The estate toward which Sir Charles and Lady Jocelyn Rutherford were returning, in the middle of the county of Devon in southwest England, had been called Heathersleigh longer than anyone alive could remember.
That some former lord of the manor had been fond of the wiry plant from which was derived the name of the property was clear from the extensive patch of it planted east of the mansion. Charles and Jocelyn had reclaimed the overgrown area from the encroaching woods because of their own newfound love of growing things several years earlier. They had since expanded it into a heather garden of considerable size, which included pathways, streams, hedges, and a few small conifers. It had become one of their favorite places on the estate, where they often retreated, either alone or together, for prayer.
Their twenty-three-year-old son George, home after his graduation from Oxford, found himself wandering out of the library on the afternoon prior to his parents’ return from London. He had been reading in one of several titles given them by London minister and family friend Timothy Diggorsfeld. The books were by the Scotsman, dead now six years, who had long been Diggorsfeld’s favorite author and whom he had met and spoken with during one of the author’s visits to London late in his life.
As George left the library, his steps took him unintentionally in the direction of a wide portrait gallery off the landing of the main central staircase. For one with such a thirst to understand mechanical things, who had explored every inch of the ancient Hall, and who had even discovered more than one hidden passage his father never knew existed, George had been curiously uncurious about the people who had dwelt in this wonderful old place which was his home, and who had come before him in the Rutherford line.
How many times had he passed through this gallery, unconsciously observing the portraits hanging on each side of him, yet walking by unseeing and unquestioning? But the book he had been reading contained just such a portrait gallery, and its mystery made him all the more aware of a possible mystery here.
Who were these people? What kind of men and women were they? What had they thought, what had they felt? What secrets of Heathersleigh Hall might they have possessed? If they could speak, what would they tell him that would satisfy George’s quest for mystery?
Such questions George Rutherford had never before considered.
But suddenly on this day, the young man stopped. His attention was arrested by the look coming off the canvas from one of his old silent ancestors. Why were those two eyes—which he had walked past a thousand times since his boyhood—all at once staring at him . . . following him even as he moved? They seemed suddenly alive with mute expression. George was not immediately aware of it, but he had himself inherited a good many of the old fellow’s physical characteristics, from dark brown hair and tall forehead, to wide-set eyes and lanky but ruggedly built frame. Right now George was gazing into the man’s eyes, hazel like his own, almost as if he were looking into a mirror.
George paused, and returned the stare. What was the old fellow trying to say?
As he gazed upward at the face, the strange sensation came over him that this was the man who had constructed the hidden passage George had discovered leading from the library to the garret, and who had walled up a portion of the upper region of the house.
It had long been a riddle that George had not been able to solve: Why had it been done?
The conviction grew upon him as he studied the peculiar expression of the portrait that this man knew the secret.
George turned and gazed around one by one at the other faces all staring down at him from the gallery’s walls.
All of these people possessed secrets. If only they could speak.
Again George returned to the portrait that had first arrested his attention. The old fellow was still staring at him with eyes that seemed alive. George walked closer, then bent forward to read the brass plate on the frame beneath the man’s portrait.
Henry Rutherford, 1783–1865.
The expression of the old lord of the manor revealed a life of bitterness. George had heard stories that in his old age his great-grandfather had lost his senses. Yet . . . something other than senility stared out of that face. There was almost a look . . . of pleading mingled with hardness and anger—pleading with someone to heed his silent cry from the grave, to make right what he had done but did not have the courage in this life to repent of, yet in the next life no longer had the power to change.
Slowly George moved away, unnerved by the old man’s expression. He continued along the gallery and gazed again at face after face from the past.
The sound of an automobile engine approaching on the gravel entryway outside interrupted his reverie. Already he heard his younger sister running out the front door below to welcome their parents home.
George turned and made for the stairway.
28
Brother and Sister
A week after the coronation, Catharine and George Rutherford bounded along in their saddles, enjoying a vigorous morning romp together on the backs of their two favorite young mounts, Snowmass and Black Fire, whose contrasting equine coats bore precise resemblance to their names. George sat atop the white colt, Catharine rode the black filly.
That brother and sister were skilled equestrians insured that a good deal of galloping, racing, hedge jumping, and various pranks were included in almost any outing together. Though six years separated them, the two were indeed the best of friends. Catharine had always looked up to her older brother almost as if he occupied an equal stature with their parents, a perspective that his years away at Oxford only enhanced. He represented in her eyes the ultimate in youthful manhood.
George, on the other hand, had come during the past few years to enjoy Catharine as a true friend and equal, appreciating her lively personality and wit, since he was himself generally reserved and quiet. With the passage of his last three years at Oxford, Catharine had matured in his eyes two or three years to each of his one. Her rapid physical growth no doubt contributed to this perception, but even more her keen-brained, invigorating, alert mentality. He found her every bit the intellectual equal of many of the students he had met while away. And now, though she was merely seventeen, in his opinion she might as well have been the same age as he.
Her medium blond hair occasionally caught the sunlight such as to give it a hint of auburn. Her expression, like the shade of her hair, carried an air of occasional mystery. Such may have been accounted for by the fact that her light grey eyes perpetually sparkled as if aware of some unspoken joke being revolved in her mind. Indeed, her dry sense of humor could pop out at the most unexpected times, and kept the rest of the family, if not in constant laughter, certainly in good spirits. She had grown to be taller and more stout than her older sister, though not plump, and also better looking. A robust five ten, Catharine Rutherford had the look of one not afraid of a tussle—with horse, with difficult task, or in fun with older brother. Neither figure nor build was likely to attract immediate notice from one desiring petite and demure femininity. However, her face and spunky nature were sure to turn nearly any man’s eye . . . and hold it, that is if he was a good enough judge of character to inquire to himself what lay beneath those gleaming grey eyes.
As they rode, Catharine was bent on pushing the pace, always inviting adventure, while George, at six one, sat more sedately in the saddle, as the elder statesman of the pair, thoughtful, perusing the landscape within and without.
“When are you going to get married, George?” Catharine asked, as for the moment they rode leisurely along.
“What kind of question is that!” laughed her brother.
“I don’t know—it just popped out,” she laughed with him.
“Then I’ll answer you with the same words—I don’t know. I suppose I don’t think about it much.”
“Everybody thinks about it, George. You can’t tell me you don’t.”
“All right, sometimes I do.”
“I knew it!”
“But it seem
s like something that might happen in the future.”
“You’re old enough to be married now.”
“Maybe, but I’m in no hurry.”
“Why?”
“Maybe for the same reason I waited until I was older to go to university. I wanted to get the most out of it possible. I wanted to be ready, not rush it. So many of the students I met were too young to absorb the education that was given them. If I ever do get married, I want to be ready for it. Besides, who’d want to marry me?”
“Anybody. If I weren’t your sister I’d marry you in a minute.”
“What a thing to say!” laughed George.
“Why not? If I were looking for a husband, I’d want him to be just like you.”
“I’m very flattered. Are you looking for a husband, Catharine?”
“Me—are you kidding! I am too young.”
“Seventeen? That’s all most seventeen-year-old girls are thinking of—finding a man.”
“A waste of time, if you ask me. I’m not most seventeen-year-olds. I happen to be Catharine Rutherford, and I won’t give a man a second look until I’m good and ready, not because most other girls my age want to behave like ninnies and go giggling and ogling at every man they see between seventeen and thirty.”
“Plenty of that goes on with young men too, though disguised.”
“Most young men are ninnies themselves—except for you of course, George. It might be different if I met someone worth giggling and ogling over.”
“You don’t want to go to balls and parties like Amanda did?”
“Ugh—balls and parties! Me? Heavens, George . . . you know me better than that. At least I thought you did. Nothing could interest me less.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed. I never found much use for that sort of thing.”
“But you do want to get married?” persisted Catharine.
“Surely . . . I suppose,” replied George. “I’m just not in a hurry.”
“What are you going to do, then, now that you’re out of university? I wondered if you would ever come home to live now that you’re all grown up and graduated.”
George laughed again. “I may be graduated, but I’m not sure I feel all grown up.”
“You’re a lot older than me.”
“True. But maybe we’re both still young. That’s one of the things about Amanda that I never understood—she wanted to grow up so fast and get away from here. I’m not especially eager to do either.”
“Do you like it here, in Devon, at Heathersleigh?”
“This is home,” replied George. “I can’t imagine living anyplace else. I love it here. And I suppose I will someday be lord of the manor just like father and his father, and so on. I’ll probably have a stern old portrait of myself to hang with the rest.” He made a face like old Henry, which brought another laugh from Catharine’s mouth.
“What about being with Mother and Father, now that you’re—you know, George—now that you’re almost grown up yourself? Don’t you want to be independent and out from under their roof?”
“Who needs independence? Father’s my best friend. Why would I want to be out from under his roof?”
“I’m so relieved to hear you say that!”
“Why?” laughed George.
“I wondered if you might be like Amanda and want to leave and never come back. That was my greatest worry about your being gone at university, that you would come back all sophisticated and different, and that you would then go somewhere else to live, and I would never see you again except for visits when you’d wear starched shirts and lift your little finger when you drank tea and be all stuffy and sit around talking about boring—”
George could not contain himself any longer. Finally he burst out laughing.
“I thought you knew me better than that,” he said.
“I thought I did too, but I couldn’t help being nervous. I like it here too. Mother is my best friend, just like you say of Father. But I suppose I thought I was the oddball of the three of us children for feeling that way.”
“Well, have no fear, younger sister. I promise I will never change. I won’t get stuffy, and unless circumstances force a change upon me, Heathersleigh will always be my home.—Come on, race you to the top of the ridge!”
With scarcely a flick of the wrist from their respective owners, both horses immediately tore off across the grassy slope, throwing back great clods of turf behind their hooves.
29
Neighbors
The race was curtailed after only about two hundred yards, however, by the appearance of another familial riding pair, who about the same time emerged from a thin stand of pine to the right of the two racers.
George reined in. Although Catharine was about half a length in the lead, it was several seconds before she realized she was no longer being hotly pursued. She glanced back, saw George slowing to a trot, then reined in Black Fire even as she spun her around to rejoin her brother. As she did, she saw the reason for her brother’s withdrawal from the contest.
George was already greeting the twenty-four-year-old heir of the marquessate of Holsworthy, Hubert Powell, and his sister, Gwendolen. Though Heathersleigh Hall and Holsworthy Castle were separated by some twenty miles, the two estates were considered almost as neighbors, not only because they were the two largest and most well-known estates in the region, but also because of the similarity in ages of the rising generations within the two families. Neither set of parents had ever been close, nor desired to be. There had been considerable interest on the part of young Powell in Amanda Rutherford at one time. However, it had been smartly rebuffed by the latter’s father. The incident left such an acrid sting in Hubert’s mouth that he never forgot his vow to get even somehow. What better way than to get the religious fool’s other daughter to fall in love with him, for which second chance he had been biding his time until she was old enough to become interesting in his eyes.
In the meantime, remarkably, in spite of having plied his affections in more than a dozen directions, he had never married. This fact was not remarkable because he desired to marry and had not been successful. Six or eight foolish maidens would happily have married him for his looks, his dash, and his wealth, and been most miserable for it later. But the young Holsworthy heir had no inclination toward that sort of existence known as “settling down.” He preferred his oats numerous and wild.
That Hubert Powell remained single was remarkable simply by virtue of the fact that no outraged father who had come to the marquess Atworth Powell demanding that his son marry his daughter had actually succeeded.
More than one had come, it is true, with precisely such a demand. But money has a way of mollifying much outrage. And the marquess of Holsworthy possessed it in sufficient quantities to have thus far kept the reputation of his son unsoiled and his future uncommitted.
By outward appearance, the years had been good to the future marquess. Hubert Powell was even more handsome and dashing than before. He had heard—he possessed many sources for the receipt of this sort of information—that Sir Charles Rutherford’s second daughter, now seventeen and thus technically “available,” had become something of an Amazon, and a beautiful one at that, whose eyes were like a wildcat’s, who could ride like the wind, and who was stronger than any three normal women together.
When first he heard the report, he lost interest immediately. Who wanted a girl whose behavior resembled that of a man? He immediately set renewed inquiries afoot concerning the elder of the two girls. Now suddenly he realized how hasty had been his judgment. As the younger of the three Rutherford progeny rode up behind her imbecile of a brother, Hubert’s eyes widened in fascination.
She was beautiful, and every inch a desirable young woman.
Knowing well enough Hubert Powell’s reputation, George immediately assumed the role of knight protector, moving forward the moment the two riders came into view in hopes of placing himself between Catharine and harm’s way. But the future marques
s was not so easily deterred. The two eldest sons had just completed their stiff but properly cordial greetings when Catharine energetically cantered up alongside her brother. Her hair was flowing and her face flushed from the exhilaration of the ride.
“And this must be your sister Catharine!” said Powell effusively, smiling his most charming smile, bowing slightly and lifting his cap. “I don’t know that we have seen one another since we were children.”
“Catharine,” said George with obvious reluctance, “this is Hubert Powell, and I believe you know his sister Gwendolen.”
Catharine glanced momentarily toward her counterpart, then returned Hubert’s smile, though cautiously. She too had heard the reports about him, and in truth George had nothing to fear. Her affections were perfectly safe. Because she was a young woman of substance, cajolery would not succeed in sweeping her off her feet. If she ever fell in love, it would be with someone of character, not superficial charm.
Already, however, Hubert was slyly angling his mount between George and Catharine, hoping to effect a pairing off, which could not better have suited Gwendolen Powell. She had had her sights on George Rutherford for years. Already, as her brother made his move, she flashed her eyes in George’s direction.
“Perhaps you would like to join me for a ride, Catharine,” Hubert said in his smoothest tone. “I’m sure Gwen and George would—”
“I think George and I would prefer to remain together,” Catharine interrupted.
“What say you, George, old man?” rejoined Powell, turning with a quick wink toward George. “You and I are both men of the world, university fellows and all that. No doubt you and Gwen—”
“I’m sorry, Hubert,” said George. “Catharine is right. We really do intend to continue on together.”
Inwardly fuming at the double rebuff, Hubert did his best to maintain his composure.
“Well then, what would you say to some company? Gwen and I were heading down in your direction anyway.”
“The countryside is wide open,” replied Catharine. “We certainly have no objection, do we, George?”
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