Ida went slowly downstairs, her soul steeped in gloom, seeing no ray of light on the horizon; for with the most earnest desire to save her erring husband, she felt herself powerless to help him against himself. If he were denied the things he cared for at Wimperfield, there was little doubt that he would go back to his solitary chambers, where he was his own master. He was not so ill either in mind or body as to justify her in using actual restraint.
At the moment she thought of telegraphing for Aunt Betsy, whose firm manly mind might offer valuable aid in such a crisis; but she shrank from the idea of exposing her husband’s degradation even to his aunt. She did not want the family at Kingthorpe to know how low he had fallen. Mr. and Mrs. Jardine had been impressed by the change in him, and Bessie had harped upon his lost good looks, habitual irritability, and deteriorated manners; but neither had hinted at an inkling of the cause; and Ida hoped the hideous truth had been unsuspected by either. She decided, therefore, during those few minutes of meditation which she spent in the portico waiting for Vernon, that she would rely on her own intelligence, and upon professional aid rather than upon any family intervention. If she could, by her own strong hand, with the help of the London physician, lead her husband’s footsteps out of this Tophet into which he had sunk himself, she would spare no trouble, withhold no sacrifice, to effect his rescue, and she and her stepmother, the kindliest of women, would keep the secret between them.
Vernon came bounding out of the hall, eager for the accustomed evening ramble. This evening walk with the boy had been Ida’s happiest time of late, perhaps the only portion of her day in which she had enjoyed the sense of freedom from ever present anxiety, in which she had put away troubled thought. She had gone back to her duty meekly and resignedly when this time of respite was over, but with a sense of unspeakable woe. Wimperfield with its lighted windows, stone walls, and classic portico, had seemed to her only as a prison-house, a whited sepulchre, fair without and loathsome within.
Vernie was full of curiosity about that little scene at the dinner table. The boy had that quick perception of the minds and acts of others which is generally developed in a child who spends the greater part of his life with grown-up people; and he had been quite as conscious as his elders of the unpleasantness of the scene.
‘I hope Brian doesn’t think I’m stingy about the wine,’ he said; ‘he might drink it all for anything I should care. I don’t want it.’
‘I know, darling; but you were quite right in what you said at dinner. The wine does Brian harm, and that’s why mamma and I don’t want him to take any.’
‘Has it always done him harm?’ asked Vernon.
‘Always; that is, lately.’
‘Then why did you let him take so much — a whole bottle, sometimes two bottles — all to himself at dinner? I heard Rogers tell Mrs. Moggs about it.’
‘Rogers ought not to have given him so much.’
‘Oh! but Rogers said it wasn’t his place to make remarks, only he was very sorry for poor Mrs. Wendover — that’s you, you know — not Mrs. Wendover at Kingthorpe.’
‘Oh, Vernie, you were not listening?’
‘Of course not. I wasn’t listening on purpose; but I was in the lobby outside the housekeeper’s room, waiting for some grease for my shooting boots. I always grease them myself, you know, for nobody else does it properly; and Rogers said the brandy Mr. Wendover had drunk in three weeks would make Mrs. Moggs’ hair stand on end; but it couldn’t, — could it? — when she wears a front. A front couldn’t stand on end,’ said Vernon, exploding at his own small joke, which, like most of the witticisms of childhood, was founded on the physical deficiencies of age.
‘Look, Vernie! there is going to be a lovely sunset,’ said Ida, anxious to change the conversation.
But Vernon’s inquiring mind was not satisfied.
‘Is it wicked to drink champagne and brandy?’ he asked.
‘Yes, dear, it is wicked to take anything which we know will do us harm.
It would be wicked to take poison; and brandy is a kind of poison.’
‘Except for poor people, when they are ill; they always come to the vicarage for brandy when they are ill, and Mrs. Jardine gives them a little.’
‘Brandy is a medicine sometimes, but it is a poison if anyone takes too much of it — a poison that ruins body and soul. I hope Brian will not take any more; but we mustn’t talk about it, darling, above all to strangers.’
‘No, I shouldn’t talk of it to anybody but you, because I like Brian. He used to go fishing with me, and to be so good-natured, and to tell me funny stories, and do imitations of actors for me; but now he’s so cross. Is that the brandy?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘Then I hate brandy.’
They were in the park by this time, wandering in the wildest part of the ground, where the bracken grew breast high in great sweeps of feathery green. They came to a spot on the edge of a hill where three or four noble old elms had been felled, and where a couple of men in smock frocks were sawing coffin boards.
‘What are those broad planks wanted for?’ the boy asked; ‘and why do you make them so short?’
‘They’re not uncommon short, Sir Vernon,’ the man answered, touching his hat; ‘the shortest on ’em is six foot. Them be for coffins, Sir Vernon.’
‘How horrid! I hope they won’t be wanted for ages,’ said the boy.
‘Not much chance o’ that, sir; there’s allus summun a wantin’ a weskit o’ this make,’ answered the man, with a grin, as Vernon and Ida went on, uncomfortably impressed by the idea of those two men sawing their coffin-boards in the calm, bright evening, with every articulation of the branching fern standing sharply out against the yellow light, as on the margin of a golden sea.
They rambled on, and presently Ida was repeating passages from those Shakespearian plays which had formed Vernon’s first introduction to English history, and of which he had never tired. Ida knew all the great speeches, and indeed a good many of the more famous scenes, by heart, and Vernon liked to hear them over and over again, alternately detesting the Lancastrians and pitying the Yorkists, or hating York and compassionating Lancaster, as the fortunes of war wavered. And then there was Richard the Second, more tenderly touched by Shakespeare than by Hume or Hallam; and Richard the Third, whose iniquities were made respectable by a kind of diabolical thoroughness; and that feebler villain John. Vernon was as familiar with them as if they had been flesh and blood acquaintances.
‘Cheap Jack knows Shakespeare as well as you do,’ said Vernon presently, when they had left the park by a wooden gate that opened into a patch of common land, which lay between the Wimperfield fence and Blackman’s Hanger.
‘Who is Cheap Jack?’ asked Ida absently.
‘The man you saw the night I came home, when Mr. Jardine was with us.
Don’t you remember?’
‘The man in the cart — the showman? Yes, I know; but I did not see him.’
‘No; he hates the gentry, and women, too, I think. But he likes
Shakespeare.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought he would have known anything about
Shakespeare.’
‘Oh, but he does — better than you even. When he was mending my fishing-rod — you remember, don’t you? — I told you how clever he was at fishing-rods.’
‘Yes, I remember — it was the day you were out so long quite alone; and I was dreadfully frightened about you.’
‘Oh, but that was silly. Besides, I wasn’t alone — I was with Jack all day. And if I had been alone, I can take care of myself — I shall be twelve next birthday. Nobody would try to steal me now,’ said Vernon, drawing himself up and swaggering a little.
‘What, not even good Mrs. Brown? Well, no; I think you are too clever to be stolen. Still you must not go out again without Robert.’ (Robert was a youth of two-and-twenty, Sir Vernon’s body-guard and particular attendant, to whom the little baronet occasionally gave the go-by.) ‘Besides, I don’
t think you ought to associate with such a person as this Cheap Jack — a vagabond stroller, whose past life nobody knows.’
‘Oh, but you don’t know what kind of man Jack is — he’s the cleverest man I ever knew — cleverer than Mr. Jardine; he knows everything. Let’s go up on the hanger.’
‘No, dear, it’s getting late; we must go home.’
‘No, we needn’t go home till we like — nobody wants us. Mamma will be asleep over her knitting, — how she does sleep! — and she’ll wake up surprised when we go home, and say, “Gracious, is it ten o’clock? These summer evenings are so short!”’
‘But you ought to be in bed, Vernie.’
‘No, I oughtn’t. The thrushes haven’t gone to bed yet. Hark at that one singing his evening hymn! Do come just a wee bit further.’
They were at the foot of the hanger by this time, and now began to climb the slope. The atmosphere was balmy with the breath of the pines, and there was an almost tropical warmth in the wood — languorous, inviting to repose. The crescent moon hung pale above the tops of the trees, pale above that rosy flush of evening which filled the western sky.
‘What makes you think Jack so clever?’ inquired Ida, more for the sake of sustaining the conversation than from any personal interest in the subject.
‘Oh, because he knows everything. He told me all about Macbeth, the witches, don’t you know, and the ghost, and Mrs. — no, Lady Macbeth — walking in her sleep, and then he made my flesh creep — worse than you do when you talk about ghosts. And then he told me about Agamemnon, the same that’s in Homer. I haven’t begun Greek yet, but Mr. Jardine told me about him and Cly — Cly — what’s her name? — his wife. And then he told me about Africa and the black men, and about India, and tiger-hunts, and snakes, and the great mountains where there are tribes of wild monkeys; — I should so like to have a monkey, Ida! Can I have a monkey? And he told me about South America, just as if he had been there and seen it all.’
‘He must be a genius,’ said Ida, smiling.
‘Can I have a monkey?’
‘If your mother doesn’t object, and if we can get a nice one that won’t bite you.’
‘Oh, he wouldn’t bite me; I should be friends with him directly. When I am grown up I shall shoot tigers.’
‘I shall not like Mr. Cheap Jack if he puts such ideas into your head.’
‘Oh, but you must like him, Ida, for I mean to have him always for my friend; and when I come of age I shall go to the Rockies with him, and shoot moose and things.’
‘Oh, you unkind boy! is that all the happiness I am to have when you are grown up.’
‘You can come too.’
‘What, go about America with a Cheap Jack! What a dreadful fate for me!’
‘He is not dreadful — he is a splendid fellow.’
‘But if he hates women he would make himself disagreeable.’
‘Not to you. He would like you. I talked to him about you once, and he listened, and seemed so pleased, and made me tell him a lot more.’
‘Impertinent curiosity!’ said Ida, with a vexed air. ‘You are a very silly boy to talk about your relations to a man of that class.’
‘He is not a man of that class,’ retorted Vernon angrily; ‘besides I didn’t talk about my relations, as you call it. I only talked about you. When I told him about mamma he didn’t seem to listen. I could see that by his eyes, you know; but he made me go on talking about you, and asked me all kinds of questions.’
‘He is a very impertinent person.’
‘Hush, there he is, smoking outside his cottage,’ cried the boy, pointing to a figure sitting on a rude bench in front of that hovel which had once sheltered Lord Pontifex’s under-keeper.
Ida saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure with a tawny face and a long brown beard. The face was half hidden under a slouched felt hat, the figure was clad in clumsy corduroy. Ida was just near enough to see that the outline of the face was good, when the man rose and went into his hut, shutting the door behind him.
‘Discourteous, to say the least of it,’ she exclaimed, laughing at
Vernon’s disconcerted look.
‘I’ll make him open his door,’ said the boy, running towards the cottage; but Ida ran after him and stopped him midway.
‘Don’t, my pet,’ she said; ‘every man’s house is his castle, even Cheap
Jack’s. Besides I have really no wish to make your friend’s acquaintance.
Oh, Vernie,’ looking at her watch, ‘it’s a quarter-past nine! We must go
home as fast as ever we can.’
‘He is a nasty disagreeable thing,’ said Vernon. ‘I did so want you to see the inside of his cottage. He has no end of books, and the handsomest fox terrier you ever saw — and such a lot of pipes, and black bear skins to put over his bed at night — such a jolly comfortable little den! I shall have one just like it in the park when I come of age.’
‘You talk of doing so many things when you come of age.’
‘Yes; and I mean to do them, every one; unless you and mother let me do them sooner. It’s a dreadful long time to wait till I’m twenty-one!’
‘I don’t think we are tyrants, or that we shall refuse you anything reasonable.’
‘Not a cottage in the park?’
‘No, not even a cottage in the park.’
They walked back at a brisk pace, by common and park, not loitering to look at anything, though the glades and hills and hollows were lovely in that dim half-light which is the darkness of summer. The new moon hung like a silver lamp in mid-heaven, and all the multitude of stars were shining around and above her, while far away in unfathomable space, shone the mysterious light which started on its earthward journey in the years that are gone for ever.
Lady Palliser was not calmly slumbering in front of the tea-table, in the mellow light of a duplex lamp, after her wont. She was standing at the open window, watching for Ida’s return.
‘Oh, my dear, I have been so frightened,’ she exclaimed, as Ida and
Vernon appeared.
‘About what, dear mamma?’
‘About Brian. He has been going on so. Rogers came to tell me, and I went up to the corridor, and asked him to unlock his door and let me in, but he wouldn’t. Perhaps it was providential that he didn’t unlock the door, for he might have killed me.’
‘Oh, mamma, what nonsense!’ exclaimed Ida. She hurried Vernon off to bed before his mother could say another word, and then went back to the widow, who was walking about the drawing-room in much perturbation.
‘Now tell me everything,’ said Ida; ‘I did not want Vernon to be frightened.’
‘No, indeed, poor pet. But oh! Ida, if he should try to kill Vernon!’
‘Dear mother, he has no idea of killing anyone. What can have put such dreadful notions in your head?’
‘The way he went on, Ida. I stopped outside his door ever so long listening to him. He walked up and down like a mad-man, throwing things about, talking and muttering to himself all the time. I think he was packing his portmanteau.’
‘There is nothing so dreadful in that — nothing to alarm you.’
‘Oh! Ida, when a person is once out of their mind, there is no knowing what they may do.’
Ida did all in her power to soothe and reassure the frightened little woman, and, having done this, she went straight to her husband’s room.
She knocked two or three times without receiving any answer; then came a sullen refusal: ‘I don’t want to be worried by anyone. You can go to your own room, and leave me alone.’
But, upon her assuming a tone of authority, he opened the door, grumbling all the while.
The room was in frightful confusion — a couple of portmanteaux lay open on the floor; books, papers, clothes, were scattered in every direction. There was nothing packed. Brian was in shirt-sleeves and slippers, and had been smoking furiously, for the room was full of tobacco.
‘Why don’t you open your windows, Brian?’ said his wife; ‘the
atmosphere is horrible.’
She went over to one of the windows, and flung open the sash. ‘That’s a comfortable thing to do,’ he said, coming over to her, ‘to open my window on a snowy night.’
‘Snowy, Brian! Why, it’s summer — a lovely night!’
‘Summer! nonsense. Don’t you see the snow? Why, it’s falling thickly. Look at the flakes — like feathers. Look, look!’ He pointed out of the window into the clear moonlit air, and tried to catch imaginary snowflakes with his long, nervous fingers.
‘Brian, you must know that it is summer-time,’ Ida said, firmly. ‘Look at the woods — those deep masses of shadow from the oaks and beeches — in all the beauty of their summer foliage.
‘Yes; it’s odd, isn’t it? — midsummer, and a snow-storm!’
‘What have you been doing with all those things?’
‘Packing. I must go to London early to-morrow. I have an appointment with the architect.’
‘What architect?’
‘The man who is to plan the alterations for this house. I shall make great alterations, you know, now that the place is yours. I am going to build an underground riding school, like that at Welbeck.’
‘The place mine? What are you dreaming of?’
‘Of course it is yours, now Vernon is dead. You were to inherit everything at his death. You cannot have forgotten that.’
‘Vernon dead! Why, Brian, he is snug and safe in his room a little way off. I have seen him within this half-hour.’
‘You are a fool,’ he said; ‘he died nearly three months ago. You are the sole owner of this place, and I am going to make it the finest mansion in the county.’
He rambled on, talking rapidly, wildly, of all the improvements and alterations he intended making, with an assumption of a business-like air amidst all this lunacy, which made his distracted state so much the more painful to contemplate. He talked of builders, specifications, estimates, and quantities — was full of self-importance — described picture galleries, music rooms, high-art decorations which would have cost a hundred thousand pounds, and all with absolute belief in his own power to realise these splendid visions. Yet every now and then in the very rush of his projects there came a sudden cloud of fear — his jaw fell — he looked apprehensively behind him — became darkly brooding — muttered something about that hideous charge hanging over him — a conspiracy hatched by men who should have been his friends — the probability of a great trial in Westminster Hall; and then he ran on again about builders and architects — Whistler, Burne Jones — and the marvellous mansion he was going to erect on the site of this present Wimperfield.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 827
