Miss Ainsleigh came to us very often, undismayed by the griminess of the coal-yard, or the bumping of casks and champagne-cases on the pavement before our neighbour’s storehouses. She had been pleased to take a fancy, as it is called, to my sisters, and they were delighted with her beauty and vivacity, I counted for less than nothing in the affair; but I felt, nevertheless, that it was a very nice thing to have sisters; and there was no attraction in Orpingdean strong enough to tempt me away from our spacious, shabby, comfortable old drawing-room, when I knew that Barbara was coming to spend the evening with our girls.
She came very often during the winter and early spring and summer and autumn that succeeded the race-ball, where she renewed her acquaintance with my sisters after their return from the Parisian seminary. Miss Ainsleigh had never been to school. Was she not too precious a creature to be intrusted to the care of strangers? She had been educated under her father’s roof, by an expensive governess, and by masters innumerable, and the process had made her a very accomplished young person; though rather superficial, according to the dictum of my sisters, who had learned Latin, and moral philosophy, and natural science, and a good many “ologies,” which Miss Ainsleigh had not been troubled with.
One of the chief bonds of union between this young lady and my sisters was music. Barbara had a noble mezzo-soprano voice. My sister Arabella had a decent soprano, my sister Louisa an endurable contralto, while I had been endowed with that deep abdominal growl which may be considered either a fine bass or an insufferable nuisance, according to the taste of the listener. It was the fashion at Orpingdean to accept me as a kind of amateur Lablache, and of the execrations that may have been heaped upon me in secret I would rather not think. I was very grateful to Providence for my ability to growl when Miss Ainsleigh came to us; for I was thus enabled to partake in those exercises of the voice which constituted our musical evenings. O, what duets and trios and quartettes we sang in the long winter evenings, while my father nodded behind his newspaper, and my mother nodded over her knitting! What gentle gales we blew, what merry men we uproused, what foxes we assisted in jumping over farmers’ gates, what cool grots we inhabited, with what happy laughter we greeted each other’s mistakes, and how like to the melody of the spheres Barbara’s fresh young voice sounded in the ears of one adoring listener!
Yes, my doom was sealed. From that love at first sight with which I was stricken at the race-bail I might possibly have recovered. Is it not a faculty of youth to be stricken with such sudden fevers, and to recover from them, to lay down its votive wreath at the feet of one divinity to-day, and to pick up the poor frail blossoms, not so very much the worse for wear, and carry them to another shrine tomorrow? This boyish fancy for a beaming smile, and dark tresses crowned with flowers, might have been fleeting as other fancies; but from the love that grew upon me in the quiet progress of our family intercourse there was no such thing as recovery. We had a garden behind the old house in the High-street, a long grass-plot, very excellent for croquet, and a hazel-walk which seemed to have been made for lovers. We heard the bumping of the casks and cases in a long covered yard next door, and on warm summer evenings a faint odour of port or sherry was wont to pervade the atmosphere. But we played croquet indefatigably, nevertheless, in the summer afternoons and evenings, nor did Miss Ainsleigh scorn to join us in that delightful sport, once, and sometimes twice a week all through the croquet season; which, as I take it, extends from the first tolerably fine day in March to the last dry afternoon in October. We walked in the hazel-walk sometimes, Barbara and I, while my sisters and Mr. Dodderly, one of our curates, or Mr. Midvale, his brother in the Church, prepared the croquet-ground, or collected the balls and mallets when the sport was over. The faint stars used to twinkle sometimes in the summer sky above the hazel-trees, and it seemed to me altogether very sweet and very poetical, despite the casks and cases bumping and rolling close at hand, and the odour of fine crusted port that mingled with the perfume of our roses and clematis.
Nothing could have been more trivial and commonplace than our conversation on these occasions. It seemed as if we were trivial and commonplace by choice, for whenever we touched perchance upon any serious subject, — our hopes, our dreams, the things we loved, the plans we had formed for the future, — we both shrank from the topic as if affrighted, and hastened with nervous precipitancy to return to some frivolous discussion about our last discovery in the science of croquet, the new glee we were learning, the curate’s sermon of the previous Sunday, or the popular volume of travels or poems lately received from the book-club.
We loved each other. Barbara must have been dullest among women if she had failed to discover how fondly she was adored; and, without being a coxcomb, I could not choose but assure myself, with unutterable delight, that I was something more than an ordinary acquaintance in the eyes of Miss Ainsleigh. And so summer and autumn went by, and no week passed in which Barbara and I did not meet — sometimes at my father’s house, sometimes at our quiet little Orpingdean dinner and tea parties; sometimes at the old Queen-Anne mansion outside the town, where Mr. Ainsleigh received us whenever we liked to visit him, and where there was a croquet-lawn that had once been a Dutch bowling-green. Barbara’s father was very well pleased that his darling should have found pleasant friends in the immediate neighbourhood, with whom she could beguile the weariness of a country life. He paid us a ceremonial visit one morning in company with his daughter, and expressed to my mother and sisters his satisfaction upon the subject, in a gallant and stately speech. After this he invited our household to a ceremonial dinner, at which we met some of the county magnates, such a dinner as Mr. Ainsleigh only gave about twice a year. He was a man who took very little pleasure in what is called society. The books which lined the walls of every room he lived in were his friends and companions. He existed for them, and he loved them with a complete affection that left no room in his mind for any frivolous attachments. He regarded his daughter with extreme tenderness, and he indulged her every wish with unquestioning alacrity; but whether this beautiful, beaming creature, with the dark hair and blooming cheeks, was quite as dear to him as his Boccaccio on large paper, or his original edition of Urquhart’s Rabelais, is a question I should scarcely like to decide. He loved her, and he allowed her to do exactly as she liked. I have sometimes thought that he might have been a little less indulgent to this charming daughter if his library had not held the first place in his esteem.
And in all these pleasant meetings, in our croquet-parties and musical evenings, our blowing of gentle gales, and uprousing of merry men, how did the future appear to me, Frederick Wilmot, only son and heir to Andrew Wilmot, solicitor, of High-street, Orpingdean? Could I for a moment consider myself a fitting pretender to the hand of Barbara Ainsleigh, beauty and heiress, future possessor of the grand old red-brick mansion, and of the wide-spreading lands appertaining thereto, to say nothing of that funded estate which Mr. Ainsleigh was said to have inherited from his uncle and adopted father, Lucas Ainsleigh? Alas, I was fain to confess that my hopes were of the faintest order.
I knew that my father had begun life with an ample fortune, and that he must have added considerably to that fortune during the many years of a prosperous professional career. I knew that he would admit me into partnership whenever I proved myself worthy of that honour. But what of that? Was it to be supposed that Mr. Ainsleigh would submit to see his daughter the wife of a solicitor in a country town? Would I submit to such a sacrifice, were I the father of such a daughter? I asked myself that question, and replied boldly in the negative. And then I ordered my young hopes — those fair children of the mind — off to execution, and felt myself another Brutus.
Yes; in the future loomed the black shadow of despair. I knew this, and yet was happy. It is so difficult to be unhappy when one is four-and-twenty years of age, and in almost daily companionship with the dear girl one loves. My Barbara’s image filled my mind by day and night; but I worked at my dryasdust labours in the office wit
h a plodding industry that delighted my business-like father. Ah, those simple, middle-aged people, how little they know of the dramas that are being enacted under their very noses! O, how Barbara’s bright image danced between the lines of leases and covenants, deeds of assignment and bills of sale! and how her sweet face peered out at me from the elaborate curves and flourishes of initial letters, like saint or siren in mediaeval manuscript!
Well, it was a sweet dream while it lasted. I was awakened by a crash; terrific as the cannonade that roared without the walls of Brescia when Gaston de Foix mounted barefoot to the breach; or as the simultaneous tumbling of fire-irons that sometimes startled my father from his after-dinner nap.
Christmas was close at hand, and I was looking forward to several parties at which Barbara and I were to meet. The shadow looming in the remote future seemed more than usually remote at this period. My sisters made merry with me on the subject of my devotion to Miss Ainsleigh; for it is the property of sisters to be disagreeably acute upon these occasions. I endured their badinage with good humour; for though they asked me if it was likely that a country-town solicitor could aspire to the hand of a beauty and heiress, their tone seemed to me to imply that they did not think my case utterly hopeless, and I took comfort from their idle discourse.
Miss Ainsleigh made her appearance unexpectedly at our nine-o’clock tea one evening in December, when my father and mother were engaged at on old-fashioned dinner and whist-party. My sisters were chattering by the fire, and I was sitting apart pretending to read, and thinking of Barbara, when I heard a carriage stop in the street below. I hurried to the window, scarcely daring to hope that I should see Miss Ainsleigh’s smart little brougham.
I did see that admired vehicle, and three minutes afterwards Barbara was in the room, shawled and furred, and looking unusually pale in the light of our wax-candles. My father cherished an antipathy to gas, which I have since learned to respect.
“Why, Barbara, this is quite a delightful surprise!” cried my sister Louisa. “Come to my room, dear, and take off your things. Of course you have sent the brougham back?”
“No, dear,” Miss Ainsleigh faltered, in tones very different from those we had been used to hear from her lips. “I can’t stay long to-night. Papa has a friend with him. See, I have come out in my dinner-dress. I made an excuse for leaving papa and his friend to take coffee alone; and no one but Emms and Phillis Trotter know that I have come out. I — I only came to say a few words to you, Louisa, about something that has happened — at home.”
She seemed on the point of bursting into tears, and her grief smote me to the quick. I was hastening to console the object of my adoration, when Louisa hustled her out of the room, and Arabella followed, both girls pleased with the excitement of the situation, and utterly indifferent to my agonies. For half-an-hour I paced the drawing-room in anguish unspeakable; but at the end of that time the three girls returned; and Louisa, who was not such a very obnoxious creature as sisters go, told me that she had obtained Miss Ainsleigh’s permission to tell me the trouble that oppressed her.
“You ought to know almost as much about the law as papa by this time,” said Louisa, “and you can most likely explain poor Barbara’s position.”
“It is not myself I think of,” exclaimed Barbara, half crying. “Poverty would not seem so hard to me; but papa — he is so refined; his tastes are so expensive, — a sudden reverse would kill him. And he will lose all — even his books, perhaps — if that dreadful paper is what it seems to be.”
“Sudden reverse! — dreadful paper!” I implored the young lady to be more coherent.
“I — I have found a will, of my great-uncle Lucas Ainsleigh’s, that makes papa a pauper,” she said; and thereupon produced a yellow-looking document, on a couple of sheets of Bath post.
I was well acquainted with the circumstances of Miss Ainsleigh’s family. William Ainsleigh, her father, had inherited the estate, which was not entailed, from his uncle, by virtue of a will, dated some years before that gentleman’s death, and immediately after his quarrel with his only child, a daughter, who had married a certain James Dashwood, a landscape-painter of some talent, but of no position, against her father’s wish. The young lady and her husband disappeared almost immediately after the marriage. It was supposed they had gone to America, where the painter had friends. Lucas Ainsleigh felt the blow keenly, but preserved an obstinate silence upon the subject of his grief. He publicly announced his intention to leave all he possessed to his eldest nephew, William Ainsleigh, and he executed a will to that effect, which document was drawn up by my father, and remained in his possession till Lucas Ainsleigh’s death.
The will Barbara showed me was dated a week before the testator’s death, the date of which event I perfectly remembered. It was witnessed by a certain Rachel Coles and Andrew Hardwick, both of which names were strange to me. The will seemed a good one. The body and signature were in the same hand. It left the bulk of the testator’s fortune to Margaret Dashwood, late Ainsleigh, — at that time supposed to be living somewhere in the United States — most probably New York, — and to Barbara’s father only five hundred a-year from funded property.
The testator entreated his nephew to pardon this sudden change of resolution. He felt the hour of death approaching; and as that hour drew nearer, his stubborn heart softened more and more to his poor child, and he felt himself bound to make her all possible reparation for his unkindness.
This was the tenor of the document. I read it hurriedly at first, in my excitement, and then carefully, but I could see no legal flaw.
“Where did you find this, Miss Ainsleigh?”
“In a chest of old manuscripts, in the room where my great-uncle died,” replied Barbara. “He was a collector of curious books and manuscripts, like papa, you know; indeed, it was from him papa learnt the taste for these things. It was only this evening I found that dreadful paper. Mr. Lostenwich dined with papa, and after dinner they began to talk about curious manuscripts; and papa said he had a muniment chest filled with very rare papers that he had not even looked at, and amongst them he believed there was a manuscript treatise by Roger Bacon. Mr. Lostenwich said he would like, of all things, to see such a manuscript. Papa was anxious to show it to him; but he has not been very well lately, and, as I knew the search would involve some fatigue, I begged him to let me hunt for the treatise. He consented, after some little discussion, and then gave me a minute description of the manuscript and the chest it was to be found in. I took Phillis Trotter, my dear good little maid, to the room with me, and between us we dragged the muniment chest from the cupboard where it had been kept for ages, as we could tell by the thickness of the dust upon the lid. I found the key upon a bunch papa had given me; and after some little trouble succeeded in opening the chest, and began my search. Phillis held the candle for me while I knelt down to examine the manuscripts.”
“Does Phillis know of this?” I asked, pointing to the will, which lay open before me, and from which I could not entirely withdraw my consideration even while listening to Miss Ainsleigh.
“Yes, Phillis knows. In my first surprise and horror I betrayed everything. But she is the best of good creatures, and will not breathe a word of this business without my permission. I looked over a great many papers, and threw them back into the chest, but I could see no vestige of Roger Bacon’s treatise, with its long Latin name. I was just about abandoning my search in despair, when I saw the indorsement — I think you legal people call it indorsement — of that paper. My uncle’s name, and the words ‘last will and testament,’ excited my curiosity. I opened the paper, and I was in the act of reading it, when the door was opened, and an exclamation from Phillis told me of my father’s coming. He had been alarmed by my long absence, and had left his friend to come in search of me. I threw the will back into the chest, and answered papa’s questions as calmly as I could. I assured him that there was no manuscript of Roger Bacon’s to be found in the chest, and persuaded him to return to hi
s Mend and to apologise for my non-appearance. I had recourse to the favourite feminine excuse, a head-ache; and, after sending papa back to the dining-room, I despatched Phillis to order the brougham, for my first impulse was to come to you with this dreadful paper. And O, Mr. Wilmot, does this will really mean anything, and will it reduce papa to poverty, for I fear he has squandered a great deal of money on his books, and has considerably impoverished the estate; and he will have to give all back, will he not, if that paper is binding?”
How could I answer her when she looked at me with such a terror-stricken face, alarmed not for herself — I doubt if she was even conscious that her own interests were at stake — but for the father she loved so fondly!
I was obliged to tell her that to the best of my belief the will was a good one.
“Then I must give it to papa,” she answered sadly. “ It would be wicked to keep it hidden for a single day, now that I know the duty it imposes upon us. And papa must give up the Hall, and begin life afresh — I am sure he will make the sacrifice bravely, but I fear it will cost him a broken heart. He loves the old Hall so dearly.”
And then she began to think of the people interested in the newly-discovered will.
“I wonder where my poor cousin is to be found*” she said; “it is nearly twenty years since my uncle died, and it was years before his death that she married Mr. Dashwood and went to America. She never was known to write to any of her relations after leaving England. I have heard papa say that he tried to find her out, in order to help her, after the property became his; but he never succeeded in obtaining any tidings of her. And now all belongs to her, and she will come back to. turn my poor father out of his home, and will never know how kindly he thought of her.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1088