Chapter VI: Startling Information

Aided by Messrs. Gull and Sharpe, of the Fields, who put all things in train for him, and take him under their parchment wing with affectionate protection, Alexis has no difficulty in proving his right to Cheswold Grange, and all those messuages and tenements and various holdings thereto appertaining. It is a comfortable estate to inherit, for Miss Secretan has been an admirable woman of business, and has managed everything with fostering care which has beautified and enriched all it touched. The land--save five-and-thirty acres of home farm, park-like pasturage all of it--is let on long leases to tenants who are contented with their holdings, and do not grudge labour or money on improvements. The gardens, the house, the stables, need only a little care to restore them to that perfection of elegant precision and graceful order which distinguished them during Miss Secretan’s lifetime. Alexis takes a singular mode of restoring things, and one which wins him much favour from the inhabitants of Cheswold and its immediate neighbourhood. He contrives, with considerable trouble to himself, to get back all his cousin’s old servants,--the butler or indoor servant, pompous as the ruler over a retinue of powdered footmen, yet with only one small underling in the shape of a knife-boy; Mrs. Bodlow, the cook and housekeeper, who had served Miss Secretan five-and-twenty years; the middle-aged housemaid, who had polished every article of furniture in the low-ceiled bedchambers so often that each had become an object of affection and pride to her; the gardeners, who knew every apple tree, every plum and peach, nectarine and apricot on the old red walls; the coachman, who had driven Miss Secretan about in the old-fashioned barouche, a serviceable vehicle yet, and in the old green pony chaise, and had ultimately subsided into drawing her along the shady lanes in a Bath chair. Alexis feels a pride in restoring the scattered household--in seeing every bit of furniture, every quaint old ornament assume its proper place. How intensely had Matilda Secretan studied the fitness of things before she so placed them--the Chelsea shepherdess at this angle, the Wedgwood teapot on that shelf, that figure of Quin as Falstaff in Bow china to balance Kitty Clive in Worcestershire ware, and so on to the end of the modest collection. Alexis remembers how his childish eyes had gloated on the old china--how those household treasures had seemed to him more beautiful than anything he had ever seen before. He remembers the garden--the broad gravel walk leading to a Dutch summerhouse, in red brick, with stained glass windows--the orange trees in square green tubs ranged along the closely shorn grass that had once served as a bowling-green. The place is very dear to him, for it recalls the happiest days of his childhood.

Before the elms in the avenue have quite lost their summer green in the early days of a fine September, Alexis is established at the Grange; the old servants have come back, and everything is in order. Full of delight in his new possessions the master of Cheswold Grange invites Richard Plowden to come and shoot his partridges.

‘They are my partridges,’ he adds, ‘though they feed on my tenants’ corn for the most part. Come and have a pop at them, Dick,’--an invitation which startles Mr. Plowden, who has never fired a gun in his life.

Dick comes to Cheswold Grange, however, and gladly, not to pop at the partridges, but to rejoice in the sight of his old friend and patron, basking in prosperity’s sunshine.

‘I always felt you must be born to good luck, Captain Secretan----’

‘Call me Alex, Dick, or I shall hit you.’

‘Well, then, Alex. There was something so bright and genial about you. It seemed as if you couldn’t long be under a cloud.’

‘Did it, Dick? The cloudy weather lasted quite long enough though, old fellow, and the clouds are not gone yet. It’s a hard thing to have this beautiful place, and not be able to bring my baby boy here, and establish him in the home which is to be his when I am dead and gone.’

‘Have you told your wife of your altered fortunes?’ inquires Dick.

‘Not a word. She shall know me only as the pauper she deserted, or I will at best own to the wages of a hard-working clerk. She shall come back to my poverty, Dick, if she and I are ever to be reunited--not to my wealth. How pretty she would look at the head of this table, by the way!’

They are lounging over their wine after dinner, the diamond-cut decanters reflected in the polished mahogany as in dark water, golden egg-plums from the western wall, and peaches from the southern, nestling among dark green leaves in heart-shaped dishes of old Derby china.

‘Yes, I dare say,’ says Dick, more inclined to blame than to praise the absent wife.

‘You never saw her, Dick. A pity. She is so lovely--a woman created for happiness and prosperity, not for toil and care. And in marrying me she wedded poverty and sorrow. It was very hard for her. I ought to have been more considerate. Can I wonder that she grew weary of the struggle--that she tried to cut the knot that bound her to my misfortunes? Poor child!’

‘Poor you, I think, to have wedded such a piece of selfish prettiness,’ says Dick.

‘Don’t be hard upon her, Dick. Fortune was too unkind in those days. The outlook was so black. If there had been a glimmer of hope on our horizon she would have stayed with me, I’ve no doubt. Think of her now, drudging as a governess, hiding her beauty in some back parlour, or second-floor nursery--toiling for a pittance, while I enjoy all the comforts of this dear old place. That’s hard to think of, isn’t it, old fellow?’

‘Merely retributive justice,’ answers Dick, sturdily. ‘But are you sure that she is a governess now?’

‘I have every reason to suppose so. Her last letter tells me that she is on the high road to fortune--fortune which she and I are to share. Taking this in conjunction with the information I got from her sister, I can only imagine that she is in the employment of some rich person likely to leave her money.’

‘Rather an ignoble position that,’ says Dick,--‘waiting for dead men’s shoes.’

Alexis sighs, and pours out another glass of his cousin’s well-kept La Rose.

‘What are you going to do to find her?’ asks Richard.

‘I’ve put the business in the hands of a very clever man in London, to whom my lawyers recommended me. In the abstract I hate the idea of a private inquiry office, but in my particular case I can’t get on without one. My man is to find out Sibyl’s whereabouts by hook or by crook. Once found, and face to face with her, I don’t think I should be long in bringing her to reason. She must have changed very much if she has ceased to love me.’

Dick ventures no reply to this. He has a very poor opinion of his friend’s wife, thinks her stony-hearted, nay, almost inhuman, and in his idea Alexis Secretan’s future happiness would be best secured by Sibyl’s being kept at a distance. What could be sweeter than life in this old country house, among these fertile gardens, these park-like meadows? and why disturb the serenity of the atmosphere by bringing a woman here? The lovelier she is, the more trouble she is likely to bring. Was it not Helen’s beauty which overturned a world?

Mr. Secretan’s new life is assuredly so full of pleasantness, that if it were possible for him to forget the wife he has loved, or to cease from longing for the son he has never seen, he might reasonably take his ease and enjoy the pleasures of a tranquil mind. Cheswold seems to him just one of the most delightful places on the surface of this earth. It is set in a landscape of rural beauty, fertile, luxuriant, like a picture of Constable’s. There is plenty of sport, a good pack of foxhounds in the neighbourhood, to which Alexis subscribes liberally. There are pleasant neighbours, who hasten to call upon the inheritor of Cheswold Grange, and are eager to make themselves useful.

Mr. Secretan finds himself received with such peculiar cordiality by fathers and mothers of goodly families of grown-up daughters that he takes an early opportunity to let it be known that he is that worst of detrimentals, a husband without a wife. He tells one of his new friends, in the strictest confidence, that he is temporarily separated from his wife in consequence of some family quarrel, but he hopes for reunion before very long; and in a week everybody within twenty miles of Cheswold knows all about it. The disappointment is rather severe for the parents of marriageable daughters, some of whom have been hanging rather long on hand, like the winter pears on the wall. Mr. Secretan is not a great catch in the matrimonial market, of course. A pretty old house and grounds and from fifteen hundred to two thousand a year. A very moderate alliance, but a comfortable and a respectable one, think the anxious parents. And then Miss Secretan has always ranked high among her neighbours. There is an odour of sanctity about the Grange.

‘A pity the young fellow should have made such a mess of himself,’ remark the fathers. The mothers go so far as to call it a shame. The daughters feel a sense of loss, and are not quite so amiable to Mr. Secretan the next time he takes them in to dinner.

Old friends whom he knew in his days of youthful extravagance find him out, and rejoice in his restored fortunes. A couple of old brother officers crop up in the neighbourhood. Colonel Churton settled and sobered into a country gentleman, great in the cultivation of mangold and turnips; Major Tollinson, who breeds prize cattle, which help to eat the colonel’s roots;--these are full of warmest friendliness.

It seems to Alexis as if he had never been poor. He has spent some of his cousin’s accumulated cash in the payment of his debts--debts of honour and tradesmen’s bills have alike been repaid, with five per cent. interest in every case. There is now no one living who can say he has lost money by Alexis Secretan.

‘What a pleasant feeling it is, Dick!’ says Alexis, as he pockets the last receipt, “with respectful thanks.” ‘I really feel as if I had only just reached my proper number of inches, as if I had been half a head shorter than I ought to be for the last six years. There is a springiness in my step, too. Ah, Dick, this is the real worth of money--“the glorious privilege of being independent.’”

Alexis has settled down comfortably in the rooms he has chosen for himself, and begins to feel as if he had lived at the Grange all his life by the time the first frosts sparkle on the grass, and the leaves fall fast from the good old trees, and lie thick in grove and glade, despite of gardeners and wheelbarrows. He has put up new bookshelves in the library, where Miss Secretan’s favourite poets and divines, in neat calf or vellum bindings, make but a small appearance, and has filled them with the books he loves, a truly cosmopolitan collection. He has bought himself a couple of clever hunters, and a useful covert hack, which he can also drive in a dogcart. He has shot over the stubbles, and in the preserves of his noble neighbour, Lord Starborough, and has had two or three good runs with the foxhounds. He has made a large circle of new acquaintances, and renewed several old friendships. But in all this time he has had no tidings of Sibyl.

He has, it is true, received numerous letters from the private inquiry office, some promising speedy success, others asking some questions of detail, which might help to confirm a suspicion, or establish its falsehood, some declaring that the inquirer is on the right track. But the result has been failure. So far private inquiry has effected nothing.

Despairing of ever succeeding by this means, Alexis inserts an advertisement, which he means to be his final appeal to his obdurate wife.

‘Dixon Street, Chelsea.--I refuse to write to you through the
faithful servant in L---- Street. I consider such indirect
communication degrading to you and to me. I have no sympathy with
your schemes. I decline any share in fortune so won. I claim you
by my sacred right as your husband. You need not fear starvation,
or even the pinch of poverty. I have obtained employment which
will enable me to keep my wife and child in decent comfort.
Come back, and be assured of my fondest affection. Prolong our
separation, and it may become eternal.’

This advertisement is quickly answered by another, beginning with the watchword, Dixon Street.

‘Wait and hope. A little patience, and we shall be reunited. You
cannot wish for reunion more earnestly than I do. The fabric
which has taken more than two years to build must not be
destroyed by a moment of impatience.’

Alexis inserts a second advertisement.

‘Dixon Street.--Give me the custody of our son, and I will be
content.’

To which the answer is one word--

‘Impossible.’

On this Mr. Secretan loses temper, and love gives way to resentment.

‘Heartless, inexorable!’ he says to himself. ‘She loves money better than she loves me. The sordid desire to inherit some weak-minded old woman’s wealth is stronger with her than duty or affection. Is she worth all the pain I have suffered for her? Is she worthy the constancy I have given her?’

The answer to these questions is a decided negative. His love for his wife has been a foolish, unreasoning passion, wasted upon an unworthy object. He now determines to forget that cold and cruel wife, and to enjoy all the pleasures of his new position; and in the various employments and engagements of country life his days glide by smoothly and pleasantly until the approach of Christmas. It is now three years since Sibyl left him. He dines with Colonel Churton one bright frosty evening, just a week before the Christian festival. The colonel’s spacious old house, Longley Mead, is full of guests, military and civil, young people, middle-aged people, elderly people, pretty girls, with portly mothers and portlier fathers.

They sit down, about thirty, to dinner, in a fine oak-paneled dining-room, and the board is a merry and noisy one. Quiet flirtation is going on doubtless in some quarters under cover of the general talk and laughter, the cross-firing of respectable old jokes, the remarkable anecdotes of horses, dogs, foxes, and birds; the discussion of that last troublesome case at petty sessions, and a good deal more genuine county talk. The banquet is long and splendid; but at last the ice puddings have made their round, the liqueurs have followed in fairy goblets, golden-starred, the hothouse grapes have been admired, and the ladies have left the ruder sex to draw up to the host’s end of the long table, and enter upon that serious discussion of the merits of various Burgundies and Bordeaux, which appears to afford so much delight to the masculine mind.

‘You used to be a pretty good judge of claret in your time, Secretan,’ says the colonel, cheerily, ‘give me your candid opinion of that Margaux.’

‘About as good a judge of claret as he was of a pretty woman,’ says Major Tollinson, while Alexis gravely sips the Château Margaux, ‘and he had a wonderful eye for beauty.’

‘Oh, come, now,’ remonstrates the colonel, ‘Secretan was never a ladies’ man. He left that kind of thing to you, Tollinson.’

‘Oh, I grant that he was too lazy a beggar to play croquet on a blazing July afternoon, or to dance attendance at picnics or tea-fights, or make himself useful at a school feast, carrying baskets of buns and jugs of boiling tea. But he was a great admirer of the sex for all that, and at a county ball he always got the most dances with the prettiest women.’

‘A nice clean wine,’ says Alexis, ignoring these remarks.

‘Talking of pretty women,’ says a young man who sits furthest from the host, ‘I think I had the pleasure of meeting one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see, down in Yorkshire the week before last.’

The word Yorkshire catches the ear of Alexis. So large a county must needs be rich in female beauty; but he remembers that Redcastle is in Yorkshire, and thinks of Sibyl. Or perhaps it is that instinct which in some moments of our lives warns us that some word vital to our interests is about to be spoken.

‘Plenty of pretty women in Yorkshire,’ says the host, incuriously. ‘How did you find the grouse this year, Danvers? You were staying somewhere near the moors, I suppose.’

‘No, I was in rather a poor country for grouse. I was at Mr. Holford’s place between Hillsborough and Redcastle.’

‘Alexis grows pale, and refills his glass with a hand that shakes a little.

‘May we ask for the beauty’s name?’ he says.

‘She is a Miss Faunthorpe--an heiress, I believe. At least, there’s a rich old East Indian party she goes about with, and I conclude she’s to have his money, by-and-bye. I met her at a dinner at Sir Wilford Cardonnel’s, and the rumour is that Sir Wilford is going to marry her. He’s uncommonly sweet upon her, that’s a fact patent to the meanest comprehension.’

Alexis tries to check the tumultuous beating of his heart, tries to steady himself and compose his countenance, and by a great effort succeeds.

Why should this be his false wife? asks the voice of reason. Sibyl has a grown-up sister whom he has never seen, a sister who may be as lovely as herself, although his wife always disparaged Marion’s charms. Or this Miss Faunthorpe may belong to some other family--nay, must so belong, since she is spoken of as an heiress.

‘You have roused my warmest interest in this Yorkshire beauty,’ he says, with assumed languor. ‘Could you not draw upon your powers so far as to describe her to us?’

‘Yes, by all means. Indulge us with a little word-painting; give us a verbal photograph of your beauty,’ says Colonel Churton.

‘Who can describe the indescribable?’ exclaims Mr. Danvers, pleased at having made himself the object of general attention, after having languished in the shade during the rest of the entertainment.

‘Picture to yourselves----’

‘Oh, come, we want you to do the picturing----’

‘Imagine an oval face framed in dark brown hair, loosely braided--I believe that’s the word, isn’t it? Hair with a glimmer of gold and a natural ripple, eyes of darkest brown, complexion ivory pale, save when excitement flushes the cheek with a lovely pink, like the inside of those pomegranates; features almost Grecian.’

‘Sounds rather like a face in a fashion plate,’ says Major Tollinson. ‘I’d rather hear of a _retroussé_ nose, red hair and freckles, or a tawny little gipsy with murderous black eyes.’

‘Not to admire Miss Faunthorpe would be to despise perfection,’ says Mr. Danvers, slightly offended.

‘You haven’t told us her Christian name,’ says Alexis.

‘It fits her to a nicety, for there is a mystic look about her pale face and dark brown eyes. Her name is Sibyl.’

‘And she is going to be married to a Yorkshire baronet?’

‘Sir Wilford Cardonnel, one of the wealthiest land owners in the West Riding. Mind, I don’t say the match is a settled thing. It hasn’t been formally announced, you know; people haven’t begun to congratulate her; but the marriage is talked of. I dare say the local papers will get hold of it soon. “We understand,” &c.’

‘And there is a rich uncle in question?’ asks Alexis. He has recovered his self-command by this time, and makes the inquiry with the air of a man who only talks for the sake of keeping up the conversation.

‘Yes, a shrivelled old fellow, who eats any amount of Nepaul pepper. An artful old bird! Looks as if he had made his money in slaves, or opium, or something contraband. Sort of man who would have done well in Warren Hastings’ time, when John Company had things all his own way in the East.’

‘Do you remember his name?’

‘Let me see--hum--ha--er--er--Travers--no--rather an odd name. Trinder. No. Trenchard. Yes, that’s it. Stephen Trenchard. Pretty niece called him sometimes uncle Stephen, sometimes uncle Trenchard.’

‘Stephen Trenchard,’ repeats Alexis, staring blankly at the tall epergne in front of him.

This is a shock he was not prepared for. Stephen Trenchard, his father’s bitter enemy. The man whose arts disinherited him, Alexis, while yet unborn. The man whom his family religion taught him to execrate. And it was this man’s niece--a daughter of this detested race--he had married. It was to court and cherish his father’s enemy that his wife had left him.

‘This is the fortune she is to inherit and we are to share. This is the scheme of her life. It is for Stephen Trenchard’s ill-gotten wealth I am to wait. It is for this I am to be patient and trust her. And she shows herself so true to her trust that common rumour gives her to another man. It is time for me to make an end of this farce of fidelity.’