Chapter XI: How Stephen Trenchard Forgives

The new life at Lancaster Lodge suits Sibyl as if she had been created for no other purpose than to sit at her uncle’s table, pour out his coffee, air his newspapers, play or sing to him in the evenings, and take her own pleasure for the rest of the day. Housekeeping is an easy burden in so well-ordered an establishment. The trained servants perform their duties, light for the most part, with mechanical precision. The service is too good to be forfeited by scamped work, or forgetfulness of the master’s wishes. Stephen Trenchard has let his servants understand that he will have fullest value for his money, that there must be no talents stowed away in napkins in his household. He has contrived to inspire them with wholesome fear, and is served to the utmost of their power.

Sibyl is not afflicted with a genius for domestic matters. She remembers with a shudder those days in Dixon Street when she had to cater for a penniless husband, and make ninepence do the work of a shilling. She remembers this weary time, and reposes in her low easy chair, novel in hand, the garden smiling at her through the open French window, horses and carriages at her disposal, luxury around her, all Redcastle subjugated and more or less prostrated at her feet,--she keenly remembers the past, and deems her present life worthy some sacrifice, more especially as the present is made still brighter by vague hopes of happiness, and a reconciliation of all life’s perplexities in the future.

She has her dark moments, naturally. What life is without shadow? There are moments when she thinks of one she has fondly loved--fondly loves still, perhaps, in some sealed chamber of her heart. There are hours in which she wonders, with remorseful wonder, how _he_ fares whom she so ruthlessly abandoned.

‘For his future advantage,’ she tells herself; ‘as Mrs. Secretan I should have forfeited my uncle’s fortune--as Miss Faunthorpe I may win it and share it with my husband.’

Established as Stephen Trenchard’s favourite niece, Sibyl finds herself an object of unbounded interest and admiration with the _élite_. Mrs. Stormont, although overflowing with kindness, at first shows some disposition to patronize, but finding this eldest Miss Faunthorpe a young woman not amenable to patronage, changes her note and accepts Mr. Trenchard’s niece as ‘one of ourselves,’ elected and chosen to sit in the high places of Redcastle.

‘The girl has a wonderful air,’ argues Mrs. Stormont, ‘when you consider that she is totally without family.’

‘Talking of family,’ muses the colonel, ‘I hope it’s all right about old Trenchard’s money, and that he hasn’t left any niggers over in Calcutta to whom he may leave his fortune.’

‘My dear Reginald, I’m surprised at you,’ exclaims the lady, with a look of horror. ‘Mr. Trenchard goes to church every Sunday, and is altogether a most correct person.’

‘We don’t know what he may have been in India, though,’ says the colonel. ‘He may have been a devil-worshipper, and danced an exaggerated highland fling at devil-dances; or a Mahometan, or a Brahmin, or a Thug. He seems to have plenty of money, and that’s about all we know of him.’

Notwithstanding which ignorance as to Stephen Trenchard’s antecedents the colonel and his wife continue to court and cherish him, arranging the nicest little dinners for him, with Mr. Groshen to sit opposite to him and discourse upon the money market; lavishing affection on Sibyl, inquiring kindly about the exiled Marion--as remote at the unvisited end of the town as if she had been removed to another hemisphere--and making themselves generally subservient and agreeable. Frederick Stormont, with his cutaway coat and legs like sticks of sealing wax, calls frequently at Lancaster Lodge, and is deeply interested in everything that interests Sibyl,--the flower-garden, the horses; he even volunteers to be interested in the poultry, but bottles his enthusiasm upon finding that Miss Faunthorpe has no taste for Dorkings, Spaniards, or Cochin-Chinas.

There is a billiard-room at Lancaster Lodge, and Frederick is great at billiards. He drops in of an evening, and plays with Mr. Trenchard; he teaches Sibyl how to handle her cue, and discourses wisely on the theory of angles.

‘Well, pretty one,’ says Mr. Trenchard one night, when Fred has taken his departure with obvious reluctance, and uncle and niece are loitering by the billiard-table, Sibyl leaning over the green cloth to aim at the distant red, dressed in pale gray silk, with innumerable flounces, and knots of mauve ribbon dotted about among them, a masterpiece of Miss Eylett’s art. ‘Well, my pet, I think it’s pretty clear what that young gentleman comes here for.’

‘Billiards, I should think,’ replies Sibyl, pushing her cue gently backwards and forwards as she meditates her aim. ‘They have no table at the Stormonts, and it is cheaper for him to play here than at the “Coach and Horses.”’

‘The billiard-table is a very good excuse, my dear, but the gentleman comes to see you.’

‘Poor thread-paper!’ exclaims Sibyl, with a contemptuous laugh. ‘For his own sake--if the thing can feel--I hope not.’

‘Why, he’d be a very good match for you, wouldn’t he?’ asks her uncle, looking keenly at her from under his penthouse brows. ‘These Stormonts are great people, the leaders of Redcastle society. You could hardly do better than marry into their set.’

‘If I were likely ever to marry, which I’m not,’ says Sibyl, pocketing her ball triumphantly off the red, ‘I’d marry a _man_.’

‘Never likely to marry! what do you mean by that?’

‘Simply that I’m quite happy as I am, and that I mean to stop with you, and take care of you, please uncle Stephen, until you get tired of me.’

She has been living with her rich uncle nearly three months, and there is no more talk of her being a visitor at Lancaster Lodge. It is her home. Marion may come and go, but Sibyl remains. Stephen Trenchard cannot do without her.

‘I shan’t get tired of you in a hurry,’ answers Mr. Trenchard, ‘but I think for your own sake you ought to marry when you get a good opportunity. I was only joking about that whipper-snapper, who walks about the place as if the very paving stones were his property, and couldn’t give you change for a five-pound note if you asked him for it. He’s not the man for you. But with your pretty face you are sure to find the right kind of man before long, a man with brains and money, and when you do I hope you’ll be wise enough to marry him. It’s all very well while I’m here to take care of you, but when I’m dead and gone----’

‘When you are dead and gone I shall have your money, you dear old thing,’ thinks Sibyl, but says not a word. She only goes to her uncle’s side, and lays her face upon his shoulder, and gives him one of those gentle little caresses which Marion would as soon have offered to the Zoological Garden’s tiger as to her Anglo-Indian uncle.

‘Yes, pretty one, I should like to see you well married before my time comes,’ says Stephen Trenchard.

‘Now you know, uncle, that you are under a solemn agreement with me to live till you are ninety,’ replies Sibyl, shaking her finger at him with playful menace.

She has grown very intimate with her uncle in these three months, her playing, her singing, her bright talk, her sparkling, vivacious little ways have won the old man’s confidence. Stern to all the rest of the world, implacable in all his dealing with men, suspicious alike of equals and inferiors, tyrannical to his servants, he is yet wondrously gentle to Sibyl. His inherent meanness, his mental incapacity to give, cannot be wholly subjugated even by her influence, but what money he bestows upon her he gives less grudgingly than to Marion. He feels the loss of so many pounds a shade less keenly when Sibyl’s pleasure is in question, and though he grumbles sorely at the costliness of a woman’s toilet he is pleased to see his niece expensively dressed, and may in time come to regard her costume as one of the accessories of his own grandeur, like his stables or hothouses.

Rarely, despite the confidence that is established between them, has Mr. Trenchard talked to Sibyl of his past life, of his youth never. He tells her his prosy old stories of Calcutta society, of men with whom he has had commercial dealings, of clever frauds and chicaneries which he chuckles over as the _coups d’état_ of the trading world, but of himself he speaks very little. Never, above all, has the fatal name of Secretan crossed his lips; and Sibyl is longing to find out the state of his feelings now, after this lapse of time, in relation to that name.

If he had learned, in the lapse of years, to forgive the man he injured and over-reached, if he had grown to feel some touch of remorseful pity for the supplanted son, what a happiness it would be to fall on her knees at his feet and confess the secret of her life, to be pardoned for her duplicity, set free from the toil and trouble of falsehood, able to call her proud young husband back to her side, and to begin life again, honest in the sight of man and at peace with God!

She is continually musing upon this question, and would give much for an opportunity of sounding her uncle’s feelings. It comes one day unawares, and she has no longer need to speculate or wonder about Stephen Trenchard’s sentiments upon the subject of an old enemy.

It is a drowsy July afternoon. The summer is at its hottest, and Mr. Trenchard and his niece are sitting on the lawn after that elaborate meal, half breakfast, half luncheon, which the Anglo-Indian calls tiffin. The lawn behind Lancaster Lodge is a delightful place on a warm summer day. Three or four old elms, a spreading cedar, a Spanish chestnut, and a couple of noble plane trees afford abundant shade. The grass is smooth as velvet. Garden chairs, low and luxurious, are dotted about under the trees. Newspapers, and Sibyl’s work-basket, bestrew the light iron table. Changing lights and shadows flit and flicker among the leaves, and Stephen Trenchard’s lean figure, stretched to its full length, reposes at ease on a bamboo reclining chair, a glass of potash water on one side of him, a cigar-case on the other.

Sibyl is reading to him out of yesterday’s _Times_, when he interrupts her with a sudden sigh, which is almost a groan.

‘What is the matter, uncle Stephen?’

‘You had better leave off,--even your soft voice irritates me.’

‘Your nervous headache not gone yet, uncle Stephen?’

‘Gone! It’s worse than ever. This English summer is more oppressive than Indian heat, or it seems so to me at any rate.’

Sibyl searches in the little work-basket lined with blue satin, fishes out a silver-stoppered scent-bottle, and is on her knees by her uncle’s side in a moment, dabbing his yellow forehead with her handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne.

‘Thank you, my dear, that will do. I don’t care about it.’

He gives her an impatient little push, as disapproving so much fuss, but not before she has disarranged one of those terrier-ear wisps of iron-gray hair, and been startled by a scar which disfigures the forehead beneath it, a long narrow seam, which crosses the temple diagonally just below the roots of the Hair.

‘Uncle Stephen, were you ever in battle?’

‘Battle, child? What nonsense! Of course not.’

‘Or in a mutiny--or anything? How did you get this dreadful scar?’

‘From the foul blow of a scoundrel,’ answers Stephen Trenchard, deadly pale. ‘From the man who lamed me for life. Did you never hear your mother speak of Philip Secretan?’

‘Yes, uncle Stephen, I have heard her say that he treated you very badly.’

‘Oh, she owned as much, did she? The world in general would have it that I used him badly, that I had no right to the money his father left me--a paltry thirty thousand; that I ought to have stood on one side and said, “No, blood is thicker than water. You’ve been an idler and a profligate--a bad son, the business would have gone to wreck and ruin if it had been left to you to save it. I’ve toiled, I’ve slaved, I’ve planned and plotted, I’ve borne the heat and burden of the day; but still you are the son, and you’ve a right to come in at the eleventh hour and rob me of my just reward, simply because you are the son.” That’s what the world would have had me do, in the high and mighty justice it is so good at dealing out for other people, and so bad at yielding on its own account. Some went so far as to say that the will was forged, and I was the forger. Luckily for me, old Mr. Secretan had published his intention of disinheriting his son, and making me his heir, the year of the great Manchester failures, when his house tottered, and I had the luck to save it by a desperate stroke of business.’

‘He was very fond of you, I suppose, this old Mr. Secretan?’ asks Sibyl, breathlessly.

‘Fond of me? Yes, perhaps as much as it was in his nature to be fond of anything, except money. He hated his son, knowing that he was a spendthrift, and would squander every shilling the old man had toiled for. He trusted me--he looked up to me. “If you were my son,” he used to say, “I shouldn’t be tortured by the thought that this business would go to ruin when I’m in my grave.” The day he said that for the first time I made up my mind that I was to be his heir. Philip’s follies and vices helped me, but my own patience and industry were the chief agents.’

‘And there was a quarrel between you and Philip Secretan?’ asks Sibyl, seated on the grass and plucking up little tufts of it nervously, as she watches her uncle’s vindictive face with eager eyes, reading doom there.

‘Yes, when the will had been read, and he knew the worst--he ought to have expected it if he had a grain of sense,--Philip Secretan followed me out into the grounds. His father’s house was a few miles outside Manchester, a fine old place enough, but neglected,--the old man was too fond of money to spend much on house or gardens. Philip followed me to the back of the grounds, where there was a wild bit of shrubbery and a hollow that had once been a stone quarry, and which had been left, either because people didn’t care about the expense of filling it, or because they fancied it was picturesque. In any case it was dangerous, and an abomination that ought to have been done away with. Well, I was close to the edge of this hollow--there being a short cut to the Manchester road just beyond it--when Philip overtook me. He didn’t spare me, I can tell you, for, apart from the money question, there was an old sore between us. The girl he wanted to marry had done me the honour to prefer his father’s confidential clerk. She was a sensible girl, and saw the point to which our lives were drifting. When he had called me reptile, and a few other equally agreeable names, finding that he couldn’t sting me into retaliation by abuse of that kind, he came close up to me and struck me across the face with his open hand. “There, cur,” he cried, “and let’s see if that will warm your fish’s blood into manly feeling.” I had been in a burning rage all the time at his insolence, but had held myself in check, in pity for his disappointment, which was hard to bear, no doubt, richly as he had deserved it. I was a man, and the shame of a blow was too much even for my sluggish temper, trained to patience by long servitude. I closed with him, and we wrestled together on that path by the quarry. Now mark the cowardice of this fine gentleman, who boasted of his honour, and called me a sneak and reptile! He was twice my match in weight and size, three times my match in training, a practised athlete, a skilled boxer, every muscle developed by exercise. To use his force against mine was simply murder. I was the shuttlecock, and he the battledore. I had a confused sense of blows raining on my head, as from a Nasmyth’s hammer, coloured sparks dancing before my eyes, fire shooting out of my brain, and then I was hurled bodily into the air, and fell crashing through the brushwood into the quarry. It seemed like falling from the highest cliff that breasts the Atlantic.’

‘How dreadful!’ says Sibyl, with a gasp.

‘It was deep in the night when I awoke, and the stars were shining. I wondered where I was, and how I came to see the pole-star looking straight down at me. Pain came before memory, acute, agonizing pain, and then I knew that my leg had been shattered somehow. I lay in the quarry till past eight o’clock next morning, suffering indescribable torture. At last, however, some labourers heard my faint cries for help, found me, and carried me to the nearest roadside inn, whence I was conveyed to the Manchester Infirmary. Here I lay for five months--the most miserable months of my life--while the fractured bones united. It was a compound fracture, and for some time I was threatened with amputation. When I rose from the hospital bed I was lame for life. The broken leg had contracted in the process of healing. Surgery had done its best for me, and had saved my leg; but surgery left me a cripple; for which life-long injury I had to thank Philip Secretan. I had to thank him for something else too, for the girl who had pretended to love me chose this time for throwing me over, and making a better match.’

‘And in those weary months, lying on your bed of pain, you learned to forgive your enemy,’ suggests Sibyl, very gently.

‘Learned to forgive him! Yes, if forgiveness means undying hatred; if forgiveness means the rankling memory of an unatonable wrong; if forgiveness means to remember him and curse him every time a change of wind brings back the old grinding pain in this crippled limb. If that means forgiveness, Philip Secretan and his race are forgiven.’

‘His race?’ falters Sibyl ‘You could feel no rancour against his children.’

‘I could. I do,’ answers the old man, vindictively. ‘Let no viper of that blood cross my path. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” There’s Scripture for you. I believe in that good old heathen creed one reads of in Greek legends, of an accursed race. Of Philip Secretan’s after career I know little or nothing. He had the devil’s luck as well as his own, and married a woman with money, soon after his father’s death, but I never heard what became of him. He may be living or dead. If he lives, let him keep out of my way. If he has left children, my dearest hope is that they are penniless, homeless, street Arabs, whose playground is the gutter, whose ultimate destiny is the gallows.’

‘Uncle, for mercy’s sake----’

‘My curse light on him and his seed to the third generation! There, child, don’t cry. You should have known better than to tempt me to talk of Philip Secretan.’