Chapter Twenty Six
Sir Ingram de Romary
“Raged the loud storm…
The lightning o’er his path
Flashed horribly – the thunder pealed – the winds
Mournfully blew; yet still his desperate course
He held; and fierce he urged his gallant steed
For many a mile. The torrent lifted high its voice.”
Lydford Bridge.
Hathercourt letters sometimes came of an evening. When any thoughtful or good-natured neighbour happened to pass the Withenden post-office at or after three o’clock in the afternoon, it was a favourite attention to call for the Rectory letters. And sometimes it happened that the owners of the letters were not sorry to receive them in private, for even among the least reserved or secretive natures it is not always pleasant to have one’s affairs discussed or guessed at by half a dozen inquisitive young people round a breakfast table.
Lilias had not written quite as much to Mary as usual of late, finding it difficult to make time for more than the almost daily lengthy and amusing letters she sent to her father. So when Mr Wills from the Edge, who, since her residence under his roof, had taken “Miss Mary” into special favour, called with a thick budget addressed in Lilias’s hand, Mary felt surprised as well as delighted.
But her pleasure was somewhat tinged with alarm when she read the few words which, at the top of the sheet, first met her glance:
“Read this when you are alone, and likely to be uninterrupted. It is nothing wrong. Don’t be frightened.”
But frightened of course she was, and thankful to be able at once to satisfy herself.
“Nothing wrong!” It would have been difficult to judge from Mary’s face, when she looked up after finishing the letter, what had been the nature of its contents. Like Lilias, her first impression was one of such utter bewilderment that it seemed as if her brain were refusing to take in the facts before her. She got up from her seat, pushed her hair back from her forehead, and tried to think reasonably and rationally. But it was difficult.
“Can I be dreaming?” she said to herself. “Mamma heir to all the Brookes’ property! Can it be true? Oh, papa, poor papa – he must be told. Only last night again he was talking to me of his racking anxiety about our future; it is so impressed on him that he is not going to live long. And, as Lilias says, this news may be fresh life to him.”
She sat down again, and for some minutes allowed her fancy to run riot in the new world so suddenly opened before her. To be rich! How extraordinary the idea seemed to her – no more furrows on her father’s face of anxiety as to the future, no more daily worries for her mother about butchers’ and grocers’ books and servants’ wages and everlasting new boots for the boys; plenty of books and music, and pretty dresses even, which in her heart Mary was by no means given to despise, for herself and Lilias; a first-rate governess for the girls – unlimited power as well as will to help their poorer neighbours – a pretty and luxurious home, something like Romary, perhaps! A flush rose to Mary’s cheek at the thought – what would the Cheviotts think of this marvellous news? Would it increase or diminish the separation between them? Was it possible that even yet all might come right between Lilias and Arthur Beverley, or had Lilias quite left off caring for him? Was it – ? Her speculations were suddenly brought to a close – a tap at the door reminded her of the present, and recalled her to the consideration of how and when she should first break this astonishing revelation to her parents.
“Consult with mamma,” Lilias had said. Yes, of course, that was the first thing to be done. But to get hold of her mother alone for an uninterrupted talk was by no means so easy as it seemed, just now especially, since Mr Western’s failing health had rendered him exigeant and capricious in a way quite foreign to his ordinary character.
The tap at the door was repeated.
“Come in,” cried Mary, starting up as she spoke.
“How can I when the door is locked?” said her mother’s voice.
Mary hastened to unlock it.
“I am so sorry for keeping you waiting,” she said, penitently, as she did so. “I had no idea it was you, mother.”
“I have been looking for you all over the house, and began to think you must have gone out,” said her mother, in a slightly aggrieved tone. “It is nearly tea-time, and I want to hasten it, for possibly a cup of tea may do your father good. It is about him I wanted you, Mary. He seems to me decidedly less well this evening, and I have just been wondering if we should not ask Dr Brandreth to come to see him to-morrow. The postman will be here directly. What do you think?”
“Would papa not mind?” said Mary, consideringly.
“I don’t know – that is the difficulty. He is always pleased to see Dr Brandreth, and often enjoys a talk with him; but whenever I have proposed it lately, he has begun worrying about the expense. Dr Brandreth is very kind – to do any good to your father I know he would gladly come for nothing at all; but your father would not have that. He has always paid our doctor’s charges to the full, and would be miserable not to do so. But it can’t be helped; we are certainly unusually short of money just now, but where your father is concerned, Mary dear, I seem to grow reckless.”
Mary had drawn her mother within the threshold of her room. They stood talking near the door-way in low tones.
“If that is the only hesitation,” the girl replied, eagerly, with a suppressed excitement in her voice which, had she been a whit less preoccupied, her mother could not but have noticed, “if that is the only difficulty, oh! mother dear, don’t hesitate an instant.”
Mrs Western sighed. Her heart only too thoroughly agreed with Mary, but, alas! to her life experience of poverty it seemed no longer unendurable and inconceivable, no longer anything but sadly inevitable that, even in such a matter as a question of health or sickness, possibly even of life or death, considerations of pounds, shillings, and pence should force themselves to the front. She only sighed and hesitated.
“Mother dear,” persisted Mary, “let me write to Dr Brandreth at once. I know it is right. And oh, mother, I have such wonderful news to tell you. I have a letter from Lilias – it was to read it quietly I had locked myself into my room. Mother I don’t know how to tell you what she has written about.”
Mrs Western’s mind was still running on the fors and againsts of sending for Dr Brandreth. She hardly took in the sense of Mary’s words.
“A letter from Lilias!” she repeated. “Poor Lily, I am glad she is enjoying herself. But, Mary, if you really think we should send for Dr Brandreth, there is no time to lose. Josey called out as I came up-stairs that she heard Jacob’s ‘make-ready’ whistle at the end of the lane, and when he whistles so far off it’s always a sign that he is in a hurry.”
“Then he must just not be in a hurry,” said Mary; “but all the same, mother, I’ll write the note at once. And, in the mean time, can’t you try to guess what Lilias’s letter is about?”
“It surely isn’t that she has met Captain Beverley again,” said Mrs Western, anxiously, “or surely not that any one else has taken a fancy to her? I never thought Lilias anything of a flirt, but – ”
“Oh, no, mother dear, it is nothing of that sort,” said Mary, as she ran down-stairs before her mother. “Don’t make yourself uneasy. I will tell you all as soon as I have sent off the note to Dr Brandreth.”
“We must have tea as soon as possible,” replied her mother. “I will be getting it ready, Mary, and when you have sent the note, go into your father’s study and try to get him to come into the dining-room. It will be better for him than sitting alone in the study when he is feeling ill.”
“Very well,” said Mary. She could not bring herself to share her mother’s apprehensions, she was in a state of such excitement that the whole world seemed to have changed to her. Her father could not but get better and stronger now; mental anxiety, she felt certain, had far more to do with his failing health than any one imagined.
Still when the note – less urgently worded, it must be owned, than had it been written to her mother’s dictation – was dispatched, and she went to the study to seek her father, she felt a little startled. He was sitting in his chair by the fire, half dozing, it seemed to Mary, but when he looked up in answer to her greeting, she saw that his face looked changed somehow, its expression told of pain and oppression greater than he had yet endured.
“Is your head so bad, dear father?” she said, anxiously.
“Very, very bad indeed. I feel perfectly stupid with that sense of oppression, and my sight is so strangely hazy. I could not conceal it from your mother,” he went on, half apologetically, “though you know, my dear, how I always shrink from making her uneasy.”
“Yes,” said Mary, half absently, “I know. Will you come into the dining-room to tea, papa? Mamma sent me to fetch you.”
“Very well. If she wishes it, though I feel as if I would rather stay here. I hope the children will be quiet, poor things. I can’t stand any noise or excitement tonight.”
Mary looked at him as he spoke, and dismissed the half-formed idea – that, since she had been alone with her father, had seized her with sudden temptation – of telling him the contents of the letter in her pocket, now, at once. She saw he spoke the truth. He was unfit to bear any great excitement.
Tea passed over with unwonted quiet. The “children” were impressed by their father’s weary looks, and conversation was carried on in unusually amicable whispers. After tea Mr Western went back to his study, and Mary at last succeeded in getting her mother to herself.
“For a quarter of an hour only, dear,” said Mrs Western. “Then I must take my work into the study and sit with your father. And I want to persuade him to go early to bed.”
“It is barely seven yet, mother,” said Mary. “Now listen – first of all, do you remember Lilias writing – of course you do – about having met a cousin of yours, a Mrs Brabazon, in town?”
“At the doctor’s, wasn’t it? Waiting for Mr Greville at the doctor’s, and your father was so pleased at it, and thought something might come of it – of course, I remember,” replied Mrs Western, growing interested. “Well, Mary?”
“Well, mother,” continued Mary, “Lilias’s letter is all about these relations of yours. She has met them again, they are at Hastings just now, and she has been to spend a day with them. And, mother,” she proceeded cautiously, “it does indeed seem as if something were going to come of it. Do you happen to know, did you ever hear how the Brooke property is left – entailed, I suppose I should say?”
“In the usual way, entailed on to the eldest son. I have always known that,” said Mrs Western, in some surprise.
“But failing an eldest son, mother, failing any direct male heir at all, do you – ?”
Her question was never completed. At that moment a bell rang sharply and violently through the house. Mary and her mother stared at each other for a moment in silence. Bells were at no time in great request at the Rectory, and the sound of the special bell now heard seemed strange and unfamiliar.
“What can that be?” said Mary. “Some trick of the children’s I am afraid. Wait here, mother; I’ll go and see.”
She ran to the door, but before she had more than opened it her mother had overtaken her.
“Let me pass,” she whispered, in a hoarse, breathless voice – “let me go first, Mary. I know what it is. It is the study bell. Mary, your father – ”
They rushed across the hall and down the study passage together. Which first reached the door Mary never knew. But between them it was thrown open and – ah, yes! – Mrs Western’s instinct was correct; the blow that for so long had threatened them had fallen at last – the Rector lay unconscious on the floor, and at the first glance Mary thought her mother was right when in agony she wailed out – “He is dead! Oh, Mary, he is dead!”
But he was not dead. They did what in their ignorance they could, poor things! and then, a quarter of an hour or so after the first alarm, Mary came rushing into the school-room, where the frightened children were all collected together.
“George, where is George?” she said. “He must go, or find some one to go, for the doctor. Simmons is out – it is always the way. But where is George? Can none of you tell me?”
“Oh, Mary, I am so sorry,” said poor Alexa. “I am afraid George has gone to bed. Have you forgotten about his sore knee? I don’t think he could go for the doctor. Couldn’t Josey and I go? Oh, dear! what shall we do?”
Mary for an instant wrung her hands in perplexity. It all came back to her memory about George’s having hurt his knee by a fall from a tree the day before, hurt it badly too. What was to be done? The nearest possibility of a man and horse was a mile off, and even then only a possibility, hardly worth wasting precious time on the chance of. Simmons, their own factotum, was out for the evening – what was to be done? Mary’s quick mind glanced it all over and decided.
“Get my cloak and hat, quick, Josey – any of you,” she said. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll run myself to the Edge and get Wills to go. He has a good horse, and has often had to bring Dr Brandreth when Al – Miss Cheviott was there. Yes, that will be best, better than running a mile the other way on the mere chance of Giles Swanwick being able to go.”
She was off before any one could stop her. But indeed it was the best thing to do. It was terrible to have to leave her mother alone with the silent, already in a strange sense, unfamiliar figure that Mary found it hard to believe could be “papa,” but what might not delay or a bungled message result in? She only glanced in again to impress upon Martha, a fairly intelligent woman of her class, on no account to leave her mistress alone; if anything were wanted to call to Miss Alexa, or Miss Josephine, who would remain within ear-shot.
At the front door Mary was stopped by Alexa, trembling and pale with repressed anxiety, yet, Mary was glad to see, crying but little.
“Tell me, Mary, dear Mary – forgive me for stopping you,” she said, breathlessly, “but do tell me, do you think he is going to die?”
“I don’t know – oh! Alexa, how can I tell?” said Mary. “Let me go, dear, and try all of you to be good. That’s the only thing you can do just now.”
“I will, indeed I will,” said Alexa, bravely, “and, Mary, you shall see a difference in me from this time, see if you don’t.”
Mary kissed her and hurried out.
“Perhaps there is really more strength and sense in Alexa than we have given her credit for,” she said to herself. It was a very tiny drop of comfort, still there was some in her young sister’s sympathy and evident desire to be of use. “For,” thought Mary, “it is impossible not to recall all dear papa’s forebodings – he has spoken so much of them lately, as to what would become of them all, and Alexa and Josey seemed as much on his mind as any – in case – ”
She stopped suddenly as there flashed across her mind the recollection of Lilias’s letter, which by some strange brain freak the new excitement of the last half hour had completely banished from her memory. Could it still be true – this wonderful news which so short a time ago had seemed to illumine the dark future so brilliantly and scatter every cloud? Could it be true?
“And what if it be?” thought Mary, recklessly, a sob rising in her throat. “What shall we care for money or comfort without him! What a mockery it seems coming now when the greatest sorrow of our lives is upon us! What madness it seems ever to have murmured at our small means or privations or difficulties or anything while we were all together and well! Oh, to think that only the last time I walked down this lane I was grumbling to myself at the home worries and the children’s troublesomeness and the monotonous commonplaceness of my life! If only we were back to all that – if only – would I ever grumble again?”
The tears would come. Mary ran faster in hopes of driving them away and preserving the self-possession which she felt she dare not lose, and another ten minutes brought her to the Edge. She knew the ins and outs of the place so well that without knocking she quickly found her way into the kitchen, where Mrs Wills was busy ironing. The familiar kitchen – how little she had thought the last time she saw it, on what an errand she would next be there!
This errand was soon told, and Mrs Wills was full of sympathy. But sympathy, alas! was all she had to give, and Mary was in sore need of something more. It was terribly disappointing to find that Wills himself was not at home, nor likely to be for some hours to come. On his return from Withenden he had ridden on to Bewley, a village some miles the other way, about a horse buying or selling, or some business of the kind, which, rendered diffusive by her excitement, Mrs Wills would have given Mary the whole details of, had not the girl cut her short with an anguished exclamation:
“What am I to do? What can I do?” she cried. “They are all depending on me to find some way – mamma and all – and even now he may be dying. Oh, Mrs Wills!”
Mrs Wills wiped away her tears with one corner of her apron, while she stopped to consider.
“There’s neither man nor boy about this blessed place to-night, as ill luck would have it,” she said. “I would offer to run myself, and gladly, but I’m not as quick as when I was younger, Miss Mary. But stay – there’s farmer Bartlemoor’s not more than a mile and a quarter away, where there’s sure to be one of the sons at home and plenty of horses. To be sure it’s not exactly on the way to Withenden, but not so far about neither. Do you know it, miss? – Bartle’s farm, I mean? Bartles we calls them mostly for shorter.”
“No,” said Mary, “I don’t. But tell me and I am sure I can find it.”
Mrs Wills’s description recalled the place to Mary’s recollection. The Bartlemoors were not her father’s parishioners, but she remembered noticing the house, a rather picturesque old-fashioned one, in some of the long summer rambles the Rectory children were so fond of.
It was not yet quite dark when again she set out. But had it been the blackest of midnights, little, save for the increased difficulty and delay, would Mary have cared. She hurried on, trying hard not to think, nor to distract herself by picturing what might at that moment be happening at the Rectory. It seemed to her that she had implicitly followed Mrs Wills’s directions, yet the landmarks she was on the look-out for were strangely long of coming. It was all but dark now – the road, hardly indeed worthy of the name, along which she was hastening was perfectly bare of any sign of human habitation; she had met no one since she left the Edge, not a single belated market-cart even had passed her, and now, as Mary stood still in despair, she noticed that the clouds, which all the evening had been gathering ominously together, had joined their phalanxes – there was no longer a break in the sky – the rain began slowly but steadily, in five minutes it was a perfect pour.
Mechanically almost, poor Mary crept under a tree and stood still to think what she should do. Where indeed was the use of hurrying on, when every step, for all she knew, might but be taking her further and further in the wrong direction? It was too evident she had lost her way. What she would have done she often afterwards asked herself, if, at that moment, the sound of wheels approaching rapidly in her direction had not caught her ears. Too rapidly indeed was her next fear – how, amidst the pouring rain and the darkness, could she attract the driver’s attention? She ran forward – yes, to her delight the vehicle, whatever it was, had lamps! Could it possibly, by any blessed chance, be Dr Brandreth himself returning from a country round? Anyway, whoever and whatever it was, she must do her utmost to attract attention. And as Mary said this to herself there flashed across her memory a gruesome legend of the neighbourhood, which many a night, when a child, had made her put her fingers in her ears for terror of what she might hear – a legend of a certain Sir Ingram de Romary who, maddened by wine and some wild quarrel, had driven himself and his horse to destruction over the Chaldron water-fall, a mile or more the other side of Hathercourt. All the way from Romary Dene, an old ruin now long given up to the owls and bats, the mad race had been run, and still on wild, dark, stormy nights “folks said ’twas to be heard again.”
Mary, standing in the road, shivered as the story rushed through her brain – shivered with strange nervous terror, for which, at the same moment, she vigorously despised herself.
“Papa dying,” she said to herself, “and I to be frightened of a ridiculous ghost story! What can I be made of? Have I no heart?”
Afterwards she did herself more justice. A strong excitement may, indeed, override every other sensation, but it may also, by some slightest variation, kindle every perception, every nerve, every feeler, so to speak, of our Briareus-like imagination into abnormal acuteness. Who cannot but recall with astonishing minuteness the trifling outside details of any scene morbidly impressed on our memory – the pattern on the walls above the bed where our best beloved lay dying, the details of the dress of the indifferent messenger who brought us that news we can never forget? Who cannot but remember the wild, even ludicrous, vagaries that flashed through our fancy at some “supreme moment” of our lives?
But, shiver as she might, Mary had already committed herself to action. She stood some little way forward on the road, and, as the gig, dog-cart, whatever it was, came within hail, she called out as loudly as she could the first thing that came into her head to say:
“Is that you, Dr Brandreth?”
She could not at first have been heard. There was no visible abatement of the driver’s speed. Again, and yet again, Mary repeated her cry, but apparently with no effect. On flew the wheels, down poured the rain. Mary was obliged, to save herself the risk of being knocked down as it passed her, to draw back a little.
“It surely must be Sir Ingram, after all,” she said to herself, but with no terror this time, with rather a wild, incomprehensible desire to laugh. But as the vehicle actually drew near her, as the lamps flashed into her face, common sense and self-possession returned.
“Oh, stop – stop!” she cried, “for mercy’s sake, whoever you are, stop!”
This last appeal, though she knew it not, was unneeded. Already the pace had been slackening, but it was not so easy, as might appear, suddenly to pull up a powerful, fast-trotting horse instinctively sharing its master’s desire to get home and out of the storm of rain as fast as possible. But two or three yards beyond the spot where Mary stood it was achieved. There were two men on the dog-cart, one driving, the other sitting behind. Almost before the horse stopped, the latter jumped down and was at its head.
“What can it be?” said the driver, as the man ran past him. “Yes, stay you by Madge, Andrew, or we shall have her getting excited. I’ll get down.”
Andrew, to tell the truth, was by no means averse to do as he was told. Madge’s kicks and plunges impressed him infinitely less than a hand-to-hand or face-to-face encounter with a ghost, or, failing a ghost, a lunatic escaped from the county asylum, which was the next idea presented to his bucolic brain. And, to do him justice, Mary might reasonably enough have been mistaken for the latter, if not for the former, as she stood in the pouring rain, umbrellaless, hatless even, at first sight; for, habitually careful, she had, when the rain first came on, half unconsciously drawn over her head the hood of the large waterproof cloak with which, most fortunately, she had enveloped herself for her run to the Edge. And from under this curious head-dress gleamed out her white face and brown eyes, unnaturally bright with anxiety and excitement, looking almost black in the flashing light of the lamps – different, how different, from the sunny hazel eyes that had looked up in Mr Cheviott’s face, half shyly, but all frankly, that Sunday morning in the old church porch!
They looked up now with a wild yet most piteous beseeching in their gaze. There was no need for Madge’s master to get down from his seat to question this strange suppliant. Before he could move she had run up to the side of the wheel, and before he could speak she had, so far, told her story:
“I have lost my way,” she said, “and, oh! I shall be so grateful if you can help me. Can you tell me if I am anywhere near Farmer Bartlemoor’s? You must forgive my stopping you. I did not know what to do.”
And for all answer, the man she was addressing sprang down at one bound to her side, exclaiming:
“Mary! You here? You poor child, what is – what can be the matter?”