by Ellen Wood
“I would go to bed, if I could sleep,” said Mrs. Chattaway. “I lie awake night after night, thinking of the past; of the present; thinking of Rupert and of what we did for him; the treatment we deal out to him now. I think of his father, poor Joe; I think of his mother, Emily Dean, whom we once so loved; and I — I cannot sleep, Diana!”
There really did seem something strange in Mrs. Chattaway to-night. For once in her life, Diana Trevlyn’s heart beat a shade faster.
“Try and calm yourself, Edith,” she said soothingly.
“I wish I could! I should be more calm if you and my husband would allow it. If you would only allow Rupert to be treated with common kindness — —”
“He is not treated with unkindness,” interrupted Miss Diana.
“It appears to me that he is treated with nothing but great unkindness. He — —”
“Is he beaten? — is he starved?”
“The system pursued towards him is altogether unkind,” persisted Mrs. Chattaway. “Indulgences dealt out to our own children are denied to him. When I think that he might be the true master of Trevlyn Hold — —”
“I will not listen to this,” interrupted Miss Diana. “What has come to you to-night?”
A shiver passed over the frame of Mrs. Chattaway. She was sitting on a low toilette chair covered with white drapery, her head bent on her hand. By her reply, which she did not look up to give, it appeared that she took the question literally.
“I feel the pain more than usual; nothing else. I do feel it so sometimes.”
“What pain?” asked Miss Diana.
“The pain of remorse: the pain of the wrong dealt out to Rupert. It seems greater than I can bear. Do you know,” raising her feverish eyes to Miss Diana, “that I scarcely closed my eyelids last night? All the long night through I was thinking of Rupert: fancying him lying outside on the damp grass; fancying — —”
“Stop a minute, Edith. Are you seeking to blame your husband to me?”
“No, no; I don’t wish to blame any one. But I wish it could be altered.”
“If Rupert knows the hour for coming in — and it is not an unreasonable hour — it is he who is to blame if he exceeds it.”
Mrs. Chattaway could not gainsay this. In point of fact, though she found things grievously uncomfortable, wrong altogether, she had not the strength of mind to say where the fault lay, or how it should be altered. On this fresh agitation, the coming in at half-past ten, she could only judge as a vacillating woman. The hour, as Miss Diana said, was not unreasonable, and Mrs. Chattaway would have fallen in with it, and approved her husband’s judgment, if Rupert had only obeyed the mandate. If Rupert did not obey it — if he somewhat exceeded its bounds — she would have liked the door to be still open to him, and no scolding given. It was the discomfort that worried her; mixing itself up with the old feeling of the wrong done to Rupert, rendering things, as she aptly expressed it, more miserable than she could bear.
“I’ll talk to Rupert to-morrow morning,” said Miss Diana. “I shall add my authority to Chattaway’s, and tell him that he must be in.”
It may be that a shadow of the future was casting itself over the mind of Mrs. Chattaway, dimly and vaguely pointing to the terrible events hereafter to arise — events which would throw their consequences on the remainder of Rupert’s life, and which had their origin in this new and ill-omened order, touching his coming home at night.
“Edith,” said Miss Diana, “I would recommend you to become less sensitive on the subject of Rupert. It is growing into a morbid feeling.”
“I wish I could! It does grow upon me. Do you know,” sinking her voice and looking feverishly at her sister, “that old impression has come again! I thought it had worn itself out. I thought it had left me for ever.”
Miss Diana almost lost patience. Her own mind was a very contrast to her sister’s; the two were as opposite in their organisation as the poles. Fanciful, dreamy, vacillating, weak, the one; the other strong, practical, matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know what you mean by the ‘old impression,’” she rejoined, with a contempt she did not seek to disguise. “Is it not some new folly?”
“I told you of it in the old days, Diana. I used to feel certain — certain — that the wrong we inflicted on Rupert would avenge itself — that in some way he would come into his inheritance, and we should be despoiled of it. I felt so certain of it, that every morning of my life when I got up I seemed to expect its fulfilment before the day closed. But the time went on and on, and it never came. It went on so long that the impression wore itself out, I say, and now it has come again. It is stronger than ever. For some weeks past it has been growing more present with me day by day, and I cannot shake it off.”
“The best thing you can do now is to go to bed, and try and sleep off your folly,” cried Miss Trevlyn, with the stinging contempt she allowed herself at rare times to show to her sister. “I feel more provoked with you than I can express. A child might be pardoned for indulging in such absurdities; a woman, never!”
Mrs. Chattaway rose. “I’ll go to bed,” she meekly answered, “and get what sleep I can. I remember that you ridiculed this feeling of mine in the old days — —”
“Pray did anything come of it then?” interrupted Miss Diana, sarcastically.
“I have said it did not. And the impression left me. But it has come again. Good night, Diana.”
“Good night, and a more sensible frame of mind to you!” was the retort of Miss Diana.
Mrs. Chattaway crept softly along the corridor to her own dressing-room, hoping that her husband by that time was in bed and asleep. What was her surprise, then, to see him sitting at the table when she entered, not undressed, and as wide awake as she was.
“You have business late with Diana,” he remarked.
Mrs. Chattaway felt wholly and entirely subdued; she had felt so since the previous night, when Rupert was denied admittance. The painful shyness, clinging to her always, seemed partially to have left her for a time. It was as though she had not strength left to be timid; almost as Rupert felt in his weariness of body, she was past caring for anything in her utter weariness of mind. Otherwise, she might not have spoken to Miss Diana as she had just done: most certainly she could never have spoken as she was about to speak to Mr. Chattaway.
“What may your business with her have been?” he resumed.
“It was not much, James,” she answered. “I was saying how ill I felt.”
“Ill! With what?”
“Ill in mind, I think,” said Mrs. Chattaway, putting her hand to her brow. “I was telling her that the old fear had come upon me; the impression that used to cling to me always that some change was at hand regarding Rupert. I lost it for a great many years, but it has come again.”
“Try and speak lucidly, if you can,” was Mr. Chattaway’s answer. “What has come again?”
“It seems to have come upon me in the light of a warning,” she resumed, so lucidly that Mr. Chattaway, had he been a few steps lower in social grade, might have felt inclined to strike her. “I have ever felt that Rupert would in some manner regain his rights — I mean what he was deprived of,” she hastily added, condoning the word which had slipped from her. “That he will regain Trevlyn Hold, and we shall lose it.”
Mr. Chattaway listened in consternation, his mouth gradually opening in bewilderment. “What makes you think that?” he asked, when he found his voice.
“I don’t exactly think it, James. Think is not the right word. The feeling has come upon me again within the last few weeks, and I cannot shake it off. I believe it to be a presentiment; a warning.”
Paler and paler grew Mr. Chattaway. He did not understand. Like Miss Diana Trevlyn, he was very matter-of-fact, comprehending nothing but what could be seen and felt; and his wife might as well have spoken in an unknown tongue as of “presentiments.” He drew a rapid conclusion that some unpleasant fact, bearing upon the dread he had long felt, must have come to his wife’
s knowledge.
“What have you heard?” he gasped.
“I have heard nothing; nothing whatever. I — —”
“Then what on earth are you talking about?”
“Did you understand me, James? I say the impression was once firmly seated in my mind that Rupert would somehow be restored to what — to what” — she scarcely knew how to frame her words with the delicacy she deemed due to her husband’s feelings— “to what would have been his but for his father’s death. And that impression has now returned to me.”
“But you have not heard anything? Any plot? — any conspiracy that’s being hatched against us?”
“No, no.”
Mr. Chattaway stared searchingly at his wife. Did he fancy, as Miss Diana had done, that her intellect was becoming disordered?
“Then, what do you mean?” he asked, after a pause. “Why should such an idea arise?”
Mrs. Chattaway was silent. She could not tell him the truth; could not say she believed it was the constant dwelling upon the wrong and injustice, which had first suggested the notion that the wrong would inevitably recoil on its workers. They had broken alike the laws of God and man; and those who do so cannot be sure of immunity from punishment in this world. That they had so long enjoyed unmolested the inheritance gained by fraud, gave no certainty that they would enjoy it to the end. She felt it, if her husband and Diana Trevlyn did not. Too often there were certain verses of Holy Writ spelling out their syllables upon her brain. “Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.”
All this she could not say to Mr. Chattaway. She could give him no good reason for what she had said; he did not understand imaginative fancies, and he went to rest after bestowing upon her a sharp lecture for indulging them.
Nevertheless, in spite of her denial, the master of Trevlyn Hold could not divest himself of the impression that she must have picked up some scrap of news, or heard a word dropped in some quarter, which had led her to say what she did. And it gave him terrible discomfort.
Was the haunting shadow, the latent dread in his heart, about to be changed into substance? He lay on his bed, turning uneasily from side to side until the morning, wondering from what quarter the first glimmer of mischief would come.
CHAPTER XIX
A FIT OF AMIABILITY
Rupert came down to breakfast the next morning. He was cold, sick, shivery; little better than he had felt the previous night; his chest sore, his breathing painful. A good fire burnt in the grate of the breakfast-room — Miss Diana was a friend to fires, and caused them to be lighted as soon as the heat of summer had passed — and Rupert bent over it. He cared for it more than for food; and yet it was no doubt having gone without food the previous day which was causing the sensation of sickness within him now.
Miss Diana glided in, erect and majestic. “How are you this morning?” she asked of Rupert.
“Pretty well,” he answered, as he warmed his thin white hands over the blaze. “I have the old pain here a bit” — touching his chest. “It will go off by-and-by, I dare say.”
Miss Diana had her eyes riveted on him. The extreme delicacy of his countenance — its lines of fading health — struck upon her greatly. Was he looking worse? or was it that her absence from home for three weeks had caused her to notice it more than she had done when seeing him daily? She asked herself the question, and could not decide.
“You don’t look very well, Rupert.”
“Don’t I? I have not felt well for this week or two. I think the walking to Blackstone and back is too much for me.”
“You must have a pony,” she continued after a pause.
“Ah! that would be a help to me,” he said, his countenance brightening. “I might get on better with what I have to do there. Mr. Chattaway grumbles, and grumbles, but I declare, Aunt Diana, that I do my best. The walk there seems to take away all my energy, and, by the time I sit down, I am unfit for work.”
Miss Diana went nearer to him, and spoke in lower tones. “What was the reason that you disobeyed Mr. Chattaway with regard to coming in?”
“I did not do it intentionally,” he replied. “The time slipped on, and it got late without my noticing it. I think I told you so last night, Aunt Diana.”
“Very well. It must not occur again,” she said, peremptorily and significantly. “If you are locked out in future, I shall not interfere.”
Mr. Chattaway came in, with a discontented gesture and a blue face. He was none the better for his sleepless night, and the torment which had caused it. Rupert drew away from the fire, leaving the field clear for him: as a schoolboy does at the entrance of his master.
“Don’t let us have this trouble repeated,” he roughly said to Rupert. “As soon as you have breakfasted, make the best of your way to Blackstone: and don’t lag on the road.”
“Rupert’s not going to Blackstone to-day,” said Miss Diana.
Mr. Chattaway turned upon her: no very pleasant expression on his countenance. “What’s that for?”
“I shall keep him at home for a week, and have him nursed. After that, I dare say he’ll be stronger, and can attend better to his duty in all ways.”
Mr. Chattaway could willingly have braved Miss Diana, if he had only dared. But he did not dare. He strode to the breakfast-table and took his seat, leaving those who liked to follow him.
It has been remarked that there was a latent antagonism ever at work in the hearts of George Ryle and Octave Chattaway; and there was certainly ever constant and visible antagonism between the actions of Mr. Chattaway and Miss Diana Trevlyn, as far as they related to the ruling economy of Trevlyn Hold. She had the open-heartedness of the Trevlyns — he, the miserly selfishness of the Chattaways. She was liberal on the estate and in the household — he would have been niggardly to the last degree. Miss Diana, however, was the one to reign paramount, and he was angered every hour of his life by seeing some extravagance — as he deemed it — which might have been avoided. He could indemnify himself at the mines; and there he did as he pleased.
Breakfast over, Mr. Chattaway went out. Cris went out. Rupert, as the day grew warm and bright, strolled into the garden, and basked on a bench in the sun. He very much enjoyed these days of idleness. To sit as he was doing now, feeling that no exertion whatever was required of him; that he might stay where he was for the whole day, and gaze up at the blue sky as he fell into thought; or watch the light fleecy clouds that rose above the horizon, and form them into fantastic pictures — constituted one of the pleasures of Rupert Trevlyn’s life. Not for the bright blue of the sky, the ever-changing clouds, the warm sunshine and balmy air — not for all these did he care so much as for the rest. The delightful consciousness that he might be as quiet as he pleased; that no Blackstone or any other far-off place would demand him; that for a whole day he might be at rest — there lay the charm. Nothing could possibly have been more suggestive of his want of strength — as anyone might have guessed possessed of sufficient penetration.
No. Mr. Chattaway need not have feared that Rupert was hatching plots against him, whenever he was out of his sight. Had poor Rupert possessed the desire, he lacked the energy.
The dinner hour at Trevlyn Hold, nominally early, was frequently regulated by the will or movements of the master. When he said he could only be home at a given hour — three, four, five, six, as the case might be — the cook had her orders accordingly. To-day it was fixed for four o’clock. At two (the more ordinary dinner hour) Cris came in.
Strictly speaking, it was ten minutes past two, and Cris burst into the dining-room with a heated face, afraid lest he should come in for the end of the meal. Whatever might be the hour fixed, dinner had to be on the table to the minute; and it generally was so. Miss Diana was an exacting mistress. Cris burst in, hair untidy, hands unwashed, desperately afraid of losing his share.
He drew a long face. Not a soul was in the room, and the dining-
table showed its bright mahogany. Cris rang the bell.
“What time do we dine to-day?” he asked sharply of the servant who answered it.
“At four, sir.”
“What a nuisance! And I am as hungry as a hunter. Get me something to eat. Here — stop — where are they all?”
“Madam’s at home, sir; and I think Miss Octave’s at home. The rest are out.”
Cris muttered something which was not heard, which perhaps he did not intend should be heard; and when his luncheon was brought in, he sat down to it with great satisfaction. After he had finished, he went to the stables, and by-and-by came in to find his sister.
“Octave, I want to take you for a drive. Will you go?”
The unwonted attention on her brother’s part quite astonished Octave. Before now she had asked him to drive her out, and been met with a rough refusal. Cris was of that class of young men who see no good in overpowering their sisters with attention.
“Get your things on at once,” said Cris.
Octave felt dubious. She was writing letters to some particular friends with whom she kept up a correspondence, and did not care to be interrupted.
“Where is it to go, Cris?”
“Anywhere. We can drive through Barmester, and so home by the cross-roads. Or we’ll go down the lower road to Barbrook, and go on to Barmester that way.”
The suggestion did not offer sufficient attraction to Octave. “No,” said she, “I am busy, and shall not go out this afternoon. I don’t care to drive out when there’s nothing to go for.”
“You may as well come. It isn’t often I ask you.”
“No, that it is not,” returned Octave, with emphasis. “You have some particular motive in asking me now, I know. What is it, Cris?”
“I want to try my new horse. They say he goes beautifully in harness.”
“What! that handsome horse you took a fancy to the other day? — that papa said you should not buy?”
Cris nodded. “They let me have him for forty-five pounds.”