Cursed by a Fortune
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She was quiet, and clasping the agitated girl once lore in her arms, she began to rock herself slowly to and fro.
“No, no! don’t,” cried Kate, peevishly, and she raised her head once more, looking handsomer than ever in her anger and indignation. “I am no longer a child. Aunt and uncle have encouraged it. This hateful money is at the bottom of it all. They wish me to marry him. Pah! he makes me shudder with disgust. And how could I even think of such a horror with all this terrible trouble so new.”
Eliza half closed her eyes and nodded her head, while her mouth seemed almost to disappear.
“It is cruel – it is horrible,” Kate continued. “They have encouraged it all through. Even aunt, with her sickly worship of her wretched spoiled boy. Oh, what a poor, pitiful, weak creature she must have thought me. No one seemed to understand me but Mr Garstang.”
Eliza knit her brows a little at his name, but she remained silent, and by slow degrees she was put in possession of all that had taken place; and then, faint and weary, Kate let her head sink down till her forehead rested once more upon the breast where she had so often sunk to rest.
“Oh, the hateful money!” she sighed, as the tears came at last. “Let him have it. What is it to me? But I cannot stop here, nurse; it is impossible. We must go at once. Uncle is my guardian, but surely he cannot force me to stay against my inclination. If I remained here it would kill me. Nurse,” she cried, with a display of determination that the woman had never seen in her before, “you must pack up what is necessary, and to-morrow we will go. It would be easy to stay at some hotel till we found a place – a furnished cottage just big enough for us two; anywhere so that we could be at peace. We could be happier then – Why don’t you speak to me when I want comfort in my trouble?”
“Because no words of mine could give you the comfort you need, my dear. Don’t you know that my heart bleeds for you, and that always when my poor darling child has suffered I have suffered, too?”
“Yes, yes, dear; I know,” said Kate, raising her face to kiss the woman passionately. “I do know. Don’t take any notice of what I said. All this has made me feel so wickedly angry, and as if I hated the whole world.”
“Don’t I know my darling too well to mind a few hasty words?” said the woman, softly. “Say what you please. If it is angry I know it only comes from the lips, and there is something for me always in my darling’s heart.”
“That does me good, nurse,” said the girl, clinging to her affectionately for a few moments, and then once more sitting up, to speak firmly. “It makes me feel after all that I am not alone, and that my dear, dead mother was right when she said, ‘Never part from Eliza. She is not our servant; she has always been our faithful, humble, trusty friend.’”
The woman’s face softened now, and a couple of tears stole down her cheeks.
“Now, nurse, we must talk and make our plans. I wish I could see Mr Garstang, and ask his advice.”
“Do you like Mr Garstang, my dear?” said the woman, gently.
“Yes; he is a gentleman. He seems to me the only one who can talk to me as what I am, and without thinking I am what they call me – an heiress.”
“But poor dear master never trusted Mr Garstang.”
“Perhaps he had no need to. He always treated him as a friend, and he has proved himself one to-day by the brave way in which he defended me, and spoke out to open my eyes to all this iniquity.”
“But dear master did not make him his executor.”
“How could he when he had his brother to think of? How could my dear father suspect that Uncle James would prove so base? It was a mistake. You ought to have heard Mr Garstang speak to-day.”
Eliza sighed.
“I don’t think I should put all my trust in Mr Garstang, my dear,” she said.
“Is not that prejudice, nurse?”
“I hope not my dear; but my heart never warmed to Mr Garstang, and it has always felt very cold toward that young man, his stepson.”
“Harry Dasent? Well,” said Kate, with a faint smile, “perhaps mine has been as cold. But why should we trouble about this? It would be no harm if I asked Mr Garstang’s advice; but if we do not like it, nurse, we can take our own. One thing we decide upon at once: we will leave here.”
“Can we, my dear? You have money, but – ”
“Oh, don’t talk about the hateful thing,” cried the girl, passionately.
“I must, my dear. We cannot take even a cottage without. This money is in your uncle’s charge; you, as a girl under age, can not touch a penny without your Uncle James’ consent.”
“But surely he can not keep me here against my will – a prisoner?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” said the woman, with a sigh.
“Then that is where we want help and advice – that is where Mr Garstang could assist me and tell me what to do.”
Eliza sighed.
“Well, if the worst comes to the worst, I can take a humble place where you can keep house and do needlework to help, while I go out as daily governess.”
“You! A daily governess?”
“Well,” said the girl, proudly, “I can play – brilliantly, they say – I know three languages, and – ”
“You have a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in your own right.”
“What are a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to a miserable prisoner who is being persecuted? Liberty is worth millions, and come what may, I will be free.”
“Yes, you shall be free, darling; but you must do nothing rash. To-day has taught me that my dear girl is a woman of firmness and spirit; and, please God, all will come right in the end. There, this is enough. You are fluttered and feverish now, and delicate as you are, you require rest. It is getting late. Let me help you to undress for a good long night’s rest. Sleep on it all, my child; out of the evil good will come, and you have shown them that they have not a baby to deal with, but a true woman, so matters are not so bad as they seem. Come, my little one.”
“I must and will leave here, nurse,” said Kate, firmly.
“Sleep on it, my child, and remember that after all you have won the day. Come, let me help you.”
“No, Liza, go now. I must sit for a while and think.”
“Better sleep, and think after a long rest.”
“No, dear; I wish to sit here in the quiet and silence first. Look, the moon is rising over the trees, and it seems to bring light into my weary brain. I’ll go to bed soon. Please do as I wish, and leave me now – Nurse, dear, do you think those who have gone from us ever come back in spirit to help us when we are in need?”
“Heaven only knows, my darling,” said the woman, looking startled. “But please don’t talk like this – You really wish me to go?”
“Yes, leave me now. I am going to make my plans for to-morrow.”
“To-morrow.”
“No, before I lie down to rest. Good-night.”
“You are mistress, and I am servant, my child. Good-night, then – good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Kate, and a minute later she had closed and re-locked the door, to turn and stand gazing at the window, whose blind was suffused with the soft silvery light of the slowly rising moon.
Chapter Fourteen
“Who’s the letter from, Pierce?”
“One of the medical brokers, as they call themselves – the man I wrote to;” and the young doctor tossed the missive contemptuously across the breakfast table to his sister, who caught it up eagerly and read it through.
“Of course,” she cried, with her downy little rounded cheeks flushing, and a bright mocking look in her eyes; “and I quite agree with him. He says you are too modest and diffident about your practice; that the very fact of its being established so many years makes it of value; that no one would take it on the terms you propose, and that you must ask at least five hundred pounds, which would be its value plus a valuation of the furniture. How much did you ask?”
“Nothing at all.”
“What!” cried Jenny, dropping her bread and butter.
“I said I was willing to transfer the place to any enterprising young practitioner who would take the house off my hands, and the furniture.”
“Oh, you goose – I mean gander!”
“Thank you, Sissy.”
“Well, so you are – a dear, darling, stupid old brother,” cried the girl, leaping up to go behind the young doctors chair, covered his eyes with her hands, and place her little soft white double chin on the top of his head. “There you are! Blind as a bat! Five hundred pounds! Pooh! Rubbish! Stuff! Why, it’s worth thousands and thousands, and, what is more, happiness to my own old Pierce.”
“I thought that subject was tabooed, Sissy.”
“I don’t care; I have broken the taboo. I have risen in rebellion, and I’ll fight till I die for my principles.”
“Brave little baby,” he said mockingly, as he took the little hands from his eyes and prisoned them.
“Yes,” she said, meaningly, “braver than you know.”
“Jenny! You have not dared to speak about such a thing?” he cried, turning upon her angrily.
“Not such a little silly,” she replied. “What! make her draw in her horns and retire into her shell, and begin thinking my own dear boy is a miserable money-hunter? Not I, indeed. For shame, sir, to think such a thing of me! I never even told her what a dear good fellow you are, worrying yourself to death to keep me, and bringing me to live in the country, because you thought I was pining and growing pale in nasty old Westminster and its slums.”
“That’s right,” said Pierce, with a faint sigh.
“Let her find out naturally what you are; and she is finding it out, for don’t you make any mistake about it, Miss Katherine Wilton is young, but she has plenty of shrewd common sense, as I soon found out, and little as I have seen of her I soon saw that she was quite awake to her position. Girls of sense who have fortunes soon smell out people’s motives; and if they think they are going to marry her right off to that out-door sport, Claud, they have made a grand mistake.”
“But you have not dared to talk about your foolish ideas to her, Jenny?”
“Not a word. Oh, timid, modest frere! I put on my best frock and my best manners when we went there to dinner, and I was as nice and ladylike as a girl could be. Reward: – Kate took to me at once, and we became friends.”
Leigh uttered a sigh of relief.
“But if I had dared I could have told her what a coward you are, and how ashamed I am of you.”
“For not playing the part of a contemptible schemer, Sis?”
“Who wants you to, sir? Why, money has nothing to do with it. Now, answer me this, Pierce. If she were only Miss Wilton without a penny, wouldn’t you propose for her at once?”
“No, Sis; I would not.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, I wouldn’t be so contemptible as to take such a step when I am little better than a pauper.”
“Boo! What nonsense. You a pauper! An educated gentleman, acknowledged to be talented in his profession. But I know you’d marry her to-morrow and turn your poor little sister out of doors if you had an income. Bother incomes and money! It’s all horrid, and causes all the misery there is in the world. Pierce, you shan’t run away from here and leave the poor girl to be married to that wretched boy.”
“Jenny, dear, be serious. I really must get away from here as soon as I can.”
“Oh, Pierce! Don’t talk about it, dear. It is only to make yourself miserable through these silly ideas of honour; and it is to make me wretched, too, just when I am so well and so happy, and all that nasty London cough gone. I declare if you take me away I’ll pine away and die.”
“No, you shan’t, Sissy. You can’t, with your own clever special physician at your side,” he said merrily.
“Not if you could help it, I know. But Pierce, darling, don’t be such a coward. It’s cruel to her to run away, and leave her unprotected.”
“Hold your tongue!” said Leigh peremptorily. “I tell you that is all imagination on your part.”
“And I tell you it is a fact I’ve seen and heard quite enough. Old Wilton is very poor, and he wants to get the money safe in his family. Mrs Wilton is only the old puss whose paws he is using for tongs. As for Claud – Ugh! I could really enjoy existence if I might box his big ears. Now look here, big boy,” cried Jenny, impulsively snatching up the agent’s letter: “I am going to burn this, for you shan’t go away and make a medical martyr of yourself, just because the dearest girl in the world – who likes you already for your straightforward manly conduct towards her – happens to have a fortune, and your practice beginning to improve, too.”
“My practice beginning to improve!” he cried, contemptuously.
“Yes, sir, improve; didn’t you have a broken boy to mend yesterday? and haven’t you a chance of the parish practice, which is twenty pounds a year? and oh, hooray, hooray! I am so glad, there’s somebody ill at the Manor again. I hope it’s Clodpole Claud this time,” and she wildly waltzed round the room, waving the letter over her head, before stopping by the fire, throwing the paper in, and plumping down in a chair, looking demure and solemn as a nun.
For Tom Jonson, the groom from the Manor, had driven over in the dog-cart, pulled up short, and now rang sharply at the bell.
Leigh turned pale, for the man’s manner betokened emergency, and he could only associate this with the patient to whom he had been called before.
“Will you come over at once, sir, please?”
“Miss Wilton worse?”
“Oh, no, sir. Something wrong with young Master.” Leigh uttered a sigh of relief, and stepped back for his hat.
“Mr Wilton, junior, taken ill, dear,” he said. “I heard, Pierce. Do kill him, or send him into a consumption.”
Chapter Fifteen
Leigh hardly heard his sister’s words, for he hurried out and sprang into the dog-cart, where the groom was full of the past day’s trouble, and ready to pour into unwilling ears what he had heard from Samuel, who knew that Mr Garstang, the solicitor from London, knocked down young Master about money, he thought, and that he had heard Mr Claud say something about his father kicking him.
“Missus wanted to send for you last night, sir, but Master wouldn’t have it, and this morning they couldn’t make him hear in his room. Poor chap, I expect he’s very bad.”
The man would have gone on talking, but finding his companion silent and thoughtful, he relapsed into a one-sided conversation with the horse he drove, bidding him “come on,” and “look alive,” and “be steady,” till he turned in at the avenue and cantered up to the hall door.
Mrs Wilton was there, tearful and trembling.
“Oh, do make haste, Mr Leigh,” she cried. “How long you have been!”
“I came at once, madam; is your son in his room?”
“Yes, yes – dead by this time. Pray, come up.”
He sprang up the stairs in a very unprofessional way, forgetting the necessity for a medical man being perfectly calm and cool, and Wilton met him on the landing.
“Oh, here you are. Haven’t got the door open yet. Curse the old wood! It’s like iron. Maria, go and get all the keys you can find.”
“Yes, dear, but while the men are doing that hadn’t we better try and get poor Claud’s door open?”
“No, hers first,” cried Wilton, and Leigh started.
“I understood that it was your son who needed help,” he said.
“Never mind him for a bit. You must see to my niece first;” and in a few seconds Leigh was in possession of the fact that the maid had been unable to make her mistress hear; that since then they could get no response to constant calling and knocking, and the door had resisted all their efforts to get it open.
On reaching the end of the corridor Leigh found the maid, white and trembling, holding her apron pressed hard to her lips, while the footman and two gardeners, after littering the floor with unnecessary tools, were now trying to make a hole with a chisel large enough to admit the point of a saw, so as to cut round the lock.
“Wood’s like iron, sir,” said the gardener, who was operating.
“But would it not be easier to put a ladder to the window, and break a pane of glass?” said Leigh, impatiently.
“Oh, Lord!” cried Wilton, “who would be surrounded with such a set of fools! Come along. Of course. Here, one of you, go and fetch a ladder.”
The second gardener hurried off down the back stairs, while his master led the way to the front, leaving Mrs Wilton and the maid tapping at the bedroom door.
“Oh, do, do speak, my darling,” sobbed Mrs Wilton. “If it’s only one word, to let us know you are alive.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t pray say that ma’am,” sobbed the maid. “My poor dear young mistress! What shall I do – what shall I do?”
Mrs Wilton made no reply, but, free from her husband’s coercion now, she hurried along the corridor to the other wing, to begin knocking at her son’s door, and then went down upon her knees, with her lips to the keyhole, begging him within to speak.
“Such a set of blockheads,” growled Wilton; “and I was just as bad, Doctor. In the hurry and excitement that never occurred to me. You see you’ve come in cool, and ready to grasp everything. Poor girl, she was a bit upset yesterday, and I suppose it was too much for her. Boys will be boys, and I had a quarrel with my son.”
This in a confidential whisper, as they crossed the hall, but Leigh hardly heard him in his anxiety, and as they passed out and along the front of the house he said, hurriedly:
“I’ll go on, sir. I see they have the ladder there.”
“What!” cried Wilton, excitedly, “they can’t have got it yet, and – God bless me! what does this mean?”
He broke into a run, for there, in full view now, at the end of the house, with its broad foot in a flower-bed, was one of the fruit-gathering ladders, just long enough to reach the upper windows, and resting against the sill beneath that of Kate’s room.
He reached the place first, clapped his hands upon the sides, and ascended a couple of rounds, but stepped back directly, with his florid face mottled with white, and his lips quivering with excitement as he spoke.
“Here, you’re a lighter man than I, Doctor; go up. The window’s open, too.”
Leigh sprang up, mad now with anxiety and a horrible dread; but as he reached the window he paused and hesitated, for more than one reason, the principal being a fear of finding that which he suspected true.
“In with you, man – in with you,” cried Wilton; “it is no time for false delicacy now;” and as he spoke he began to ascend in turn.
Leigh sprang in, and at a glance saw that the bed had not been pressed, and that there was no sign of struggle and disturbance in the daintily furnished room. No chair overset, no candlestick upon the floor, but all looking as if ready for its occupant, save that an extinguisher was upon one of the candles beside the dressing-table glass.
“Gone!” cried a hoarse voice behind him, as he stood there, shrinking in the midst of the agony he felt, for it seemed to him like a sacrilege to be present.
Leigh started round, to find Wilton’s head at the open casement, and directly after the heavy man stepped in.
“No, no,” he shouted back, as the ladder began to bend again. “Not you. Stop below. No; take this ladder to the hall door, and wait.”
He banged to, and fastened the casement, after seizing the top of the ladder, and giving it a thrust which sent it over with a crash on to the gravel.
“Don’t seem like a doctor’s business, sir,” continued Wilton, gravely; “but you medical men have to be confidential, so keep your tongue quiet about what you have seen.”
Leigh bowed his head, for he could not speak. A horrible sensation, as if he were about to be attacked by a fit, assailed him, and he had to battle with it to think and try to grasp what this meant. One moment there was the fear that violence had been used; the next that it meant a willing flight; and he was fiercely struggling with the bitter thoughts which came, suggesting that his love for this delicate, gentle girl was a mockery, for she was either weak, or had long enough before bound herself to another, when he was brought back to the present by the action of the Squire, who, after a sharp glance round, stooped to pick up the door-key from where it lay on the carpet after being turned and pushed out by means of a piece of wire, in the hope, as suggested by Samuel, that it could be picked out afterwards at the bottom of the door, a plan which had completely failed.
Wilton thrust in the key, turned it, and opened the door, to admit his wife and the maid.
“Miss Kate, Miss Kate,” cried the latter.
“Call louder,” said Wilton, mockingly. “There’s no one here.”
“James, James, my dear, what does this mean?” cried Mrs Wilton excitedly.
“Bed not been slept in; window open – ladder outside – can’t you see?”
Eliza looked at him wildly, as if she could not grasp his words; then with a cry she rushed to a wardrobe, dragged it open, and examined the hooks and pegs.
“Hat – waterproof!” she cried; and then with a faint shriek – “Gone?”
“Yes, gone,” said Wilton brutally. “Here, Maria; this way.”
“Yes, yes; Claud’s room. Come quickly, Doctor, pray.”
Pierce Leigh followed the Wiltons along the corridor, hardly knowing where he was going, in the wild turmoil which raged, in his brain. There were moments when he felt as if he were going mad; others when he was ready to think that he was suffering from some strange aberration which distorted everything he saw and heard, till he was brought back to himself by the Squire’s voice which begat an intense desire to know the worst.
“Here, Claud,” he shouted, after thumping hard at his son’s bedroom door without result. “Claud! No nonsense, sir; I want you. Something serious has happened. Answer at once if you are here.”
There was not a sound to be heard, and Mrs Wilton sobbed aloud.
“Oh, my boy, my boy! I’m sure he is dead.”
“Bah!” cried Wilton, angrily. “Here, who has been trying to get in this room?”
No one answered, and Wilton bent down and looked through the keyhole.
“Has anyone pushed the key out to make it fall inside?”
A low murmur of inquiry followed the question, but there was no reply.
“Come round to the front, Doctor,” said Wilton then, and Leigh followed him in silence downstairs and out to where the men were waiting with the ladder.
This was placed up against the window which matched with Kate’s at the other end of the house, and at a sign from Wilton, Leigh once more mounted, acting in a mechanical way, as if he were no longer master of his own acts, but completely influenced by his companion.
“Window fastened?” cried Wilton.
“Yes.”
“Break it. Mind; don’t cut your hand.”
But as Wilton spoke there was the crash of glass, Leigh thrust in his hand, and unfastened the casement, which he flung open and stepped in, the Squire following.
In this case the bed was tumbled from Claud having been lying down outside, but it was evident to his father that he had descended in the ordinary way, after locking his room and placing the key in his pocket, so as to make it seem that he was still in the room.
“That will do,” said Wilton, gruffly. “We can go down, and it must be by the way we came.”
He looked at the young doctor as if expecting him to ask some questions, but Leigh did not speak a word, merely drawing back for his companion to descend.
“You’ll hold your tongue about all this, Mr Leigh?” he said.
“Of course, sir,” said the young man coldly. “It is no affair of mine.”
“No, nor anybody else’s but mine,” cried Wilton, fiercely. Then as soon as he reached the foot of the ladder he gazed fiercely at his two men.
“Take that ladder back,” he said; “and mind this: if I find that any man I employ has been chattering about this business, I discharge him on the instant. – Thank you, Doctor, for coming. Of course, you will make a charge. The young lady seems to prefer fresh air.”
Leigh looked at him wildly, and strode rapidly away.
“Disappointed at losing his patient,” muttered Wilton, as he went in, to find his wife waiting for him with both her trembling hands extended.
“Quick!” she cried; “tell me the worst,” as she caught his arm.
He passed his arm about her waist, and seemed to sweep her into the library, where he closed the door, and pushed her down into an easy chair.
“There is no worst,” he said, in a low voice. “Now, look here; you must keep your mouth shut, and be as surprised as I am. It’s all right. She was only a bit scared yesterday. The boy knew what he was about. The cunning jade has bolted with him.”