Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Mr. Chattaway! The farms don’t belong to him now, but to me.”

  George laughed. “Yes, I forgot. I must come to you for it, sir. I want the Upland.”

  “And you would like to take Maude with it?”

  “Oh, yes! I must take her with it.”

  “Softly, sir. Maude belongs to me, just as the farms do: and I can tell you for your consolation, and you must make the best of it, that I cannot spare her from the Hold. There; that’s enough. I have not come home to have my will disputed: I am a true Trevlyn.”

  A somewhat uncomfortable silence ensued, and lasted until they reached the lodge. Squire Trevlyn entered without ceremony. Old Mark, who was sitting before the hearth apparently in deep thought, turned his head, saw who was coming in, rose as quickly as his rheumatism allowed him, and stared as if he saw an apparition.

  “Do you know me, Mark?”

  “To my dazed eyes it looks like the Squire,” was Mark’s answer, slowly shaking his head, as one in perplexity. “But I know it cannot be. I stood at these gates as he was carried out to his last home in Barbrook churchyard. The Squire was older, too.”

  “The Squire left a son, Mark.”

  “Sir — sir!” burst forth the old man, after a pause, as the light flashed upon him. “Sir — sir! You surely are never the young heir, Mr. Rupert, we have all mourned as dead?”

  “Do you remember the young heir’s features, Mark?”

  “Ay, I have never forgot them, sir.”

  “Then look at mine.”

  There was doubt no longer; and Mark Canham, in his enthusiastic joy forgetting his rheumatism, would almost have gone down on his knees in thankfulness. He brought himself up with a groan. “I be fit for nothing now but to nurse my rheumatiz, sir. And you be the true Rupert Trevlyn — Squire from henceforth? Oh, sir, say it!”

  “I am the Squire, Mark. But I came here to see another Rupert Trevlyn — he who will be Squire after me.”

  Old Mark shook his head. He glanced towards the staircase as he spoke, and dropped his voice to a whisper, as if fearing that it might penetrate to one who was lying above.

  “If he don’t get better soon, sir, he’ll never live to be the Squire. He’s very ill. Circumstances have been against him, it can’t be denied; but I fear me it was in his constitution from the first to go off, as his father, poor Mr. Joe, went off afore him.”

  “Nonsense,” said the Squire. “We’ll get him well again!”

  “And what of Chattaway?” asked old Canham. “He’ll never forego his vengeance, sir. I have been in mortal fear ever since Master Rupert’s been lying here. The fear had selfishness in it, maybe,” he added, ingenuously; “for Chattaway’d turn me right off, without a minute’s warning, happen he come to know of it. He’s never liked my being at the lodge at all, sir; and would have sent me away times and again but for Miss Diana.”

  “Ah,” said the Squire. “Well, it does not rest with him now. What has he allowed you, Mark?”

  “Half-a-crown a week, sir.”

  “Half-a-crown a week?” repeated Squire Trevlyn, his mouth curling with displeasure. “How have you lived?”

  “It have been a poor living at best, sir,” was the simple answer. “Ann works hard, at home or out, but she don’t earn much. Her eyes be bad, sir; happen you may call to mind they was always weak and ailing. The Squire fixed my pay here at five shillings a week, and Chattaway changed it when he come into power. Miss Diana’s good to us; but for her and the bit o’ money Ann can earn, I don’t see as we could ha’ got along at all.”

  “Would you like the half-a-crown changed back again to five shillings, Mark?”

  “I should think it was riches come to me right off, Squire.”

  “Then you may reckon upon it from this day.”

  He moved to the staircase as he spoke, leaving the old man in an ecstasy of delight. Ann Canham, who had shrunk into hiding, came forward. Her father turned triumphantly.

  “Didn’t I tell ye it was the Squire? And you to go on at me, saying I was clean off my wits to think it! I know’d it was no other.”

  “But you said it was the dead Squire, father,” was poor Ann’s meek response.

  “It’s all the same,” cried old Canham. “There’ll be a Trevlyn at the Hold again; and our five shillings a week is to come back to us. Bless the Trevlyns! they was always open-handed.”

  “Father, what a dreadful come-down for Chattaway! What will he do? He’ll have to turn out.”

  “Serve him right!” shouted Mark. “How many homes have he made empty in his time! Ann, girl, I have kep’ my eyes a bit open through life, in spite of limbs cramped with rheumatiz, and I never failed to notice one thing — them who are fond o’ making others’ homes desolate, generally find their own desolate afore they die. Chattaway’ll get a taste now of what he have been so fond o’ dealing out to others. I hope the bells’ll ring the day he turns out o’ the Hold!”

  “But Madam will have to turn out with him!” meekly suggested Ann Canham.

  It took Mark back. He liked Madam as much as he disliked her husband. “Happen something’ll be thought of for Madam,” said he. “Maybe the new Squire’ll keep her at the Hold.”

  George Ryle had gone upstairs, and prepared the wondering Rupert for the appearance of his uncle. As the latter entered, his tall head bowing, he halted in dismay. In the fair face bent towards him from the bed, the large blue eyes, the bright, falling hair, he believed for the moment he saw the beloved brother Joe of his youth. But in the hollow, hectic cheeks, the drawn face, the parched lips, the wasted hands, the attenuated frame, he read too surely the marks of the disease which had taken off that brother; and a conviction seated itself in the Squire’s mind that he must look elsewhere for his heir.

  “My poor boy! Joe’s boy! This place is killing you!”

  “No, Uncle Rupert, it is not that at all. It is the fear.”

  Squire Trevlyn could not breathe. He looked up at the one pane, and pushed it open with his stick. The cold air came in, and he seemed relieved, drawing a long breath. But the same current, grateful to him, found its way to the lungs of Rupert, and he began to cough violently. “It’s the draught,” panted the poor invalid.

  George Ryle closed the window again, and the Squire bent over the bed. “You must come to the Hold at once, Rupert.”

  The hectic faded on Rupert’s face. “It is not possible,” he answered. “Mr. Chattaway would denounce me.”

  “Denounce you!” hotly repeated Squire Trevlyn. “Denounce my nephew and my brother Joe’s son! He had better let me see him attempt it.”

  In the impulse, characteristic of the Trevlyns, the Squire turned to descend the stairs. He was going to have Rupert brought home at once. George Ryle followed him, and arrested him in the avenue.

  “Pardon me, Squire Trevlyn. You must first of all make sure of Chattaway. I am not clear also but you must make sure of the police.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police have the matter in hand. Are they able to relinquish it, even for you?”

  They stood gazing at each other in doubt and discomfort. It was an unpleasant phase of the affair; and one which had certainly not until that moment presented itself to Squire Trevlyn’s view.

  CHAPTER LVIII

  A CONVERSATION WITH MR. CHATTAWAY

  They stood together, deep in dispute — Squire Trevlyn of the Hold, and he who had so long reigned at the Hold, its usurper. In that very rick-yard which had recently played so prominent a part in the career of the unhappy Rupert, stood they: the Squire — bold, towering, haughty; Chattaway — cowardly, shrinking, indecisive.

  It was of that very Rupert they were talking. Squire Trevlyn hastened home from the lodge, and found Chattaway in the rick-yard: he urged upon him the claims of Rupert for forgiveness, for immunity from the consequences of his crime; urged upon him its necessity; for a Trevlyn, he said, must not be disgraced. And Mr. Chattaway appeared to be turning obstinate; to say that he nev
er would forgive him or release him from its consequences. He pointed to the blackened spots, scarcely yet cleared of their débris. “Is a crime like that to be pardoned?” he asked.

  “What caused the crime? Who drove him to it?” And Mr. Chattaway had no plausible answer at hand.

  “When you married into the Trevlyn family, you married into its faults,” resumed the Squire. “At any rate, you became fully acquainted with them. You knew as much of the Trevlyn temper as we ourselves know. I ask you, then, how could you be so unwise — to put the question moderately — as to provoke it in Rupert?”

  “Evil tempers can be subdued,” returned Mr. Chattaway. “And ought to be.”

  “Just so. They can be, and they ought to be. But unfortunately we don’t all of us do as we can and ought to do. Do you? I have heard it said in the old days that James Chattaway’s spirit was a sullen one: have you subdued its sullenness?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t wander from the point, Mr. Trevlyn.”

  “I am keeping pretty near to the point. But I can go nearer to it, if you please. How could you, James Chattaway, dare to horsewhip a Trevlyn? Your wife’s nephew, and her brother’s son! Whatever might be the provocation — but, so far as I can learn, there was no just provocation — how came you so far to forget yourself and your temper as to strike him? One, possessing the tamest spirit ever put into man, might be expected to turn at the cruel insult you inflicted on Rupert. Did you do it with the intention of calling up the Trevlyn temper?”

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Chattaway.

  “It will not do to say nonsense to me, sir. Setting fire to the rick was your fault, not his; the crime was occasioned by you; and I, the actual owner of those ricks, shall hold you responsible for it. Yes, James Chattaway, those ricks were mine; you need not dispute what I say; the ricks were mine then, as they are now. They have been mine, in point of fact, ever since my father’s death. You may rely upon one thing — that had I known the injustice that was being enacted, I should have returned long ago.”

  “Injustice!” cried Mr. Chattaway. “What injustice?”

  “What injustice! Has there been anything but injustice? When my father’s breath left his body, his legitimate successor (in my absence and supposed death) was his grandson Rupert; this very Rupert you have been goading on to ill, perhaps to death. Had my brother Joe lived, would you have allowed him to succeed, pray?”

  “But your brother Joe did not live; he was dead.”

  “You evade the question.”

  “It is a question that will answer no end,” cried Mr. Chattaway, biting his thin lips, and feeling very like a man being driven to bay. “Of course he would have succeeded. But he was dead, and Squire Trevlyn chose to make his will in my favour, and appoint me his successor.”

  “Beguiled by treachery. He was suffered to go to his grave never knowing that a grandson was born to him. Were I guilty of the like treachery, I could not rest in my bed. I should dread that the anger of God would be ever coming down upon me.”

  “The Squire did well,” growled Mr. Chattaway. “What would an infant have done with Trevlyn Hold?”

  “Granted for a single moment that it had been inexpedient to leave Trevlyn Hold to an infant, it was not to you it should have been left. If Squire Trevlyn must have bequeathed it to a son-in-law, it should have been to him who was the husband of his eldest daughter, Thomas Ryle.”

  “Thomas Ryle!” contemptuously ejaculated Mr. Chattaway. “A poor, hard-working farmer — —”

  “Don’t attempt to disparage Thomas Ryle to me, sir,” thundered the Squire; and the voice, the look, the rising anger were so like the old Squire of the days gone by, that Mr. Chattaway positively recoiled. “Thomas Ryle was a good and honourable man, respected by all; he was a gentleman by birth and breeding; he was a gentleman in mind and manners — and that could never be said of you, James Chattaway. Work! To be sure he worked; and so did his father. They had to work to live. Their farm was a poor one; and extra labour was needed to make up for the money which ought to have been spent upon it, but which they possessed not, for their patrimony had dwindled away. They might have taken a more productive farm; but they preferred to remain upon that one because it was their own, descended from their forefathers. It had to be sold at last, but they still remained on it, and they worked, always hoping to prosper. You used the word ‘work’ as a term of reproach! Let me tell you, that if the fact of working is to take the gentle blood out of a man, there will be little gentle blood left for the next generation. This is a working age, sir; the world has grown wise, and we most of us work with hands or head. Thomas Ryle’s son is a gentleman, if I ever saw one — and I am mistaken if his looks belie his mind — and he works. Do not disparage Thomas Ryle again to me. I think a sense of the injury you did him, must induce you to do it.”

  “What injury did I do Thomas Ryle?”

  “To usurp Trevlyn Hold over him was an injury. It was Rupert’s: neither yours nor his; but had it come to one of you, it should have been to him; you had no manner of right to it. And what about the two thousand pounds bond?”

  Squire Trevlyn asked the last question in an altered and very significant tone. Mr. Chattaway’s green face grew greener.

  “I held the bond, and I enforced its payment in justice to my wife and children. I could do no less.”

  “In justice to your wife and children!” retorted Squire Trevlyn. “James Chattaway, did a thought ever cross you of God’s justice? I believe from my very heart that my father cancelled that bond upon his dying bed, died believing Thomas Ryle released from it; and you, in your grasping, covetous nature, kept the bond with an eye to your own profit. Did you forget that the eye of the Great Ruler of all things was upon you, when you pretended to destroy that bond? Did you suppose that Eye was turned away when you usurped Trevlyn Hold to the prejudice of Rupert? Did you think you would be allowed to enjoy it in security to the end? It may look to you, James Chattaway, as it would to any superficial observer, that there has been wondrous favour shown you in this long delay of justice. I regard it differently. It seems to me that retribution has overtaken you at the worst time: not the worse for you, possibly, but for your children. By that inscrutable law which we learn in childhood, a man’s ill-doings are visited on his children: I fear the result of your ill-doing will be felt by yours. Had you been deposed from Trevlyn Hold at the time you usurped it, or had you not usurped it, your children must have been brought up to play their parts in the busy walks of life; to earn their own living. As it is, they have been reared to idleness and luxury, and will feel their fall in proportion. Your son has lorded it as the heir of Trevlyn Hold, as the future owner of the works at Blackstone, and lorded it, as I hear, in a very offensive manner. He will not like to sink down to a state of dependency; but he will have to do it.”

  “Where have you been gathering your account of things?” interposed Mr. Chattaway.

  “Never mind where. I have gathered it, and that is sufficient. And now — to go back to Rupert Trevlyn. Will you give me a guarantee that he shall be held harmless?”

  “No,” growled Mr. Chattaway.

  “Then it will be war to the knife between you and me. Mind you — I do not think there’s any necessity to ask you this; as the ricks were not yours, but mine, at the time of the occurrence, you could not, as I believe, become the prosecutor. But I prefer to be on the safe side. On the return of Rupert, if you attempt to prosecute him, the first thing that I shall do will be to insist that he prosecutes you for the assault, and I shall prosecute you for the usurpation of Trevlyn Hold. So it will be prosecution and counter-prosecution, you see. Mark you, James Chattaway, I promise you to do this, and you know I am a man of my word. I think we had better let bygones be bygones. What are you going to do about the revenues of the Hold?”

  “The revenues of the Hold!” stammered Mr. Chattaway, wiping his hot face, for he did not like the question.

  “The past rents. The mesne profits you have received and a
ppropriated since Squire Trevlyn’s death. Those profits are mine.”

  “In law, possibly,” was the answer. “Not in justice.”

  “Well, we’ll go by law,” complacently returned the Squire, a spice of mischief in his eye. “Which have you gone by all these years? Law, or justice? The law would make you refund all to me.”

  “The law would be cunning to do it,” was the answer. “If I have received the revenues, I have spent them in keeping up Trevlyn Hold.”

  “You have not spent them all, I suspect; and it would be productive of great trouble and annoyance to you were I to come upon you for them. But now, look you, James Chattaway: I will be more merciful than you have been to others, and say nothing about them, for my sister Edith’s sake. In the full sense of the word, I will let bygones be bygones.”

  The ex-master of Trevlyn Hold gazed out from the depths of his dull gray eyes: gazed upon vacancy, buried in thought. It might be well to make a friend of the Squire. On the one hand was the long-cherished revenge against Rupert; on the other was his own interest. Should he gratify revenge, or study himself? Ah, you need not ask; revenge may be sweet, but with Mr. Chattaway his own interest was sweeter. The scales were not equally balanced.

  He saw that Squire Trevlyn’s heart was determined on the pardon of Rupert; he knew that the less he beat about the bush the better; and he spoke at once. “I’ll forgive him,” he said. “Rupert Trevlyn behaved infamously, but — —”

  “Stop, James Chattaway. Pardon him, or don’t pardon him, as you please; but we will have no names over it. Rupert Trevlyn shall have none cast at him in my presence.”

  “It is of no consequence. He did the wrong in the eyes of the neighbourhood, and they don’t need to be reminded of what he is.”

  “And how have the neighbourhood judged?” sternly asked Squire Trevlyn. “Which side have they espoused — yours, or his? Don’t talk to me, sir; I have heard more than you suppose. I know what shame the neighbours have cast on you for years on the score of Rupert; the double shame cast on you since these ricks were burnt. Will you pardon him?”