Chapter XIV: A Fresh Actor on the Scene

Except in a few occasional instances, Mr. Ambrose Cortelyon, who prided himself on his possession of an unbiassed mind, was not in the habit of being unreasonable either in his demands or his expectations, whether they concerned himself or others. Thus, he was quite aware that when his convalescence, so to call it, had reached a certain point and made no advance beyond it, it would be both useless and unreasonable on his part to look for any. Although Dinkel's marvellous drug could do much, it could not work miracles. He, the Squire, must not only be content, but must deem himself one of the most fortunate of men that such a measure of health had been given back to him as was now his, and henceforward his most fervent prayer must be for a continuance of it for an indefinite time to come.

Dinkel had held out to him the hope--nay, it had been next door to a promise--of a prolongation of his life for several months. What was there to hinder those months from extending themselves to years? He himself could see nothing in the way. Why should he not go on as he was going on now till his years had stretched themselves out to fourscore? Of course, he was only living a half-life, as it were; it was existence with sadly maimed powers, but only on such terms was existence possible to him at all. When we can't have what we would, the only wisdom is to content ourselves with what we have.

He was quite aware of his utter dependence on Dinkel, but on that score he had no fears. He knew that the young doctor meditated a removal to London before long; indeed, the contingency had already been discussed between them and provided for. Week by week Dinkel would forward to his mother by coach a small packet containing seven phials, the contents of one of which would be administered to the Squire each day by Mrs. Dinkel, whose services had been exclusively secured by the payment of a wage far more liberal than she could hope to obtain elsewhere. Dinkel's own services were to be remunerated at the rate of one hundred pounds a month for as long a time as he should prove successful in keeping his patient in the land of the living.

Under these circumstances, the Squire could bear to look forward to Dinkel's proximate departure with tolerable equanimity.

Dr. Banks, at the Squire's request, still kept up his visits to the Hall, but he no longer came daily as of yore. At each visit the same little farce, which each knew to be a farce, was enacted between him and his patient. Having felt the latter's pulse and looked at his tongue, Banks would remark in his inanely amiable way: "We are going on famously--famously. Strength thoroughly maintained; total absence of febrile symptoms; temperature absolutely normal. I think we could not do better than keep on with the old medicine."

"Of course we couldn't, Banks," the Squire would respond with a chuckle. "It's wonderful stuff that of yours. Send another pailful along as soon as you like."

Then would Banks take his departure, knowing well that not one drop of his medicine would be swallowed by the master of Stanbrook. But he had a large family, and could not afford to quarrel with his bread-and-cheese. He was no worse than the majority of his fellows, for circumstances make humbugs of most of us, if not in one way, then in another.

He had heard all that common report had to tell him about Dinkel, and about the magical drug he had brought with him from the East, but he forebore to make any inquiries of his own into the matter. To him the whole thing was an insoluble mystery; but, for all that, there was one consolatory feature connected with it. So long as Mr. Cortelyon could be kept alive, even were it with the connivance of the Foul Fiend himself, so long would he, James Banks, continue to draw a certain number of guineas for visits paid and physic supplied, although the one might be nothing more than a solemn farce, and the other might be poured down the kitchen sink.

To himself he stigmatized Cornelius Dinkel as a "Son of the Devil."

But what about the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant all this time?

After that last interview with the Squire, she had waited with exemplary patience for the news of his demise. He was a dear old man, and she had been grieved at finding him so near to death's door; but all these things are ordained by Providence for the best, and it would not only be useless but wicked to rebel against them. Of course, under the circumstances, she would have to go into mourning--that is to say, into a modified kind of mourning--for a short time. Society would expect it of her when the dead man's munificent bequest to her was made public. Well, she had the consolation of knowing that she never looked better than she did in mourning. Dear, dear Mr. Cortelyon!

Still, the expected news--one hardly likes to term it the longed-for news--failed to come. It was strange, it was very strange. After waiting a few more days with restrained impatience, she sent one of her servants direct to the Hall with a diplomatically worded message having reference to the state of Mr. Cortelyon's health. The answer he brought back was both surprising and disconcerting. An unexpected change had manifested itself; the Squire was very much better, and the improvement seemed likely to last.

"Oh, I am so glad, so very glad!" said Mrs. Bullivant to her messenger when he had unburdened himself of his news. "You have relieved me of a great anxiety."

"So the improvement seemed likely to last, did it?" she said to herself. But that was sheer nonsense. It had been her lot to see a good deal of sickness and death, and if she had ever seen a man whose hours were numbered, that man was Ambrose Cortelyon. The so-called improvement, as to the nature of which every one about him seemed to be laboring under a misapprehension, was but Nature's expiring effort. She had been a witness of such things before. For a few brief moments the lamp would flame up as brightly as ever it had done, and then would come sudden darkness.

It was with an easy mind that she set out next day for London, where some law business connected with her late father's affairs rendered her presence imperatively necessary. She was gone six weeks, during the whole of which time she looked, morning by morning, to receive a letter containing an announcement of the Squire's demise. But none came to hand. It was both unaccountable and disappointing. It would have been such an advantage to her to be able to buy her mourning in town! She journeyed back home in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. It was no longer "dear, noble-hearted Mr. Cortelyon," with her; he was now a "nasty tiresome old man, who ought to be ashamed of himself to be so long a-dying."

On this occasion Mrs. Bullivant had a travelling companion in the person of her half-brother, Captain Wilton Ferris, who was a son of the late Mrs. Flood by her first husband.

Captain Ferris, who had sold out of the army some years before in consequence of a certain scandal with which his name was prominently mixed up, was a handsome but blasé-looking man of forty. He was well-known in London society as a gambler and a rake who had been black-balled at more than one club. In his time he had gone through two fortunes, his own and his wife's--he was now a widower without family--and for the last few years had been reduced to living by such wits as nature had endowed him with; but at length he had come to the end of his tether. He had received a quiet hint that his presence on the heath at Newmarket was undesirable; men looked shyly on him at the card-table; his reputation with the dice-box seemed to have preceded him wherever he went; pigeons worth the plucking were few and far between; and, worse than all, a bill for five hundred pounds, bearing his signature, would fall due in about ten weeks' time, his failure to take up which would involve nothing less than social ruin--such ruin as was still possible to him--and outlawry.

His strait was a desperate one, and, as a last resource, he had come to his half-sister, in the hope that once more--neither for the first nor second time--he might find salvation at her hands.

Mrs. Bullivant was a woman of tepid affections; nature had made her so, and she could not help herself; but, in her limited and narrow way, she had always cherished a fondness for her handsome, scampish half-brother. Her own bringing-up had been of the most strait-laced kind, and maybe for that very reason she liked him none the worse on account of his faults, which--and so far one may give him credit--he never strove to hide from her; in point of fact, she was the only person in the world to whom he ever spoke frankly. As a consequence, she cherished no illusions in respect of him; she knew that at his time of life it was useless to look for any radical change or improvement in him; that which he had been and was now he would remain till the end.

He had told her all about the "damnable fix" in which he now found himself, and if she did not sympathize with him, that was probably because it was not in her nature to sympathize with any one. On the other hand, she did not blame him, as so many people in her place would have done, for the reckless folly which had at length landed him in such an _impasse_.

But if she did not sympathize with him in words, she did something else which was very much more to the purpose so far as he was concerned. She said to him, "As soon as ever Mr. Cortelyon's legacy of three thousand pounds comes into my hands--and I am expecting the news of his death from hour to hour--I will place five hundred pounds of it at your disposal."

That had been a fortnight ago, but the wished-for news was still lacking; so now Captain Ferris was journeying down to Uplands with his sister, glad enough to get away from London for awhile, where, so importunate were his creditors becoming, it was no longer safe for him to venture out of his lodgings by daylight. Besides, at Uplands he would be on the spot when the longed-for legacy, in which lay his only hope of salvation, should drop into his sister's lap.

At this time it so happened that Mrs. Bullivant was not in a position to supply her brother out of her own resources with anything approaching the sum needed to help him out of his difficulty. She had just completed the purchase of a considerable slice of freehold property abutting on her own estate, and for the present her balance at her banker's might be said to be down to zero.

Although the late Mr. Flood had never liked his stepson, and after his wife's death, which occurred within a few years of their marriage, had kept him at arm's-length as much as possible, he had yet felt compelled, for the sake of appearances, to invite him now and again on a short visit to Uplands, so that the Captain was no stranger to the place and its surroundings.

No sooner was breakfast over on the morning after the arrival of himself and his sister than he set out on foot for a long ramble. The way he took led him in the direction of Stanbrook, and when he reached the village of that name, which, as we know, lay within a bowshot of the Hall, he marched into the bar parlor of the White Hart Inn and called for a bottle of the best sherry the house could furnish.

Such an order was attended to by the landlord in person, which was just what Ferris had counted on.

After they had chatted together for a few minutes about the weather and the crops, there was nothing out of the common in the Captain asking the worthy Boniface to join him over a glass of his own wine. A second glass helped to loose the latter's tongue, after which the rest was easy. They gossiped together for upwards of an hour before Ferris went his way. There was no need for him to seek further information elsewhere; he had learnt all he wanted to know.

What he had heard impressed him greatly; nor was its effect less marked upon his sister, who was, however, inclined to be skeptical with regard to some of the details. One thing was evident to both: Mrs. Bullivant must go to Stanbrook on the morrow and ascertain for herself how matters were progressing.