The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 2 of 3
Following this paragraph came one reciting the property of the deceased man, the most important passage of it being this:
"And such Consols as may be found registered in my name in the books of the Bank of England, an account of which, and the Consols themselves, are in the custody of Henry Walter Grey aforenamed, to the value at this date of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling."
Then came the final paragraph:
"And I hereby elect and appoint Henry Walter Grey, of the Manor House, Daneford, banker (hereinbefore described as Henry Walter Grey), executor and trustee to this my last will and testament, to hold authority, and to act in all matters connected with my property at his own sufficient discretion, with the limitations herein aforesaid. And I hereby elect and appoint the same Henry Walter Grey, of the Manor House, Daneford, banker, to be and to act as the sole guardian, with the limitations hereinbefore set forth, of my only daughter Maud, hereinbefore described as of the Castle of Warfinger, the residuary legatee in this my last will and testament. And to the aforesaid Henry Walter Grey I leave the burden of the safe guarding of my daughter's fortune, and the care of her orphanhood. I leave to his charge the savings of half a lifetime, and the last of a noble house. I pray that, as Henry Walter Grey may do by them and me, the God Almighty may do by him. Amen."
The old solicitor then read out the formal ending of the will, looked up, shut his eyes, and said:
"That is the only will which has been found of the late Sir Alexander Midharst, Baronet, of Warfinger Castle."
He opened his eyes for a moment, and then shut them again, adding while they were closed:
"The will is in my handwriting. I drew it at the late baronet's dictation, using almost his identical words."
He turned over the document, and scrutinised it closely.
"There is no codicil or addition of any kind," bowing to Miss Midharst.
There was a moment's silence, during which every one present looked down.
It was only by the most powerful effort Grey could prevent himself from shouting aloud under the intolerable relief. Although he had expected the will to be in some such terms, he could scarcely believe that, after his days and nights of agonised dread, all had come right. He felt like one who, after long durance in a dim and choking cave, is lifted into a sunlit flowery valley, over which larks are singing, and through which flows a bright silver stream, along which he may wander with unquestioned feet.
Now all was secure. This girl and her whole fortune had, within the past half-hour, been signed and sealed into his possession. True, he had no control over her personal actions. But he soon should have control, the most potent of all – the control of husband over wife. According to the will, she might marry as soon as she pleased. There was nothing now in the world to prevent her being his wife in twelve months.
Nothing to interfere with his marrying this girl and blotting out the trace of his crime. Already she liked him. As they came into that room to hear that will read, by which he became sole executor, trustee, and guardian, did she not lean on him? Already she liked him. Soon she should love him. Soon she should marry him.
Considering her position, the world would approve of her marrying; for she had no one to protect her but a guardian, no kin near enough to take any interest in her. In her solitary situation, every one would approve of her marrying soon.
There was a rustle, and all the men rose to their feet upon perceiving Miss Midharst in the act of rising.
Grey looked across for a moment at her, as she stood upon the right hand of the vacant chair.
"She mine!" he thought. "She will be my salvation! There is nothing now to keep her from me! Nothing between her and me!"
"Miss Midharst," said a deep grave voice at the other side of the table, "I fear there is no one here who can introduce me to you, so that I shall be obliged to introduce myself."
Grey started, and looking across the table, saw the stranger advancing towards Miss Midharst.
The banker threw one glance around, by which he plainly told the other men that he intended resenting so unwarrantable an intrusion on the grief and privacy of the occasion. All his fears had vanished into air. The only feeling he now experienced was that a pushing stranger was seeking to occupy the unwilling attention of his legally constituted ward, and the woman who was to be his wife.
Grey crossed the room rapidly at the back of the vacant chair, and placing himself beside Miss Midharst, bowed and offered her his arm.
She took it, and for a second no one moved.
Maud looked up and saw in front of her a tall, broad, dark-visaged, black-haired, sad-featured man, with dark and dreamy eyes.
She shrank back slightly, and clung to the stalwart arm on which her small white hand lay.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the banker blandly, "I shall be happy to place myself at your disposal when I have led Miss Midharst to her private apartment. May I request you to take a seat until then?"
"Thank you, sir. Your name is Grey."
"It is. And as you have heard the will, you know I am in a position to tell you that anything you have to say to Miss Midharst may, under present circumstances, be more reasonably said to me." The banker advanced his foot, and Maud, still clinging to him, moved to go.
Again the stranger bowed low to Miss Midharst. It was impossible, without downright rudeness, for Grey to move until the stranger should have recovered an erect attitude, as evidently there was something else he wished to say.
"Miss Midharst," at last the stranger said, "I am William Midharst, your cousin;" he held out his hand to her.
"The new baronet!" murmured the servants, in whispers. All the men looked keenly at the tall dark young man, who with a grave smile stood holding out a brown right hand to the fair, shrinking, timid, pale, beautiful girl.
She took her white trembling hand off the banker's arm and held it out to him. She was cold and trembling, and she felt as though she should faint.
He took the fingers of her white hand respectfully between the fingers and thumb of his own brown hand, and bending low with the homage of a chivalric age, and the simple sincerity of our own, kissed the white hand he held. Then, inclining his head towards the banker, he said gravely:
"Will you, sir, upon this occasion of my first meeting my cousin, forego your privilege, and allow me to take her to her apartment?"
The mind of the banker was dazed and paralysed, and in silence he signified his assent.
Placing the hand on the black sleeve of his left arm, Sir William Midharst, of Warfinger Castle, led his orphan cousin Maud down the room, and through the doorway.
As they disappeared Grey's face shrivelled up. Fortunately for him all present were too much occupied with the new baronet's arrival to notice him.
The whole fabric of Grey's rearing seemed to topple over and tumble into dust as these two figures went through the doorway. He was guardian it was true, but his power did not extend to his forbidding her to take that arm, to go through that doorway with that young man, to walk up to the altar-rails with any man whatever.
"Idiot that you have been, Alexander Midharst; you deserve nothing better than that your daughter's fortune should be lost!"
Then he stood a long time immovable.
At last the thought of the stake he had put down in this game rushed in upon his mind, and he was once more on the top of that Tower of Silence, under the dull sky with the Dead.
He now stood in the awful solitude of blood. He strode on through a realm of endless silence and limitless sand. For him there could never be any change here; always that maddening silence – always those unconquerable leagues of sand. Never any variety except —
He suddenly started and shouted. There had been a change in the monotony; for over his shoulder – not the one at which Maud had stood – over the right shoulder suddenly peered the face of his murdered victim.
With a pang of apprehension he became alive to his situation, and looked suddenly round. He was alone. All the others had left, and it was growing dark.
CHAPTER III
"COUSIN MAUD – " "NO; MAUD."
When the young baronet reached the corridor he said in a grave sedate voice:
"I knew your name was Maud; and I knew your poor father did not like me. I am sure you will believe me when I tell you I never saw him in all my life, never saw you until to-day, and never gave him any reason I know of to dislike me. It so happened I was heir to the property; it so happened I was poor. I could not help the former; I tried to do all I could to help the latter, and took an appointment in Egypt. It was such an appointment as a gentleman might take. You, Cousin Maud, had no feeling against me because I happened to be next to the title and estates?"
"Oh, no," answered the girl quickly, in a tremulous half-frightened voice, without looking up.
"And now that I have come to see you, cousin, you have no feeling against me?"
"Not the least. Why should I?"
"When you did not know who I was, you refused to see me to-day. Now that you know I am your cousin, the nearest relative you have on earth, will you do me a favour?"
"If I can, I will."
"Walk with me a while in the grounds; I have much to say to you. The air will do you good, and what I have to say will keep your mind off the sad business of to-day. Grant me this favour, if you do not feel too weak."
"I do not feel weak; only – only confused and frightened. I will go with you."
They had both halted at the foot of the grand staircase. She looked up into his face as she spoke. She had never seen one of her house but her father before. It was strange to think this man should be so unlike her father and yet related to her. He spoke as if he meant to be kind, and in any case she ought not to refuse so slight a favour to the only member of her father's family now living. As a child she had stood in mortal terror of this cousin – this cousin whom her father never lost an opportunity of abusing. But when she had grown older, she knew the young man did not, because he happened to be heir-presumptive to the property and title, deserve on that account solely to be vilified. Her father had always led her to think that towards her this cousin William would behave brutally, simply because her father had racked the property to the very uttermost penny. It had seemed natural that the next tenant for life would regard the acts of her father with strong resentment; and, taking into account the object for which the property had been swept clean, she felt William Midharst, when he came to be Sir William, could not look on her in a friendly spirit. But now that the worst had arrived, and he as a factor in the worst, it did not seem that he should have received such elaborate consideration, or have been the cause of any great dread. He was dark and gloomy-looking, but then he had been very polite.
While these thoughts were jostling one another in Maud Midharst's head, she was in her own room, preparing for that stroll with her cousin. The young baronet was walking softly up and down the great hall, and Wat Grey was standing transfixed by a new terror in the library the two young people had just left.
Presently Maud came down the great staircase. The young baronet looked up and saw a sweet, white, childish face, full of sadness in the midst of crape, and beneath that face a lithe graceful figure, moving as though the ground had nothing to do with her movements, her step was so free and light.
"My cousin Maud," thought the young man, "is too fair for health. Little cousin Maud – lonely little orphan cousin Maud – looks as if she and her father will not be long separated. I hope she is sufficiently clad. But then I must not forget I am used to swarthy faces and warmer skies. My little cousin Maud may live to wear a brighter look and gayer colours."
She was at his side now. All the other women in the world were nothing to him. She was his cousin. Back to the first litigious Sir John they both traced their lines – the great family of Midharst, which had come down through the noble house of Stancroft. His cousin Maud. They two were the last of the great house, they two. She, the pale, fragile, griefful lady, with the wonderful soft eyes, and shy half-frightened air and the pure young beauty. Good Heavens, how she sanctified the place! How she illumined the past! All the ladies of the Midharst house but her were dead: their portraits hung here and there upon the walls of this old historic castle. There was on the walls no lady of the Midharst line as beautiful as Maud. They were all dead and passed away. Around the walls hung the extinguished lamps of beauty in the Midharst house; here by his side stood the lamp clear and burning bright, the most beautiful and the only burning lamp in the house of Midharst – his beautiful cousin Maud.
"Cousin Maud," he said.
She looked up into his swarthy face, into his deep dark eyes, to show that she was attending, but did not speak.
"When I touched your hand first in all my life, a little while ago, there were many present, and you gave me your hand; it may have been merely to show those around us that you recognised me as the head of the family – the family of two. Will you now give me your hand as a private sign that you know of no reason why we should not be friends?"
She held out her hand to him. Not only was he not to be unfriendly, but he was going to be very kind, she thought.
He took her hand, and bending over it kissed the glove, and once more placing that hand on his arm, led her into the open air of the courtyard, under the great brown archway, and out into the shrubless bare grounds.
When they had got a little distance from the castle he broke silence:
"That tall good-looking gentleman, your guardian, Mr. Grey, was very nearly right in saying I was in Egypt; I have just returned. I have been only a few days in England. Upon my arrival I heard what had taken place, and came on as soon as possible. I got to Daneford last night, and put up at the Warfinger Hotel. It was then too late to call upon you, Cousin Maud. I did not send up my name to-day, because I feared, if you knew my name, you might, out of respect to the old feeling, refuse to see me."
He paused a moment as if to arrange his thoughts.
She, without raising her eyes from the ground, murmured,
"You were very kind."
She did not in saying this mean he had displayed kindness in his past action, but that he was displaying kindness to her now.
He understood her, and went on:
"I shall have to go back to Egypt immediately, and I cannot possibly return to England for some months. I shall be here again as soon as I can. Before I go away I want to establish a great friendship with you. I want you to make up your mind to disregard anything you have ever heard to my disadvantage, and look upon me as the head of the family of two, and your best and truest friend. I want you to promise me that at once, to-day – before I leave you – now."
His manner was very fervid and intense as he came towards the end. At the word "now" he ceased to walk.
She looked up. What a change had taken place in that placid, grave, sad face of a few moments before! The dark eyes were full of fire, the delicate nostrils moved, and the swarthy cheek was flushed. He rose up over her, tall and broad and fierce and strong. She trembled, but could not take her eyes from his. She had never met any man like this before. He fixed her attention upon him and upon his words beyond the power of her control. She was frightened and surprised.
"What am I to do?" she asked fearfully.
"You are always to look on your cousin William Midharst as your best friend. Will you promise me that here and now?"
"Yes."
"You promise."
"I promise."
"Very well, that is settled," he said in a quick way. "Let us move on. Now I have other things to say to you of as great importance. You must listen to me very patiently. When you do not understand what I say, you are to stop me and ask me to explain. Won't you?"
"Yes," very timidly.
"Now, from the little I have seen of your guardian, I like him very well, and I have no doubt no wiser selection could have been made. Those people I met in Daneford had something to say about events here, and every one who spoke said good things of him; when every one says good things of a man he must be a good man. Do you like your guardian? I believe you know him some time?"
"I know him since I was a child and I like him very much. No one could have been more kind or considerate than he; and I know my poor father had the greatest confidence in him."
She said this with more animation and earnestness than she had yet shown. Her gratitude to Grey was profound, and she did not wish her cousin should be for a moment in doubt of her feelings in the matter.
"That is all right: I am delighted to hear you say so. Now Mr. Grey has full and complete control of your fortune; that is a mere trifle."
She looked up at him in some surprise and said,
"I understood that Mr. Grey had a large sum."
"I did not mean that your fortune is a mere trifle, but that the fact of its being in his hands rather than any other honest man's is a mere trifle. What I wished to do was to draw a contrast between the comparatively triviality of the guardianship of your money compared with that of another thing."
His eyes were now fixed, staring ahead; and although she looked up into his face, he did not glance down, and she could gather no information through her eyes.
She said, in a tone of faint wonder:
"I do not know what you mean. My father always told me I should have nothing but the money."
Still keeping his eyes fixed ahead, he said, in a dull, slow, dreamy way:
"Well, there was one thing in your father's gift, for a time at all events, and the will gives it to no one. Supposing the guardianship of that thing were in your gift now, would you, considering that I am the only relative you have alive, and that you have agreed to look on me as your best friend, – would you, I ask, give me the guardianship of that thing?"
"But is there any such thing? I certainly never heard of it," she said, in greater wonder.
"There is such a thing."
"And it is in my power to give you the guardianship?" she asked.
"Absolutely, Cousin Maud."
"And you really wish to take the troublesome care of this, whatever it may be?"
"I do."
"Then I give it to you freely."
"And you will give me as absolute control over it as if it had been formally made over to my care by the will of your dead father?"
He had now paused in his walk once more, and was standing looking down on her, not with the fiery eyes of a few moments ago, but with deep, careful, anxious eyes, as though matter of great moment depended on her answer.
Under his steady glance she felt her head grow confused and hot. She did not know quite clearly what was passing, but she knew he had asked her to do something, and she must do it. "I promise," she said, very faintly.
This time he spoke with the most elaborate clearness of articulation, slowly and with emphasis:
"You promise to make over to me the guardianship of the thing to which I allude as absolutely as though it had been made over to me by your father's will."
"I do."
"Then it is the guardianship of my cousin, Maud Midharst."
"The guardianship of me! But Mr. Grey is my guardian!"
"Yes and no. He is the guardian of your fortune absolutely. But with respect to your own personal action you are left free. You are recommended by your father to apply to him for advice, but you are not bound to do any one thing he asks you, or to accept his advice beyond money matters. In all matters except money you are to consult me. You have promised, and you will do so?"
"I will keep my promise, but it is strange." She dropped her eyes, and again the two moved forward.
His face gradually lost its intense expression, and assumed its usual dreamy far-away look. In a few moments he spoke:
"Yes, it is strange, and to me, Cousin Maud, very sweet, that I should be able to do the least thing for you. You must now rely on me wholly. You must take no important step without consulting me. You are as much under my charge now as if you were my daughter. My only regret in the matter is that I am compelled to leave England almost immediately, but I shall be back in as short a time as possible; in the meanwhile you may look to Mr. Grey for the advice you want from day to day. But if anything of importance should arise, you must write and tell it to me, and I will write back and tell you what to do. You understand?"
"Yes. You are very good to one you know so little of."
"Know so little of! Know so little of! Do I not know you through the history of our house? Is it because we never met, and I never set foot on the Island before, that we do not know much of one another? When I look at those old walls; when I think of the great house of Fleurey from which we are both come; when I think that you and I bear the one name, and that the very walls which protected your infancy and girlhood are mine in my manhood; when I learned that my cousin Alexander had died, and left my cousin Maud alone in the world with a huge fortune and no natural guardian but myself; when I saw my cousin Maud, and found her pale and timid and tearful – I knew her through the past and in the present; and, Cousin Maud, with the help of Heaven and a resolute will, I shall know her in the future, to the last hour I can be of the least service to her. Why, child, I was horrified to think of you all alone and unfriended, save for the friendship of a middle-aged busy man, who had no natural claim upon the privilege of your safe-guarding. I feared something might come between you and me to prevent my getting close to you as I am now, in your confidence, and in the consequence of your promise."
She had raised her eyes to his after the first few sentences. She had noted again the flush in the swarthy cheek, again the fire in the large dark eye. She caught the voice of passionate chivalry that rang out through his words, clear and sharp as the voice of the cornet when it alone holds up the theme to the melodious confluence of harmonious strains flowing from orchestra and stage.
"Cousin Maud – "
"No; Maud."
"Maud."
They paused again. He was still in thought, and looked into her eyes, not with the sight of intelligence, but with the sight of the physical eye merely.
He had aroused her confidence, her gratitude, her interest. She was looking at him with as much astonishment as though, upon turning her back, she found not the Weeslade and the Plain of Spears, but the streams and fertile land that lie around Damascus, and the long low line of the city's ruined walls against the northern sky.
Mutely she held out her hand to him. He took it in silence, shook off his absorbed manner, smiled softly on her, then the two resumed their walk. From that moment, from that hand-pressure, from that smile, from the soft sigh which greeted that smile, and the firm breathing and measured step with which he resumed the walk, it was plain their friendship had been sealed. He knew he had inspired her with confidence, and she knew she felt faith in this new cousin-friend, who had been a source of disquiet to her in her childhood, and was destined to be a source of sustentation and strength to her in her maiden years.
For a while they walked on in silence.
"And now, Maud, there is some detail I wish to speak to you about."
"Yes."
"You will of course continue to live here – "
"But I am no longer – " she interrupted.
"You will, of course, continue to live here. I shall not set out for Egypt for a few days, and in that time I will see that all things are put in order for you here. I understand that the lady who sat upon your right is the Mrs. Grant alluded to in the will?"
"Yes. She is my only friend – "
"Maud, your only friend!"
"I mean, of course, William, after you."
"That's a good child. Call me William always, and learn to think of Mrs. Grant as your second friend. I hope she will continue to stay with you. Do you think she will?"
