cousin had two sides? If it was so, where did the insincerity end? This was a miserable discovery after she had lifted him up in her mind as a perfect model of what a man should be.
"Of course you will write to your guardian and your only cousin; but mind you are not to say anything about what I have been saying to you. I should not mind speaking of it to him in your presence, but a thing of that kind in black and white looks very bad. Have you heard from him yet?"
"Yes; I got a note saying he was about to set off. It was written yesterday."
Her face looked wan and weary. It was disenchanting to hear all this of Cousin William. How could it be?
"A bad sign. A very bad sign," thought the banker. "But we must be a match for him. We must be a match for him. No precaution shall be neglected." Then he said aloud: "I shall be very often at the Castle now; for not only shall I have to come and see you, but I am also to look after the workmen for Sir William, so that I fear you will have to make up your mind to endure a great deal of me."
