Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Greatorex had informed her that henceforward she would be allowed two hundred pounds a year. One hundred pounds in addition he made her a present gift of. The clerk, despatched with the letter and money, was Mr. Brown, who had entirely resumed his name of Winter: the office, not getting into the new habit readily, usually called him Mr. Brown-Winter. Mr. Winter was commissioned to discharge the above-mentioned bills, and to see a stone placed over the grave, the inscription for which had been written down by Mr. Greatorex. It was short as might be: only the following words, with the date of death.

  BEDE GREATOREX

  AGED THIRTY-NINE.

  “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden.”

  Mr. Winter had executed his charges, and was back again. The clerks heard with very little surprise that he was to be promoted amidst them: the confidential manager in future under Mr. Greatorex and his son; one to whom the office would have to look up to as a master. Rumour went that Mr. Winter was about to become a qualified solicitor: not from any view of setting up for himself, but that he might be more efficient for his duties in the house of Greatorex and Greatorex. His salary would be handsome: it had been already considerably augmented since the month of January last. Mr. Winter had taken a small, pretty house, and would soon bring a wife home to it: Alletha Rye was to exchange her name to Alletha Winter. The clerks in general looked upon it that Mr. Winter’s promotion took its rise in his undoubted business merit and capacity: but in point of fact it was owing to a few lines written by Bede to his father. “The man is of sterling merit: he has forgotten self in striving patiently to benefit and shield me: reward him for my sake. I am sure he will repay in faithfulness all you can do for him.”

  Little more than this did Bede say; not a word as to the nature of what the benefit or the shielding had been. Mr. Greatorex knew now, for a revelation had been made to him through Judge Kene. Bede, only the day before his death, had posted a letter to Sir Thomas Kene, one that he had spent a week in writing, getting to it at intervals.

  The anguish that communication, and other things, brought to Mr. Greatorex, was very sharp still. He was feeling it as he sat there in the evening twilight. Bede’s death he had, in one sense, almost ceased to mourn: knowing now what a happy release from mental pain it must have been. But he could not think with the smallest patience of Bede’s wife: never again, never again. She had been the primary author of all the misery: but for her, his son — ay, and some one else, dear to him as a son — had been, in all human probability, living now, happy, peaceful, and playing a good and busy part on the world’s stage.

  “Will you admit visitors, sir?”

  “Eh! what!” — and Mr. Greatorex started up half in alarm as the servant spoke, so deeply had he been buried in far-away thoughts. “Visitors this evening! — no. Stay, Philip. Who are they?”

  “Sir Roland and Lady Yorke, sir.”

  “Oh, I’ll see them,” said Mr. Greatorex. “Ask them to walk up.”

  Roland and his wife, passing through London from their wedding tour, part of which had been spent in Ireland, at Lord Carrick’s, had halted for a night at one of the hotels. “To see old friends,” said Roland. Not that he had many to see: Mrs. J. and Mr. Greatorex nearly comprised them. Winny Yorke and her children were in Wales with her mother. Gerald had sent them, “as a temporary thing,” till he could get “a bit straight.” When that desirable epoch might be expected to dawn, was hidden in the mystery of the future. Gerald had been a good month in Whitecross Street prison, done to death pretty nearly with his creditors’ reproaches, who used to go down in a body to abuse him, when they found there was no chance of their getting a farthing. He and his chambers had been sold up; and altogether Gerald had come to considerable grief. Just now he was in Paris, enjoying himself on a sum of money that Lord Carrick had been induced to give him, and on the proceeds from an article that he supplied twice a week to a London newspaper. He thought himself terribly hard worked; and slightly relieved his bile by telling everybody that his brother Roland was the greatest villain under the sun. Roland meant to find him a post if he could, and meanwhile took care of Winny and the little ones: Gerald quietly ignored that.

  “Sir Roland and Lady Yorke.”

  Mr. Greatorex met them with outstretched hands, giving Annabel a fatherly kiss on her blushing face. He quite forgot her new elevation, remembering her only as the sweet and simple girl who had made sunshine in his house at odd moments. She looked sweet and simple, still quite unaltered. Roland, on his part, had not attained the smallest additional dignity: he clattered in just as of yore. They were going to Sunny Mead on the morrow, and he began telling of his future plans for the happy home life.

  Mr. Greatorex smiled as he listened. “I don’t fancy you will give us much work, Sir Roland, in the way of incurring debts and trouble, and coming to us to get you clear of them,” he observed.

  “No thank you, I leave that to Gerald. Mr. Greatorex,” added Roland, his eyes shining with honest light, his face meeting that of his ex-master, “I promised Vincent when he was dying that I’d keep clear of trouble; I as good as promised Hamish: I’d not go from my word to them, you know. And, what’s more, I shall never wish to.”

  “I see. You will be a dead loss to us. The Yorkes in general have been profitable clients.”

  Roland took the words seriously, and his mouth fell a little.

  “I’m very sorry, sir. I — I’ll give you a present every year to make up for the deficiency, if you’ll accept it. A golden inkstand, or something of that sort.”

  Mr. Greatorex looked at him with a smile, never speaking. Roland resumed, thoroughly in earnest, his voice low.

  “It’s such an awful deal of money, you see; four thousand a year, besides a house and lots of other things. Two people could never spend it, and if we could, we don’t think it would be doing right. Annabel and I see things alike. We mean to put aside half of our income; against a rainy day, say; or — there are so many people who want help. You see, M. Greatorex, we had both learnt to live on little. But I’m sure I shall be sorry, if you look upon me as a loss.”

  “You can repay me, Roland, better than by a golden inkstand,” said Mr. Greatorex, laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Let me come to you for a week annually when the summer roses are in bloom; and do you tell me, year by year, that you have adhered to your proposed simple mode of life.”

  Roland was in the skies at once. “It is a bargain, mind that,” he said. “You will come to us always with the summer roses. As to a week only, we’ll talk about that.”

  “And Jane shall meet you, sir,” interposed Annabel with shy joy. “She is very happy at her school; I often have letters from her. Roland and I were thinking of having her at Christmas, if you don’t mind.”

  “And Nelly Channing too, if her mother will spare her,” put in Roland. “And we have talked about those three little mites in Wales. It would be good to have the lot together, and give them a bit of pleasure. They should have a jolly Christmas tree; and we’d get over some boxes of Lumps of Delight from Turkey, by one of the P. and O. steamers; and I’d bring them up to the waxwork. Annabel and I both love children.”

  “And I hope to my heart you may have some of your own to bless you!” rejoined Mr. Greatorex with unaccountable emotion. “To bless you when they are young; to bless you when they — when they — shall be grown. God grant you may never have cause to weep for them in tears of blood! Many of earth’s sorrows are hard to bear, but that is the weightiest that Heaven can inflict upon us.”

  Roland stared a little. The thing seemed nearly as incomprehensible to his view of social life as that he should have to weep for some defect in the moon.

  “We’d bring them up in the best way, Mr. Greatorex,” was the simple answer. “Annabel would, you may be sure, and I’d try to. I don’t think I got brought up in the best way myself: there was too much scuffling and scrambling. Mrs. J. once said — I beg your pardon, Annabel.”

  Fo
r Annabel was trying to express to Mr. Greatorex their regret at his son’s death. The strange emotion that had shaken him she knew must be felt for Bede.

  “We are both of us very sorry, sir, for him and for you,” she said.

  “My dear, you need not be,” spoke Mr. Greatorex, in a low, sad tone. “His life had grown weary; and death, to him, must have been like a welcome rest at the close of day. A little sooner, a little later — what does it matter?”

  “And for the muffs of doctors not to be able to cure him! Mr. Greatorex, when I remember him, and Vincent Yorke, and Hamish Channing, my respect for the medical profession does not go up. Halloa! who’s this?” broke off Roland. —

  Philip was coming in with a cloud of surprise on his face, while a rustle as of extensive petticoats might be heard in his rear. He addressed his master with deprecation, conscious of something to tell that might not be very agreeable.

  “It is Mrs. Bede Greatorex, sir.”

  “Who?” hurriedly exclaimed Mr. Greatorex.

  “Mr. Bede’s widow, sir. She has arrived with a French maid and a cab full of boxes.”

  No need to reiterate the news, for Mrs. Bede stood in view. Mr. Greatorex seized his servant by the coat like one in alarm, and gave a private order.

  “Keep the cab. Don’t unload the boxes. Mrs. Bede Greatorex will not remain here.”

  Mrs. Bede Greatorex, a widow of a month, was not less fashionable in appearance than when she was a wife. Rather more so, of the two. Her dress of rich silk and crape was a model for the mode books, her hair was wonderful to behold. A small bob of something white peeped out atop of the chignon; looking close, it might be discovered to be an inch of quilled net: and its wearer called it a widow’s cap with all the brass in life.

  She held out her hand to Mr. Greatorex, but he seemed not to see it. That his resentment against this woman was one of bitterness, could not be mistaken. Mrs. Bede did not appear to notice the coldness of the greeting. Brushing past Annabel, she cast a rather contemptuous look towards her, and said some slighting words.

  “What! are you here again? I thought the house was rid of you.”

  “This is my wife; Lady Yorke,” spoke Roland in as haughty a tone as it was possible for him to assume. “Don’t forget it, if you please, Mrs. Bede Greatorex.”

  She looked from one to the other of them. That Roland had succeeded to the family honours, she knew, but she had not heard of his marriage. The poor young governess, whom she had put upon and made unhappy, Lady Yorke! A moment’s pause: Mrs. Bede’s manner changed as if by magic, and she kissed Annabel on both cheeks, French fashion. Nobody knew better than she on which side her bread was buttered.

  “Ah, dear me, it’s fine to be you, Annabel! What changes since we last met. You a wife, and I a widow.”

  Mr. Greatorex took an impatient step forward, as if to speed her departure. She turned to him, speaking of her husband.

  “I think Bede might have got well if he would. I used to tell him so. The doctors made an examination afterwards, and found, as you have heard, that there was no specific disease whatever. He wasted away; wasted and wasted; it was like as though there were a consuming fire ever within him, burning him away to death.”

  “My goodness!” cried Roland. “Poor Bede.”

  “It was most unsatisfactory: I never saw anything like it in my life before,” tartly retorted Mrs. Bede, for her husband’s death had not pleased her, and she resented it openly. Not for the loss or love of him, but for the loss of his means. “I think he might have got well had he struggled for it. If you’ll believe me, only the day before he died, he went out in a carriage to the post-office, that he might post a letter himself to Sir Thomas Kene.”

  No one answered her, or made any comment.

  “Is my old room ready for me?”

  Mr. Greatorex, to whom the question was more particularly put, motioned her towards the door, and moved thither himself. “I wish to speak with you in private for a minute,” he said. “Pardon me, Sir Roland, I will be back directly.”

  That Mrs. Bede Greatorex had come to take the house by storm, hoping thereby to resume her late footing in it, Mr. Greatorex knew just as well as she. His letter to her, delivered by George Winter, was unmistakably plain; and he did wonder at the hardihood which had brought her hither, after its receipt.

  “You cannot have misunderstood my communication,” he said to her as they turned into the room that had once been her boudoir. “I must beg to refer you to it. This house can never shelter you again.”

  “But it must,” she answered.

  “Never again; never again.”

  “At least, I must stay here for some days, until I can decide where my residence shall be,” she persisted, her voice taking the unpleasant shriek that it always took in anger. “You can’t deny me that.”

  Mr. Greatorex raised his hand as if to waive off the argument and the words. “Philip shall see you to an hotel, if you feel incompetent to drive to one with your maid,” he said, slightly sarcastic. “But, under my roof; it once sheltered in happiness my poor son; you may not remain.”

  “I was your son’s wife,” she passionately said.

  “I will tell you what you were to him, if you wish. I don’t press it.”

  “Well?”

  “His curse.”

  “Thank you.”

  “His curse before marriage; his curse after it.”

  As he stood there, with his face of pain, speaking not in an angry tone, but one mournfully subdued, certain items connected with the past rose up to fill the mind of Mrs. Bede Greatorex. She was aware then that he knew all; she had some little shame left in her, and her very brow grew crimson.

  “I cannot imagine what you may have heard, or be suspecting,” she said, falteringly. “The past is past. I did nothing very wrong. Nothing but what plenty of other girls do.”

  “May God forgive you, Louisa Greatorex; as I know He has forgiven him.”

  It was surging up in her mind like angry waves, that far gone-by time, one event replacing another. During her prolonged visit to this very house as Louisa Joliffe, she had suffered Bede to become passionately attached to her. Suffered? — it was she who drew him and drew him on. She engaged herself to him privately; a solemn engagement; and Bede acceded to her request that it should be kept secret for a time. She did not like Bede; she was playing an utterly false part; she coveted the good income and position that would be hers as his wife, but she rather disliked him. Her motive in demanding that their engagement should he concealed, was a hope that some offer more desirable might turn up. Oh that Bede had suspected it! He looked for her to be his wife as surely as he looked for Heaven. After her return home from her visit, and John Ollivera was sojourning at Helstonleigh, she played exactly the same game over with him. Drawing him on to love her, and engaging herself to him in private. She liked him, but she did not like to have to wait an indefinite number or years, until the young barrister should find himself in a position to marry. Which of the two she would eventually have chosen, was a matter that must remain in uncertainty for ever; most likely (she acknowledged so to herself) Bede and his wealth. Things went on smoothly enough, she corresponding ardently with both of them in secret, until the time of the March assizes — so often told of — and the fatal night when Bede Greatorex came down to Hestonleigh on a mission to his cousin. The contretemps, the almost certainty of discovery, the very probable fear that she should lose both her lovers, nearly drove Louisa out of her senses. That something in connection with it had passed between Bede and his cousin, she knew from Bede’s manner that evening at her mother’s; how much, she did not dare to ask. The following morning, when the news was brought to her that Mr. Ollivera had destroyed himself, she felt like a guilty woman. Whatever might have been the mystery of the death: whether he had really committed suicide, or whether Bede had shot him in the passion of his hot Spanish blood — and it was impossible but that she should have her latent doubts — she was the primary c
ause; and she knew it, and felt it. Had she gone out and killed him herself, she could not have felt it more. She became aware of another thing — that Bede Greatorex, searching amidst the effects of the dead on the following day, must have found her love-letters: more impassioned letters than she was wont to write to him. Bede did not visit her again during his stay at Helstonleigh, and she would not have dared to seek him. Some months later they met by accident in London: were thrown together three or four times. Bede renewed his offer of marriage, and she accepted him at once; the doubt in her mind, as to the part he might have taken in John Ollivera’s death, never having been solved. She conveniently ignored it, for the glowing prospect of an establishment was all in all. But what sort of a wife did she make him? — how much did Bede, in his chivalric devotion, have to bear? She alone knew; she knew it now as she stood there; and her attempt to carry it off with a high hand to Mr. Greatorex failed signally. If ever the true sense of her sin should be brought home by Heaven to Louisa Greatorex, its weight, as connected with the treatment of her husband, would be well-nigh greater than she could bear. A curse to him before marriage; a curse to him after: Mr. Greatorex had well said it.

  “Am I to starve in future, that you won’t give me a home?” she burst forth, driving other thoughts away from her. “What’s two hundred a-year? How am I to live?”

  “My recommendation to you was, that you should live in Boulogne; with, or near your mother,” Mr. Greatorex answered calmly. “The two hundred pounds will be amply sufficient for that.”

  “Two hundred pounds!” she retorted, rudely. “I shall spend that on my dress.”

  “As you please, of course. It is the sum that will be paid you in quarterly instalments of fifty pounds, as long as I live. At my death, the half of it only would be secured to you. Should you marry again, the payments would altogether cease. All this I stated to you in my letter: I repeat it now. Not another shilling will you receive from me — in life, or after death.”