BERKELEY LIBR.\?.Y COLONIAL A Series of Copyright Books for Circulation only in India and the Colonies. LIBRARY Each Volume in Crown 8vo, Handsome Clotk, Gilt on back and side ; also in Artistic Paper Covers. NEW AND FORTHCOMING VOLUMES. ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER Place and Power RICHARD WHITEING The Yellow Van "LUCAS MALET" The Paradise of Demonic Iglesias E. LIVINGSTON PRESCOTT Dragooning a Dragoon The Queen's Own Traitors JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER Before the Dawn Dr. S. R. KEIGHTLEY The Pikemen "RITA" The Jesters WILLIAM LE QUEUX Secrets of the Foreign Office ALICE MaoGOWAN The Last Word RALPH H. BARBOUR The Land of Joy EVELYN EYERETT-GREEN The Niece of Esther Lynne RONALD MACDONALD Camilla Faversham F. FRANKFORT MOORE Shipmates in Sunshine B. L. FARJEON The Amblers ALLEN RAINE On the Wings of the Wind TOM GALLON In a Little House ELLEN ADA SMITH The Fulfilling the Law CYNTHIA STOCKLEY Yirginia of the Rhodesians THE SUCCESSOR SOME EARLY PRESS OPINIONS ON THE SUCCESSOR 2>ailg ftelegrapb. "An exceedingly interesting story; his characters are clearly and incisively drawn, and his dialogue is both witty and pointed. And to a novel possessing such qualities it would be strange indeed were the public to refuse the hearty welcome which it thoroughly deserves." pall dfeall <5a3ette. "It is the risk of exposure which keeps you on tenterhooks throughout, aod adds a zest to the clever interest of the story. Gundred is a charming girl." /IBorntng poet. " Not many living novelists have so much of the true spirit of comedy as Mr. Richard Pryce. His latest tale, ' The Successor,' has a double portion of that spirit. The characters are well imagined and deftly individualised." Scotsman. "The author of this clever and powerful novel has more than once given evidence of a peculiar faculty of holding the reader's interest. There is nothing common-place either in the book's idea or in its execution, and the story should be read with a hearty interest by everyone who begins it." IberalD. " As was to be expected from the author, the characterisation is crisp and decisive, the dialogue invariably apposite, and the narrative clear, strenuous, and admirable at once for its persuasive humour and the realistic vigour of its descriptive passages." notttngbam (Suarfcian. "A powerfully-written story. The author has treated a risky subject in a very skilful manner." BberDeen tfree press. " A vigorously- written, well-worked-out, and interesting story. In his descriptions of the various characters Mr. Pryce is subtle, artistic, and graphic in his touches ; and he does not waste his strength on padding, but works out his singularly clever tale in a straightforward and powerful manner." nloofcer. "The plot is original and distinctly ingenious." SbetRelfc Gelegrapb* "Amongst contemporary novelists Mr. Pryce need fear no rivals, and in 'The Successor ' he has excelled himself, and given us a novel which will make its mark." THE SUCCESSOR H IRovel BY RICHARD PRYCE AUTHOR OF "JEZEBEL," "ELEMENTARY JANE," "THE BURDEN OF A. WOMAN, " MISS MAXWELL'S AFFECTIONS," ETC., ETC. THIRD EDITION LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW 1904 Copyright 1904. by Richard Pryce in the United States of America sue. BOOK I 152 THE SUCCESSOR CHAPTER I THE first Lady Alton de Merringham was an Andover Victoria Gwynedd, second daughter of the fourth Lord Culvert of Ock, by Gwynedd Llywelyn, his wife, who claimed descent from that Prince of South Wales, Seithenyn ap Seidden Seidi, the Drunkard, by whose wanton or muddled tampering with floodgates, as she was never tired of declaring, sixteen fortified towns lie submerged in the waters of Cardigan Bay. The first Lady Alton de Merringham brought her husband the purple in which she was born little else, for the Culverts were always church mice ! was a good wife and woman, did him credit and honour, but bore him no child. She died, fretted, it was said, by the thought of the bad bargain she fancied herself, and in course of time, and in accordance, if report speak true, with her express wish, her lord married again. Once more he allied himself with blood that was blue as his own. The second Lady Alton de Merringham was a Redruth of Angerstown. We need not go into her pedigree, which was long as your arm ; but pausing only to remember that Victoria Gwynedd had been slim as a lath, observe that Georgina Veronica the 3 Successor Redruth was plump and well-liking, had broad shoulders and hips, and reminded you (as Mrs. Alton Lord Alton de Merringham's sister-in-law and mother of the heir presumptive is said to have whispered at the time of the wedding) of nothing so much as a healthy and handsome brood mare of good stock. Whether or not Mrs. Alton did indeed make a comparison which jumped to the eyes and was irresistible, I know not, but certain it is that her brother- in-law, never at any time having wasted any liking upon the caustic lady, from that day ceased to ask her to Merringham. The yearly visit which had been an institution was thenceforward a thing of the past, and if, during the life of Georgina, Mrs. Alton did cross the Merringham threshold once or twice, it was at her own bidding. In these days Mrs. Alton is said to have smiled at all mention of the place and its master and mistress. "Poor dear Alton, I'm told, wears an injured ex- pression," is a sentence that is said to have escaped her. " Two injured expressions, I hear, may be seen . . ." was another; and "No one with eyes could lay any blame at the door of the Redruth," a third. What good Mrs. Alton said is nothing to what she did not say. She had a bright and quizzical eye and a curl in her lip. Nothing that she said or did not say but sooner or later reached the ears of Lord Alton. How such "things said" (and unsaid) accomplished their journey who shall tell ? Not Mrs. Alton. Not I who but chronicle what I know. Not one nor another. Since the world began, however, what else may have lacked, there has never been any dearth of tale-bearers. Lord Alton knew when Mrs. Alton's eye twinkled and when her lip curled; knew when she spoke and when she did not speak ; when she laughed. Ube Successor 5 The Redruth died, and was buried. She got a chill upon a hot-and-cold day of June at a garden-party; took to her bed ; left it feet foremost, and was laid with her husband's fathers. The third Lady Alton de Merringham Mrs. Alton might perhaps be excused for losing, as she said, all patience the third Lady Alton de Merringham! Think of it ! Lord Alton went indeed for a third time to the altar. Heavens, the talk in the county ! He gave the Redruth a year to get cold. His hat-band was a foot high upon one Sunday ; the regulation inch and a half upon the next. He was away for six weeks after that and brought home his bride. The Peerages of the following January, for those who kept their Peerages to the current issue, and subsequent editions for everyone else, deal shortly with her. " Third," you may read, for " thirdly," if you look up Alton de Merringham, which comes after Altamar, and before Alton of Orsby " Third, Blanche, daughter of the late John Mason, Esq., of Liverpool." The third Lady Alton de Merringham was not born in the purple. What the third Lady Alton was born in nobody knew. Rumour, for what rumour was worth, said the spangles and tinsel. She had a great deal of very yellow hair which was always dressed very elaborately. The theory may have taken an illogical start thence. Some- one was said to believe to remember her, or someone very like her, among the lesser lights of a provincial theatrical company ; which is as it may be. Lady Alton herself said nothing at all, or as little as might be. She held off inquiry, indeed, with some skill. Mrs. Alton, upon the occasion of a memorable visit, found her match. The third Lady Alton de Merringham was full able to take care of herself. " Not likely ! " she said gracefully. Successor to her lord's " Mrs. A., my dear, I'll say that for you, didn't get much for her pains." "Not likely!" The elegant phrase in a manner presented her type, summed her up, expressed her She had known social vicissitudes. It was generous to say that the third Lady Alton wasn't Quite Quite ; it was nearer the mark to say with indignant Mrs. Alton that she Wasn't at All, that she Didn't Begin to Be. Wits ? Anyone could see that she had had to have her wits about her. There was the stamp of big towns and the struggle for life all over her from the crown of her handsome barmaid's head to the soles of her expensively shod feet, She was the woman of the Golden Shoe, who has known what it is to wear doubtful boots. Lady Alton, it is possible, was all this and more. There was, in every probability, a chequered life behind her. She owned to twenty-six, and with never a hair out of place may have experienced the hazard of worn seams and the humiliation of mended gloves. The imperial carriage of her yellow head did not gainsay such surmisings. Rather, if one look about with observant eyes, and see the contemptuous pose of many an obscure but garish head, might one suppose it to give them point. A head so borne may have ducked a little. Time went on. Lady Alton kept her own counsel, and preserved it. People knew of her at the end of a year just as much as she chose they should know, which amounted to very little indeed. She was evidently proud of her position, her house and her servants. She drove out every day sitting very upright amongst her cushions, and bowing from the waist to the curtsies of her husband's tenants. She was like pantomime royalty ; the peeress of a penny novel ; Roman pearls or Parisian diamonds, Mrs. Balderton, housekeeper at ZTbe Successor 7 Merringham, and at one time an ally of Mrs. Alton, said of her that if she wanted to ring the bell she would call someone to ring for her. " She's been used to doing things for herself, 'm, or I'm not a judge of my sex. Inconsiderate ? It's not for me to speak, I know that, but if you'll believe me " Mrs. Alton believed. " Further and more," Mrs. Balderton said Mrs. Alton, who changed later, said " Indeed! " " And that's not the half," said the Balderton, who in course of time changed too, and became silent. The Balderton had known former Lady Altons, Lady Alton the dowager amongst them, the present peer's mother, and was privileged. She was a little woman with a silk apron, the pockets of which held keys and string, and year in and year out wore a black chenille cap with violet rosettes. A heavy gold chain was round her neck, and she wore elastic-sided boots with patent leather toes on which were little patterns in white dots. She wore a monstrous cameo brooch under her chin, and on her thin hands beaded mittens. In summer her mittens were lace. She wore two rings ; her wedding ring a slender thread, and the mourning ring of the last lord. She was a widow whose three years of marriage had not taken her off the estate. Her interests were bound up with it, and she kept a jealous eye upon its fortunes. The Altons were well served. The Andover and the Redruth Mrs. Balderton had welcomed. In alliance with these ladies the Alton traditions were preserved. Neither of them but could show cause why she had been allowed to join herself to the august family. Burke and Lodge and Debrett could answer for one of them ; Burke, (there were gentry, landed and otherwise, that needed no patent of nobility, Mrs. Balderton knew that!) for the other. 8 tlfee Successor With the Mason it was different. Nothing answered for her, some local directory perhaps ; Mrs. Balderton doubted it. She was the outsider who had been smuggled in ; the cuckoo in the nest. " Where his lordship can have picked her up," was the form in which one of the things that exercised Mrs. Balderton took shape. " Met," Mrs. Balderton, with some appreciation of subtleties, felt to be hardly the word. There were expressions that the Mason used (" Not likely," perhaps one of them, " No fear " another) in the early days at least for it did not escape Mrs. Balderton that she was apt, and even anxious, to learn expressions to have set old Lady Alton and her other two daughters-in-law turning in their graves. She said " des//Vable," " hos/zVable," "like I do," "seem to care," "if I had've " ; she " went hot " or cold or pale, as the inelegant case might be ; and added ever to her interrogative pronouns, as, for example, "whatever for ? " and " whoever next ? " but (or and) carried her head like an empress ! A year toned her down somewhat. She was heard to amend a sentence. She " laid " on the sofa no longer, but lay like anyone else, retracing her steps, if need be, to substitute the one word for the other, and did battle generally to keep an obstinate r from the end of such syllables as ended with a. For her constant entanglement, one of the housemaids at Merringham was Emma by name. Thoughtless ! Another answered to Anna. Inexcusable ! It was difficult in bracketing them not to speak, when occasion arose, of Emmer and Anna, or Anner and Emma, or Anner and Emmer and Kate. Well, in church we have heard (the sensitive among us) of Caner of Galilee, and at play- houses .... what in the name of all that may outrage the ear and set the teeth on exasperated edge has not Successor 9 been heard and endured ? Raw-reggs ? The law ris- er risn't? But come! Let us in turn dror a veil .... Lady Alton the third erred in company as good, at least, as her own. Two years went by. There was no child at Merringham. The case of Lord Alton was aggra- vated by its circumstances. A daughter would have " sufficed " (hats off to her sex in apology !) to put heirs presumptive out of court and the reckoning. The title a Barony in Fee, with Remainder, etc., etc. originally for the benefit of the first baron who had a daughter but no son to succeed him, passed, failing male heirs direct, in the female line. The Fates giving Lord Alton a double chance had but mocked him. Every tramp's woman that dragged her feet a tired fifty yards behind her man on the dusty high-road outside the park gates had a child at her heels and another at her breast, and another elsewhere. Not a married cottager on the estate but complained that children came apace. Children cumbered the ground in the villages. They sprawled upon the door-steps and the narrow footpaths in front of the houses. A child was born to every frightened girl who forgot her catechism a-maying or a-harvesting or a-fairing. Children were here, there, everywhere ; it was the owner of Merringham only was childless. Assuredly the Fates who gave and withheld were mocking him. Mockings were in the air. He suspected a wink in every glance, a scoff in every smile, jestings behind every door. He was morbidly sensitive in these days, and thinking himself gifted or cursed with intuition, supposed much that had no existence but in his own pallid imaginings. The household could have issued warnings. He was uncertain in his dealings, hasty, obscure, repenting him sometimes of his severity, refusing obstinately at others to listen to reasons or io ftbe Successor reason. The servant who pleased him might find himself at any moment the one of all who was out of favour. He was like a sick king. A third year saw no change in the situation. Then it was that Mrs. Alton, with Edmund at Winchester, promising, increasing in wisdom and stature, and the picture of his handsome dead uncles in the more glorious days of the Altons de Merringham, drew, and felt she might draw, a long breath. But she should have stopped at a long breath. There might be reason and human nature in her attitude the attitude of one who draws a long breath after storm and stress over-ridden though never so buoyantly but she should not have written to her brother-in-law just then, or, if she must write, should have written in different vein. Was it a time to receive money, and garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and menservants and maidservants ? It was as if she held out the olive branch ... as if she, Mrs. Alton; could afford to make friends and let bygones be bygones, It was the one downright stupid thing she had done in a shrewd and sensible if somewhat independent life. Lord Alton, five feet four in his socks, and smarting already had he not known, as we know, when the unwise lady had smiled, when she had shrugged her capable shoulders, when she had talked, and when she had been significantly silent ? Lord Alton, I say, was not to be played fast and loose with, ridiculed, patronised, petted. Edmund at Winchester should have been at home to restrain his competent mother for once. Mrs. Alton in writing chronicled his looks and his inches (Lord Alton was notably plain and meagre) ; said Edmund was an Alton to the tips of his nails (Lord Alton, the survivor of his three comely brothers, had been known from a baby for his unlikeness to the family Ube Successor n type), and suggested that the head of the house and her son should be better known to one another. There was more between the lines which were wide, or Lord Alton thought there was more. There was enough in all conscience in the pregnant lines them- selves. The letter was pretty explicit. Lord Alton knew his sister-in-law's circumstances : what she could afford and what not. Edmund, aiming tentatively at the Diplomatic Service, was approaching an age when something must be settled about his future. It must be decided anyway whether or not he was to go on to a university to Oxford ; the Altons were Baliol men. The time had come in fine, Mrs. Alton thought, or appeared to think, for asking Lord Alton what he intended to do for his CHAPTER II THE dining-room at Merringham was a sombre room giving north. It needed for three-fourths of the year at least all the glittering equipment of the well-appointed table to lend it a welcoming air in the morning. Lady Alton, breakfasting in the sunshine, or the sun-blinded shade of her south bedroom, excused her indolence, when she saw fit to excuse it, upon the graceful plea that the dining-room gave her the Creeps. She was nothing, as we know, if not eclectic where words and phrases were concerned, and the Creeps presented, in distinguished English, what the ungilded room gave her till candles transformed it in the evening. She made shift to endure it at luncheon. Lord Alton, as a philosopher of sorts, and patient, moreover, with his latest wife as he had not always been with the others, maintained that in a house the shape and size of Merringham some rooms must be sunless, nor, though he humoured the lady's fancies in most things, would hear of cutting down a monstrous ilex that further obscured the light. The brighter, to be sure, for the sable point of view, the broad acres of Merringham were to be seen from under the spreading branches. It was upon these that Lord Alton's eyes would rest as he ate his solitary breakfast. The undulating park was dotted with trees. To the left of each when the park smiled in the gold of such a morning as brought Mrs. Alton's ill-judged letter, a blot of shadow, cool and heavy, lay upon the shining grass. There were deer grazing ia 12 ttbe Successor 13 sight of the windows. To the right the bracken came into range, to stretch thence presently to the foot of the wooded hills. In rain and shine, by night and day, Merringham was beautiful exceedingly, and the thought of it, with other thoughts in train, was never long absent from Lord Alton's mind. The post reached Merringham in those days at breakfast-time, and in a locked bag which was laid daily beside Lord Alton's plate. It was Lord Alton's cu:.tom to unlock the heavy leathern case every morning before the servants left the room, and dividing its contents into the several heaps that comprised the letters and papers generally for himself, those for Lady Alton in her bedroom, for what guests might be at Merringham, and the servants' hall, proceed with his breakfast and examine his own correspondence at leisure. There were no guests at Merringham just then, and when the butler had gathered up his mistress's budget bills for the most part, circulars, illustrated papers and withdrawn with his subordinates, who carried the servants' modest pile as something to be smuggled quickly out of sight, Lord Alton was left to himself to taste his sister-in-law's quality and see how he liked it. How the little man liked it we who have now a nodding acquaintance with him may guess. The time was supposed to have come, was it . . . ? And was it indeed ? A word that was not actually used leapt from the paper. Mrs. Alton, committed as she was to indiscretion, had stopped short of the great indiscretion of all. But had she stopped short of aught in intention ? Was any line drawn on the hither side of folly ? Lord Alton was seized with trembling in reading. Heir! Heir! It was in raised letters. There it was, and there, and over the leaf! It was in letters of flame They seared Lord Alton's little pink eyes. M tlbe Successor The passion that seized him, that shook him, wrung him, bids fair to make history in the annals of the family. Twenty years afterwards the thing had not ceased to be spoken. There were noises in the dining- room, " rampagings," crashings. The story may have grown. One version has the china and pottery from the shelves and the walls involved with the urn and the breakfast things in one common and insensate smashing. Another gives you the lawn and the gravel path strewn with the fragments of decanters that crashed their way through the windows. Was the cloth really torn from the loaded table? A curtain from its hangings? A footstool dashed through a looking-glass? Embroideries ! Exaggerations ! Neither did Lord Alton, except in the spirit, gash himself, like the priests of Baal, with knives. He knocked over a chair in clambering on to the side- board to reach the picture of Edmund's father, and in ripping this from its frame, in his blind rage, he over- turned a "tantalus" and broke it. The sound brought a startled servant, who fled. His lordship was going on like a madman dancing on the sideboard and tearing the pictures to ribbons. He was blue in the face, " fomenting " at the mouth. Stark staring mad he was, slashing at things with the bread-knife. 'Ark ! What was that ! And there again. Mercy upon them ! Thus and thence might tales spring. . . . But Lord Alton was found in a fit upon the carpet, and the picture of Edmund may be seen to-day at some period of its existence to have undergone extensive repairs and restoration. Marvels were done with the canvas, which was pronounced at the outset past mend- ing. The bread-knife had done its work well. Mrs. Balderton, summoned from the housekeeper's room, tells or could tell. She knew Mrs. Alton's handwriting. Lord Alton was carried to his bedroom, and Lady Successor 15 Alton informed of her husband's indisposition. Her place, she said, was at his side; and she slipped into embroidered slippers and a blue silk dressing-gown. She stopped but thus to array herself and to give a hurried direction that her breakfast, which she had not finished, should not be taken away, and then sped along the corridor to her husband's room. Her Place, she said again in the going, was at his Side. His room seemed to be full of servants, two or three of whom were in the act of leaving it by Mrs. Balderton's orders, as their mistress came in. "You, Charles and William, get along with you. You're not wanted here blocking the air. Open the window, James not that one, stupid. Yes, wide! Lean him a little on this side so as I can get his arm out of the sleeve. Cut it, then. Where's the scissors ? That's better. Now lift him a bit, Mr. Berners a little more. There, that'll do. Is that the hot water, Emma ? As hot as you can bear ? Leave it, then. Now be off with you, and don't stand about the passages. Your ladyship? The other pillow, Mr. Berners. A little more towards me. Gently. That's it. He'll be easier now." " My place is by his side," said Lady Alton, yet again, but with less conviction when she saw the purple face and heard the stertorous breathing. Mrs. Balderton, authoritative, collected, capable, seemed, without moving over-much, to be here, there, and everywhere. " The first thing was to get him to bed. Yes, they've gone for the doctor. Now the hot-water bottle. No, the flannel right round it. There it is, by James. Give it to Mr. Berners, James ; you're less than no good. That's right. Now, close against his feet. Let me feel it, to see it won't burn him. No, but it's hot 1 6 Ube Successor enough. No, my lady, nobody knows just how it happened." " His lordship was all right when he got up," said Berners, Lord Alton's body-servant. James, a footman, began a story which was taken out of his mouth by Dunwich, the butler, who had been absent from the room giving directions, and who now returned. " The dining-room's a sight, your ladyship ; and as for the picture that hung over the sideboard . . ." words failed him. " We hadn't left his lordship not above twenty minutes when he seemed just as usual, though a bit irritable, if I may be excused the expression, over a omelet which, preferring truffles to fine herbs, wasn't quite to his liking, when we heard the commotion. William heard him first, so to speak, passing the dining-room door, and come straight to me. I knew what it was in a minute, having seen apoplexies, and didn't hesitate . . ." "But the doctor," said Lady Alton "the doctor?" " We sent, your ladyship, post-haste." " He can't be here for an hour," said Mrs. Balderton shortly. "We're doing all that can be done in the meantime. A bit more ice, James the big lump. Well, break it. Now, here. Take those away, and that can. Mr. Berners will see to the rest. Yes, my lady, a seizure. Something maybe upset his lordship. It's Mr. Edmund's picture that seems to have given offence . . ." Mrs. Balderton smiled grimly. " Ripped and hacked and torn it is. It hangs from the frame like a dish-cloth. A rush of blood to the head ? Ah, that's what we can't tell, my lady. Some regain con- sciousness in a few minutes, and some will lay in a I forget the word." She paused and hazarded "cata- mose" ... "a catamose state for an hour and more Successor 17 though that don't seem the word neither. Your ladyship will know." Lady Alton shifted her eyes under the housekeeper's enquiring glance. It was the butler who said : " No ; comatose, I think. Isn't comatose the word, Mrs. Balderton?" "Yes; catamose, or comatose, it's all one to some of us." Lady Alton seemed ruffled of a sudden without reason apparent upon the surface of things, and began finding fault. Lord Alton should not have been carried up from the dining-room till she had been consulted ; should (or should not) have been placed in the draught of the window and door ; should (or should not) have been given brandy at once. Why had not this been done, or that ? Someone ought to have guessed sooner that all was not well. How long had his lordship laid lain, she should say upon the dining-room floor before any of his servants thought it their business to " trouble " to see what was the matter ? That was what she wanted to know. Lady Alton's hand, with its many rings, fluttered the lace on her dressing-gown. Whatever the emotions that governed the moment, they were plainly disturbing. The men looked at each other discomfited. " I'll have that other bit of ice," Mrs. Balderton said. " If it happens again . . ." Lady Alton began. " If it happens again/' Mrs. Balderton said, " it'll of course be more serious. They're seldom fatal till the third." She gave some directions to Berners. Lady Alton left the room soon after this. She was to be informed of the doctor's presence immediately upon his arrival. If in the meantime Lord Alton recovered consciousness, she was to be summoned B is TTbe Successor forthwith. The third Lady Alton de Merrin gharri's orders were peremptory. It was perhaps "just as well," as we say, that she did not see the shrugging of noses and shoulders that followed the closing of the door. Mrs. Balderton sat down by the bed. It was a lady with nerves somewhat ajar who went back to her bed and her breakfast. Bonner, her maid, had a difficult quarter of an hour. Fresh tea must be made at once and the toast was quite cold ; so were the poached eggs. Bonner should have seen that every- thing was ready "against" her mistress's return. At once, did Bonner hear? And it was no good doing more eggs. Lady Alton did not feel " equal " now to an egg. She did not know when she had felt so upset. Just fresh tea and toast and perhaps a slice of ham. Her appetite was gone. . . . Her appetite, however, which seldom failed her, was recovered with the reappearance of the breakfast tray. Her palate was responsive to the sight of good food, and Bonner, a discerning person, had not taken her too rigidly at her word. There were many things besides the modest slice of ham upon the capacious tray. There was foie gras, for example ; there were anchovies ; sardines. The toast was there ; a little hot loaf ; a boiled egg. What Lady Alton had eaten of the breakfast that had been interrupted was ignored with commendable tact. In the dining-room the picture of Edmund hung limp and ragged from its frame. The servants had not been silent. Already the thing was on view. Coachmen and grooms and gardeners, profiting by the temporary de- moralisation of the house, had set deliberate or furtive foot in the room that had been the scene of their master's Successor 19 strange "taking." Inquisitive maids peeped over shoulders or, Mrs. Balderton being absent and known to be occupied, pushed boldly in and hazarded opinions. They the maids each of them nevered ! Did ever . . .? Who would have believed . . . ? Look at the glass on the floor I T't, t't, t't, and the scratches on the me'ogany ! Well ! and there ! And what could have ailed his lordship ? him most in generally so careful ! But his temper was . . . ! Yes, and growing upon him too, so that you never knew where you were, nor what next would upset him. It was constitoosh'nal, upper house- maid Anna believed, whose own aunt, upon her mother's side, had been criss-cross for years owing to being dropped at nurse when an infant. Upper housemaid Anna's relation flew out at nothing whether it might be a door banging, or an east wind, or a noise in the street. You could hardly live with her for her tantrums, and what upper housemaid Anna's cousin (Laura by name) had endured before what you couldn't but call the 'appy release, no one but upper-housemaid Anna's cousin (Laura) knew, and she was in Canada, having married a French mechanical engineer. Charles and William, turned out of his lordship's bedroom by the peremptory Balderton, had tongues to wag, and wagged them. Mother B. was on the 'igh 'orse, and no one but Mr. Berners was good enough for her except it might be James, who let himself be put upon. It was Mr. Berners this, and Mr. Berners that, and outside please all the rest of you ; and his lordship port-wine in the face, and snorting like a steam-engine, while her ladyship flounced down the passage in her bedgown with " My place is by his side." " ' My place is by his side,' she says ! " William mimicked to an admiring gallery. Mother B., Charles opined, would have ordered her 20 ZTbe Successor out too if we could all have our way in the world. William said " H'm," but did not waste overmuch love upon her ladyship either. It was six of one at any time and half a dozen of the other. The world would be well enough if it wasn't for the women in it. The maids upon that had a word or two to say. It was the men in a house that made the trouble any day of the week. Look at his lordship. Look at the scratches on the sideboard, the broken tantalus, the torn picture. . . . Mrs. Balderton had let fall an observation or so before the dismissal of Messieurs William and Charles. Mr. Edmund (the portrait) was the father of the heir. . . . Everyone knew this, but the fact on a sudden gave point and significance to the incidents of the morning. When it further became known that a letter from Mrs. Alton had been received by Lord Alton, it was manifest that it was with deliberate intention that this picture, and not any other, had been picked out as object, for the venting of the bitter little gentleman's spleen. "I suppose," William said, "that that's how his lordship 'd like to serve Master Edmund." " He hates him enough." The talk became general. One spoke, and another. " A fine, upstanding young fellow, they tell me." Not much like present folks." " That's where the sting come in." " Ah ! where the shoe pinches.'' " Yet his own flesh and blood." " What's that come to ? Blood's as thin as it's thick when there's bad blood in the question. It's thin or thick according as you want it to be. Kinship's nothing. Some hold to their own, and some hold their own at arm's length. It all depends." Heads were nodded, with "H'm's" and "Ah's,"and Ubc Successor 21 it was generally allowed that the speaker Jebson, the head gardener, from whom a querulous wife lived apart was right, and that it all depended. A coachman, one Matthews, a Methodist, quoted " Scripture." In the last days, he said, we should be betrayed by parents and brethren, and kinsfolk and friends ; the son should be set at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law which last, he conceded, in parenthesis, was but human nature for all time and a man's foes should be those of his own household. Well, what was to be would be, upper housemaid Anna held. For her part, she had seen how things were going for a long time back. It was " 'Ope deferred," that's what it was. 'Ope deferred made the 'eart sick, she said, and wasn't sure rt but what " that wasn't Scripture too. Yes, that was Scripture right enough, Coachman Matthews said. Proverbs, that's what that was. Solomon said that Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived. Whereat upper housemaid Anna bridled, but depre- catingly. She wasn't setting up to be the wisest woman. "Far be it," she said, and perhaps meant "Far from it." You never "reelly," she supposed, forgot a good bringing-up, that was all, and her mother had always been " particularly and careful " that her children should know their Bibles. ""Ope deferred/" she said again, well pleased with herself " ' 'ope deferred maketh the 'eart sick.' " Methodist Matthews was able to complete the aphorism : " But when the desire cometh it is a tree of life." Everyone present seemed then to say " Ah ! " With common accord all appeared to feel that once more a finger was upon the nail. Anna looked round as one who says " There," or, " What did I tell you ? " So all eyes were upon what was not. The Babe Unborn was at Merringham, and upon this day of all days the Babe that was thought of, and thought of intently, and thought of in more ways than one. Lord Alton had thought of it, but he, as we know, thought of little else. The servants thought of it. Lady Alton, thinking of it occasionally, was to think of it, and thought of it, before night. The sound of wheels on the drive, heralding the advent of the doctor some three-quarters of an hour later, found the dining-room still extensively occupied, and emptied it summarily. The maids fled precipi- tately. The footmen felt their coat collars and went to the hall. The outdoor servants creaked by byways to back doors CHAPTER III LORD ALTON meanwhile had regained consciousness. The doctor had little to do but ask questions, approve what had been done, write a prescription, order perfect quiet, and look at his watch. He spoke tentatively of a nurse, but the patient shied at the word. No hospital women for him, he said, no hospital women, did everyone hear? Lady Alton, in the blue silk dressing-gown still, but with her hair by this time elaborately dressed, rustled attentively, and was the anxious but resourceful and sensible wife in the sick-room. Balderton stood by, speaking only when she was spoken to, and wearing a curious little smile. " The ice was right, wasn't it ? " Lady Alton said. " Perfectly right," said the doctor. His name, when we want it, was Amberley. "And the hot bottle to the extremities?" Lady Alton thought she was being technical. " Could not have been more judicious." " It's so difficult to know just what to do/' Lady Alton said modestly, " in the absence of a medical man." " Balderton's a good nurse," said Lord Alton, from the bed, his mind perhaps running still upon " hospital women." Lady Alton was clever enough to say, without appear- ance of haste, or of taking her cue from anyone but herself, " Mrs. Balderton is a great help where there is illness." 23 24 TTbe Successor Balderton said, " Thank you, my lord," towards the bed, and smoothed her silk apron. Her keys jingled a little. She may have included her mistress in the old- fashioned bow which accompanied the smoothing of her apron, and which may or may not have been designed to be comprehensive. Her smile was inscrutable. Lady Alton looked out of the open window. Every prospect pleased at Merringham, and if anything was vile it was woman. Balderton knew that her place was safe, did she, and that it would be her mistress who would go at the death of Lord Alton, and not she? The dower-house was on the other side of the county, and lay empty waiting. Lady Alton had seen it, and thinking it wonderful enough in the early days (with Heaven knows what to compare it with !), now thought it very small potatoes indeed. She realised then for almost the first time, and by reason somehow of the attitude of Balderton, that to leave Merringham, as she must if death robbed her of her husband and fate gave her no child, would be a wrench unspeakable. Balderton knew. Balderton took liberties . . . felt she could afford to take liberties ! The thought was in- supportable. Lord Alton would never part with her in his lifetime, and her reign (Balderton's) was not dependent upon the life of Lord Alton. Edmund was an Alton. It was traditional with the Altons to keep Balderton. Oh ! and oh ! To be even with her ! To be able to say " This day month," or, tendering wages, "This day! This very day!" (The blessed sound of the words !) " Your keys of office, if you please," and " Be off with you, bag and baggage," and, " Not a word, please. When I say a thing I mean it. Away with you. Pack ! " Some such thoughts occupied the interior of the elaborate yellow head, the back of which was turned to ZTbe Successor 25 the room as the tried lady stood contemplating the shining view. A peacock was sunning himself upon the lower terrace. A yellow butterfly, fluttering from rose to rose of those that blossomed against the wall of the house, flapped softly up almost to the casement at which she stood. Summer sounds filled the air, hummings, buzzings, twitterings, and the scent of many flowers was upon the languid breeze. Would it be possible to surrender Merringham ? Lord Alton was not going to die just yet. But he might have been going to die What a scare she had had . . . potentially, for in point of fact she had not been alarmed . . . what a scare ! She felt like one who has escaped some unrealised perhaps unsuspected danger. Lord Alton meanwhile began to show signs of agita- tion. His mind, working slowly across the interval of unconsciousness, was groping vaguely after causes. The indistinct events of the morning were taking shape. " What happened in the dining-room ? " he asked. " I have a sort of recollection of something being broken bottles glass something ? Did I fall ? The chair, too, slipped from under me, and there was a devil's own crash. I don't remember . . after that. It seems as if ..." The doctor here said that We must be calm, and avoid all excitement. Rest was what we needed. Let us be content to let things be for the present. Rest and perfect quiet were essential. If Lord Alton excited himself, Dr. Amberley said in an aside to Lady Alton, one could not be answerable for the consequences. "Yes, never mind trying to remember, dear," Lady Alton said. "Dr. Amberley's quite right. You lie still for a little, and try and rest, and you'll be yourself again in no time. Would you like to have the blinds 26 Ube Successor down and the curtains drawn, and see if you can get to sleep ? " Lord Alton waved the suggestion aside impatiently, " What was I doing on the sideboard ? " he said. " There, dear, I wouldn't worry," Lady Alton said. " I remember distinctly standing on the sideboard, I pushed the silver out of the way with my foot ..." " Perhaps you dreamed, dear ..." " Dreamed ? Dreamed ? Dreamed be damned that is, my dear," as Lady Alton looked shocked, " I wish you wouldn't put me off in this way. I was as much awake as you are, and I stood on the sideboard for something or other. What ? Here, Balderton, where are you ? Who came to me first ? I will know what happened. William ? Well, ring for William. Do you hear ? Ring for William." " William won't be able to tell your lordship more than we can," Balderton said quietly. "Your lordship was not conscious when he found you and came for help. You'd been on the sideboard right enough." " Edmund's picture ! " Lord Alton exclaimed suddenly, and seemed to remember himself. A curious expression passed over his face. " Oh, well," he said, looking at the doctor, " one does odd things when one is ill, eh ? You come across strange cases in the course of your practising, I daresay, Dr. Amberley. There, I'll be quiet. I have felt this little attack coming on for some time. I'm afraid I'm an irritable subject Balderton knows and you, Lady Alton, too, have reason to know it at times, as I fear. But there, I'll be reasonable, and with these two good people to look after me you won't order me nurses. I'm not going to be ill. Oh, 7 know, believe me. I'm over this the worst of it and as you say, have only to take care of myself and be quiet ; only I mustn't be thwarted." TTbe Successor 27 Ten minutes later, when Dr. Amberley was taking his departure with, " I shall come in this evening to see how we are going on," Lord Alton Lady Alton still being present called him back to say again : " I mustn't be thwarted, eh ? " " Your lordship must not be excited." " Any thwarting would excite me," said Lord Alton. " We must avoid all excitement." " Man," said Lord Alton, " you're thwarting me now, Can't you say what I want ? " "Anything in reason," said the little doctor, who lacked humour, and hardly knew how to take his illustrious patient. " Then for goodness' sake tell this good lady that her sick husband mustn't be crossed." " We must humour Lord Alton," the little man said. Lord Alton shrugged his shoulders. " I suppose," he said, " that that is the most I shall get out of you. You hear, my dear," he returned to his wife, " that it might be fatal to combat me." " Oh, I didn't say fatal/' said the doctor. " But I did, and do," said Lord Alton, " and you, my dear, hear me." Lady Alton left the room with the doctor for the interview outside that every patient, wait he a verdict or not, wots of, though all about him dissemble, and wotting of, resents. Lord Alton, during her absence, was rest- less. Balderton could tell you that his lips moved, and that he muttered to himself. She occupied herself with one thing and another. " I had some letters," said Lord Alton suddenly. " I had letters by this morning's post where are they ? " 11 Your lordship," Balderton said, < had a deal better not worry yourself with letters yet. What the doctor 28 ftbe Successor said was you was to be quiet. Let 'em be for the present, won't you ? " " Where are they ? " said Lord Alton. " Oh, they're here right enough, m' lord. Here on the dressing-table." " Give them to me." Balderton hesitated. " Do as I tell you." 11 Correspondence," Balderton said. " is a disturbing thing at the best of times." " Come, come ! " said Lord Alton impatiently. Thus admonished, Mrs. Balderton did as she was bid. She shook her head as she handed him the packet Mrs. Alton's letter being sandwiched between others of less conspicuous import and muttered something about doctor's orders. " The doctor's orders," said Lord Alton, " were that I was not to be combated. You were here. You heard them." " Oh, I heard," said Balderton. Lord Alton was odd in his manner for the rest of that day. That he was shaken and bruised not by his fall alone, but by the paroxysm of rage which had preceded or caused it was patent to all who saw him. When his wife came back to the room he looked at hei strangely, as one tentative, speculating, gauging chances. She was conscious of something unfamiliar in his gaze, and said " Yes, dear ? " and " What is it ? " uncomfortably. She did not like illness. Lord Alton said " Nothing, nothing," and averted his eyes, only to refasten them upon her presently. They strayed enquiringly from the soft colour upon her cheeks to the yellow elaborateness of her hair. Lady Alton was using a new cosmetic just then for her lips. Her ZTbe Successor 29 husband's eyes rested from time to time upon her lips also. She grew restive under the scrutiny. " Is there anything the matter ? " she asked. " Very well, then, I wish you wouldn't stare so. It's enough to give one the fidgets. . . ." She had plenty of self-reliance, but had not then acquired the repose of manner that is supposed to mark the caste of Vere de Vere, and that came to her later in life. She was, as we know, in her transitional stage. " Was I staring ? " said Lord Alton. " Were you staring ! " said the lady. She could be curiously vulgar. Harmless phrases on those pretty carmine lips could take a common sound that was not in the 'words as words. A touch of resentment and the most innocent expressions were sullied, tainted, coarsened. Lord Alton smiled. " And now you smile," said Lady Alton, unpacified. "And now," said Lord Alton, "I smile." He too had but repeated the other's words. Balderton had been in the adjoining room, and came back. " Well I must go and dress," Lady Alton said. " The morning's slipped away. You'll send for me if you want me." "Very well. I shall want you later not now. I shall have something to say to you. I will send for you. It will be after your lunch probably. I want to be left alone now. I've things to think of. I want to think." Lady Alton thought her husband looked excited again. Letters lay on the bed a letter. He was not smiling, and seemed in a moment to have forgotten the recent passage, and to have reverted to matters or thoughts anterior to it. Lady Alton, vaguely uncom- fortable, permitted herself to exchange a glance with 30 ITbe Successor Mrs. Balderton. Balderton, after all, knew more about illness than she did ; and if there were these sudden changes of mood. . . . " Balderton will be here," she said doubtfully. " No, Balderton, I don't want you/' Lord Alton said. " I want to be alone. You must go too, like a good creature. The bell is at my side. I'll ring it if I need anything of anyone." " Shall I send Berners to your lordship ? " " Neither Berners nor anyone else. Don't you understand that I want to be alone ? " There was a little expostulation plaintive upon the part of Lady Alton, reasoning upon that of Balderton and Lord Alton had his way. " I don't know what ails him," Lady Alton said, outside the door. " We can't answer for our nerves when we are upset," said Mrs. Balderton shrewdly. " They play the wisest and best of us tricks. Has your ladyship been to the dining-room ? " Lady Alton had not. " It'll surprise you then, my lady. The glass, I expect, is swept up by now, but the picture's, I suppose, as his lordship left it." " What can have upset him so ? " " Some things upset one," Mrs. Balderton said, " some another. With one it's bills, with another it's letters. You never can tell." " I'll go to the dining-room," said Lady Alton. " No, I'll dress first. Tell them to leave it just as it is. I wish to see it. And then you'd better be somewhere near his lordship's room. Whatever he says, there must be someone within hail." Lady Alton went her way rustling. Balderton rang for one of the women servants, and sent down her Ube Successor 31 orders, and then, having fetched some work, she took up her position at the table that stood under the window at the end of the corridor, near her master's room. Silence reigned in the great house. In it many small sounds were audible ; the distant singing of the canaries in the aviary, where, too, a bullfinch piped inter- mittently ; the slow ticking of the clock on the stairs ; the sweeping of a housemaid's broom in a bedroom ; an occasional murmur of far-off talking. Balderton remembered when these same passages resounded with young voices, and the coming and going of young feet. Lord Alton Master Edward was always the quiet one; but the others. . . . What boys ! What wonderful boys ! Master Edmund, whose picture was hanging in ribbons to-day from its frame was anyone like him ? Mischievous ? What pranks were those that he would not be at ? And what was there that you would not forgive him ? She could see him in swaddling clothes, a babe to delight you ; in the petticoats of the twos and threes ; the knickerbockers of the fours and upwards, to his first little trousers. Then she could see him as he came home for the holidays from Eton ; later, when he came down from Oxford ; later, at longer intervals, when he was launched in the world, and made Merringham 3unny with his occasional visits. She could see him as she saw him at his wedding ; as she saw him with his wife, when the bride, as a bride, made her first appearance at Merringham ; a year later dandling the babe he was so proud of the Edmund of Mrs. Alton's indiscreet letter ; and, but one short year later, in his premature shroud. Ah, Master Edmund whom everyone loved, of whom the old lord thought and expected so much ! Master Edmund ! Master Edmund ! And Master Terence and Master John ! You made 32 ZTbe Successor these corridors ring, in the short day of you, with your young shoutings and laughter. What boys you were ! Altons both of you to the tips of your fingers ! And what men you made ! You were men if the mould be broken. You both died fighting as you would have wished to die. . . . Silence, silence in the big house. In her room, Lady Alton was making her toilet; Lord Alton, his mind up, in his. When half an hour had passed, Balderton rose, and putting down her work, went along the passage and listened outside her master's door. Silence there, as in the house. He was sleeping? She hesitated and knocked lightly. No answer. She opened the door and looked in. Lord Alton lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. Never before had Balderton seen quite such a look of abstraction. The face was the face of one who gazes across great distances, ignoring things near. Not till she spoke did he become aware of her presence, and then, though he started at the sound of her voice and looked towards her, raising his head from the pillow, recognition of her travelled slowly to his brain, and back slower still, in outward presentment, to the eyes that met hers. CHAPTER IV IT was three by the clock on the stairs when Balderton, by Lord Alton's direction, summoned Lady Alton to her husband's bedside. The summer's day was unclouded, and the air hummed to the beat of a pulse as at mid-day. Balderton, however, with a foot for a barometer (rarely at fault), and just now a "feel" in it, as she said, prophesied rain before sunset. Lady Alton, looking at the blue, shook her head. 11 Before sunset, my lady," said Balderton. Lord Alton was propped up now in bed. He knew himself, and was not going to be ill. It was a day of odd repetitions. Repetitions were everywhere. Were so many things ever before said twice in twelve hours ? Yet when the door had closed upon Balderton's back, and husband and wife were alone, there was a time when, the conventionalities of the moment and its circumstances having been dealt with conventionally, (Lady Alton herself a very type of convention !), it seemed as if there were nothing left to say. Lord Alton was easier ? Easier. He was sure ? Sure. He had all that he wanted ? Here was Lord Alton's opportunity, but he did not seem able or ready to take it. He let it pass with a curt " Everything," having, in fact, everything but that which he wanted. When the silence had lasted so long that it began to play upon Lady Alton's nerves, she rose from her chair 33 c 34 ftbe Successor by the bed her " place " by his " side " and went to the window. " There isn't a cloud in the sky," she said. " There isn't a speck of dust moving." Her husband had followed her with his eyes, and waited. " But Balderton," she said, " says there will be rain." The prediction might, from her tone, have been supposed a menace to herself, biassed, personal, pointed. Lord Alton, sick or well, uncertain, hasty, dangerous, whatever he lacked, lacked not the saving grace of all, and distraught- as he was, excited, nervous even, was able in this moment of tension to smile. " ' There is yet one man,' " he said drily, " ' Micaiah, the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord : but I hate him ; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.'" Lord Alton occasionally talked over his wife's elaborate head. She ignored what she did not understand, and said, irrelevantly it may have seemed, but contemptuously of obvious intention, " By her foot ! " Lord Alton did not fail to follow her. "I'd back Balderton's foot for all that," he said, "against many a better brain." Lady Alton's nerves were perhaps really ajar, or for her rejoinder, and their soothing, she might not have descended to a ready and cheap : " Well, it's large enough, any way." "My dear," Lord Alton said suavely, "I think you hardly appreciate Balderton. She is one in a thousand. She is a splendid example of something that is fast dis- appearing. These women are wonderful. They are born in the service of houses such as ours I am so far arrogant ! and die therein. They don't flit from house to house and serve best the master that pays best The Successor 35 younger women do that light come, light go. But Balderton she doesn't like me particularly perhaps, but if I lost every penny to-morrow, Balderton would stay with me though she starved for it. Try to see. We must make allowances." " I can't bear her," said the lady, with petulance. " I am sorry to know it." " She flouts me." " You don't take her aright. " She is impudent." "An old servant. She is my earliest recollection. Years give privileges . . ." " Privileges ! The privilege to insult her mistress ! " " I can't think she would do that. Then unprovoked, let me say, Reconsider her. Balderton dies in this house. As long as I live she shall only leave by her own act and will. On so much, dear, I am determined, and mean no slight to you. Think if I have ever slighted you ? I have even, I believe, been a good husband. Attach Balderton to you. You can do it if you will. You have only, perhaps, not to alienate her deliberately. Attach her to you, and you have an ally for a foe; so at the smallest reckoning, and my wishes apart, it is politic advice that I'm giving you." Lady Alton had plenty to say upon that, but, hipped as she might be, was impressed in spite of herself. These things, none the less, and as each knew, were not what they had come together to say or to hear. " How we got upon Balderton ..." said Lord Alton, He was temporising. " By the way of her foot," said Lady Alton indiffer- ently, but with a glimmering of the comic spirit that spoke something for influences at work in her. Lord Alton, nervous once more, and excited, felt vaguely for respite. 36 trbe Successor 1 Her foot and the weather, you, Anab, Micaiah, the son of Imlah. . . . God help me ! We are not seeking we can't on the face of things ! to enquire of the Lord." He laughed out. The joke was rich indeed. Lady A.lton was astray again, and partly to bridge the diffi- culties of the situation, partly because the picture he had drawn of Balderton's part in the household had indeed impressed her, and the consequent need to justify herself was urgent, she returned to the vanity of vain prophesies. " You," she said, " can't see the sky from your bed. Where's the rain to come from ? For rain you want clouds. I've never seen such a sky." " Yet I have read of a sky," said Lord Alton it was palpable now that he temporised " of a sky in which there was nothing ... to six lookings ; at the seventh there was a little cloud like a man's hand. After that it was the rush for shelter . . . 'that the rain stop thee not' . . . 'get thee down,' and all that, girdings of loins, runnings, the heaven black with clouds and wind a veritable ' sound of abundance of rain.' You heard as you read. Elijah smelt rain in a sky as blue, I daresay, as your sky there. A fine nose, Elijah's." But if Elijah had a fine nose or, to keep to the letter, an ear that was notable Lord Alton had. a tongue that could turn words to his uses. He took the blue sky now to his aid. Mrs. Alton had seen a blue sky and written her letter. It was not always blue skies that were to be trusted. Bolts fell from them sometimes. The unexpected happened the thing to surprise you. He was trembling again ; had his hand upon the letter. " Here, read it," he said. " The woman counts. . . . Successor 37 The impudence of her ! The effrontery ! But read it. It needs no pointing. See for yourself. Take it. See. Here, I can't . . ." His trembling fingers wrestled with the envelope. " Let me," Lady Alton said, but, the tumult of nerves communicating itself to her also, began to take it by force. It was a strange moment in a day of strange hours. As she seemed like to twist the thing from him, he crammed it into her hands. " Can't you wait ? " he snapped. "You've hurt my finger," she said. "Your great ring . . . ! I thought you wanted me to read your letter . . ." " Not," he said" not to snatch it." Veins stood out on his forehead. Lady Alton, with the flushed cheeks of a nursemaid who has wrested a toy, or what else, from a recalcitrant charge, and is yet a little bit ashamed of her achieve- ment, looked ruefully at her finger and rubbed it. In doing so she dropped the letter, and stooped for it. " Am I to read this ? " she said doubtfully, when her husband, controlling himself for her shaming, kept silence. "You said, 'Read it.' You said/ Take it.' If you wanted me to read it, why didn't you give it to me ? If you didn't want me to, why did you say you did ? " But that was not enough. " " I don't know what made me," she said then. " It was your impatience, I think the sight of you fighting with the envelope. I didn't seem able to help it." She paused, knowing it vaguely to have been the impulse that makes animals attack a wounded companion. " I'm sorry," she added abruptly, surprising herself. Lord Alton speaking then, spoke sharply, but showed by his words that he accepted her honourable intention. js Ube Successor Who was he, he said, not to recognise the part that nerves played in the ordering of human affairs ? It would well become him to be critical ! Lady Alton had only to look at the picture downstairs, and at the more instructive spectacle still of her husband temporarily laid low a pretty example indeed ! " But, heavens above us ! " he finished, " you and I mustn't quarrel. The fault's mine, I daresay, though I don't care whose the fault is. You and I must make common cause or none. It's no time for dissensions in the camp. See what the woman says ! Read ! Of course, I mean you to read." His pink eyes watched her as she spread out the sheet. To read " writing " was always a process set with obstacles to her. She read slowly, pausing at a word from time to time, and returning to one or two as unmastered. She referred a hieroglyphic obscurer than the rest to her husband for elucidation, complaining that the writer wrote vilely. " I found it legible enough." " You know her hand, you see." " She makes small bones of showing it. "Look at that for a W," said Lady Alton, "and there's an L for you. Any school child would make better pot-hooks. That's meant for a t, I suppose, and just look at her i's." " I can't say," said Lord Alton, " that I mind any crosses or dots." The reader seemed like to overlook the matter in her zeal to condemn the manner. It was not till she was nearing the end that she realised what it was that was taken for granted. Lord Alton saw perception dawn in her eyes. " Of all the impudent ..." she said doubtfully, and then broke off. Ube Successor 39 " That's it," said her husband ; " impudent, daring, cool. . . ." He blew the coals with his adjectives. "Are you Sarah?" he said, "... ninety? that she should suppose . . . even if I were a hundred ! Not but that Sarah surprised every one, herself most of all if the woman remembers what she professes to believe. But this is Susan Alton through and through. Do you read her contempt of you? You are not mentioned. There is but one thing that would have made you a person to reckon with, and lacking that you can be ignored as of no account. Am I right to be angry ? " " It's a begging letter ! " said Lady Alton ; " it's nothing more nor less than a begging letter. I wonder she isn't ashamed to ask such favours." "It isn't what she asks," said Lord Alton; "it's what she assumes." He had a vague uneasiness at the back of his mind that she was going to call Mrs. Alton " No lady," but to his relief the horrible phrase was not spoken. "Why should she think . . .?" Lady Alton began suddenly, and paused. That was the right note. That was what he was waiting for. She thinks herself safe," he said. " Her letter, if it says anything, says that we may now consider Edmund's succession assured. Shall we take it that all doubts are at rest on the point ? Shall we adopt her boy, eh ? Pay for his schooling and send him to Oxford ? Shall we sink past differences, hold out the olive branch lacking olive branches ourselves ! and take my brother Edmund's wife and her son to our bosoms ? When I'm safe in my grave there's the dower-house for you, and Merringham (they assume) has got to be theirs. I'm 40 Ube Successor only asked to ante-date their well-being by a year or two." "But I'm a young woman," said Lady Alton. It was the right note again. "She dismisses you, my dear, with a shrug of the shoulders. She would say she had given you time." Lady Alton, who had been standing, sat down by the bed, and fell to tracing the pattern of the counterpane with one finger. Her rings sparkled with her movements. Lord Alton watched her for some moments in silence. There were lilies in the pattern, roses, twining ivy ; Lady Alton's finger travelled intricately. She might have been weaving fancies or spinning a web. A knock at the door recalled her to herself, and brought a frown to the forehead of her husband. What was it now ? he said. Were his orders always to be disregarded ? What he wanted was apparently what he could not get, and that was quiet. Let the servants be careful ! Lady Alton went to the door. Were there any orders for the carriage? The carriage! Lady Alton's tone was expostulating an appeal to the reason. There were no orders. Stay, though ... it was Lord Alton from the bed. Lady Alton must have her drive. The air would do her good. She would come back to him when she came in. The lady consulted her husband with her eyelids. " At four, then," she said. She would drive for an hour. "You wish it?" she asked, as she turned again to the bed. "Yes; I wish it." It meant that the right note having been struck, it might be counted upon to hold the air for a time, as TOe Successor 41 the sound of an evening bell lingers in the twilight. All that need be said had perhaps been said. So at four of the clock Lady Alton drove out in the monstrous Merringham landau and solitary grandeur. Her eyes were restless and bright, her forehead puckered, and William, upon the box in his white livery, looking round once to take some direction from his mistress, thought, and afterwards said, that her ladyship had evidently been more put about by the events of the morning than he, for one, would have expected. Inward excitement, in truth, was outwardly expressed by something unusual in every line of her face, and it did not need more than the intelligence of a William to see it. CHAPTER V LADY ALTON'S brain was in truth working. The wheels turning under the luxurious springs of the carriage did not turn more steadily than the wheels that turned and hummed in her head where, indeed, within every wheel there seemed to be another wheel turning, humming, humming, turning, to a degree of activity that might have been expected to be bewildering, but that, in some odd way, was stimulating instead. The slim back and the broad back were in front of her, and had the immobility of well-trained service. There was no one to see her except at the starting, and in the brief moment of the colloquy. Yet Lady Alton lowered her pink parasol, and under it, in the pink radiance of it, her eyes burned, and burned, and burned. Was Mrs. Alton's taunt rankling ? Lord Alton's words were sinking in ? He had pointed the slight assuredly. Was she the lady with the burning eyes under the pink parasol Sarah indeed? ... or ninety. . . .? It was very pink under the pink parasol. The country moved by smoothly; trees, hedges, a wood, a common. Here and there a cottage sent blue smoke into the blue. Children bobbed their curtsies to the unresponsive silk. Some hens at a point in the road ran frenzied before, and almost under, the horses' hoofs, and sought noisy shelter in impenetrable fences, to turn back baffled but instantly calm at the passing of the danger. A flock of sheep, too, was driven for a 42 ttt>e Successor 43 space to part at last like the waters of the Red Sea. Birds were everywhere ; the hedgerows bright with flowers ; the day brimmed with life. Under the pink parasol the eyelids closed now and then for a moment or two over the shining eyes, as if to cool them. Always the eyes were opened a little wider then, before they settled down again to their steady burning. They were like two flames in the conven- tional face that looked now so unconventional, and they leapt as flames leap in a draught. The sound of the trotting hoofs was sharp on the well-kept roads. The round world on this day of full summer seemed a sounding board for noises, so that the whistle of a train, made pleasant by distance, was yet clear on the fleckless air. Lady Alton hung on to it and found it to conjure up visions of travel. Perhaps for the little that she had travelled her impressions were the more vivid. They were vivid enough. She thought of big London stations ; book-stalls ; Dover ; the Admiralty Pier ; the wash of green water ; Calais ; its refreshment room ; the sound of French ; the names of stopping-places upon a certain journey Laon, Belfort, Bale ; the sound of German and other tongues ; with all the things incidental to voyaging ; frontiers ; pass- ports (the world younger then and less free) ; customs ; couriers. The thought grew with her. It was part, or became part, of the other thought. Movement, that was what she wanted movement, fresh places and faces, life. She was young still, and here at Merringham ran risks of settling down prematurely into comfortable middle age. To have been so successful . . . and not to succeed a little more! To let Mrs. Alton have the last word, moreover ! A case, indeed, for the elegant No Fear of earlier days. 44 ^be Successor Movement, life, fresh places . . . and faces ? " Abroad," she said two or three times to herself, " abroad." Another carriage passed, bearing ladies who bowed stiffly. The third Lady Alton was here and there kept outside the cordial nod and smile of intimacy. "They, too, think maybe that I'm here but for a time," was a thought that shaped itself vaguely in her mind as she bowed back mechanically. A thought of the distant dower-house came as a pendant to this, with a recollection of the mutilated picture of Edmund, and she laughed to herself under the pink parasol. The picture of Edmund carried its own significance, and the dower-house was further from her perhaps than people would imagine. The incident of the cold bow but increased her inward excitement. The day itself was stimulating. Lady Alton from Liverpool had not always the seeing eye. When she drove, the carriage (the coronet on its panels), the horses, the servants in the white liveries that were her admira- tion and pride, and the fact that it was she (who had walked so much !) who sat behind them in state these were the things that occupied her. Landscape, skies, the sights and sounds of the country had their part but as accessories to her well-being. But for once her eyes and ears and nostrils were open to the appeals of Nature. Here was a dragon-fly hovering for a few moments, as with a sort of suspended motion, over the carriage. Its metallic colours shone in the sun. It was like a flying jewel. As she looked at it, wondering, it vanished. There were butterflies, and she saw them ; birds chirping and twittering, and she heard ; fra- grances everywhere of field, or wood, or wayside. The light on the hills caught and held her. Never before, though she had seen it a hundred times, Successor 45 had she remarked the odd outline of the hills themselves Lady Alton extended her drive. There was a cloud in the sky by the time she gave the homeward order, but conscious of it as her keener perceptions may have caused her to be, she took no heed of it in connection with what had passed earlier in the day, nor of an odd little wind which had arisen and rustled the leaves and taller grasses to the sound of an audible Hush. It was as if the resonant day itself asked for silence. Ssh, said the cornfields, white to harvest, Ssh and Ssh, Ssh, said the trees in a wood. Ssh, sighed the reeds in the lake. Lady Alton reached home ten years younger. Balderton, still in her place at the table under the window in the corridor, saw the change in her. Lady Alton was humming who never hummed ! as she came up the wide stairs. Balderton, choosing to think she was spoken to, said, " My lady ? " Her mistress deigned to smile on her. " I know he is better," she said pleasantly ; " you needn't tell me." " Well, restless," said Balderton ; " restless, more than ill. I've hardly dared to go near him more than to take him his tea which was hardly tea when you come to that. Something lays on his mind . . . yet doesn't quite lay, so to speak, being more prickly than anything else. Dead weights don't spur and goad you. Better, my lady ? Perhaps, yes. His lordship says he knows, and is not going to be ill." " Spur ? " said Lady Alton. " Goad ? " " Well, the picture, ..." said Balderton. "That reminds me," said Lady Alton. "It will 46 Ebe Successor have to go to be repaired. I must speak to Lord Alton about it." " Hardly to-day ? " ventured Balderton, who seemed under the dominion of a word. "No, perhaps not to-day." Balderton appeared to think. " It might be taken down," she said, " and out of the frame, and put aside carefully. I'll see to it. Jt seems hardly right to have it hanging there in ribbons for every one to talk about. It has been thought a fine picture, too. I remember the painting of it, and how Mr. Edmund hated sitting. It seems odd to look at it now, and to think . . . but that," she ended abruptly, reverting to the hostile Balderton that Lady Alton knew best " that's for those who have associations with it." For once her mistress did not rise. " Have it taken down," she said, " and packed. We will decide later what is to be done with it." She even smiled. Balderton, perplexed, looked after her wonderingly. Nothing more happened that day except that not a word was said definitely upon anything that might have supposed to be occupying two minds. That was indeed what did happen : the happening of nothing. Lady Alton had her tea brought to her husband's room, and when William and James were arranging the table was talking of new chintzes for her boudoir. She sent away the buttered toast, complaining that it was too thick, and found fault, as was her habit, with this or with that. Bread and butter should be curled, she said, in case the eater wore gloves ; and why were there no hot cakes ? William, outside the door said, as he always said, that it ZTbe Successor 47 was plain that her ladyship had not all her life had the privilege of giving orders and trouble. Balderton questioned him. The " boudwor," he told her, was to be done up ; the toast was too thick (James, carrying the dish, raised the cover lowering the corners of his mouth) ; and mimicking Why were there no hot cakes ? " Now then," said Balderton sharply. " * Why/ " mimicked William unabashed, " ' why, pray, are there no hot cakes ? ' " " Well ? " said Balderton sternly. "Hot cakes," said William "hot cakes up in the bedrooms! I'd give my lady hot cakes if I'd my way." " That clever tongue of yours '11 be getting you into trouble one of these days, my fine gentleman," said Balderton, and went down to her room. There was nothing to be learned, But neither when Lord and Lady Alton were alone did anything pass between them to have enlightened the inquisitive. Looks perhaps were exchanged or avoided, though on the whole it might be said that looks to any noticeable extent were neither avoided nor exchanged, and the case, if it was understood at all, asked for no words. Lady Alton talked of the new chintzes for the boudoir for quite a long time. There should be roses in the pattern and love-knots roses, falling, garlanded, looped ; with festoons of riband between. " I see it all," she said, " in my mind's eye. You don't know how pretty it will be pink roses, of course, and the palest blue ribands. I want it to look like perpetual summer. Is your head easier, dear?" 4 8 Gbe Successor " Better altogether," said Lord Alton. He spoke no more of not being thwarted, or crossed, or combated. It seemed he could wait. "I've read of or seen what I mean/' Lady Alton said. " I want the whole room to smile. I want it to be everything that the dining-room is not." " We won't, I think, talk of the dining-room," said Lord Alton. "That's it," said Lady Alton, "you see exactly what I mean. In some of your pictures there's the sort of thing I have in my head. I want the room to look as if no trouble could come near it ; as if there were only and always, mind ! sunshine, and music, and laughter, in the world at all." Lord Alton smiled, but said nothing. A new Lady Alton, surely a fourth? who sought the spirit of Versailles, of Ftes Galantes and Fetes Champetres, to the decking of her boudoir! What did he seek in turn? A fourth Lady Alton, wasn't it, in effect ? he who had taken him three to no purpose. This was his fourth Lady Alton. The Andover, the Redruth of Angers- town, the Mason (of Liverpool) there was his list ; but it was the Mason of Liverpool who, comprehending, transformed, was going to be wives three and four to him. The fresh toast arrived, and was allowed to remain. "You'll find what you want without doubt," Lord Alton said presently. "We'll send to London for patterns, and they'll send, if need be, to Paris. You shall have what you wish." Lady Alton looked pleased, and laid her hand lightly upon the hand that lay on the coverlet. "You're too good to me," she said "You spoil ZTbe Successor 49 Her husband smiled indulgently, his little pink eyes blinking. " I was thinking ..." she began, and paused. "Yes?" " Shall we go abroad for a little when you are better ? Paris? and choose things ourselves. Do you think that we stay, perhaps, too much at home ? " Lord Alton's eyes followed the movements of a fly upon the counterpane, followed the fly to a picture on the wall, from the picture to one of the posts of the bed, from the post to a spot midway between the bed and the ceiling, where it swam to and fro like a gold-fish in a bowl. " Abroad ? " he said, giving no sign. " I'm a little bit tired of the country the same people, and no people. I passed Lady Wraysbury to-day and her ugly daughters. Their complexions get worse every year as their noses grow longer. Poor things, it made me quite sorry, and I don't suppose the youngest is much over thirty. She looks twice my age, doesn't she ? " " Three times, shall we say, to-day ? " He smiled again. " Oh, I don't say three times," said Lady Alton modestly. " I'm contented with twice. And then fair people always look younger, don't they? It must be dreadful to be so dark. I shouldn't like to look as if I had ink in my veins for blood, and couldn't scratch my finger without the risk of ironmoulding my handkerchief." "Blue blood," murmured Lord Alton, "the Wrays- bury;" but by his expression did not seem to be disapproving, and by his eyelids was waiting. " I'd like to be even with it," said the lady quietly, and looked out of the window. so Ube Successor Clouds had come up, and now began to overspread the heavens, but she did not see them. A rose knocked and knocked at the casement where it was open. Another fly and another had joined the fly in mid-air, and the three, more than ever like fish in a bowl, swam, and swam, and swam, this way, that way, crossing, doubling, circling, bobbing to bewilderment and untraceable measure. Lord Alton was busy with them when his wife's eyes came back from the window. " Shall we travel a little ? " she said. The cue for the saying of what little was said. " That's just what we will do." Lord Alton left the flies to their swimming. " England stands for Susan Alton just now, and Edmund and the proud Wraysburys with their noses in the air, and ink perhaps acrid at that for blood, I daresay (as you say), in their veins, and for a good deal else that means defeat for us here. Defeat for me, who may be supposed to have wished . . . and have at least given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme ! and for you in the Reproach, howsoever unreasoning and undeserved." Lord Alton drew breath and laughed. " Is Susan Alton a clever woman at all ? " he said. "Tell me that." " Isn't it rather : Has she shown herself a wise one ? " "Blanche," said Lord Alton, "you're wonderful." It rained before sundown, as Balderton had prophesied. Lady Alton saw her shut the window on the stairs to " keep out the wet," as the demure housekeeper quietly said and was not angry, and in that Lady Alton was wonderful indeed. But the Lady Alton who had tEbe Successor s 1 " risen >f at everything was not quite the Lady Alton who had come in from the pink drive, and perhaps in very truth, without actual change, was to prove a new Lady Alton a "Fourth," after all. Time would show. CHAPTER VI So the odd couple went abroad, taking with them a moderate suite Berners, Bonner, a courier ; visited this country and that ; dawdled here, hurried there ; zig- zagged, made bee-lines, meandered till a year was past, when, as suddenly as they had started, they turned their faces towards home. Balderton, as an observer, fancied some change of outlook or attitude. Thoughtful on the whole as Lord Alton had shown himself in his relations with his wives bearing even, in the case of one of them, and forbear- ing he came back from his sojourn abroad a husband attentive to the reigning wife of his bosom, and con- siderate of her to a degree that seemed, to the Balderton at least, to ask explanation. Her first sensation as she welcomed the voyagers home was one of surprise at a physical and mental change of which she became conscious in her master. You would not have expected Lord Alton off a journey to be other than the victim to nerves outraged and demoralised. A train always upset him locomotion, indeed, generally. Yet it was a Lord Alton almost debonair, younger, surely, and hardly furtive ("to speak of") or suspicious, who gave her his hand in the hall with a " Well, Balderton, how do we find you?" and a "Mightily glad to be home again ! " Not the normal Lord Alton, I take it, with Balderton bowing over the urbane and gracious fingers. What had happened, and what? The Lord Alton of Balderton's intimate acquaintance was wont, 5 2 Ube Successor 53 after travelling no further than from London, to betake himself to his rooms, shut himself up in them, and there woe betide the disturber of his seclusion ! This Lord Alton, learning that tea had been prepared in Lady Alton's boudoir, which had duly been redecorated in her absence, followed her thither to criticise and approve, hung over her and upon her words, and altogether may be said to have comported himself in ways that his housekeeper, making it her business to be present as long as possible, was at pains to recognise as presenting the man she knew so well. What, again, had occurred? You did not change the habits of a lifetime for nothing. Balderton retired to her room, puzzled, intrigued, speculative. Thence, curiosity holding her, she emerged at dinner-time, first to hover genially about the dining- room door for a moment or two, and then, under pretext of seeing that all was right, presently to make her way to Bonner unpacking in her lady's chamber. There she had a long talk. Bonner told of the usual difficult mistress. No pleasing her was there at times, though, to be sure, at others it was " Bonner, would you like this ? " and "Bonner, I've been thinking that ..." and butter wouldn't melt in the mouth. " Erritable ? " Well . . . Should they say, Nervous ? Yes, some of her new dresses were lovely. Paris, of course. Mrs. Balderton should see a few of the toilettes in the Bor d'B'long. She should really. But what were they saying? Nervous, that was it excitable, even jumpy. Caught that from his lordship, perhaps. The odd thing was Mrs. Balderton was quite right, and that was just what Bonner had been about to say his lordship was less nervous, and it was Bonner's belief that it was as her ladyship had become more so that he had become less. 54 Ube Successor " She has the highest opinion of you, Mrs. Balderton." " Of me ? " said the housekeeper. " Of you," said the lady's-maid. " That's news to me," said Balderton. The skies would fall, and yet (talking of skies, too !) had there not been some little alteration in her demeanour upon a day that Balderton remembered ? The going abroad had come soon after that must have been settled about then. That was the day of strange things, and his lordship's " taking." Words, looks, impressions came back to her from the curious day . . . " I mustn't be thwarted." . . . Lord Alton's illness and oddness. . . . Balderton was in a brown study. " She says," continued Bonner, shaking out a skirt, " that you are one in a thousand. Look at the lace on this and there's another I must show you. Where did I put it ? Ah, there on the bed ! Look, row upon row the insertion between and the little velvet knots, eh ? She looks very well in this, I will say, with her hair a TEmpire. I don't know what she didn't pay for it. ... One in a thousand, she says." Balderton considered. Her mittened hands pink a little at the knuckles and the joints of the fingers played with her silk apron. She pursed a shrewd mouth. " There's a trunk or two to come still," proceeded Bonner, folding and unfolding, shaking out, patting, smoothing "things that we wasn't in a hurry for and two or three boxes have come already, I suppose, that was sent off here and there on our way. Her ladyship would buy and buy, and anything she set her heart on she could have. She might think herself lucky, I say. Handkerchiefs ? Look at these, and these are nothing to some. Wait. Yes, Brussels. I don't expect she did always know, but you can go by the price . . . and, ttbe Successor 55 of course, there was his lordship. She'd take him with her as often as not, and then they'd bring out the things from the back of the shop. Money, of course, was no object." "Indeed, then," said Balderton sharply, "it used to be." Bonner, comparatively a new-comer, was telling her ! Lord Alton, to be sure, had never denied the Mason, if his dealings with the Andover and the Redruth of Angerstown had not been marked by any special generosity ; but it was surely of a further change that Balderton was hearing ? Money no object ! " It didn't seem to enter into the calculations," said Bonner. She launched into descriptions of the recent travels moving rapidly from one place or country to another, but giving on the whole an intelligent and coherent account of her impressions. The Italians, she liked them the French, too, some of them, though one here and there was too saucy for her taste ! She had seen nothing she liked better than Paris ; that she would say. The cafe's and the shops ! but she didn't think much of theatres where you didn't have to dress in the evening. Give her London on the whole, take it all round. Rome she didn't " seem " to care much for 'Omburg, to her mind, was brighter, and there was the band and the gardens, and always something to look at. The bread there she couldn't bear ; it was too fancy for her, and the poor people would Balderton believe? actually ate black that was sour into the bargain, and really hardly fit for Christian food. Balderton bore the recital of her individual experiences for the sake of what else she might have to tell her. Only when Bonner enlarged upon the craving that had come upon her in Athens for the taste of a muffin did 56 Ube Successor she show a little impatience, and turn the talk on to her master and mistress. But Bonner had only to tell what in the first five minutes she had told of the curious assuagement of nerves upon the one part, and upon the other of a not less curious alternating of excitability with the airs and graces to which all who were acquainted with the third Lady Alton were accustomed. Balderton asked a question or two. Bonner, pausing in her work, or going backwards and forwards between the open boxes and the wardrobes and chests of drawers, answered her volubly. Balderton went back to her room satisfied that her perceptions were not at fault, but not a little mystified. In the dining-room the pair sat at their dinner. Conversation, when they were alone, could not be said as a general thing to be brilliant or sustained. It was Lord Alton's habit to sit in a moody silence, out of which he roused himself irritably to give some direction to his butler, or send messages, for the most part of disapprobation, to his cook. When he addressed his wife it was always politely, but seldom with any inten- tion of setting a ball rolling. Lady Alton was never entirely silent, but took little trouble to be entertaining or amusing. To-night, however, an air of cheerfulness was over the glittering board. Lord Alton, it was reported, was in high good humour. He ate and drank with apparent satisfaction, took an interest in what was set before him, and while he talked easily and lightly, was heard to praise a dish even, and to remark upon the wine to the gratification of Dunwich, who, feeling the occasion to be a special one, had given the matter of the decanting considerable thought. Lady Alton responded to her husband's mood, and, for her usual languors and airs and graces, wore a smile. She bent to admit that after a course of foreign cooking English ttbe Successor 57 fare was not distasteful to her. You got tired, she said, of eating you knew not what, and there came a time when . . . and so on. " Just so," said Lord Alton. Her remarks were never very profound. Dinner proceeded. Time had been when just such a "Just so" would have been read into a challenge. Then had her retort been ready and to the point. She was losing, studying, perhaps, to dispossess herself of an alertness that had characterised her in earlier days when give and take had been the rule with her give quickly and as good as you got, take . . . what advantage sharp and sharpened eyes might see ! But those were the days of the struggle for life. She had no longer to fight her way inch by inch, and could suffer herself to relax her vigilance. Languors and elegances were the natural outcome of what had gone before, and, or but, no longer (for the closely observant) parts of an armour wherewith she must needs protect herself. " Your room pleased you ? " said Lord Alton. It was all that she had hoped to find it, Lady Alton conceded and more. The roses and the twined ribands, with the little cupids (which were repeated in the cornices), had all charmed her. " I feel I shall be very happy there," she said. A bride might have been speaking. Lady Alton might have been viewing Merringham for the first time. " Roses, ribands, cupids," said Lord Alton, and looked at his wife over the rim of his glass. She raised her own to her lips and smiled. The sleeve fell away a little from her arm, which was seen to be round and firm and wonderfully young. It was a bride surely that she suggested. Lord Alton, in exuberant good humour, laughed gently to himself. s 8 ZTbe Successor The servants had left the room. The decanters were in their places at the end of the table, and the light of the candles made the wines to throw ruby and amber splashes, like stains, upon the cloth. The white of fine napery was a background to many pleasing things of silver and porcelain and glass. A dish of nuts sent the thoughts to groves and leafy woodlands. The bloom on a bunch of grapes was a thing to arrest the attention, and some peaches were beautiful to hold the eye, and make the mouth water. It was the moment when the bridegroom steals round to the side of his bride. . . . Lord Alton did not do this, but he helped himself to a peach, pausing for a moment to admire before disturbing it, peeled it and cut it in half. " Adam for Eve," he said ; " Eve for Adam. I doubt that the fruit of the Garden was finer." " For Eve ? " Lady Alton said vaguely, but not stupidly, "for Adam?" "The case, I mean, is reversed/' said Lord Alton. "So perhaps is the result if Adam tempting Eve neither is turned out of Paradise ! " She took the half he held out to her, but not his meaning. He, upon his part, played with the thought, hazarding that they upon theirs aimed did they not ? at not being turned out of Paradise ! The idea seemed to afford him considerable amusement, and Lady Alton looked for once as if she wished she could follow him. She was accustomed, however, to knowing, as we know, that her husband's talk, when he talked, was occasionally over her head, and contented herself with saying that she had never seen him in this mood before. " I should like," he said, " to know how in your heart of hearts you regard me." She was eating the peach, so was he ; each paused ttbe Successor 59 with a piece in mid-air on a fork. The little pink eyes had not released their whimsical smile, yet there was for a moment or two in the big room a feeling of suspension, as when the cry of a child that has tumbled is long in coming. " I am jesting," said Lord Alton, breaking the spell, and conveying the piece of fruit to his mouth. " I don't want to know and do know, indeed, for that matter." He went back to the peach, dropping Adam and Eve. " The best I have eaten this year. My plate is full of the juice of it. Jebson succeeds with his wall fruit. He shall stop with me." There spoke geniality. Jebson's predecessor had been sent about his business with a month's wages short shrift, indeed ! That had something to do with his management of orchids, but more with his employer's capriciousness. " They are certainly," said Lady Alton, looking at her plate rather than at the dish before her "certainly beautiful and ripe." " Exactly," said Lord Alton. He looked at the dish. " Beautiful, as you say and ripe also." So much he often permitted himself. After all, it might have been worse, as he had probably told himself long ago. She might might she not? have said " beautifully and ripe," with the housemaids. Not that he was in any mood to find fault ! The entrance of the servants with coffee found the odd pair still conversing. Unusual? Unheard of. Lady Alton, since the first days of all when she may be supposed to have been taking her bearings, had always caught her own eye, " gathered up," and rustled from the room as soon as her dinner was finished. Dunwich reported, and William. Balderton, we may be sure, heard. 60 Ube Successor Dunwich said, "Like a newly-married couple." William said, " Like a couple, anyway " meaning, perhaps, like human beings. Him Balderton thought it necessary to set down with a " Like his impudence which one of these days would, as she always had said, get him into trouble ! " Everything, however, was colour of rose, like the garlands, the ribands, and the cupids of her ladyship's boudoir. The day closed in in pink, and Balderton looked for wonders. CHAPTER VII LORD ALTON, settling down into the everyday life at Merringham, continued to show a new spirit. One would have said that a pain had been removed, a sick- ness cured, an anxiety laid. He went his way boldly for suspiciously, and as one who, like the blacksmith, could " look the whole world in the face." The servants began to be less in dread of him less in dread, that is, of his uncertainties. Something had come into his life, or been taken out of it. He glanced about him less from under his pink eyelids, and wore altogether an unfamiliar mien. He kept a good joke to himself, one would have said . . . had a secret . . . knew that which would presently surprise you. Balderton watched him, speculation in her shrewd face. From her window she would see him leisurely pace the lawn in the sunshine, or stroll along the gravel paths. He would stop at a bed, examine a flower, pull up the stick beside it, perhaps, to read the name on it, snip off a dead leaf or blossom, and show himself interested, who seldom was interested. There was even something of vigour in his step when he walked. What "ailed" him, she asked herself, that he who had never been well should seem so well ? His study saw less of him, the books which, in orderly parcels, were always arriving from London, and with which he used to shut himself up for hours together. He began on a day to drive out with his wife, and that maybe, to 61 62 Ufoe Successor Balderton, who knew him and his ways, was not the least strange of his doings. So were things changing for all who might see. Balderton saw much, but not everything; and to us, whose opportunities for observing need not be bounded by hers, is permitted an intimate glimpse or two which she, by the nature of times and places, perforce was denied. Lady Alton has a " taking," talks to herself, sees a vision. Lord Alton goes for a walk and plays the Lord Bountiful to the least deserving but largest family he knows. We may see ! The summer waned. Colours other than green began to be seen in the trees. There was sunshine, but a nip in the air, and the evenings which overtook you by craft, as it seemed, and subtlety were chilly. Then there would be days of misty dampness when the clouds did not lift, or lifting, were dirty and ragged. It was after a day as of full summer, but upon a falling glass, that there came a sudden eight hours of gusty downpour to affect one at least at Merringham, oddly. The house was full of the sound of rain. The drops, in close slanting lines, beat upon its mullioned windows and lead roof. Water gurgled in its many pipes, and flowed from the mouths of them with a steady unsteadiness that had a sort of halting but insistent rhythm. Little rills and rivulets ran over the stones, and every path had its lake at the sloping edge, or where a gully was blocked. The wind took the rain from time to time, and lashed the panes with it as with whip-cords. Lady Alton, amid the garlands, the ribands, and the cupids of her renovated boudoir listened and shivered. The fire burned ill, and did little to mitigate the depressing influences of the day. For colour there TTDe Successor 6 3 seemed to be grey shadows everywhere. She moved about restlessly, began to rearrange the ornaments on one of the cabinets, lost interest in her occupation, and left it. She went to the window and looked out across the sodden park, where the dripping trees were shedding their leaves, and the distances were obscured. Swish came the rain against the glass an inch from her nose, swish and swish ! Little streaks of air came in at the joints of the leaded panes too minute, almost, to place or reckon with as draughts, but goads to vague discomfort, pin-pricks, touchings on the raw. She groaned, and was talking to herself before long. It was the dining-room ! She had broken through her rule and had come down to breakfast that morning, and the room had upset her. It was the blackness of the carved oak ; it was the heavy ceiling ; but principally it was the tree in front of the window. The tree, the tree, the tree! It became for her an object of active and accumulated hatred. " Always," she said to herself, " from the first day from the first moment I saw it ! He knows perfectly well. It's been like a dead weight on my spirits. . . ." She was working up to a crisis of sorts. She glared from the streaming window, so that one might have supposed her eyes to be fixed then and there on the offending thing. It, however, as we know, was on the north side of the house, where, moreover, in sight of it, but a few hours back, breakfast had been eaten amicably to the tune of pleasant commonplaces. " If I am to live here," (she was whipping herself as the rain whipped the windows) " it must be cut down. What does it matter who planted it ? Not to be able to breakfast in one's own dining-room ! A tree ! An ugly black tree! He likes to see me miserable. He cares more for it than for my happiness." 6 4 Ube Successor She began an imaginary colloquy with her husband, in which he, protesting that he had forgotten (she was sure that he would so protest), used the old arguments. " Such a big tree ! " for example. Lady Alton haa little invention. He might well say that ! It was a monster a night- mare to her. She lay awake thinking of it. It hadn't been out of her mind for a day. She might not have said anything, but she didn't forget. And such a little thing to ask of him. "Oh!" She said "Oh!" at intervals, and was as unlike herself as could be. " My dear, we must try to be reasonable." She could hear him say that. Reasonable ! Reasonable ! She was reasonable. That was just it. He couldn't complain. He couldn't say she didn't listen to him. Hadn't she borne with his Balderton ? But why should she with his tree? He would try expostulation. Useless ! Cajolery ? She was in no mood, she would tell him, for jesting, and would not be mocked. The balm of smooth words ? If he did she would try for a promise. He had used the word reasonable, hadn't he? Very well. She would be reasonable. She was ready to be. Let him listen to her. If ... She breathed faster, her hands ruffling her laces, a.nd let a second or two pass. " If . . ." Oh, he needn't make her say it. It was not fair. Besides, if she understood at all, there were to be no words. The " sound of abundance of rain " was sending her thoughts back as it might have been counted upon to send his to the day of no words which each must remember. It was the lady now who must not be Successor 65 thwarted. There were other things unspoken to be remembered or forgotten. The rain smote the windows as if it would break them. It was like a torturer who insists, knowing exactly how far he may go. She shivered again. She turned from the window, and walked back to the cabinet with some indefinite intention of resettling the things she had left in dis- order. But she had not counted with a mood in which nothing satisfied her. She quarrelled with the objects under her hands till, inanimate as they were, they assumed an air of hostility and defied her. A valuable little jar slipped from her fingers and broke. She had bought it in Florence. A photograph frame refused to stand upright ; she propped it against another. It slipped. She readjusted its balance ; it fell, breaking its glass. By then she was on the verge of unusual tears. What was wrong with her ? The room that had so pleased her oppressed her. In the sombre light the garlands and ribands had lost their brightness. It was without warning that in one of the cupids, made pale by the greyness, Lady Alton saw that which sent her hand to her heart. The sound of her bell was the first intimation to the household, of disturbance. William answered bells leisurely perhaps his master's excepted and had not reached the room before the wires rattled again. Lady Alton desired Bonner's presence at once. At once, did William hear ? Bonner was summoned but not before the lady had rung again. Lord bless them and save them ! William's lip delivering the message had a curl in it. Did they hear that, and that, if you please ? Upon William's word ! 66 Ube Successor Bonner hastened, to be met with distraught looks and upbraidings. What did she mean by not coming immediately? 11 1 couldn't, m' lady," said Bonner, mildly remon- strant. " I couldn't come quicker than quickly. I'd me mouth full of pins." " One might die in this house," said her mistress, " while they get ready to come to you. For ten minutes I've been ringing, and now you stand arguing. What have you to say? I'm waiting. I'm waiting, can't you see ? " She was trembling. " It's the rain, I think," she said. " It's the day, anyway. Can't you say something? You stand there like a stick or a stock, and ought to be able to tell I'm not well.'' Bonner, upon that, was all suggestions hot tea; sal volatile; smelling-salts. Lady Alton would have none of them. She sat down upon a chair that was near her, and looked towards the window, upon which the rain pelted. " Who could be well ? Listen ! There's wind howling in the chimneys, too." She looked over her shoulder. " Come here, Bonner." Bonner approached her, wondering. " You don't see anything, do you ? " " See anything ? " " It's it's only the paper, isn't it ... only one of the cupids ? Oh ! Oh ! I saw it again." It was two scared women then who looked at each other. "What's the matter, m' lady?" Bonner asked nervously. "What's the matter?" Lady Alton was trembling. " Look at it," she said. " What do you see ? " " The wall-paper ? Nothing else." On the wall-paper ? " ZTbe Successor 67 " Bows of ribbon," said Bonner, H and roses and the cupid." " You're sure just a cupid, like the other cupids ? I thought . . ." Bonner waited, expectant. Lady Alton gave a little shudder. " I thought it was I thought it looked like . . ." " Yes," said Bonner ; " yes ? " " Like like oh, nothing ! It was foolish. Of course, it's just one of the cupids. I see it is. I'm better now. It was just the tree downstairs and the day, and I was upset. I'm all right again now. You can see I'm all right. You may leave me." So it came that Balderton, who heard as much as Bonner could tell her, was disappointed of one bit of knowledge. What Lady Alton supposed she had seen was confided to Lord Alton alone. The fire had burned up by then, and pinkness had returned to the wall-paper. Lord Alton, who, informed by Balderton's advice of what had occurred, had hurried to his wife's side (showing more concern, Bonner thought, than the occasion seemed to warrant), shut the door upon the confidence. "Dead?" he said "that? Look at the rolls of fat on him and the pink in the creases a boy, too . . . not that that matters! Nothing could be better food for your eyes. Continue to see such babes. Continue . . . and prosper." His face had cleared. There was no need for alarm. Lady Alton wept a little and felt better ; dried her eyes tremulously ; looked pretty and bethought her of Bonner's suggestion. " Hot " tea would perhaps do her good. Had she been very ridiculous ? She poured eau de Cologne upon one of her new handkerchiefs they were pretty, were they not? Did he remember 68 TTbe successor how he had helped her to buy them in Brussels ? and would lie down for an hour. Not a word of the tree. It had served its purpose in the impossible mood in which one thing for a plaint would have answered as well as another, and was forgotten. Else who knows but that then and there it had been (as indeed it became later on) the head of a St John the Baptist, for such a daughter of Herodias ? Lord Alton assuredly was Herod in the giving mood just then. He patted her hand, and saying her maid should be sent to her, went his way beaming. Sunset, when the rain ceased, found him still in the same frame of mind. Balderton, passing him in the hall, saw and noted. Lady Alton then was sleeping comfortably, and had given directions that she was not to be disturbed. Lord Alton stretched himself and looked at the clock. There was an hour or so before dinner, and the wind had fallen. He opened the hall door and went out on to the steps. The trees were dripping, but a bird or two sang, and an air that had freshness and the smell of earth in it greeted his nostrils. He loitered desultorily for a moment or two, and then, seeming to make up his mind, returned for his hat and coat, and presently was seen to leave the house and walk briskly down the drive. He crossed the bridge over the stream that fed the lake, pausing for a few seconds to note the rise of the water, and then instead of following the road across the park, took a narrow lane that branched off from it near the first or the last gate. The rain had washed the autumn day with no gentle hand, and here and there the herbage was battered and bruised. In more sheltered spots where the damage was less the leaves Successor 6 9 were beginning to lift themselves, and a tiny rustle might have been heard as, gradually relieved of the burden of heavy moisture, the verdure everywhere sought to find once more its normal poise and level. Stones in the road looked as if the storm had brought them to the surface, and the road itself seemed to have become sandy. Overhead the clouds were still big with rain, and straggled, and were grey, but presently as the road mounted and a wider view might be seen, something approaching to colour was to be found in the sombre evening. Lord Alton followed the lane till it came to an open place, where stood a tumble-down cottage. The spot by some overlooking was no man's land, and defied law and order. Mud walls bulged to bursting, and thatch, mended and unmended, had come to look less the work of man than part and parcel of Nature itself, so that, from above at least, and but for the chimney, the roof might have been supposed an uneven mound. What had once been a garden was a tangle of overgrown weeds. The whole was an eyesore or a thing of beauty according as the seer saw. What charm it had was clearly fortuitous. Thriftlessness was written large everywhere, unarrested decay. A scurry as of rabbits in a warren greeted Lord Alton's approach. He had been seen and recognised, and but a shaking of the brambles showed where a poacher's children had hidden themselves. " Out of it, young rascals ! " cried Lord Alton, poking in the bushes with his stick, and releasing showers of drops from them at every ruffle. " Out of it ! I see y'. Don't think to deceive me. What have we here, eh ? What have we here ? " He caught at a brown ankle and tugged. " There, I'm not going to eat y', and what are y' 7 ZTbe Successor squeaking for ? It wasn't you, eh ? Then who was it, and what went last into the pot? One of my pheasants ... a hare was it? Oh, there's a fine boy I , Bashful are y', my little man ? The back of your hand to your eyes? You're quite right. There's a terrible glare these wet evenings. What, you can't speak? You, then I You're Tommy perhaps, or is it Billy ? One of you's Billy, I'll swear. You, sir ? I was sure of it. Well, Billy, what did you hide for? And this is Matty is it, and this Bessy, and this Kate ? Not Kate ? Oh, Jimmy a boy are y'? Well, Matty, you seem spokeswoman, what's your father doing these days ! Not at home, eh ? I might have guessed." The children stood about him doubtfully, shuffling, in various attitudes of interested shyness. A bare foot or two looked ready to run. " How many did you say there were of you ? " That was only Lord Alton's facetious way of putting his question. " Eleven. Bless m' soul. Eleven ! " He counted to eight. John was with father, and Abel was somewheres round, and little Phcebe perhaps in the cradle. " And all of an age ! " said Lord Alton. But there he was wrong. The eldest was fourteen. Only two were of the same age the twins, of course. The rest . . . A head appeared round the side of the cottage and was withdrawn, but not before Lord Alton had seen. " Mrs. Henster ! " he called. There was no answer. The children all turned in the direction of his gaze. " Mrs. Henster ! You're there, I know. Come out here to me." The head re-appeared at the edge of the wall. ZTbe Successor 71 " Look at this," said Lord Alton, " and this, and this." He pointed to the rotting thatch, the bulging walls, the fallen fence. " Pretty sights, to have under my eyes, as I may say almost within sight of my windows ! " The woman laughed, secure in the knowledge that her position was impregnable. " Well, well/' said Lord Alton, " the house '11 be about your ears one of these days, and don't say you weren't warned. If I'd had the power to turn you out of such ungracious quarters, be sure I'd have done it long ago. What's your husband about ? " " Down to Tredbury," said the woman, " after a job." "H'm!" said Lord Alton. "If he comes across nothing more tempting to him than a job . . . ! When did he last do an honest day's work? And eleven mouths to feed, eh ? to say nothing of his and your own. Eleven ! Eleven ! Is this the eleventh ? " He pointed to the child in her arms. " A year, I suppose ? " " Thirteen months." " Eleven of them, and I take it you're not five-and- thirty ! Would they like sixpence apiece ? " He felt in his pocket and brought out some silver. "You make it a dozen, I suppose?" She laughed again, but differently, dropping her eyes and a curtsey. " By Lady Day, your lordship." " Disgraceful," he said, and put six shillings into her brown gipsy's palm. CHAPTER VIII To Mrs. Alton, meanwhile Susan of the sharp tongue and the possible indiscretion had come and came rumours. Attendant upon fortune and assailed by vague uneasiness, tempered by the amusement she got out of everything, she had marked time in Curzon Street through the long summer days. Was it con- ceivable that she had acted unwisely ? Her brother-in- law's silence seemed to say so, and presently the first rumour which soon was more than a rumour to endorse what his silence might say. Something had happened at Merringham. Lord Alton was ill. That perhaps accounted. Her letter had chanced on his illness ? She was solacing herself with this conjecture, when of a sudden she found some story of tantrums and a torn picture to be about. She held her breath then. The tale of the torn picture once in the air blew this way and that. Mrs. Alton heard it everywhere, and where she did not hear it imagined that she did, much as Lord Alton himself might have imagined, suspecting raisings of eyebrows and shoulders. She laughed, but took care to speak of her " eccentric " connection ; Alton was really "not normal," "excitable," " odd "kindness itself, of course," but " not like other people " ; and then his health was not good. Her heart, none the less, for all its buoyancy, was inclined to sink. You did not destroy valuable paintings for nothing. A letter from one of the ugly Miss Wraysburys of Rookhampton, near Merringham, (they of the long 72 TTbe Successor 73 noses and ink for blood) gave truth to the story : <( Nobody knows quite what happened, and we, of course, go there so little. Mamma thinks some sort of brain attack, for there seems no doubt that he danced on the dining-room table with knives and forks in his hands and did terrible damage before he providentially fell to the floqr in a fit, the noise of which summoned the household. We can't think why it was that parti- cular picture he selected. Mamma says there are worse pictures at Merringham. You may fancy how excited everyone has been. He seems to be better, and they talk of going abroad. Mamma says after a brain attack it is much better to keep quiet, but probably Dr. Amberley, who, between you and I and the penny post, mamma doesn't think a very clever doctor, though well- meaning, was afraid of him, and agreed with whatever he said. We always have Mr. Davenport ourselves, who likes to be called Mister, and won't meet Dr. Amberley. But some people place great faith in him so you can't tell, can you ? You must come and stay with us when- ever you like, dear Mrs. Alton, only not just now, as mamma has had bronchitis again, and does not feel equal to visitors though, of course, we should hardly look upon you as a visitor. The summer is the best time. Perhaps next summer, if you could give us a few days. "P. S. We hear it is going up to London to be repaired." So much and so little ! Only an innate and uncon- querable distaste for back doors withheld Mrs. Alton then from writing to Balderton for her version of what had happened, and hoping, in a sort of good-humoured 74 Ube Successor exasperation, to see her clear and crabbed hand upon an envelope, she watched the posts. There was little else, as she told herself, to watch in London in August. Edmund was spending his holidays with a school-fellow, and she, excusing herself from the expensive hospitality of rich friends, was unoccupied. For money, a thing spoken of in those days as little as might be, was tighter even than usual that year in the small house in Curzon Street, and expenses showing a tendency to increase rather than lessen with time and the times, Mrs. Alton saw herself chained for the summer to a city of closed shutters and newspapered windows. She saw London empty itself without over- much repining; but when the house the smallest perhaps in the street was hot, as in that hot August bigger houses were hot, Mrs. Alton, thinking of her friends at Homburg and Wiesbaden, Trouville, Deau- ville, in Switzerland or Scotland, or where else you please, drew many an impatient, if on the whole a philosophic, blind. Oh, ways and means, convention, the botherations generally ! She, for her part, could have scraped along happily enough anywhere, and goodness knew the house in Curzon Street presented a sufficiently dingy front to the world ! But there was Edmund. Curzon Street was Curzon Street when America, South Africa, and Judaea were undiscovered countries, and Mayfair belonged to those for whom Mayfair was built. It was due to Edmund as his uncle's probable heir that his mother should not drop out. The social area, we must remember, had recently been more restricted then. There had been Mayfair, and there had been Belgravia not much else. You might be poor, but unless your poverty was of a kind to send you out of London altogether (who had lived in London) you made sacrifices the putting down of a TTbe Successor 75 carriage, a man, or a maid and lived on in those quarters of the town to which, in the nature of things, you belonged. This, at least, as to the possible and impossible, was the attitude of Mrs. Alton as Edmund's mother. She had put down considerably more, indeed, than her carriage and her maid at the death of her husband, and it would have surprised not a little a good many people whose footmen rattled the knocker on her dingy door in the manner of that day, and who, in the silks and satins of the time, rustled up her narrow stairs, to have seen the slender figures of the income upon which the small house and decent appearances were kept up. Edmund in the nursery did not know ; Edmund at his first school did not know ; Edmund nearing his last term at Winchester may have guessed. His early recollections were there, at all events, to have enlightened him. The plainest fare had marked his childhood ; cakes were not plentiful, jams even the puddings he liked. Other children seemed to have . . . and habitually ! . . . and were sweet things really unwholesome ? On the whole, it was a cold mutton regime, with rice pudding, but plenty of milk. What- ever it was, he had thriven on it. So might Mrs. Alton of the caustic tongue be said to have fought a good fight. Balderton did not write ; Lord Alton did not write. But Mrs. Alton, rest assured, did not want for correspondents. Lord Alton's seizure, taken in connection with his subsequent silence, seemed to point a significant finger at her. The picture was going to be repaired, was it? In King Street maybe, where a picture dealer whom Lord Alton employed from time to time was to be found. 76 Ube Successor She walked down to King Street. No ; nothing was known of it there. Mr. Raphael of Old Bond Street might know. Should they send up? By no means, Mrs. Alton said ; she would walk up there herself. Mr. Raphael, who had done considerable business with Merringham, did not know either, but directed her to St. James's Street, where she not only found but ran the picture to earth. It was fetched, like the laces for Lord Alton, from the back of the shop and unrolled. Unrolled? Shaken out. Disentangled. She saw Edmund's father in shreds. She said " H'm ! " as she saw. There seemed nothing else to say, but St. James's Street said gravely that accidents would happen. To which she said absently " H'm ! " St. James's Street did not repeat or even enlarge. An allusion to well- regulated families was not perhaps to be hazarded. " Can it be repaired ? " she asked at length. So effectually, St. James's Street assured her, that it would scarcely be possible to say where the thing had been injured. " Then you can work wonders," Mrs. Alton said shortly. Was it a venting of spleen that she read in every slash ? She tried to imagine the scene, but Lord Alton would not dance for her, knives and forks in his hands, quite as Miss Wraysbury had described. Things happened, it seemed, that you could not imagine. St. James's Street, pointing out a canvas or two to her, brought her up from Merringham to London. " As bad ? " " Worse." " Quite impossible/' TTbe Successor 77 " Well, nearly as bad. You should have seen. You will be surprised, I venture to think." "All the same," said Mrs. Alton, "I could wish the picture had been any other." She went back to Curzon Street more disturbed always in a grim, half-amused sort of way than she cared to acknowledge even to herself. Had she, by a precipitancy that was assuredly not to have been expected of her, done for poor Edmund ? Her impressions during the rest of the afternoon when she sat in her drawing-room looking out into the deserted street were of irrelevant things assuming impertinent proportions in the economy of the day's events ; of workmen taking down a hatchment from one of the larger houses, and making merry over a short labour made long ; of the rumble of a cart, or the whistle of an errand boy, or the bark of somebody's dog released for his daily walk with somebody's butler ; of a milk- woman with a yoke upon her shoulders, and sturdy white legs, who to the tune of the stump of strong boots on the pavement and the clank of milk-pails, was coast- ing the areas squarely ; of old Lady Boscombe's house- maids opposite, leaning out of the windows to shake their fringes at all who might see, and looking look back at them. Yet, " humanly speaking "... Oh, humanly speaking, Edmund's ultimate inheritance could not be in doubt humanly speaking. Humanly speaking, of course. How else should one speak ? Her thoughts, however, on this horrible afternoon did you ever see such fringes, or such a bobbing of fringes? Lady Boscombe (at Spa) really ought to be told I her thoughts, I say, as if Lord Alton himself had directed them by suggestion, did actually take in Abraham and 78 <Xbe Successor miracles, and the laughter of Sarah. But that, perhaps,, was by reason of Mr. Raphael, of Bond Street, who naturally sent the thoughts to the Old Testament by way of Jewry. No, no ! Humanly speaking . . . The fringes bobbed and bobbed. Now the workmen who dallied with dead Lord Tantamont's hatchment were implicated. There was an interchange of pleasan- tries that sent Mrs. Alton from the front to the back drawing-room. No, no ! It was the day. This was one of the days when everything struck you (in deserted London, at least) as having turned out " so differently " from the turning out of your younger expectation that, nothing else ! She had looked to a life of un-anxious well-being by the side of the husband whose picture she had just seen in ribbons, and whom in the flesh two short years of marriage had taken from her. It was the year of her widowhood which had seen the death of her father, and revealed the disorder of the affairs of that debonair gentleman. There was little enough for her mother, who had promptly died too. What there was was her brother's bad hat of bad hat ; lovable, light, irrespon- sible son of lovable, light, irresponsible father. You did not get help from a brother of the kind. Rather, when you could not help yourself, you helped him. A month went by, and another. Edmund was back at Winchester, his future as unsettled as ever. The Alton de Merringhams were abroad. She heard of them here and there, but from them not at all. There was always the possibility that her letter had miscarried . . . but in her heart of hearts she did not believe it to have miscarried. There was nothing to be done. The autumn passed, Successor 79 and the winter. With the return of people to London, the marking of time was less a thing to be conscious of than in the hot empty days, when the beat, beat, of the process had been as the throbbing of pulses that a patient himself must hear in fever. To see and to hear yourself waiting . . . think of it ! ... and you, if you please, of all people . . . horrible ! ignoble ! Yet so did Fate use you. She met friends who had come across her relations in their travels. Did they speak of coming home ? No. On the contrary, they seemed full of plans. " Goodness knows," Mrs. Alton said to herself, " why that should disturb me " admitting, you see, that she was somehow vaguely disturbed. Did she regret her letter? She was not of the sort that regrets. But who could have foreseen ? She could not remember that she had chosen her words or her phrases unwisely. The Altons, as we know, completed their wanderjahr. Now, a point being reached, to write again or not to write ? She seated herself one day at her desk, and idling with her pen for a time did write her eyebrows high, and her mouth drawn up a little to one side in a smile. In the end, however, what she wrote did not go to the post, but in fragments into the waste-paper basket. Edward Alton, if he had not understood, would not understand. She paid some visits that summer and autumn, and heard further news and rumours. Lord Alton looked ten years younger for his trip. Why should he look ten years younger ? though, if you came to that, why should he not ? Lady Alton, more golden than ever, more elegant, more rustling, was never out of his sight, and the picture was back in its place in the dining-room. Was there aught to perturb you here ? On the face of 8o Ube Successor things, no. And yet in the dark . . . although in the dark " how easy is a bush supposed a bear " ! The good lady rallied herself on nice issues. But it was the rumour that Lord Alton was putting his affairs into order, rebuilding his farms, looking to his roofs and fences, and paying off mortgages, that presently moved her (however indirectly) to action. Searching for a reason for her uneasiness, she could show herself no better grounds for it than that such a course upon the part of her brother-in-law seemed to ask an explana- tion which was not forthcoming. You did these things at crises in your life, did you not? Landlords there were, to be sure, whose hobby was the improvement of their properties, but Edward Alton, so far as she had ever known him if at all she had known him ! was not of these. Merringham had never been other than well kept up ; but further than to see that the park and the house and its immediate surroundings were as they should be, Lord Alton, impatient of calls upon his time or attention, had not troubled himself. This unwonted bestirring of sleeping energies . . . whnt did it mean ? A year and some months had passed now since the despatch of the letter which had not been answered. How the time had gone Mrs. Alton could hardly have told. In thinkings and in deliberate puttings away of thought, it had passed a not altogether comfortable experience in a life which, on the whole, had seemed to justify its own injudicious humour. It was true that she had smiled as who would not have smiled ? at Lord Alton's three marriages. It was true that she had indulged her sense of the ridiculous in this little com- ment, and that. But "what of it?" . . . what in Heaven's name of it ? Surely, surely at this hour of the day she was not going to develop the sort of conscience, timid, self-accusing, which we call " guilty," and which Ube Successor 81 sees a stalking fate in every change and chance? Almost it seemed so ! Then this must not be. Unchecked, it would make of her what she was not, and despised. She would sit still no longer. To Merringham ! To Merringham, via Ruokhampton. F CHAPTER IX ' LORD ALTON DE MERRINGHAM had just come in from looking at some building operations which were in progress at one of his farms (and which stood probably for the " rebuilding of farms " of the " rumour " of the last chapter) when a note was brought to him. The bearer, one of Lady Wra^sbury's grooms, was waiting, Dunwich said with his deferential bow, for an answer. Lord Alton took the note, and was proceeding to open it when the handwriting upon the envelope seemed to catch his eye. He* paused ; looked at it ; looked again, and opened. He turned to the end for the signature before reading ; grunted ; read. Dunwich, from under the bend of his bow (he never quite assumed the perpendicular in the presence of his master) watched his face. Lord Alton read the note twice. " Tell the messenger to wait," he said then. " Very good, your lordship." The note was folded and unfolded by undecided fingers. Was her ladyship in her room, did Dunwich know ? Dunwich did not, but would " ascertain." "No matter," said Lord Alton. "I'll find her. There will be an answer ; I'll ring." Dunwich bowed over his " Very good, m' lord," and withdrew. He came back to say that her ladyship was in the library. 82 Ube Successor 8 3 There Lord Alton found her. She looked up from a book. Her expression as she saw her husband's expression said "Well?" "This," said Lord Alton, and held out the note to her. " Is that a hand that you know ? " " Rookhampton ? " She looked at the address on the paper. " Susan," said Lord Alton shortly. " Susan Alton is staying there and writes, as you'll see, to know what day she may come to see us." Lady Alton read half aloud : " Down here for a few days. . . . Should like to go over and see you and Lady Alton. I write because I should not like to miss you, and though Lady Wraysbury very kindly offers me the use of her carriage," and so on. Lady Alton read to the end. " I should like to know," she said, " why this was not written to me." Her husband waived the point of the etiquette of the thing aside as of small moment " I had somehow fancied myself in Susan's debt where letters were concerned," he said, smiling. " But I see she is the generous correspondent who has learned that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Well, well ! What's to be said to her? This time she takes the precaution of sending a messenger who waits for an answer." " He needn't necessarily take one back with him," said Lady Alton. " Could be told there was none ? " " That's what I mean." Lord Alton pondered. "No," he said at length his wife in the meantime having delivered herself of many sentiments adverse to 84 Ube Successor the lady and her offspring " on consideration we will see Susan Alton." " See her ? Do you remember her letter ? " "Think! "he said. Lady Alton's " Well, but ... " was cut short with another " Think ! " There was some further talk, but the upshot of it was that Lady Alton came round to her husband's view, and the messenger went back to Rookhampton with a note asking Mrs. Alton in cordial terms enough to lunch at Merringham the following day. The note was written by Lord Alton at one of the writing-tables in the library, read over, approved, and despatched to an interchange of smiles. Now Mrs. Alton at Rookhampton receiving it smiled also. Wherein as in the case of him of the fable who blows on his fingers to warm them, and upon his pottage to cool it lies I know not what of paradox, of apparent connection of statements, of anomaly generally. Mrs. Alton, whose wits were never at fault, would have been the first to perceive . . . had she known . . . but sitting with the ugly Miss Wraysburys in the hideous Rook- hampton drawing-room, how could she guess that what she read with the smile of satisfaction had been written and sent with smiles equally satisfied ? She looked up from her note and the stocking she was knitting for Edmund. " To-morrow," she said, her face under the Miss Wraysburys' inquisitive scrutiny assuming its normal unfluttered serenity, " luncheon. I hope it won't be inconvenient to your mother to lend me the carriage." Two long noses hastened to assure her that the carriage was at her disposal. " I wonder," said the elder and longer, " whether you'll see the picture ? " Successor 8 5 "Of course she will." The Miss Wraysburys took one another up. " How silly of you ! It is back in the dining-room, and they're sure to have luncheon there, though Lady Alton is said to hate the room, I don't know why. Do you know why, Mrs. Alton ? " " I know so little about this Lady Alton," Mrs. Alton said. Indeed, for so long had Merringham been virtually closed to her that Mrs. Alton had met her sister-in-law but two or three times all told. The Miss Wraysburys would gladly have discussed their neighbour, and the situation generally, but Mrs. Alton for some reason or other was not to be drawn. They contented themselves with " You must tell us all about it when you come back." " About what, my good women ? " was on Mrs. Alton's tongue, but was not spoken. The morrow saw her get into the Wraysbury brougham at the stroke of the half-hour after twelve, and start for the hour's drive. She was of the unstufTy order of women, and that, perhaps, was why she let down both windows with haste and both hands ? Her hostesses were on her nerves who had never acknowledged to nerves ! But not her hostesses alone. She was eager and restless to the point of discomfort. What ailed her that she should have been ready to start twenty minutes before the time? She had chafed in her bedroom for the sound of the carriage on the gravel to tell her that she might begin to move, and it had been an effort to her not to hurry down to the hall. For very discipline she had forced herself to put her head in at the morning-room door and say a word or two before setting out. The clock, even thus, hardly struck as she put her foot on the step of the brougham. It was humiliating to be so at the mercy of forces 86 ZTbe Successor that hitherto she had controlled so successfully ; humiliating to feel humiliated at a time when she had need of all her self-possession. Why should this visit to Merringham exercise her ? Never in her life had she known what it was to dread an interview, or to be unsure of herself. The motion of the carriage, and the breeze, fresh and clean, and with a stimulating foretaste of winter in it, served presently to brace her spirits. She took heed of *vhe country through which she was passing. It had once been familiar enough to her. She remembered a dozen little incidents connected indirectly with it, and directly with what she was beginning to regard as the old days. Little was changed. Here was Allom Wood, where in the summer it used to be the fashion to picnic. There was one of the bridle-paths she used to know. It led past the " petri- fying " spring, under which nothing in the memory of living man had ever been petrified. Now it was the gates of Fiel Park she was passing, where had lived that Mrs. Phillips who, ostensibly to distinguish herself from another and less important Mrs. Phillips of the neighbourhood, used to have herself announced as Mrs. Phillips of Fiel, and who (rather cheaply and obviously, it must be admitted) had come to be known in the mouths of the unimpressed and facetious as Mrs. Fillet of Veal. Here, after a time, was the village of Tredbury, then more woods breaking suddenly on to a common. It did not seem long after this that the woman at the south lodge was opening the gates and curtseying. There was a mile of park yet. Mrs. Alton was mistress of herself by the time she reached the house. The Wraysburys had not spared her a footman, and she had to ring for herself. The heavy outer door was open, and through the TTbe Successor s 7 glass of the inner one Mrs. Alton could see into a big polished hall. It was as she had always known it too substantial n its scheme for succeeding Lady Altons to leave any appreciable mark on it. The Vandyke and the Rembrandt and the two Gainsboroughs she could see dimly, and the doubtful Botticelli. The last she herself would have hung elsewhere, having little belief in its genuineness, and remembered an argument or two of many that had taken place before it. Alton was conservative on the whole, and given to leave things as he found them. A door opened and released a yapping lap-dog Lady Alton's she was sure, just such a little expensive plague as a would-be-great of the sort would deem one of her necessary appointments and following close upon it the servants to admit her. As they advanced she recognised Dunwich, marvelling a little to see a face that she knew. The footmen, though one of them William had been at Merringham quite a presentable time, were new to her. "Well, Dunwich," she said, "it's me, you see. I'm glad to see you here still. You're well ? I needn't ask you." Dunwich declared himself well ; thanked Mrs. Alton ; hoped she was the same. The Same, Mrs. Alton assured him. "And all here?" His lordship and her ladyship were in excellent health his lordship especially. Dunwich did not know that he had ever known his lordship to be better. " That's right," said Mrs. Alton. " We haven't," said Dunwich then, relieving her of her cloak, " had the pleasure of seeing you at Merringham for a long time some few years I think, 'm." "No, have you?" said Mrs. Alton, with the smile which, 88 ZTbe Successor taken in connection with her address generally, gave Dunwich occasion presently to speak in the servants' hall of her affability, and to contrast it with the loftiness and languors of his mistress's manners and manner. You could tell, he said, to a nicety where differences of birth would show themselves. The little dog was leaping round her. He was the merest puppy, she saw, and so far from being objection- able, now that he had ceased his shrill bark, showed qualities most engaging. He was none the less of the finicking kind which in theory Mrs. Alton despised. She picked him up and spoke to him. " Lady Alton's ? " she said, as she put him down. " A new toy, so to speak, 'm," said Dunwich. " He arrived last week, 'm from Germany, I think it was, where his lordship had taken a fancy to the breed. Her ladyship does not altogether care for pets." He led the way to the drawing-room. She was to be treated to the ceremony of the room of state ? Life at Merringham used to be lived in the hall or the library, or the study or the gun-room. The Mason of Liverpool might of course have made changes. On the whole, Mrs. Alton inclined to the view that changes had not been made, and that it was intended that a certain formality should attach to her visit The great room was empty. It had the cold air that has nothing to do with temperature of a room little used. A fire burned brightly in the grate, but despite its pleasant rays it did little to give cordiality to the room's welcome. This was Merringham, but not Merringham intime. There was an appreciable pause, during which Mrs. Alton had time to look about her, and then a jingling and a rustling which heralded, she supposed, the approach of her hostess. Successor 89 The Mason, she was sure, would so jingle and so rustle in season and out of season, to the distraction of anyone less incomprehensible than Edward, who had married her. It was Lady Alton, sure enough, who, scented and golden, appeared a moment later. She carried the little dog, having stopped at the door, Mrs. Alton believed, to pick him up. Her hands thus seemed very much occupied, and as that, moreover, which she borrowed from her leaping charge to extend to her visitor held her handkerchief and a tiny scent-bottle, Mrs. Alton had an impression of receiving no more than two fingers. " It's so good of you," Lady Alton said, " to take all this trouble to come and see us." " I couldn't," answered Mrs. Alton, " be in the neighbourhood and do less." " It's such a long drive," Lady Alton said ; " and to take it in the morning ! I hardly ever go out before the afternoon, and never can bring myself to accept invitations to luncheon." Mrs. Alton smiled. " I don't bind myself by any such stringent rule," she said. " Oh, /don't bind myself," said Lady Alton, "... my precious, keep still ! . . . that is partly why. No, you must let me say it. It was good of you to come. Lord Alton, I'm sure you'll find, appreciates your coming as I do. Have they a large party at Rookhampton ? " " No party at all," said Mrs. Alton blandly. " No party ? " Lady Alton's eyebrows ran up her forehead. "Just you four Lady Wraysbury and those two poor middle-aged things with the black skins?" 90 OTe successor " I'm afraid you don't like the Wraysburys," said Mrs. Alton. She was as yet more amused and " intrigued " by Lady Alton's grand airs than irritated. " I ? " said that lady. " Oh, I don't dislike them. I'm only sorry for them. Who wouldn't be ? so painfully plain as they are. Dislike ? I didn't mean to convey that. They do so much good, I'm told. Visits, you know, and that sort of thing. I've quite a respect for them. I only meant how kind it was of you to take pity on them, and come to stay." Mrs. Alton's shrewd face crinkled a little. " I confess I hadn't looked upon my visit in that light," she said. There was a brief silence, during which Lady Alton played her dog and her scent-bottle, and may or may not be supposed to have been thinking of something to say. The pause did not appear to embarrass her. So much Mrs. Alton, considering her dispassionately and with some amusement, did her the justice to admit. In many ways the woman whom Alton had married was wonderful. For her own part, Mrs. Alton minded silences not at all, and looking at her hostess and Fido and the scent-bottle, felt this one was well filled. Fido worried his mistress's handkerchief; was smiled over, caressed. Fido tried to lick his mistress's face ; was cuffed and set down. " You were saying . . . ? " said Lady Alton. Mrs. Alton wondered whether her expression had betrayed her entertainment. " I ? " she said. " No ; I was watching your little dog." " A great pet of mine." " Come here, Fido." Mrs. Alton put out her hand. Fido went to her, and was picked up. He kissed her, TTbe Successor 91 and was not cuffed. A thing to have taught him one of two differences a difference between hearts, was it, or a difference between faces ? " Don't let him tease you," said his mistress. Mrs. Alton laughed over him, and rubbed his kiss off with her handkerchief; which was perhaps exactly what her hostess dared not do. "As a rule," Lady Alton said, "I don't care for animals, but Fido's different." Mrs. Alton was maybe a little bit disloyal to Fido when, looking at his infinitesimal proportions, and his expensive muff-dog air, she agreed that Fido was different. " His father won twenty-two prizes," Lady Alton said, " and his mother belonged to the Grand Duke of Baden-Dordlich." " I can understand how proud you are of him." " It's Lord Alton more than me," said Fido's mistress. Her visitor looked astray. " Who is proud of him," said Lady Alton ; " under- stands his value, and all that. I may say he was very er very costly." Mrs. Alton conceded that he looked expensive. She flicked him gently with her muff. " Worth nearly your weight in gold, aren't you, Fido ? " said Fido's mistress. " And you live on the fat of the land, don't you, darling ? . . . fare what is it ? every day." " Sumptuously ? " Mrs. Alton suggested. " That's it," said Lady Alton. " ' Fare sumptiously every day.' " Mrs. Alton stroked her muff. She felt compensated for a good deal. There was another pause. Lady Alton gave it countenance ; her visitor also Lady Alton for 92 Ube Successor sheer airs, Mrs. Alton for the feeling, perhaps, that such delicious morsels as " sumptious " (" sumpshus," bien entendu /) were wasted on an audience of one. She Mrs. Alton should assuredly have been there to hear, but Alton should not have been absent ! Well, well ! She remembered herself presently. She had not come to Merringham to fight. Rather was her coming conciliatory. She broke the silence pleasantly with some question about the time abroad. Lady Alton responded readily enough ; so they talked for some minutes. Lady Alton, her visitor might have observed, dwelt more upon certain times and places than upon others. But it was a conversation sufficiently cordial and sustained, that was interrupted by the sound of a gong. " I'm afraid luncheon is a little late," Lady Alton said. " Mr. Linster the agent, you know has been here all the morning. Lord Alton will probably keep him to lunch. You won't, I hope, mind ? " " Why should I mind ? " " Oh, well . . ." Lady Alton made a show of being confidential, " he's the the agent, you know, very nice and all that, and first-rate, I understand, at his work. Lord Alton has the highest opinion of him but just the agent, you know." " I see," said Mrs. Alton. A moment or two later Lord Alton made his appearance with the gentleman in question. Mrs. Alton rose to meet her brother-in-law, reserving her " Well, Alton ! " till she heard his " Ah, Susan ! " and by his greeting might suppose relations to be friendly. " The years pass you by," he said. Mrs. Alton smiled. " I may say the same of you," she said. In truth, he had never looked better. Successor 93 " Mr. Linster and I have kept you waiting, I'm afraid," he said, when he had made the introduction. "We have had a busy morning of it, eh, Linster ? Blanche has probably told you. No ? I have been an idle man, and am becoming an industrious. One wakes to one's responsibilities when there is anything to wake one. Is lunch ready, my dear ? " Luncheon was announced as he spoke. "You must be hungry," Lady Alton said to her visitor. " Your long drive . . ." " You make too much of it," said Mrs. Alton. The party adjourned to the dining-room. Lord Alton talked genially, and had more sure a step than that she remembered. Rumour had kept within the mark in reporting the change in him. " All much as you remember it," he said as they entered the room. " I don't think anything has been touched in the house since you were here. We're making an improvement or two out of doors, eh, Linster? Where will you sit, Susan? Your back to the fire? The other side? You always liked to face fire, I remember. A good rule to make through life." "If one lived by rule." "Just so," said Lord Alton. It was impossible to determine his attitude. To all appearance it was friendly, cordial even . . . the word forced itself . . . and yet this was not Merringham intime. Edward Alton talked to her, yet held her, she fancied, at a distance. The presence of Mr. Linster was a bar to any but the most general topics, and was, she began to suspect, a thing that was planned. If, on the other hand, Lady Alton engaged her for a moment or two in conversation, Lord Alton resumed the discussion with his agent which the gong 94 ^be Successor (presumably) had interrupted. Twice he apologised to his guest for his preoccupation with his affairs. " We don't make a stranger of you," he said. What it was exactly that they were making of her she was at a loss to know. Incidentally she found that she was learning that a great deal was being done on the estate. The report of the " rebuilding of farms " might be an exaggeration of actual facts, but it was evident that considerable undertakings were in progress. Lord Alton was planting or about to plant extensively. Could one, after all, she heard him say, overplant ? The tenants, Mr. Linster submitted with a smile, might have a word or two to say upon that point. " Have I a farm unlet ? " said Lord Alton. Agricultural depression had spared Merringham hitherto. It was Lord Alton's boast, moreover, that Merringham was one of the few remaining places in England where something of the feudal spirit survived. Outside the house itself, in which, partly by reason of the present owner's uncertainties, more modern con- ditions prevailed, persons continued to be born or to die on land held by their ancestors in times remote enough at least to cite in argument. Merringham was a fine heritage, and would be, Mrs. Alton gathered, a finer. All of which is or is not by the way. Fido was given a bit of the breast of a chicken. " I'm afraid you think I spoil him," Lady Alton said, and turned to William : " The bread sauce." It was for Fido. William's face was worth reading, or Mrs. Alton, catching a glimpse of it as he stooped over Fido's plate, thought so. Mrs. Alton shook her head amiably. She had herself well in hand. " No," she said, smiling ; " but we agreed, I think, that he ought to be called Dives." TTbe Successor 95 " Why Dives?" asked Mr. Linster. Mrs. Alton, her ears itching to hear a word repeated, was wondering whether it would be safe to refer him to his hostess, when he answered himself. " But to be sure," he said " and how dull of me ! for his sumptuous fare." " Precisely." It was better perhaps thus to be baulked more especially as Lady Alton, who was quick to hear (though whether or not she had recognised a pitfall her sister-in-law could not decide !) more especially, I say, as Lady Alton the next moment said sumptuous, in exploiting the case, as if never in her life had she been guilty of anything so flagrant as " sumpshus " ! "I mustn't," Mrs. Alton said to herself, "be 'presumpshus' ;" but was tempted nevertheless. Lady Alton, meanwhile, showed no consciousness of either false step or retracing. She occupied herself gracefully with Fido's needs. " There, my pretty," she said, as he licked the plate. " Was his dinner nice, then, and did he enjoy it ? Go to William, precious, to have your little mouth wiped with your own little napkin. You have it, William ? That's right." The office was performed grudgingly, one at the table believed, and as of necessity, but to Lady Alton's apparent satisfaction. " I was telling Mrs. Alton," she said, " how much we prize our Fido." "A funny little shrimp," said Lord Alton. "Did Blanche tell you how we bought him ? " Something was amusing the speaker. He met his wife's eyes across the table. " It was a toss up whether he would come into existence at all. We bought him before he was born 96 trbe Successor no, I won't add ' or thought of before he was born I take a certain interest in hazards do you ? " He caught the little animal up as he spoke. " It was just a chance, Fido, wasn't it, whether your let me see your cousin, was it? who did exist, and whom indeed we bought in the first instance, or you who were in the clouds or well, never mind where you were ! should come to us at Merringham ! " Mrs. Alton turned a perplexed face to him. " In plain English," said Lord Alton, "we had bought this little person's relation before we heard that there was just a chance of this little person's appearance. We took our chance and waited for this little person. We had a preference for a puppy, do you see ? something that should attach itself to us wholly ? " "I see," said Mrs. Alton. "That makes Fido very interesting." " Well, to us," said Lord Alton. Mrs. Alton just then was not attending very closely. Fido seemed to her of small import, while the question, " Did you or did you not get my letter ? " was a question unasked and unanswered. It was beginning to seem little probable to her that the subject would be broached at all. Of a certainty the talk was kept arbitrarily to such trifles as Fido ; and Mr. Linster in like certainty though he did not know it was present of her brother- in-law's deliberate intention. To ask or not to ask ? So her attention wandered. The picture was behind her. Stupid to have chosen that side of the table when the choice had been offered to her, and by sitting the other her eyes might have rested upon it all lunch time. She was curious, all other curiosity apart, to see what St. James's Street had been able to do for the tattered canvas. In spite of herself, and behind a grim amusement which the situation TObe Successor 97 afforded her (she being she), she felt herself to be baffled. " I shall ask him straight out,' 1 the exercised lady said to herself. " If Mr. Thing doesn't go I shall ask Alton to give me five minutes." Her mind at least was made up. The question of the receipt of the letter should be settled for ever that day. For the rest, she would be guided by circumstances and that discretion by which in turn (with a single possible exception !) she believed herself to have been guided through life. After all, what had she or Edmund at Winchester to fear ? She looked round the room. " There's something different about it," she said. " It looks to me brighter than it used." Lady Alton beamed upon her in a moment. " There ! " she said to her husband. "Well," said Lord Alton, "there's something, I admit, to be said for your view. Still, all the king's horses and all the king's men, you know and I liked, myself, to see out from under the branches, even if we were a bit darker here for them." " To be sure," said Mrs. Alton, " the big tree is gone. I was conscious of some change at once." " A present to my good lady." He smiled over the table again into his wife's eyes. " A present your good lady had to ask you for," said Lady Alton. " Ask ? Beg, crave, on my knees almost, if Mrs. Alton will believe me." Lord Alton's smile broadened. " So well," he said, " does your sex, you see, under- stand the power of importunity ! The parable of the unjust judge showed a fine knowledge of women." " It showed some slight knowledge of men, I think," said Mrs. Alton. Surprise was growing in her. Successor Never with his former wives had her brother-in-law indulged in like playfulness. She remembered to have heard of many a sombre meal in this room ; timidities on the part of those disappointed ladies, watchfulness, frank apprehensions ; and glumness on the part of their lord. Here was an Edward Alton tame, to come up quite close, as children say of an animal, to eat out of your hand, to twist round a little finger for one little finger at least ! Would the Andover have got her tree out of him? could one suppose for a moment the Redruth of Angerstown ? Not a bit of it ! It took a Mason of Liverpool or Heaven-knows-where to work that miracle. Mrs. Alton felt that whatever the outcome of her mission, she would take food for thought back with her to Rookhampton and Curzon Street CHAPTER X LUNCHEON proceeded an excellent luncheon, simple as luncheon should be, but admirable of its kind. The cooking at Merringham had always been of a high order. The cook who did not satisfy Lord Alton's somewhat exacting taste was never long under his roof, and if at periods changes had been of rather startling frequency, it was that the standard of excellence might be maintained. Mrs. Alton, d propos, thought once or twice of her own cook in Curzon Street. Nor (by the same token) was the smooth and silent service without its part in the influences of the moment. She would certainly speak. All that she could not do for Edmund, the picture of whose father hung behind her, was with her in epitome Edmund who at this length of time, and humanly speaking. ... It was ill-going to be under the dominion of a phrase. "It is quite true," Lady Alton was saying, "that I was what did you say? inopportunate ? It was the only way to get what I wanted." Her husband saved that situation. " No," he said, " I can't claim that, my dear. That's your own. f Inopportunate ' ! Excellent ! " He smiled at his sherry, holding it for a moment to the light. " Excellent, if it fitted the case. Does it ? To me it seemed that you timed the moment to a nicety. There is an opportunity even for importunity, a time to ask, and a time to refrain from asking, a time to persist to insist. You took me where and when I was weakest." 99 ioo Ube Successor Lady Alton saw perhaps that he was helping her out. "We'll let my little jest pass, then," she said. "I gained my point ; that was the main thing. The room was gloomy, and I can't stand gloominess. What's an old tree, as I said to my husband? Why, you could hardly see the pictures before." Mrs. Alton made the word Pictures her opportunity to look at the walls, and presently to turn round. " One certainly," she said, " sees them better." Lord Alton closed on the direction of her eyes. "I've had Edmund there restored," he said. "You heard probably ? " It was he who was asking her ! "It met with an accident. I heard something nothing definite." " It got damaged," he said, looking at it complacently. " It happened the day I was taken ill last year. You heard that too ? Oh, yes well, for a few hours I was quite ill, and for some days I kept to my room. Oh, some sort of attack ! I don't know. I was always excitable, as you may remember." " You had to be careful for weeks," said Lady Alton. " It's wonderful what going abroad did for him." " Wonderful," said Lord Alton. He seemed to be laughing whether in his sleeve or out of it Mrs. Alton could not tell. " I didn't hear it at the time," she said, " or I should have written. It was only by chance that I heard at all and from outside. You see you didn't let me know. I only heard you had gone abroad from the Wraysburys." " I've never been much of a correspondent, I'm afraid," said her brother-in-law, as one who admits a short- coming. " I ought, of course, to have written. I might be said to have owed you a letter." Successor 101 What did he mean by that, if you please ? But for the presence of Mr. Linster she would have put her question then. She let the moment pass, however, not choosing to open up a subject involving her son before a stranger. Her brother-in-law's allusions to the picture and his illness amazed her. What to make of him ? If this was not " friendliness " it was an hostility that, for very subtlety, was formidable. If under his new amiability he was bearing malice, it was not the ordinary malice that you may dismiss from your mind with a shrug of the shoulders. She found herself thus formulating her thought twice over. Yet when all was said, and let his spleen be what it might, what in effect could he do ? She knew the terms well upon which his successor must succeed. " You must look presently at the extraordinary way in which they have managed to repair poor Edmund," said Lord Alton. " At a yard or two's distance you could hardly say where the damage had been." He showed no disinclination to pursue the subject. Mrs. Alton was no less self-possessed. " How did it happen ? " she asked. " I did it," he answered quietly. If Mrs. Alton was at all taken aback by the calmness of his reply, her face did not betray her. " You ? How ? " Lady Alton now showed some signs of uneasiness. She jingled rather more than she had been jingling, and pushed a dish of walnuts towards Mr. Linster. "With your port," she said. "Walnuts and port, don't they speak of? Alton, won't Mrs. Alton have some dessert ? Some grapes ? we have done exceed- ingly well with our grapes this year or a banana ? " " Yes, try these grapes," said her husband to his guest. io* ttbe Successor " As Blanche says, we have done remarkably well in the houses. Indeed, for once we have little to complain of. I never remember better peaches than the walls gave us this year. Take it ail round, it has been a good year." Mrs. Alton ate a grape or two and expressed her approbation. But the talk had been diverted from the channel into which it had been flowing. " You were telling me ..." was on the tip of her tongue. That she did not speak it was due to no lack of courage, but rather was an offering to expediency. Yet before she could thus bring herself to allow the theme to be abandoned she had again to remind herself, this time somewhat sharply, that her mission was pacific. Lord Alton, released, plunged once more into " affairs " with his agent. The hollow in the park, it seemed, where water always collected in the winter, was being drained. She gathered this generally with miscellaneous scraps that told her of other improvements contemplated, begun or completed, as she exchanged conventional politenesses with the Mason. Could it be that her brother-in-law intended her to know of these things ? When luncheon was finished, and the move was made, she looked to see whether the picture would be remembered. Her hostess, she believed, did remember it, and was, she thought, for getting her out of the room without mention of it. Her brother-in-law, however, had no such qualms. " By-the-by, yes," he said. " I wanted you to look at Edmund, didn't I ? " He crossed the room to the sideboard. Mrs. Alton followed him, and stood under the picture of her husband. That it bore marks of extensive repairs could not be denied, but the work had indeed been effected with extraordinary skill and cunning. Mrs. Alton was astonished. It was a moment or two before Ube Successor 103 she remembered that she was not supposed to know the extent of the injury the picture had sustained, and she committed herself to a "Wonderful!" before she had time to think. " It looks rather different from when you saw it last ? " said Lord Alton, and Mrs. Alton for once in her life had not an answer ready. She looked at him a little blankly, and repeated : " When I saw it last ! " " In St. James's Street," he prompted. At any rate, she did not flounder. Her eyes were steady and managed an amused twinkle, if inwardly she went through some considerable disturbance. St. James's Street, in all innocence, it was probable, had betrayed her. She surveyed her position rapidly, and tried to recall exactly what had passed between her and the picture dealer ; and, more important still, between her and her brother-in-law in the last few minutes. To how much knowledge had she admitted when the sub- ject had first been broached ? " Something nothing definite," buzzed in her ears. She decided on perfect frankness. " Yes, I took the trouble of going to see it," she said. " It is the only really good likeness there is of Edmund. The thing in crayons that I have in Curzon Street never did him justice, and he always made a wretched photo- graph. They have certainly succeeded in repairing it to a degree beyond my inexperienced expectations. It "she was sorely tempted "it was shockingly torn." " It was," said Lord Alton. " My own expectations were equally inexperienced, I confess. Had you much trouble in finding it ? " "Finding it?" " Where it had been sent, I mean." " Oh, no ! I knew, you see, pretty well who' you had 1^4 trbe Successes dealings with about pictures. I wanted to see it, and I didn't want to trouble you." Lady Alton chipped in here. " You are keeping Mrs. Alton standing, Alton. I'm sure she'd rather come to the fire in the drawing-room. We'll have coffee in there. And afterwards, I daresay, you'd like to see the gardens, wouldn't you? though there isn't much to see at this time of the year. Did the servants take Fido, do you know, Mr. Linster ? Ah, well, I can ring for him presently. Shall we go ? " They went. At the drawing-room door Lord Alton, with a word about a cigar and joining the ladies pre- sently, held Mr. Linster back, and for half an hour Lady and Mrs. Alton endured each other civilly. By the end of that time, and just as Mrs. Alton's patience was being exhausted, her brother-in-law reappeared alone. He came in suavely, and with apologies. " You will excuse me, I know, Susan . . ." " You are going out ? " " On the contrary, I am now entirely at your service. For leaving you so long, I mean. That is a capital man new, I think, since we saw you. Yes, it was old Estcourt then. He was letting things go to rack and ruin. Oh, past his work, I think, that was all, and a ' time enough ' man always inclined to let things slide, as I was. Linster has a head on his shoulders, and is a great help to me." " You seem to be doing a good deal." " I am." He seated himself in a low chair by the fire, and spread his small, nervous hands to the blaze. There was yet nothing nervous in either his air or his bearing. Mrs. Alton, while she waited for him to speak, found herself wondering what he had done with the uneasiness which she remembered so well, and which, when she tTbe Successor 105 had last seen him, had seemed to show rather an increasing than a declining tendency. He smiled absently into the glowing coals. "Nothing had been done for years oh, I speak a little widely perhaps ; Merringham has always looked fairly well kept up the natural features of the place helped that but things wanted seeing to. Things are getting what they wanted. When in course of time I am gathered to my fathers " he paused and looked at his sister-in-law " it will be a very different Merringham that my successor will step into." Mrs. Alton made no rejoinder. Lady Alton said: "Oh, my dear, we needn't talk about that." " Every landowner," said her husband, " has a duty to those who come after him." "We needn't, I mean," said Lady Alton, "anticipate your demise. Now, I'm sure Mrs. Alton would like to look round the garden. The houses are thought worth seeing if you care for flowers ? " " Yes, I should like to see them. I remember them well in the old days. It won't bore you, Alton? and then I must ask for the carriage." It seemed to Mrs. Alton then (who may have been fanciful) that Lady Alton consulted her husband with her eyes as to whether she should go too. Lord Alton perhaps signalled back that this was unnecessary, feeling possibly that he was equal to any emergency that might arise in a t$te-a-tete, and having thus no need of the protection of any third person: Mr. Linster had been allowed to go having played his part. Be this as it may, Lady Alton did not accompany her husband and his guest to the gardens, and Mrs: Alton saw before her the " opportunity " she had desired. When Lord Alton, at her wish, had ordered her c Successor carriage to be round at what time seemed to her good, they went out by the broad steps on the west side of the house and descended to the terraces. A pleasant air was here, in which were faint fragrances as much of earth and mellow masonry as of the lingering plants in the borders. A bronze Hermes, green in parts with age, and exceedingly beautiful, was one of the beautiful things that made the terraces beautiful when flowers were passing. Vases, also of bronze, and stained like the statue with verdigris, or of stone, flaking and lichened, or of lead, stood at intervals on the low walls. The dignity of time was upon everything. Leisure, well-being, the necessity to be careful for nothing, were on all sides in evidence for the sensitive, or for anyone who seeing might see. Mrs. Alton was not sensitive, but had eyes shrewd enough. As she walked and talked, commenting on this and on that, she was conscious of a wandering attention. Merringham had always had this air of stately orderliness and prosperity. To have spoken of rack and ruin, things let to slide and the like, was indeed to have spoken somewhat at large. But much was evidently being done on the estate, and for some reason or other it was her brother-in-law's intention that she should know it. " So you are making improvements," she said, out of a silence in which she thought her absence of mind to have communicated itself to her manner. Lord Alton turned to her, smiling. " Well, we're beginning," he said. " Mr. Linster has inspired me, or I have inspired him, and all sorts of projects are in the air. A man wants interests in his life. That's what I have only just found out. I mean, as I've told you, to leave Merringham in better case than I found it. Shall we go down to the corner there, to look at the view before we go to the houses ? " tbe Successor 1^7 They descended to a second terrace, and reaching the end of it, where there were stone seats, leant on the wall to look over such an expanse of undulating country as a favoured land might show you once, perhaps, in a day's march. Something was changed here. Mrs. Alton, knowing the country well, could not remember to have seen precisely this view of it. A very map of gracious English scenery, pasture, woodland, cornland ploughed now this last, and reddish in the afternoon sunlight with here a farmstead, there the distant spire of a hamlet amongst trees, was spread before her as a chart that is unrolled. Immediately below where she was standing stretched the park, to end in a dip, where out of sight ran the river, which showed presently as a white riband streaming through the valley. Wood and hedgerow were stained gorgeously, wantonly, to very excess of lavish staining, but had they indeed been bare and bleak, Mrs. Alton did not feel that the dowered country over which she gazed would have been robbed of its air of richness and fecundity. The very browns and reds of the soil where the plough had turned it seemed to speak fatness corn and the western equivalent of wine, as the pasturage promised milk, and a row of silent hives under the sheltering wall to the right sent the thoughts to honey. So the land " flowed." All the gifts of a generous earth were there in actuality, assurance, or suggestion. If this now as the year went howsoever exuberantly to its death, what in spring ? in full summer ? Not all that she saw was Merringham, but a good part, and all was Merringham's to see. She turned to her brother-in-law, and meeting his eyes, experienced a curious sensation. He had been watching her as she looked ; perhaps reading the thought that that which she saw the sight of it, any io8 trbe Successor way would one day be Edmund's ? Where she stood was only relatively high ground, commanding, though it did, so fine a stretch of opulent country. It was not vertigo then, nor any other physical uneasiness connected with heads and altitudes, that gave her this sudden feel- ing of having been caught up taken for a purpose (as One once for temptation) to a pinnacle of the temple, say, or an exceeding high mountain. She held her breath for a beat or two of the pulse, hardly knowing why. Lord Alton was smiling. " It was a view to sacrifice a few trees for, wasn't it ? The trees had grown up, shutting everything out as the ilex, by the way, before the dining-room window. This end of the terrace was evidently planned for this view. You don't get quite the same range from any- where else, and the trees had been allowed to blot it all out till the very scheme of the point of vantage had been forgotten. Three generations must have lived in ignorance of so much of the designer's intention." He looked east and west " There's not such another view in the country." Mrs. Alton's eyes scanned the horizon. "Who comes after me," said Lord Alton, with deliberation, and looking at his sister-in-law with the same expression as a moment ago she had surprised on his face, " will owe me this, too, in a measure. Since I turned my thoughts to improvements, I have been looking about me, and in that way I made my discovery. Now, shall we go to the houses ? " They retraced their steps for a few yards, ascending to the first terrace, whence, crossing a lawn, they made for a path leading to the inner gardens, where the hot- houses were. The feeling of bewilderment grew with Mrs. Alton. What had happened to give this little TTbe Successor 109 pink man the power of dominating every situation ? and what did these activities portend ? Not once, moreover, nor even twice, had he made his allusions to the future of Merringham. Was there any point of law with which she was unacquainted that could make Edmund's position with regard to the place less secure than she supposed it? Surely, surely he Alton could not still hope . . . could not by any possibility expect . . . She ran her eye mentally over the elegancies of her sister-in-law's appearance. Lady Alton's silks and laces. . . . But she always overdressed. And nonsense! Nonsense ! She (Mrs. Alton) would have known in a moment. Her imagination was running away with her. Ridiculous to have entertained so preposterous a thought for an instant. Enough of it. Anyway, she would be seeing Balderton presently which reminded her that she had not asked for Balderton. Balderton, Lord Alton said, was away. CHAPTER XI THE day was assuredly to be marked uncomfortably on Mrs. Alton's mind. " Away ? " she said. " For her holiday." Here was an unexpected check ; and that she should regard the absence of the housekeeper in such light showed her that her misgivings were not wholly formless. " I should have liked to see Balderton," she said, "an old friend . . , one of the few remaining old servants." " To be sure. The type is dying out I have suc- ceeded in impressing Blanche with a comparatively sound appreciation of its qualities. For a time she hardly understood. Now she accepts Balderton, and what is almost as important I think I may say that Balderton accepts her. You wanted to see Balderton. A pity ! " " Oh ! to exchange greetings with her," said Mrs. Alton. " Balderton and I have always been good friends." " She will be sorry to have missed you." " You must tell her I asked for her." Was it intended that she should not see Balderton ? Could they have sent her away to that end ? For what conceivable purpose ? It was impossible to think of 11 holidays " in connection with Balderton. What could no Successor m she, with her bugles and her mittens, want or do with holidays ? Mrs. Alton considered. They reached the first of the hothouses now, and she stood back as he opened the door for her. The handle was stiff, and she spent the moment's pause thus afforded in a curious survey of her companion. She who had always laughed at Alton had an unconquerable misdoubt as to the direction just then of the laugh. The latch yielded, and he stood back for her to pass in before him, taking in turn as he did so his survey of her, but smiling. They stepped from the fresh outer air into the soft warmth of the hothouse. The scents of many exotic flowers and plants blended (as the frag- rances which mingled in the garden) with others of flower-pot itself and hothouse soil and old red brick to the making of the pot-pourri of sweet essences that is the familiar atmosphere of all such houses. Vivid colours caught and held the eye: crimsons, scarlets, purples, with flaming yellows and gentler blues. Whites were virginal, but not to be overlooked in the patchwork of varied hues. Ferns had sown themselves beneath the gratings underfoot, through which they thrust here and there a spike or a leaf of tender green. Lord Alton, pulling up the slip of wood from a pot now and then, and reading from it a Latin name, dis- claimed any special knowledge of flowers, but in his answers to Mrs. Alton's questions and comments showed no small acquaintance with their characteristics and needs. " My poor Victoria," he said, " was the gardener of my generation. She lived with her flowers and for them. I see her now with her gardening gloves and a large pair of scissors. The gardens have never been quite the same since she left me." Successor He paused and looked into space, calling up pre- sumably the vision of the Andover in her chamois gauntlets and with the shears of her chosen office. Mrs. Alton found herself recalling also the first Lady Alton. She saw her in the odd garments of her day notably a shady hat of the mushroom order and the longest of long ear-rings. "Dear Georgina's hobbies were her dairies and her bees pastoral rather than aesthetic. Herbage grew for the cows that supplied her model dairies, and flowers for her bees. We took prizes in those days for butter and honey." " I remember," said Mrs. Alton, a little vaguely. It was at the Alton-Redruth wedding that caution was said -to have given her the slip, and neither butter nor honey had reached her in Curzon Street. "We were called bucolic," said Lord Alton, "and other things other things. Dear Georgina, as you know, was a picture of health. It was said that com- parisons were found for her to certain domestic animals. A fact. Would one believe ? " Mrs. Alton had been bending over a flower. She raised unhurried eyes to meet her brother-in-law's question. " Oh, one can believe anything of gossip," she said ; " but if one believe gossip itself, one can believe anything." If Mrs. Alton was sorry when she had thus spoken, she did not show it. " Nevertheless," said Lord Alton, " I have always been inclined to believe gossip in this instance." " One believes, I suppose," Mrs. Alton hazarded, "what one is ready to believe." "Just so," said Lord Alton, "just so. Well, well, gossip has its place in the affairs of men, and its uses, Ube Successor 113 perhaps. What were we taking of? Oh, characteristics, to be sure by the way, of horticulture, wasn't it? Blanche, I was going to say, cares most for flowers when they are cut. She likes results, as it were the fruits of care, rather than the care itself. So do we differ one from another. Shall we look at the orchids next door ? " They left the house and proceeded to another. A gardener was coming up the path, and Lord Alton beckoned to him and gave him some direction. " You'd like a few flowers to take back with you, wouldn't you ? We will send some to Lady Wraysbury too. What has she least of at Rookhampton ? that we may not find ourselves sending coals to Newcastle. Belbridge would know; he came to me from Lady Wraysbury. Consult him, Cotton, and cut accordingly." " I shall take mine back with me to London," said Mrs. Alton, when the man was gone. " They will be quite fresh. I go home to-morrow." "So soon?" " I only came for a few days. That's why I wanted to make sure of seeing you." Orchids were ever after associated in Mrs. Alton's mind with Edmund and Merringham, and her brother- in-law, and the Mason, and a day of perplexities ; so that she never saw one but some thought of this strange visit, and all that it held and concealed, came to her, as the memory of some curious dream. Not to have known ! . . . not to have seen ! . . . understood ! she who was not a stupid woman ! A tangle of thoughts enmeshed her. That she had taken a thrust or two since setting foot in Merringham was not to be disputed. Alton had kept her fencing whether she wished it or no, and it was disturbing to feel that where he would he had pricked her. The H4 Ube Successor picture ... he had her there, forcing even an acknow- ledgment from her of her expedition to King Street. Balderton . . . there, too, she was foiled though what it was exactly that she wanted to see Balderton for, and what it was exactly that Balderton might be supposed to be in a position to tell her, she could not have said. Georgina, the Redruth of Angerstown . . . had the comparison indeed been made ? and if so, had it really reached the ears of the good lady's husband ? Some- one had, in truth, been indiscreet. So did Mrs. Alton's thoughts hold her. Lord Alton's voice broke in upon her. " Perverse things," he was saying, " aren't they ? " and it was a moment before she realised that he spoke of the plants. " Nothing about an orchid would surprise one. If its roots were in the air, and it blossomed underground, one would shrug one's shoulders and feel that when one had said ' Orchid/ one had said all that was necessary in the way of explanation. To me they are more curious than beautiful. But Victoria loved them, and Jebson takes a great pride in them, so here they are." " Jebson ? " said Mrs. Alton. " The head gardener. No. I forget who was with us when you were here last. I have the regrettable faculty of offending my servants much as I think of the old breed or rather I have had, for I am inclined to think I am going to lose it ... instead of my temper and them." "I wonder," Mrs. Alton said "I wonder what has changed you ? " " Do you find me changed ? " "Yes or in course of changing. In course of changing, I think, though I don't know why." " for the better, I hope, Susan." Ube Successor 115 " How/' said Mrs. Alton, " can I answer you that ? If I said ' Yes ' it would imply that there had been room, as we say, for improvement. Nor could I possibly say ( No.' I put the case to you." This was safer ground. It was through the give-and- take of banter that Edmund's name must be approached. The orchids, which had looked half-human things, grotesque, distorted, a trifle malignant even, took less subtle and more kindly an aspect. " Marriage, I take it, like the years, must affect one in some way," said Lord Alton. " Marriage ! " " In my case marriages. One doesn't stand still. 1, then, less than most people. Shall we say that we are not, any of us, changing so much as developing? In life there are periods, from time to time, when the process seems quickened. It is so, certainly, with the vegetable life which we are looking at in these plants. Weeks or even months will go to the forming of the bud which a few days or hours will open." "It is mainly, isn't it, a question of light and heat?" " Mainly, as you say, a question of light and heat," said Lord Alton, " taking light and heat in the case of the man to stand for their equivalents, whatever those may be. Encouragement ? Prosperity ? What shall we say?" " And you are feeling encouraged ? prosperous ? You were always prosperous, Alton. Prosperity compara- tive prosperity, anyway and primogeniture go hand in hand in this land of eldest sons. So it must be encouragement in your case. I wish I knew the secret of encouragement. I don't suppose you are going to tell me the secret of yours ? " n6 TTbe Successor " Awakening," said Lord Alton. " I slept and am awake." Mrs. Alton shook her head. "You are giving me the effect for the cause," she said. " Who shall say how he wakes ? " said Lord Alton. " One man wakes when he has had his sleep out ; another when he is called ; another is called and goes to sleep again. I can hardly tell you whether I had had my sleep out when I was called. I am disposed to think that I was called at the very moment at which I was ready to wake. I passed, I know, from sleeping into broad waking." Mrs. Alton thought this over. It bore, she believed, in some way upon the torn picture. But she knew not in what manner nor why she should think so. "You were ' called/ then ?" she said. " I was certainly called." " May I ask how ? " " Oh, how is one generally called ? " " I know so little of men's ways," said Mrs. Alton, smiling. "At home my housemaid since I have no maid of my own comes in to pull up my blinds." "And give you your letters," said Lord Alton, "just so. In some such way. And your letters generally see to it that you shan't go to sleep again, don't they?" Now, what did he mean by this ... if not to connect her letter with that which underlay, or might be supposed to underlie, his words and hers ? But he had not finished. " It may be open to question," he was saying, from under eyebrows half-humorously puckered, " which succeed in rousing one most effectually the letters one tlbe Successor 117 gets, or the letters one doesn't get. A whimsical, tricky, disturbing thing the post at the best of times." Mrs. Alton threw her rapier away. She had done with fencing. If need were she would close with him. "I don't know," she said, without further ado, but also without any outward show of fight " I don't know, Alton, whether in what you are saying you mean any allusion to a letter which I wrote to you some time ago considerably more than a year ago and to which I never got any answer. I have been in the difficult position of not knowing whether it reached you." Lord Alton leaned against one of the shelves and regarded her slowly. " A letter," he said. " It seems to me that I remember something of it. Tell me about it. It was before I went away, wasn't it ? before I was ill." " I have been afraid that you were ill when it reached you." " I don't think so. I don't remember that I was," " You did get it, then ? '' " I must appear very stupid or negligent. I must get you to tell me what was in it. You didn't write again ? " " It was on a matter of some importance to me," Mrs. Alton said, a little coldly. " As you didn't answer, I could hardly write again. I waited, indeed, expecting to hear from you, Alton. If you will think, you will see that I was in rather a difficult position." He shook his head. " I am ready to believe I have been culpably remiss," he said. " If the letter had reached you," explained Mrs. Alton, " to have written again would only have seemed a device to hurry you or worry you. As I didn't get my letter back from the Dead Letter Office, I could only suppose that it had been delivered. The post may us tlbe Successor be whimsical and tricky, as you say, but, on the whole, one can rely on the safety of what one commits to it. That, at least, is my experience." " The blame, I don't doubt," said Lord Alton, " lies with me. You'll have to help me out, Susan, for all that. I get a good many letters on one subject or another, and from what you say, and from what I fancy I recollect, this one must have come just before I was ill. Since then, you must remember, I have been abroad, and when one is moving about from place to place one is apt to overlook the claims of one's corre- spondence. I make out a lame case for myself, I'm afraid." Mrs. Alton allowed a smile to play about her mouth. " You speak as if I were taking you to task," she said. "I deserve nothing less, do you think, if I have behaved so reprehensibly ? " " I don't want to take you to task," Mrs. Alton said. " Who am I that I should ? But I do want, if you will let me, to arrive at some sort of understanding about the matter on which I wrote to you. I should like to have known definitely whether the letter did reach you. Perhaps you may remember ... I wrote to you about Edmund." Lord Alton shifted his position to one of more comfort. " I haven't asked for him yet. He is well ? I have seen his name once or twice in connection with prizes isn't it ? or games ? " " He is very well, and is doing well. I am rather proud of my boy. He is much that his father would have wished him to be, and an Alton from head to foot." tlbe Successor n$ " Points further apart in his case than mine, I daresay." Mrs. Alton looked astray for a moment. " Ah ! I see," she said then. " Well, perhaps a little. He will be about his father's height, I think ; not a young giant like either of your brothers, though he resembles each of them in some things. Poor Terence had very much the same way of speaking, and I find myself recalling John, too, in small traits the way he comes into a room, for instance. Do you remember that John used always to give you the flattering im- pression that he was delightfully surprised to find you ? He always opened a door as if he were pleasantly and actively interested as to what he should find behind it. I express myself badly ; but if you ever observed what I mean in John, you would recognise something very like it in Edmund." " I recollect perfectly what you describe. I commend Edmund's choice." " His choice? " said Mrs. Alton. " The wisdom he shows in his selection of which of us to take after." But Lord Alton spoke as one who speaks lightly, and it was impossible to think he was offended. Mrs. Alton thought it wise, nevertheless, to overlook what might be fraught with dangerous qualities in his comment, and said complacently enough that she would wish nothing better for her son than that he should take after his father's family. " A pick of the members of it, anyway." "Oh, the Altons generally," said Edmund's mother. " I have never heard of any black sheep among them which is considerably more than I can say of my own family." She looked at the orchids as if, in a scarlet blossom or t*o frbe Successor two, she could see prototypes of the sinners on her own side of the house. " My poor dear father," she said ; " if Edmund had shown signs of taking after him! Dear father, he meant so well, and left us all in such difficulties. Or poor Roddy ! No, no, Alton, it is your family, not mine, that I should wish my boy to be like." Lord Alton said nothing, but had an air of attending. His pink eyelids weighed her words, and he did not show any sign of rinding the topic irksome. She had misjudged this odd little man perhaps even his wife the fearfully and wonderfully lady-like person to whom as the possibility occurred to her she sent a flying thought. Encouraged, Mrs. Alton proceeded. "If the years don't stand still for us," she said, " they stand less still even for the young. It seems only the other day that Edmund was shortcoated, and here he is now nearly sixteen, and a sort of surprise to me every time he comes home for the holidays. I never realised till I saw my own boy growing up under my eyes how rapid the succession of the stages could be. The infant in arms is like to be a man before you know that you have weaned him." Lord Alton nodded inquiringly. " Is that so ? I daresay, I daresay. He had, of course, no experience of what she was telling him or an experience so subjective as to be valueless. The flowers were forgotten, ostensible pretext though they were for the absence from the drawing-room, where presumably Lady Alton sat awaiting the return of her guest. Unconsciously, or subconsciously, Mrs. Alton had sense of them, however, and even observed (always without knowing that she observed) the curious tlbe Successor 1*1 "reservoirs" that have their part in the domestic economy of the lives of certain species. The seeds, all unknown to her and unsuspected, of a subsequent and enduring dislike of orchids were being sown then. "Well, Alton, to come to the point, the time has arrived had arrived, indeed, a year ago and more when I must decide something as to Edmund's future : whether he must work with a view to earning his living at the earliest possible moment in whatever way may offer, or whether, in view of well, of his position, he may hope to go to the University, as his father did before him, and . . ." she hesitated . . " perhaps even think of the Diplomatic Service." She paused. " This is what I wrote to you an easier thing, somehow, to write than to say. Yet, after all, whom should I consult if not you ? You're his nearest male relation. I wonder you must let me say just this why, if you got my letter, you did not answer it." " I certainly got it," said Lord Alton. " I can't help thinking that you'll find I answered it." " I received no answer. I waited and waited, not liking, as I say, to bother you. So you did get my letter ! " " I gave it the closest attention. You bring all the circumstances back to my mind. I couldn't forget." Mrs. Alton wheeled round in front of him. " But this is most extraordinary," she said. " Your answer never reached me. I watched the posts. I came almost to believe that my watching for your letter delayed it prevented its coming. When did you write ? Do you remember ? " Lord Alton, she might have observed, but did not, had said nothing of having written. Successor " I dealt with your letter almost at once the same day, anyway. The matter is firmly impressed on my mind. I couldn't forget." Mrs. Alton looked more surprised. "But . . ." she began, and broke off. "Yes?" " Just now you didn't appear to remember at all." " You have brought it all back to me." "Well, I can't understand . . ." said Mrs. Alton. " Your own letter would have come back to you through the Dead Letter Office. And didn't you wonder why you didn't hear from me in answer ? I'm not a very good correspondent, but I always answer letters, and whatever you may have said in your letter it must have . . ." She broke off again. "But perhaps you refused," she resumed a moment later. " Yes, I suppose it can only mean that you refused." " What you asked ? " " You know pretty well how I am placed, Alton. I haven't come to you to-day to make a poor mouth. Edmund's father made the best provision for me that he could ; and if since my own father died, and his affairs were found to be in such an unsatisfactory state, it has been something of a struggle now and then to make both ends meet, both ends, I am thankful to say, have met hitherto. I can scrape along quite comfort- ably; and I have been able, thank God, to give Edmund the education of a gentleman. So far it has been fairly easy to do what was necessary for him ; but if he is to go to Oxford it will be a different matter, and it can only be done if the difficulties in the way of it have any reasonable chance of being removed." Lord Alton still heard her attentively. tTbe successor 123 l{ You spoke of his position just now Tell me exactly what you mean." " His position ? Oh, as an Alton family should count for something and also in regard to yourself." Lord Alton nodded. "Just so," he said, "just so taking all hazards, of course, into due account just so. Does the boy wish to go to Oxford ? " " Naturally, but that is beside the point. Do you think it would be advisable for him to go ? And if it is advisable, is it possible ? Do you, in fact, wish him to go?" Then it was that like life, according to Lord Alton the vegetable life, anyway, of this house of strange plants the discussion suddenly flowered, and as suddenly bore fruit. "We shall find, I think, one of these days that your letter was answered. But let that pass. I can give you another answer to-day. This I will say : Edmund may go to Oxford. His father was at Balliol, and so were Terence and John in their day. Three hundred a year would enable him to do the thing comfortably ? He may count upon me for that sum for three years." " Alton, how good of you ! " " For three years we will say a thousand pounds in all. He, or rather you, can have it at once, if you like, in the lump. That indeed would perhaps be best. I shan't ask for any account of it. Apply it, in fact, as you like." " This is very generous of you. I hardly know how to thank you. Edmund will write to you." " He may think he has little enough to thank me for," said Lord Alton. They went back to the house then, where the hour being found to be five of the clock, and the carriage to 1*4 have been waiting already for a very considerable time, Mrs. Alton's adieux were somewhat hurried more hurried, indeed, than she could afterwards have wished and she had but the briefest glimpse of her hostess. So ended her strange visit CHAPTER XII IT was not till his visitor was safely out of sight that Lord Alton's self-possession gave place to the excite- ment that was the prelude to what was spoken of afterwards as his second "seizure." He came back to the drawing-room hurriedly, as one with something to disclose, and Lady Alton looked at him questioningly. "She doesn't know," he said, shutting the door quickly, and coming over to the fire. " She doesn't know now. Actually she has gone without knowing ! " Lady Alton, who, a cream-ewer in one hand and a cup in the other, had suspended her operations at the tea-table, gave a little exclamation and waited. " She doesn't know," he said again. " And you didn't tell her ? " " I haven't told her yet." Lady Alton smiled. " I thought when you came back that you hadn't. She would have looked different somehow if she had known not that, as it was, she didn't look at me. What were you saying to her, then, all that time ? " " We found plenty to say. I was prepared to tell her any moment, and it never became necessary." "Well," said Lady Alton, "it seemed possible, certainly. . . . Well, I thought you were never coming back. Will you have some tea ? " " Tea ! no," said Lord Alton, in impatient parenthesis. " Tea! " with contempt. " We went first to the terrace, 126 Ube Successor and I gave her Moses' glimpse of the Promised Land. She didn't know what to think hasn't known what to think from the moment she set foot here. Even now she doesn't, and will still less when she has had time to turn things over a little. What had set me to work? That puzzled her primarily ; all through lunch she was puzzled, and all through the afternoon. She has gone, in fact, from one mystification to another. I could hardly have expected to touch her on so many points." " I couldn't imagine what you were going to say about the picture, or for that matter what you were not i How could you ? What were you dreaming of? I was on thorns till I got you out of the dining-room." Lord Alton laughed out. " To think that I was able to tell her about that ! I did it,' said I, but I would have said anything just then, I believe. And I made her own up to having seen it. ' Rather different, eh, from when you saw it last ? ' ( Saw it last ? ' " He laughed again, reviewing the situation. " She has her wits about her, I'll say so much for her. She didn't falter or stumble, or do anything stupid. Susan's a well-bred one, little as I have reason to like her. But I fancy I pricked her when I wished. There isn't a thing that I wanted to say that I did not contrive to say to-day, and all (I think I may claim for myself, and I think Susan would admit) without abusing my somewhat delicate position as my enemy's host. There was an old score or two to wipe off, and old scores were not passed over to-day, as I fancy she will perceive presently, if she hasn't already." Lady Alton helped herself to Sally Lunn. She, at least, might go on with her tea. One meal was not of less importance than another to her, and she had chafed TObe Successor 127 under the delays which had kept her from the tea-table till after her sister-in-law's departure. Mrs. Alton, in consideration of the hour and the length of the drive before her, had reluctantly refused tea, and might be supposed now to be sitting " parched " and regretful in the Rookhampton carriage. Lord Alton was too excited to eat or to drink ; but not so Lady Alton. " Balderton . . ." said Lord Alton. " She was brought to a stand-still when I told her Balderton was away. A fine talk she had promised herself a nice quiet talk over things generally in Balderton's room. But there we had been just a little too quick for her. I wasn't going to have that, Balderton knows you may bet what you like. Everyone else, please God, will know in a very little while, but Balderton knows this minute. So none of these confidential talks ! Susan, I promise her, shall know in plenty of time. Wasn't I prepared here's the joke of it ! to tell her myself to-day ? But the longer we put it off ... do you see? . . . Why are you looking at me ? " he said, a moment later. Lady Alton was in truth looking at him curiously. Something unusual in his aspect disturbed her. She was vaguely uncomfortable hardly knowing why. " I wish," she said, " you would sit down quietly and have your tea." Five minutes later she was looking at him again. He broke off in a rapid flow of words to say impatiently : "Well? Well? What is it?" "You're so so excited, dear. I'm quite afraid of your making yourself ill again." "111? I'm too well satisfied to be ill! I've no pictures to tear down to-day and tear up." Yet there was something that he seemed to be tearing, destroying, consuming (Lady Alton was no 'ologist) yital energy, what, or what else, you will and it wa.s. I2 8 Ube Successor difficult to keep your apprehensive eyes from his face. She went on with her tea, however, as before, and tried to conceal her uneasiness. She was acutely conscious of it till her husband's allusion to the cheque he had promised drove, by the sheer size of the amount, all else from her mind. A thousand pounds ! That did seem unnecessary. Really, after all that had happened ? A thousand pounds? Nearly half the cost of their trip. What need was there for this extravagance? Here Lord Alton chipped in with a laugh to point an obvious analogy. Might have been given to the poor ? Well, so it might. Was given to the poor, did he say ? Mrs. Alton wasn't Lady Alton's idea of poverty. " She was as well-dressed as I am. I don't, of course, care for that severe style myself. I like a woman to be graceful and more more elegant. But that's a matter of taste, and many people, to be sure, can't wear lace or anything delicate like that . . . particularly if they're at all what I call weather-beaten. And then years do tell, and she can't be far short of well, what shall I say ? But to come here and play the poor relation to work upon your feelings. . . ." Lord Alton heard her with commendable self-restraint, and even some amusement. He knew the Mason of Liverpool ; that she should miss the point was inevitable. When she had made an end of speaking, which was not, we are to suppose, for a minute or two, he shrugged his shoulders. " Never," he said, " will the writing of any cheque give me so keen a satisfaction. Think ! and when you have thought, think again." "You give her money the woman who has flouted you ? " "True," ZTbe Successor 129 " The woman who has flouted me, and those who came before me." " Who will it be who will score in the end ? Even now she is not sure whose the laugh is. What I shall send her will be the key, if she have the perception to know it, to all that is and has been puzzling her. She shall have a day or two in which to be puzzled, a day or two to read her cypher with its help if she can, and then ... do you see ? " The Mason's range was limited. A thousand pounds that was not spent upon her was a thousand pounds. Look at it as you would you could not make it less. "Edmund's dismissed," said Lord Alton sharply. " Exert yourself to realise ! This is Edmund's dismissal. This is my long answer to Susan. I have waited my time, but I haven't forgotten. Susan won't know it at once, but this, when all's said, is her answer. And now once more, what in God's name is the matter ? " For Lady Alton's eyes were fixed on a pink face growing purple, and her uneasiness, swamped tempo- rarily by such more agreeable emotions as astonishment and indignation, had reasserted itself with alarming suddenness, and was not to be concealed. And Mrs. Alton? Mrs Alton in the Wraysbury brougham knew not in very truth what to make of her day. Lord Alton himself, flushed, trembling, disordered, could not have wished her more exercised. Was it peace ? She could not tell. There was nothing that she had ever said or done that he had not appeared to know. Was it war, then ? There was the generosity of the promised cheque. Edmund might look forward to Oxford. What to think ! Satisfaction was tempered by she knew not what of apprehension. i 130 Ube Successor She had changed her gloves as she neared her destina- tion for a new pair in going, and now as the carriage left the park she took off these, blew into them mechanically, and having folded them up and turned a ring, the stone in which was hurting her finger, she proceeded to put on the old pair. The little act of homely economy served in some way to steady her nerves. Such takings of thought had part in her every-day life. It was thus, broadly, that Edmund's education had been made possible; thus that she was able to keep up the appearances which Lady Alton even now was criticising at Merringham. She looked out of the window with eyes that were not for the country through which she was passing if, indeed, in the early dusk there had been light enough remaining to enable her to distinguish its features. She was occupied with the events of the last few hours to the exclusion of everything else. Minutely she went over all that had happened. Fido had part in her thoughts Fido the dog that had been bought before he was born, and on trust and in faith ; Mr. Linster, the exemplary agent, who had incited her brother-in-law to his present exertions ; the Mason, of course, and the Mason's affectations, her mistakes and her cleverness; the picture, Alton's admissions in regard to it, and the admission extorted from herself; more of the Mason; then Alton again . . . and the view, with a vivid recollection of the strange moment connected with that ; some straight speaking ; the orchids ; Edmund ; the plunge, and the surprise of the final outcome of her visit. ,, Rookhampton was reached in what seemed an incredibly short time. Here she would have gone straight to her room, but was pounced upon by the younger Miss Wraysbury, who, like a little black cat, Successor 131 had been lying in wait for her, and was led to the drawing-room, where the rest of the family was ranged and arranged to receive her. A crescent of three chairs, the unoccupied one of which had been vacated (at the sound probably of wheels on the gravel) by the younger Miss Wraysbury, who now resumed her seat in it, was drawn up on one side of the hearth. Facing this con- clave, there remained in this part of the room a single arm-chair on the other side of the rug before the fire. An expectant " Well ? " rose in chorus from the three sallow throats. It did not take Mrs. Alton long to pull forward another chair from the distance. " I'll keep away from the fire," she said. " Dear me it is a long drive to Merringham." She looked round. " Has tea gone, Carry ? I was afraid so. No, I didn't wait for it at Merringham. I wonder whether I should be giving too much trouble if I asked for some now ? " " We made sure you were staying for tea at Merring- ham. It it is nearly half-past six. No, no trouble if you don't think it will spoil your dinner so late. . . ." Mrs. Alton, with unruffled geniality, was quite certain it would not spoil her dinner. 11 I'll ring, then, shall I ? " said Miss Wraysbury. " If you will," said Mrs. Alton pleasantly. She had no more thought of going without tea for any " difficulties " that might be made than she had of sitting in the seat that had been prepared for her catechism. The bell was rung, and tea was ordered "back." " Bring back tea," so did Lady Wraysbury phrase the direction she gave. " I'm afraid," Mrs. Alton said, " I am putting you to a great deal of trouble." To none, Lady Wraysbury assured her to none 132 Ebe Successor whatever ! She was but thinking of her guest's appetite for dinner. That, Mrs. Alton promised her, would be all right, and anyway, she would rather have tea. Tea appeared presently, and was supposed to unlock Mrs. Alton's tongue. In reality, she told no more than she chose should be known. From her account it appeared that she had had a very agreeable day. Lord Alton had never looked better, and really Lady Alton was wonderful a little insistent and voyante perhaps, but wonderful. Oh, and she was forgetting, there were some flowers for Lady Wraysbury in the brougham. They would be brought in presently, she supposed. Ah, here they were ! as a servant appeared with them. The houses at Merringham made a good show. The picture? Yes, she had seen the picture. It did not look as if it could have sustained much injury. So she held them off. The elder Miss Wraysbury plucked up courage to say : 11 But the the feud, dear Mrs. Alton the estrange- ment. . . ." Dear Mrs. Alton laughed. " I am tempted to think the whole thing must have been imagined." " Oh, but . . ." said Lady Wraysbury, emboldened by the daring of her braver daughter. "And they did say," Miss Wraysbury greatly ven- tured, " that the affair of the picture. . . . You see, it was torn with a knife. Cut, you know. It didn't just fall." " No, it didn't just fall," put in her sister timidly. " It didn't fall at all," said Lady Wraysbury. " It was taken down afterwards with a ladder." "Just so in the ordinary way," said Mrs. Alton, smiling irnperturbably. "Well, it is up again in its ZTbe Successor 133 place, not much the worse for its accident, so there's an end of it. It shows the mending a little nothing to signify." Lady Wraysbury sniffed. She had put down her wool work, and now took it up again. " They do wonders nowadays," she said, "with damaged canvasses wonders, as you say." Mrs. Alton, who had not said anything of the kind (though something of the kind had, to be sure, been said elsewhere), went on, like Lady Alton at Merringham, with her tea. "Well," she said genially, "whatever may have happened to it, there it is. Also our quarrels if we quarrelled are over." "We have to congratulate you, then?" Lady Wraysbury said. "This surely is matter for con- gratulation. A reconciliation, I thought, was the whole object of the visit." The Miss Wraysburys chirped and fluttered. Mrs. Alton kept her patience. "Reconciliation," she said, smiling, "is rather too much of a word for the case. I had fancied relations more strained perhaps than they were. Alton met me as if he had seen me yesterday. It showed me how one might imagine, and go on imagining, things that had no foundation outside one's imagination." The elder Miss Wraysbury wriggled. "We always thought, somehow . . ." "Yes?" " That it was as the mother of of . . ." Mrs. Alton put down her cup, which was empty. "Yes?" " I mean ..." said Miss Wraysbury. "We all did," said her sister. "Mamma was sure of it." 134 tTbe Successor Mrs. Alton looked from one to another. " I don't quite follow you." Lady Wraysbury was spearing her wools with a nervous wooden needle. " I think Clara means that your relationship to Lord Alton's next of kin, so to speak, might have prejudiced him against you. You see, it was his father's picture Edmund's his brother's, of course, but your son's father's. I'm afraid I haven't made it very plain." " Oh, but perfectly plain," said Mrs. Alton, " on the assumption that the picture was wilfully damaged." " It was, you see," said Lady Wraysbury. " We didn't like to say too much at the time. We heard the most minute account of it afterwards. These things leak out, and we had it on the very best authority. They were always parting with their servants. It was a fit of passion the like of which had never been witnessed. He stamped on the sideboard. They say he stabbed the picture with a carving knife. I really didn't like my girls to hear about it." " The room was covered with glass." " He hurled the decanters through the windows through the panes, you know." Mrs. Alton again looked from one to another, a smile playing round her mouth. " Was it as bad as that ? " she said. "The room afterwards was like the scene of an earthquake." " Or a battlefield." " Other things suffered, then, besides my poor husband's picture?" "No other picture. I'm afraid there was only one inference to be drawn." Mrs. Alton heard them to the end, when the dressing bell sounded. ZTbe Successor 135 "Well, well," she said, rising and gathering up her things to take them to her room " well, well, whatever happened then, nothing could have been kinder than he was this day about his brother's son. I needn't tell you that I have been anxious about my boy's future. His uncle to-day removed one great anxiety from me. Edmund is to go to Oxford." Six eyebrows were raised in question. "At his uncle's expense. Alton generously relieves me of all anxiety in the matter." When Lady Wraysbury found her voice, it was to say " How do you account . . . ? " and break off. "Account?" said Mrs. Alton from the door. " Account ? " Lady Wraysbury looked at her daughters. "For the change," she said "the extraordinary change." Mrs. Alton steadied her nerves by shifting her cloak from one arm to the other. "What is extraordinary?" she asked. "Edmund is his nearest relation. He decides, very generously, as I say, to do something for him. I confess I did not feel called upon to hesitate to accept his kindness." The Miss Wraysburys were standing, as she told herself, like stocks, stones, or stuck pigs, and she longed to knock their heads together and shake them. "It's not that," said Lady Wraysbury. "You do perfectly right, and he does no more than he should ; but it has always been thought that he well, resented his brother's son being his heir. You see, having no child of his own ; ; . and your son standing, as it were, for what he lacked ; : . do you see? It was indeed well known in the county no blame, of course, attaching to your son, whose name they said his uncle would not hear mentioned at Merringham. What he did to the picture bore this out though the rights of 136 Ube Successor that affair never, I suppose, will be known. Still, there it was: And now he makes provision for him ! Doesn't it strike you as odd ? " "No," said Mrs. Alton: "It strikes me as only natural." Lady Wraysbury shook her head. "Something must have happened to change him," she said. CHAPTER XIII MRS. ALTON heard of her brother-in-law's illness at the moment of starting for London the next morning. The Rookhampton footman, returning to the carriage after seeing to the comfort of the departing guest, learnt the news from the coachman, whom he found in conversation with one of the Merringham grooms, and being a young man of some intelligence, he hurried back to the plat- form, where he was in time to acquaint Mrs. Alton with the bare fact. The train was then in motion. Mrs. Alton learnt that Lord Alton had suffered a recurrence of the malady which had attacked him in the summer of the year before, and was lying unconscious at Merringham. But that the train was moving she would have alighted, and delayed her departure till she had learnt more. As it was she had time but to send a message to the Merringham servant to beg that particulars should be telegraphed to Curzon Street, and was obliged to resign herself to wait what news might reach her in London. The journey seemed interminable. She wished Alton no ill, and even prayed for his recovery ; but she was only human, and flesh and blood, and the mother of Edmund ... it was inevitable that she should at least envisager all that it would mean if if Alton did not recover. Never had Merringham seemed so fair an inheritance. The sight of it had refreshed her memories, and added impressions to the making of others. . . . Edmund in the gardens ; Edmund calling his directions 138 Ube Successor to the many servants ; Edmund riding down the long avenue. . . . By the merciful ordering of things, and the cleverness of the Rookhampton footman, she had the compartment in which she travelled to herself. Little as she expressed outwardly the commotion into which her feelings had been stirred, she could hardly have borne the presence of curious eyes. Was freedom coming at last? So long had she been a prisoner ; so long strive as she would that he should not feel it had held Edmund bound with her chains. Was a wider life coming at last? She could, she knew, have looked her boy's father in the face and said she had fought a good fight. Edmund one of these days, if as yet he was too young to realise it to the full, would know it too. Nor had she complained. But oh, Merringham ! Was her son indeed to come to the heritage of his fathers ? She held her breath for a moment and closed her eyes. Then resolutely she tried to put the thought from her. Alton would recover. He was not an old man, if marriage had played so frequent a part in his life ! It was this, the number of his wives, that inclined one to think his years more than they were. He was hardly elderly even had not had his share of life or his full " turn." Why should he die ? He would not die. She did not wish him ill ; indeed, she did not. Merringham was his. None else might dispose of it even in thought. Many years must be wished him in which to enjoy his own only ultimately Edmund. . . . But if he did die ! . . . So, in spite of herself, did she see her thoughts work round to the thought of thoughts. She tried to imagine what was passing at Merring- ham. Alton had fallen ill the night before, and was still unconscious. Was it possible to conceive of Lady Alton in a sick-room? By now nurses would have TTbe Successor 139 been sent for, and Balderton perhaps summoned from wherever she was spending her holiday. Alton would scarcely, she fancied, be patient as a patient. She could picture him irritable, self-willed, intolerant of restraint. Hazarding a guess at the nature of his ailment apoplexy ? the breaking of a blood-vessel ? paralysis ? (interchangeable terms, perhaps) she wondered what news the passing of the hours would bring her. The train bore her onwards. She had books with her, but could not read just yet. A large bunch of flowers was in the rack, over her head, and, opposite to her, and where it caught her eye from time to time, a huge bundle of evergreens with which the elder Miss Wraysbury, who meant so well and was so tiresome, had insisted on encumbering her. She did not look back over the past few days with pleasure. Rook- hampton had never been an ideal house for a visit, and her hostess upon this occasion had seemed more than ordinarily trying. Yet she was glad she had gone. Had not a reconciliation been effected with her relations ? and was not Edmund assured his three years at Oxford ? She had been provided with an ample lunch many more sandwiches than she could possibly eat to say nothing of cake and a flask of wine, or wine and water, but London was almost reached before she bethought her of eating. When she did break her fast, a few mouthfuls sufficed her. She was a capable traveller, and, arrived at her journey's end, it was not long before she had claimed her luggage and was rattling in the excruciatingly noisy cab of those days towards home. The shivering and the chattering of the glass drowned thought even. She had set out in fine weather, but London was enveloped in a thin, drizzling mist. The streets looked i4o ttbe Successor wet and cheerless. Hurrying umbrellas reflected on their shining surfaces blurred lights from the lamp- posts and shops. Policemen in their capes looked unspeakably dreary. Half a mile from Curzon Street a cab-runner, soaked and miserable, spied her and began to follow. There was no luggage that her servants could not between them have carried into the house, but hearing in imagination his laboured breathing and the splashing of his broken boots through the mud, she had not the heart to have him sent away. Her servants gave her welcome, and a bright fire in the small drawing-room and the tea that was ready for her a few minutes later served somewhat to raise her spirits. Yet she was shaken and unsettled. The telegram had been her first thought, and no telegram awaited her. They were sure ? They were quite sure. Nothing had come but what letters had been forwarded. A few circulars that had not seemed worth sending on were in the dining-room, and that was all. Her message might not have reached Merringham at all, or might have been overlooked in the general upheaval that serious illness makes in a house. The Rookhampton footman in the hurry of the moment might not have understood her. Against this his " Very good, 'm " sounded clearly in her ears. Lady Alton chose to keep her waiting, perhaps. Doubt renewed her perplexities of the past year and of yesterday. The news of Lord Alton's illness, with all that its possible issue involved, had put every other thought from her mind. Now the misgivings which her kinsman, chuckling, and on the verge of his sickness, had prophesied for her, began once more to assail her. The mother of Edmund was indeed oddly changed from the " caustic lady " who was said to have laughed . . to have let drop a whimsical sarcasm or two . . ttbe Successor 14* to have sharpened a sharp wit on a sensitive hone. . . . With her brother-in-law's promised thousand pounds she spent an uneasy evening so uneasy, indeed, that despite all that she had to tell to Edmund, she put off writing to him till the next day. The morning surely would bring news from Merringham. The morning came. Long before she was called she was awake, and listening for the postman's knock along the street. It was later, she thought, than usual, but at last she heard it. The sharp rat-tat sounded from door to door. It was opposite now. That was Lady Boscombe's heavy dolfin ; that, the new Lord Tantamont's brass Mercury. Now the postman was crossing the road. He was next door but one. How long he was there the servants delaying him, probably, at the area railings as he passed. He was next door. He ... she listened intently, almost persuading herself that she could hear his steps . . . was next door on the other side. There was no letter. Indignation held her for a time. For immediate ease she wrote out a telegram (wording it carefully, however, that it might bear no trace of her annoyance), and despatched it before she left her room. She calculated that she might expect an answer by noon. Then she breakfasted, and went about her household duties. Smaller than ever seemed the little .house that morning, and greater than ever the number of things it needed. That it wanted to be " done up " she had known for a long time. The wall papers were faded, the paint was discoloured. These things must wait. There were matters that asked present attention. Something in the kitchen range had gone amiss in her absence, and must be seen to, and in the night there had been a small leakage from the roof, where yesterday's rain, it would seem, had found out a weak spot. Mrs. Alton gave the M2 ttbe Successor necessary orders. Oh, to know nothing of ranges and roofs ! That was a thought that could be, and was, put from her. She began her letter to Edmund. She would keep it open, she wrote, for what news might come of his uncle, but meanwhile must let him know the results of her visit. She came to the point at once, and told him of his uncle's generosity. She had hardly hoped for an issue so satisfactory. He would know the feelings with which she had heard the proposal, and the joy it was to her that this good thing should be in prospect for him. But to Edmund she need put no curb on her pen. Something of her old smile played presently round her lips and her eyes as she wrote of her visit : of Fido ; the Mason; airs, elegances, graces. "Sumpshus" alone had been worth going to hear. "'Sumpshus' (I spell it," she wrote, " as it was spoken), ' Sumpshus ' would have delighted your ears tickled them as it tickled mine ! ' Inopportunate ' was less delicious, savouring more of a conceivable correctness. But I wish you could have heard." She gave her humour play for a few lines, becoming more like her old self as she did so. Her pen moved rapidly, making a perceptible and not unpleasant sound in the room. The light falling directly upon her, and revealing more grey perhaps in the neat braidings of the orderly hair than one would have expected to find there, illumined a fine type of Englishwoman. Edmund might be proud of his mother. Noon came, but no news. All the afternoon she waited. She kept her letter open till the last moment, and had to post it without adding the bulletin she had thought to receive. More waiting. It was demoralising ! She lost the look of her type. Not till seven o'clock was there heard the sound of ttbe Successor 143 the knock and the ring for which all day she had listened in vain. A telegram was brought to her. She controlled the annoyance she felt towards the dilatory sender and opened the envelope quietly. " Seriously ill," she read in the unpunctuated lines, "London doctors sent for no change." Mrs. Alton said, " Poor Edward ! poor Edward ! " and once more wished him better as sincerely as might be, but in spite of her, her heart leapt. An almost overwhelming wish to have Edmund with her had to be resisted. She began indeed to compose a telegram asking that he should be allowed leave of absence ... on urgent family family what? business? it was scarcely that . . . and only when she found a difficulty in formulating a reason that should not, in the light of anything that might happen, be committal, did she so far abandon the idea as to tear up what she had written. Yet when all was considered, why should she resist . . . abandon the thought ? Why, after all, should she not have him with her ? Were schools, with their rules and regulations, an end, pray, or a means ? She stretched out her hand for another form, but withdrew it in fine, without taking the piece of paper from its place in the rack. Words she could find, of course, in which to express her wish, and Edmund, equally of course, would, if she desired it, be allowed to come to her ; but what would be effected by precipitancy ? She, it was true, would have the satisfaction of her son's company, with the consequent outlet for feelings that were indeed somewhat overwrought, but he, on the other hand (if to no better " purpose" than this she could trust herself!) would of a surety see his mother in a new light ! Mrs. Alton, unstrung as she might be, knew herself well enough to perceive that her present state did her grave injustice. 144 tlbe Successor Lord Alton at Merringham, sick perhaps unto death, but knowing what he knew, would have chuckled, we may suppose, could he have seen then into the poor lady's heart ! The morrow found her still wishing for her boy, but glad she had held her hand. She was more sure of herself, and could view foolishness with a sort of good- humoured and tolerant contempt. A telegram from Merringham brought a slightly better account. Lord Alton was conscious. She wrote to Lady Alton, and we treat her with but common fairness in not questioning the honesty of her sentiments. She hoped Alton was not suffering ; that even as she wrote he was better, and that by the time her letter reached Merringham he might be in such a reassuring condition as to allay all anxiety. She would be watching for accounts of him. Would her sister-in-law have her kept informed of his progress ? Thus and thus did she write ; and waited. She wrote again to Edmund, and then to Lady Wraysbury; and waited. Visitors called. She denied herself to them ; and waited. The sense of so doing was exceedingly dis- agreeable to her. To fill the empty hours, she devised work for herself, and sewed away at a pair of curtains she had begun to make some time before for Edmund's room. The orchids of a recent memory was it only two days ago that she had walked and talked with the owner of them ? got between her and the stuff. Some- thing not unlike an orchid was, she saw, to be traced in its pattern. She had not observed this before. Late in the afternoon came another telegram. The improvement in Lord Alton's condition was maintained. He had even been able to transact some business with his lawyers. Successor us Mrs. Alton received the news with something like relief. He was better \ was going to recover. Indeed, she was glad for him, and for herself glad too, so demoralising had been the uncertainties of the last forty-eight hours. She had gone through a humiliating experience ; learned something of herself at close quarters. Indeed she was glad. Relieved. She had thrown off a burden too heavy for her. Thankful. So she reasoned. It was not for some moments that the second piece of information in the telegram arrested her attention. Why was she told that Lord Alton had transacted business with his lawyers ? That the extent of the improvement might be manifest ? Thus she had read at the first and second readings. Subsequent readings led to others and other. She was puzzled as perhaps it was intended that she should be puzzled. A brisk walk helped to dispel useless speculations, and a chance encounter with an acquaintance, showing her that busybodies were already agog at the news of the day as it might be supposed to affect her and hers, braced her finely. Some of the papers that morning had, it seemed, regretted to learn that Lord Alton de Merringham lay dangerously ill, and so on. Mrs. Alton, scenting inquisitiveness under enquiry, was glad to be able to give the better account of her illustrious relation. She thought the seriousness of his illness had been exaggerated. She had seen him but a couple of days ago, and had never known him to look better. So Mrs. Alton, annoyance (tempered by amusement) helping. She chose the other side of Oxford Street after that for her walk, and measured the length, not ungratefully, of several long and straight streets. A letter from Rookhampton reached her that night, M6 TTbe Successor It told her, with much underlining and many words, a few details of Lord Alton's illness not, indeed, much more than she knew or had guessed. But there was that between the lines which it was not difficult to read. " You are much in our thoughts." " We are so glad to think you have the satisfaction of having seen Lord Alton so lately." "Rely on us to keep you in our minds at this sad time." Rook- hampton, too, was agog, a-cock, a-twitter. As she read she could fancy the chirping. A room in which two or three Wraysburys were gathered together was at any time like a cage of hen canaries. "Well, well! well, well!" said the tried lady. " However, he is going to recover. . . ." So Mrs. Alton, in Curzon Street. . , . But this was as nearly as possible the moment at Merringham when Balderton, silent and still in the silent room, was struck by the silence and stillness. She was alone with her master just then, Berners having gone off duty, and Lady Alton having betaken herself for rest to the sofa in her boudoir. There were no trained nurses (there Mrs. Alton's imagination had been at fault) no hospital women, as it had pleased Lord Alton to call them. Why should there be? Berners on the spot could lift and was handy as a sailor ; Balderton, hastily summoned, was at her post at a few hours' notice. The doctors, in deference to the patient's known prejudice, had sanctioned the arrangement. Lord Alton had seemed better all day notably since the visit of the solicitor, who had been summoned at a demand that was not to be gainsaid, and who had taken certain instructions, the execution of which Lord Alton had refused to see delayed by so much as an hour. Contentment and calm succeeded on Successor 147 this excitement. The doctors had seen him recently, were satisfied, would see him at intervals through the night. He was resting, and was to rest. At nine o'clock the great room was in the dusk of firelight and of a single lamp turned low. Silence held the room not, as it seemed, the breathless silence of impending storm, but a silence in which grave thoughts might travel far. From the bed came no sound ; from the house but faint noises : the distant shutting of a door many doors intervening to deaden it; a far-off murmur of voices; Fido's little bark. Balderton thought of days and a day, and what she knew and had known. She without light to read or to work by could always sit still. She would have deemed it strange indeed if she could not have counted upon thoughts then for company. The life that stretched evenly behind her was accurately remembered accurately remembered, also, so much of the lives of those with whom it had brought her into contact as had come under her keen eye. There was little that she had seen in the day of her, that she had not seen to good purpose. So still sat Balderton that only by the occasional rustle of her silk apron as she moved her hands in her lap, would her presence in the shadow have been suspected. A watch ticking steadily from amongst the medicine bottles on the polished table seemed suddenly to tick loudly, more loudly, still more loudly. Balderton's thoughts travelled back to the silence it emphasized silence of which she herself was a part. What silence ! It was some time since she had moved ; some time since the fire had fallen in the grate ; some time since her master had stirred in the bed. . . . At noon the next day Mrs. Alton telegraphed for Edmund. His uncle was dead. Legitimately now 148 TTfoe Successor might she send for him. He arrived in the evening a tall boy, as we see him for the first time, and a handsome boy; embodying, as has been said of him, all that was best in the stock of which he came ; and bearing a notable resemblance to the picture of his father. It was two days later that there was put into Mrs. Alton's hands the letter which told her that at Merringham a posthumous child was expected. BOOK II CHAPTER I FOR a considerable time after the birth of the solemn but sturdy little fragment of humanity which came into the world some months later, not the least abashed by the honours and glories to which it found itself born, Lady Alton, the mother, plaintive and interesting in her weeds and her widowhood, but curiously nervous and unstrung, seemed to derive solace and help from the uncontrovertible fact that Lord Alton had died happy. The phrase indeed "died happy," alternating with " died content," and rounded or not by a tremulous "at all events," was a phrase often on her lips. She had spoken it in the early days to the doctors, to the nurse, to Balderton, and (into the cradle itself) to the little dimpled creature who had been christened Gundred after many Gundreds, and was known to an interested world from the moment of her appearance in it as the Baroness Alton de Merringham. Later, speaking the phrase with the sigh of one who has earned such con- solations as circumstances may have to offer, she spoke it less generally, perhaps, but whenever her husband was mentioned. If he had not lived, it implied, to see the embodiment of his hopes, at least he had not been denied the knowledge that his hopes were in a fair way to their realisation. She had thus, she appeared to be arguing, much to be thankful for. She would rather, perhaps, have had a son, but fortunately the prospective sex of the infant had been a point as to which Lord Alton could be almost unconcerned ; and she anyway i $2 Ube Successor could not be said to have failed him. All was no doubt for the best. She clung to phrases : all was no doubt for the best ; it was to be ; what would be would be ; we little knew . . . and the like ; seeming to have need of even such meagre support as words could give her. To Balderton, moreover, who was interested but not a little sceptical, the strange lady turned now as to a friend. "You'll never leave me, Balderton, will you?" she said. " I like to have those about me who knew Lord Alton. I have a horror of changes." " I've lived long in this house, m' lady," said Balderton, " longer than many would care to remember too long not to know something of change. I have seen changes in my time, and change too." That's it," said Lady Alton; "that's what Lord Alton said. The rest might come and go, 'but not Balderton,' he said, 'but not Balderton.' He thought of you as apart from the others. You, he said, were attached to the house and the family. His lordship, I may say, had a very high opinion of you." Balderton bent her head. "A very high opinion," said Lady Alton, "and he was no ordinary judge. It was his wish that you should stay with me. The wishes of the dead ..." she broke off. " Oh, it's so strange to think that he's dead," she said. She looked at Balderton helplessly. "There, my lady, there!" Balderton said. "You mustn't give way. If one has been taken, another has been given in his place, There's baby to think of now her ladyship the Baroness, I should say." Lady Alton's lips trembled. "It's only the thought of all I want to teach baby that keeps me up," she said. " Children grow like what TTbe Successor 153 they are with, don't they? pictures, and people, and even places. He believed that, I know." She lowered her voice. " Before baby was born he told me to keep my thoughts on the little fat cupids in my boudoir. I thought one of them looked as if it were dead that was what frightened me one day when I wasn't well (Bonner might remember) ; but he laughed at me. He told me to look at the rolls of fat on him, and the pink in the creases. So you see he believed you could mould them even before they were born, and I've read of such things looking at statues, you know, to make your baby good-looking, and not thinking of anything disagreeable. It's a mystery, of course, but any nurse could tell you. . . . Then how much more afterwards ! A place like this couldn't help making its mark on a child. I know that, and yet. . . . Oh, why must he go and die . . . and . . . and desert me ? When I wanted him most ! It was cruel ! cruel ! " Lady Alton's feelings got the better of her, and she burst into tears. Balderton, who had heard her curiously, pondering, perhaps, the seeming inconse- quence of her words, said dubiously : " There ! " again, and " There ! ", as one who hears but hardly understands the sobbing outburst of a child. Her mistress, she thought, had made, after all, but a poor recovery. " There," she said, " there! Baby couldn't be healthier. Not for miles round would you see a finer child. What you've gone through has upset you." " I am upset. I never expected ... it seemed so different then. It isn't fair. If I had known I should be left like this. ... It has all fallen on me." " Fallen on your ladyship ? " " The responsibility. Sometimes I feel as if I could hardly bear it." "The responsibility?" said Balderton. i54 Ube Successor "You'll help me, won't you?" Lady Alton spoke wildly. " Won't you ? Won't you ? I feel sometimes as if I must have someone to share it. . . ." " The responsibility ? " said Balderton again. Was her ladyship talking at random? Perhaps the housekeeper's look expressed her thought, for her mistress, catching her questioning eyes, seemed, with an effort, to pull herself together. " I'm all alone," she said querulously, and steadying her trembling lips. "Of course I feel responsibility. Everything's a responsibility. Look at this great house. There's Mr. Linster, of course, but a woman looks to a woman. Why do you look like that ? Oh, I know what you mean ! That's all over. There was a time, to be sure . . . but then I didn't understand you as I do now. You can see for yourself that I do now. Do I ever complain? Lord Alton explained to me how you felt yourself to be part of the house. He said your life was bound up with the life of the family. I forget how he put it." " His lordship knew I did my best. I've served the family faithfully, I hope, up to now, and his lordship knew it would be my wish to continue, please God, to do so while there was an Alton to follow an Alton." " I don't know why you should say that ! " said Lady Alton sharply so sharply that Balderton would not have been Balderton (always supposing her words to have been innocent of any sinister intention) if she had not sifted what she had said for its fancied offence. Lady Alton heard her own sharpness. " I don't know, I mean, why you should put it in that way," she said, in a tone of vexed but gentle remonstrance. " You would have stayed, do you mean, if my baby had not been born ? Mr. Edmund is an Alton, you needn't remind me of that. Who could forget it ? Not I. Not the Successor 155 boy's uncle. He made handsome provision. Mr. Edmund, I may tell you, will be able to go to Oxford. That gives him a start in life, and I daresay but we must see what we must see. Of course Mr. Edmund's an Alton. I don't forget it. No one knows better, but it's not a time to remind me. I didn't expect it of you." " I'm sure I meant no harm, my lady. How could I ? Isn't there the little Baroness upstairs in her cradle ? Everyone knows it was his lordship's dearest wish to have a child of his own." Lady Alton's frown lifted. The tears were still on her cheeks. " He wished for a child. You know that, don't you ? I always think his other the other Lady Altons had disappointed him. One couldn't expect him to like to make way for a stranger." " Ah, not a stranger, m' lady," said Balderton, " his own flesh and blood. An Alton, as your ladyship said a moment ago. But naturally he would have liked a son or a daughter to succeed him. There's the little Baroness upstairs, as I say. So long as his lordship had his wish, what cause can we have to repine ? " Lady Alton disclaimed any repining. Her husband had lived to know that he was to have what he wished. Which was but another way of saying that at any rate he had died happy. Balderton, we may be sure, went her way from such talks with food for reflection. Truly, as she had said at the outset of this one, she had seen changes and change. An odd woman, Balderton ! How much she had meant, how much she saw, or suspected, or knew, it would have been difficult to guess from her manner. But we may take it that little escaped her keen eye. 156 TTbe Successor Her mistress continued abnormal, fretting, sighing, looking for support, and seeming for ever on the verge of saying more than she said. For hours together she would hover on the brink of tears. At such times she would wander aimlessly from room to room, pulling up or pulling down a blind, ringing a bell here and there to order an unnecessary fire ; undecided, impatient, driven. A poor recovery? Yet she had been up and about sooner than any who knew her had expected. De- servedly or not, she had a reputation a "name," as we say for self-indulgence, and it had been looked that an interesting illness would be stretched to the utmost possible limits, and be followed by a protracted convalescence. Instead, the invalid's progress from the bed to the sofa, from the sofa to the arm-chair, from the bedroom to the boudoir, and the house at large, was rapid, to surprise you ! As lightly do the women of the poor take such crises and uprise. Mrs. Henster, the brown gipsy of the tumbledown cottage, and of Lord Alton's curious and sudden generosity, brought to bed of a brown boy at much the same time, was not sooner on her feet again. But the poacher's wife up and stirring, her baby slung round her, went her ways placidly enough, suckling or shaking her child when it cried, and knowing nothing of megrims or humours or nerves. It was once Lady Alton had the use of her legs that her restlessness and her weakness appeared. People called. Sometimes she consented to see them, making an effort, as she said ; sometimes, feel- ing " unequal " to visitors, she did not. She drove or did not drive, ordering and counter-ordering the carriage in a way that unsettled the stables. There were wet days, when she would have and keep the horses out for the whole of a pouring afternoon ; balmy days of unex- pected sunshine, when she would shut herself up in her ZTbe Successor 157 sitting-room, and refuse herself even to Gundred and her nurses. Who, said everyone, could have supposed her so much attached to her husband ? Lord Alton, in his lifetime, had been very estimable and all that, and, whatever his personal attributes, had managed, it could not be denied, to persuade no less than three ladies to link their fortunes with his ; but, after all . . . ! Also, as mother of the little Baroness, her position (she had been nobody before she married, as everyone knew) was materially strength- ened. Why, in the twinkling of an eye, so to speak, and without the addition of a year to her age, she might be said to have been advanced a whole generation. By two stages now was the Mason of Liverpool behind her. And then she was comparatively young, and a widow. There were those who could have borne up in her circumstances. Well, well, that was an unusually long and depressing winter. With bright intervals, but short and all too rare, low skies frowned persistently on a chilled or sodden earth. The year hung fire, lacking, it seemed, like the lady herself, vital energies. The fields were white when they should have been green ; tree and shrub and hedgerow meagre when they should have been bursting into leaf. There . were cold rains, part sleet, part snow. After the rains came the mists. When the mists went, it was to give place to east winds. But at last, two months late it was said, came the spring, slowly at first and timidly, then with a rush of green as the year changed. Without let or hindrance the world unfolded. A few hours turned bare woods into bowers. The spirit of youth was loosed and was abroad. The birds were infected with it and sang. The cuckoo was heard, and the voice of the turtle. i s ftbe Successor The rooks had long since been busy in the elms, where callow sounds mixed now with the hoarser cawings. Lady Alton revived somewhat, and revived. There came another change in the speaking of her phrase. Lord Alton had died happy : it had been a supplication at first. Hadn't he died happy ? A plea. Say he had died happy. So in the earliest days. Then a protest : Lord Alton had died happy. She was entitled to the comfort of this knowledge. She would not be robbed of her consolation. Thus in the second phase of her phrase. In the third, to make an end of the matter, Lord Alton had died happy and that was all about it ! She seemed to pause and take breath. Had she reasoned things out once for all? She was going to withdraw from the contention ? Wash her hands of it ? and of the blood of a just person ? The just person had scarcely entered her thoughts. With him, at least, if anyone had concern, it was the dead and not she. For the rest, there were plenty of arguments. Some of them she drew from the Marriage Service itself; some of them even obversely, it is true, to meet the case from the Bible. Had Rachel failed in magnanimity, or Leah, or Sarai ? Had Jacob refused the sacrifice, or Abram ? A greater sacrifice was here. Good gracious ! how much greater! And was it hers, anyway, to think? since at her marriage she had thrown in her lot with her husband. The woman's desire was to her husband, and he should rule over her. Her duty, then, was to him, alive or dead, her obedience, her unquestioning allegiance. Lord Alton, to whom she owed everything, had died happy. What more was there to be said ? Some such reasonings as these may be taken as presenting generally the arguments with which she calmed herself at this time, and together with an im- proving health mind and body acting, indeed, and Ube Successor 159 reacting upon one another may be supposed to have had their share in restoring her to something of her normal appearance and demeanour. She felt herself absolved ? It seemed so. She took heart and looked about her. Seeking interests, then, she found unfailing occupation and entertainment in Gundred, who, a contemplative, and in her fine embroideries a resplendent little creature, began to usurp Fido's place in her arms. Gundred ruminated ; Gundred turned solemn eyes on the world ; Gundred broken into slow but wonderful smiles. Taking most things for what they seemed, she clutched inquir- ingly at her mother's elaborate hair, but was not shaken nor chid. Her nurses were enraptured. They said that mother and child made a picture to see. Lady Alton was gratified. " A picture," she said, " oh, well ; . . ! But it's you are the picture, my darling, aren't you ? Look at her little white hands ! " "Just like your ladyship's own. Aren't her little ladyship's hands like her ladyship's ? " Lady Alton spread her fingers, glistening with rings, and looked at them complacently. " Baby's have dimples. Yes, I daresay mine had too when I was little. And baby's wrists have dear little creases. Mother must kiss them. Oh, baby ! mother's poor nose ! Little precious ! " And then it was Gundred's little feet. " This little pig went to market," said one nurse. " This little pig stayed at home," said the other. "And this little pig," said Lady Alton, "this little pig . . . after all, women were made to have children. I've always wanted a child. That's what has ailed me all this time, I believe" forgetting that she had ailed most since her infant's birth. 160 ZTbe Successor The nurses agreed in chorus. That was it. Women were meant to be mothers. Great ladies were not exempt from the universal plan. A woman's life, gentle's or simple's, was incomplete till it embraced motherhood. "Your ladyship will be as happy again," said one nurse. " Twice as happy," said the other. Lady Alton looked at her crdpe. " In time, perhaps," she said. But already she was changing and changed. She now took her place in Gundred's little life, and gave Gundred a place in her own. She rustled into the nursery twenty times a day, and rarely drove out without the child and one of her nurses. It became her delight to learn the mysteries of the baby toilet of the bath, the dressing, the putting to bed. She showed an aptness in these things that was even a little surprising, and she was patient, considerate, understanding. Thus it was, paradoxical as it may seem, that the hardening of her heart was coincident with its softening. CHAPTER II THAT Lady Alton searched her child's face constantly did not escape one observant as Balderton who indeed, when occasion offered, did not scan it herself with less assiduity. Lady Alton would take Gundred's face between her hands and, looking deeply into her eyes, search them as if for a secret. She would examine her features, scrutinising them closely, as a botanist the characteristics of some plant he seeks to classify. She would hold long conversations with the nurses upon children's ways in relation to their parentage. At what age did they begin to display inherited traits? Lord Alton had had a habit of wrinkling up his forehead. It made lines, and was thus not wholly to be approved. Still, did the nurses think that the little Baroness puckering her face for tears, or screwing up her eyes, when washings were the order of the moment, promised to reproduce it ? All children, the nurses declared, twisted their faces (bless their little hearts !) at such moments. No, they did not think her ladyship need be under any apprehension. Baby was going to be a beauty, there was no doubt about that. Lady Alton hastened to deprecate what was nevertheless well-meant. It was they who misapprehended. A mother would wish her child to resemble its father. It was only that his lordship might be said to have spoilt his forehead lined it before its time, and she would not, of course, like baby to do that. She herself (Lady Alton), had 161 L 163 Ube Successor hardly a line, had she? To be sure, she had no right to any yet, but still There ! Baby was putting her hand to her mouth. Did they see? Lord Alton, she had often noticed, used to bring his well, to his chin and stroke it when he lost himself in thought. Baby really did begin to reproduce what you might call traits, didn't she? though in actual face she promised to be much more like her mother. " I should like her to have my figure," she said, " and Lord Alton's distinguished manner. Lord Alton was not tall, but he had great distinction. Baby will be darker than either of us, I think. But there have been many dark Altons. So curious the way the colours come out again and again ! Lord Alton's father had black hair, I believe, and Lord Alton's was almost sandy. Baby's, I should think, would be nut brown. That's what I should like it to be, though I'm so fair myself." The nurses agreed with whatever she said, declaring Gundred the image of this picture or that. Now it was to Terence Alton that the child's mother suggested, and the nurses found, a resemblance for her; now to John, the cavalier in the hall of widely different type ; now to a former Gundred. In their zeal, on a day they found her like the late Lord Alton's first wife the Andover, Victoria Gwynedd, whose portrait stood on an easel in one of the drawing- rooms ! That, however, as Lady Alton pointed out, could hardly be. An ace only saved them then from giving her the eyes or the nose of the Redruth of Angerstown, whose photograph in a Dolly Varden hat and a grenadine " polonaise" was upon a table near by. So evidently just then were likenesses for the baby their mistress's craze. Balderton, somewhat aloof from the rest of the Successor 163 household, looked on. She went about her business alertly on small flat feet, arranging, directing, con- trolling, making the work of the day to go as on oiled wheels, and keeping her own counsel. Or like a little dark spider in the corner of her web, or a queen-regent in her watch-tower, she sat in her room and thence issued orders and ruled. Nothing escaped her. Without encouraging gossip rebuking it, indeed, in her subordinates, as we have seen she yet knew all that went on outside the four walls of her domain proper. She knew when it was Terence Alton that Gundred was supposed to resemble ; when John the cavalier ; when Gundred of the White Hand. The time came when she had her own opinion as to whom it was that the child resembled. That, however, was not yet, and meanwhile she sniffed to herself over the nurses' enthusiasms. What did they know of the past glories of the house ? New-comers themselves, they took people naturally at their own valuations. To them Lady Alton de Merringham was Lady Alton de Merringham. What standard had they to judge her by? So Balderton then not that she was antagonistic exactly to the curious mistress she served. She com- mitted herself to neither approval or disapproval. Her attitude was rather that of one who sits on a fence. Time was when, if she had seen Mrs. Alton, she would have discussed the lady and the situation freely and by the light of her minute observations. Now she was content to observe in silence. Lady Alton talked to her, asked her opinion upon this and that, consulted her, smiled on her, but seemed no longer on the verge of making con- fidences. She appeared to have passed a stage in the history of her needs, and, like the housekeeper herself to be self-sufficing. She had now a gracious word for 164 Ube Successor everyone. William even, her arch-critic, began to reconsider her. She had, he said generously, her good points. Meanwhile, the first rigours of mourning being over, a few people were asked to tea " quietly " at Merringham. Gundred, jumping and jerking in her nurse's arms, played a prominent part on these occasions. As her veils in the days of her 'more elaborate robing had been lifted proudly for her display to interested eyes, so now would ritual attend her presentation. She would be sent for with many ceremonies. If she were sleeping, she was not to be waked, and so forth, and so on. Or, the day being fine enough for the garden, she would come on to the scene in her perambulator, which had a white silk awning, C-springs, and was fashioned in the semblance of a swan, aad there would be a grouping round her as of pilgrims about a shrine. Lady Alton, who contrived to give the air of ceremonial to the occasion, and to invest its smallest circumstance with pomp and rite, spoke of the baby as "her little ladyship," or "the little Baroness" giving her not infrequently the whole of her Alton de Merringham ! and called her a Sacred Charge. "We are all expected to bow down and worship," wrote the elder Miss Wraysbury to Curzon Street. "I am bound to confess that most of us do. The sweetest little thing you ever saw if only she isn't spoiled, as she is quite certain to be directly she is able to understand the fuss that is made of her. Mamma says it is quite ridiculous. There was never, she says, this fuss made of either of its. Lady Alton if you could see her! treats her (the baby, I mean) like royalty She not the baby, but your sister-in-law TTfoe Successor 165 is in crpe from head to foot. One has to admit that it is very becoming to her, but I fancy it must be generally thought to be a little overdone. Such very deep mourning, and then her hair in such sharp contrast ! Mamma, I know, though she does not say so, thinks golden hair quite unsuitable for a widow. Her own, as you know, has been grey ever since dear papa was taken from us, and she gave up using Mrs. Page. One does admire consistency. You, dear Mrs. Alton, are much in our thoughts." But talk as people might, raise their eyebrows, or laugh in their sleeves, they went to Merringham readily, and with a pleasant sense of expectancy. Nor did they come away disappointed. Lady Alton, if she was regarded somewhat in the light of a raree-show, had taken a firm hold on the local imagination. From having been overlooked in the life of her husband as far as might be without actual slight to Lord Alton himself she bid fair to take her place as one of account in the neighbourhood. The company of the small fry was always to be had for the asking, but now "personages," the elect, those of the inner circle of the county who, in other days, had left perfunctory cards, or none, sought her out, and manifested an interest in her existence. The shire's one duchess, her Grace of Middlesex, paid a visit of curiosity. Lady Abbotswood and the Ladies Camlet, Jane and Jessica, drove over from Broadhanger. Lady Henry Witton-Wilson said that she and Lady Alton must see more of each other. And Pandora, Lady Winstaple, who never went anywhere, and had ceased calling upon Lord Alton's wives after the death of the second, saying when she heard of a third that she could not keep up with them, descended upon Merringham in 166 tTbe Successor state, and with a gift for Gundred in her august hand. Lady Winstaple's visit was the visit of visits, though at the outset, by some momentary misunderstanding, it promised badly. How or why, who shall say ? An abrupt manner perhaps took the baby's elegant mother aback, for to her visitor's " I, you see, know all about her," she turned a blank face, while, instead of respond- ing with the genial civility which the occasion seemed to demand, she gave a little exclamation which seemed indeed to be jerked from her. " Her father . . ." began the visitor and paused, thinking something amiss. " What about him ? " said Lady Alton, with stiffening lips. " If you don't know it, I may tell you that I knew him well." " You knew . . ." began Lady Alton. " I knew him well," said Lady Winstaple. " I go further than that. I knew not only her father, but her father's father all about her, you see, as I began by saying." Lady Alton seemed tongue-tied. Her flow of careful commonplace failed her. " And that," said Lady Winstaple, who was thinking that never had she met anyone so extraordinary " and that is naturally more than can be said even of her mother." Lady Alton sat, as the visitor expressed it to herself, like a stuck pig. Lady Winstaple snorted. " One of 'em," she said shortly, "was dead, wasn't he ? before you were born or thought of; and as for me, I'm old enough to remember the Flood." What it was that had exercised Lady Alton, Lady tbe Successor 167 Winstaple did not know, but she broke into sudden smiles, and with " To be sure ! To be sure ! " (though that was scarcely, perhaps, the right response to her visitor's gratuitous admission of years), changed her manner completely. Extraordinary creature! It was well to have been prepared for surprises, it seemed, on this visit of inspection. As Lady Alton had been tongue-tied, now was she expansive. More, she was cordiality itself. Lady Winstaple knew not what to make of her, but was diverted, and not sorry she had called. Gundred was sent for and presented to her, and her gift coral and silver bells presented to Gundred. " You who knew so many of my husband's family," Lady Alton said, "which of them do you think she resembles ? " " It's early days for likenesses," said the old woman ; " those will come out by-and-by." " My husband," said Lady Alton, " was quite different in looks from the rest of the family. Likenesses are strange things, are they not ? We think her much more like some of the pictures." Lady Winstaple stayed for more than an hour, so we may suppose her visit, however it began, to have afforded her entertainment of sorts. " You mustn't," she said, when she rose to go " you mustn't visit my sins of omission upon me. I never, as I daresay they've told you, go anywhere. Moreover, bear with me if I confess that I lost patience with with someone who I see now knew his own business best. It was none of mine, anyway. You gave him a beautiful child, which is what my two poor friends couldn't do for him. He would have been proud of her." i6& TObe Successor " He er he died happy," said Lady Alton, Lady Winstaple went her way smiling. Report had not misrepresented Lady Alton the " Paris diamond," the " barmaid in weeds " but after all . . . and was not that, in fine, what she had come out for to see ? Rolling Lady Alton upon her tongue, she drove home to her hill-top. Lady Alton, on her part, when the hall-door had closed upon her visitor, laid her hand over her heart and said, " Oh, my goodness ! " with eyes to the ceiling. She was thinking perhaps of the momentary " awkward- ness " which had marked the beginning of the visit, and wondering what she could have been about so to lose the use of her tongue. Presently, however, the signifi- cance of the visit itself began to occupy her, and soon to outweigh other considerations whatever these may have been. Lord Alton would have been gratified. The Old Woman of the Hill had called on her. She saw the county at her feet. She looked forward. At the end of a year she would be able to see a little society, go out "quietly," of course give and accept informal invitations ; at the end of two she might entertain. She had Gundred brought to her, and sent the nurses away. " Everything will be for you, my heart's joy," she said. " I make you my life's end and object as you were his end and object . . . attained, mind you 1 Attained, you little funny thing you ! Attained ! do you hear me ? Never, I don't believe, was anyone so ardently desired. Never, do you know that? Why, they speak of the wish being father to the thought, don't they? You were the Thought. He was the Wish, then, in all conscience. If you were the Thought, my goodness, who else was the Wish? Ube Successor 169 Isn't it simple enough, when you look at it reason- ably ? As simple as simple. As simple as mother's little innocent here. So mother's got no responsi- bility but baby. Mother didn't see that at first, and was very, very unhappy. But now it's all been made plain to her, and she sees her duty as clear as clear. As clear as clear she sees it, and you are her sacred charge." The Wish and the Thought ! A travesty (in sound, at least) of such juggling with words as Lord Alton himself in certain moods used to delight in. Gundred took all solemnly. Everything, everyone, was for contemplation to her wondering eyes. She turned grave looks upon her nurses, the other servants, Fido, the nursery lamp, and all shining things; and regarding her mother not less intently than that curious person regarded her, indulged no doubt in much interesting speculation concerning her. She broke now into one of her wonderful smiles. Lady Alton kissed her, and carried her over to an easel on which stood a portrait in crayons of Lord Alton. " The first word your little lips are to speak is 'Father,' my darling ' Father.' It'll be a long time, of course, before you can say it ; but ' Father/ do you see ? ' Father.' " She pointed to the picture. " Daddy, dad-dee." She went over to the mantelpiece and took down a photograph, waving it before Gundred's round eyes. " Daddy," she said again. " Daddy dad-dee." She took up a miniature and repeated the words. Then she carried Gundred round the house, showing her the Alton ancestors one by one, and pointing out to her in what particulars she might be said to resemble them. CHAPTER III MRS. ALTON in Curzon Street had bowed her head with sufficiently good grace to the inevitable. She did not repine, beat her head against the bars, nor after the birth of Gundred seek to relieve her feelings by giving breath to such smallnesses as "smuggled infant" in reference to her, " baby of the warming pan," " impostor/' " interloper," or what else might suggest itself to the embittered or the disappointed. Embittered indeed she was not. Disappointed ? She was Edmund's mother, and would have acknowledged unreservedly to dis- appointment. But the hours of uncertainty over, with their exasperating complement of petty humiliation, she had risen up undiscomfited stronger maybe for the knowledge they had given her. She had been proud of Edmund. The recollection of ten minutes of boyish feeling given boyish reign she treasured for what had succeeded them. Edmund (it was a revelation to her) had been conscious of the chains that held him. One of the natural consequences of her effort to give him his fair start in the race of life. Had she not placed him handi- capped by want of means amongst the unhandicapped ? She became aware in those ten minutes of what he had kept from her. Still, for the sake of the qualities that showed themselves, when the first smart was over, she would not have wished things otherwise. If the dis- cipline had been severe it had not been lost on him. She saw her boy ready to face life for himself. Edmund, in truth, had not looked to dead men's shoes. 170 tEbe Successor 171 Merringham had been no more to him than the symbol of a state of well-being, into which in the very distant future it might be his lot to step. He spoke of it as little as might be, and had never indulged in vague allusions to the position in which he stood with regard to it. Till the week of his uncle's last illness, when the possible, looming suddenly big out of the darkness, had come so close as to speak to call itself the probable, the assured, the accomplished even he had hardly given his potential inheritance serious thought. Not his mother only had felt that week to be demoralising. Carefully as she had written, her restlessness had com- municated itself to him, who so seldom was restless, and what was to be expected had happened. He had hurried up to London, supposing himself one thing when he was another. For two days he had been allowed to suppose . . . and was so heartily ashamed of himself ! What he had seen in his forty-eight hours' imaginary reign I cannot tell you. Freedom, scope, a clear horizon; so much we may guess. He may have remodelled the house and the stables, planted, cut timber, shot, hunted, fished ; wild horses would not have dragged this from him. While his mourning was being made, and, with his mother he had waited further tidings, there had been time and to spare for such mental exercises. He was not idle, we may be sure. He asked an occasional question. There were trout (for example) in the stream? There used to be. His uncle did not fish but his uncles and his father had been keen fishermen. No doubt there were trout. " Your uncle has made great improvements." " This house looks so shabby," he said cheerfully, out of a silence. It had " done " well enough, Mrs. Alton said, implying maybe that it had served its purpose. She was glad to 172 ZTbe Successor have had nice things pictures, china, The walls, after all, were well covered. " Mother ! " Edmund said more than once, with a long breath and shining eyes, and half laughing for very excitement. " Oh, mother ! " She knew so well what was in his mind. Afterwards she was glad that some things had not been put into words. " There are a lot of people," he said, out of another teeming silence " a lot of people who have been most awfully good to one," and paused. His mother waited. " Well, one hasn't been able to do much for them," he said, "has one?" " I don't think people want any return for kindness," Mrs. Alton said, "... people who are worth anything . . . worth thinking about." "Still, one would like . ." said Edmund, smiling. So his thoughts ran then. His mother neither encouraged nor checked him. Each knew what was in the mind and the heart of the other. Well, we know how, and how rudely, such imaginings were dissipated. The iron entered into Edmund's soul, but he was strong enough presently to pluck it out. After all, possessing nothing he had lost nothing. If Fate had mocked him, he had allowed himself in this week of disintegration to be betrayed into providing the opportunity. After his brief outburst he pulled himself together. He was sorry that his mother should have seen, while she, as we know, for the knowledge it gave her of him, was glad. He too had seen something illuminating. Any thought of his mother which came to him at school or elsewhere gave her amused eyes, shrewd, tolerant, witty. Successor 173 He did not remember ever before to have seen even whimsical tears in them. "Why," he said, "mother!" " I have a horrible feeling that you owe this to me." " To you ! I owe everything else to you. Do you think I don't know what I owe you ? " " This with the rest," she said, half to herself, " though I should be hard put to it to say how." She could have laughed. The blow was to be taken quietly and without spleen, but it is not to be supposed that a mind active as hers did not find occupation. Not a word spoken in the Merringham hothouses but was large now with elusive meaning ; not a tone, an inflection, a gesture, but was reticently eloquent. She had food for thought to bewilderment ! The laugh was with dead Alton, small doubt of that ; but, and but, and but. ... Oh, there were plenty of "buts"! At the end of three days Edmund went back to Winchester. For the sake of appearances, Mrs, Alton would have wished him to have been present at his uncle's funeral, but as Lady Alton made no sign of desiring his company she did not suggest it. So back he went to school a little older, perhaps, for his experiences, but none the worse for them and in due course came the news of Gundred's birth. That clinched matters. Mrs. Alton, having faced the situation, had accepted it unconditionally, and no insidious thinking of Gundred in the light of a " slender life between" was allowed to hold her for a moment. She was glad, on the contrary, that the child was strong. Merringham for good and all was out of the reckoning. In the lull which followed these somewhat exhausting experiences, Roderick Carmelin, Mrs. Alton's beguiling brother, turned up and paid her one of his flying visits. 174 TObe Successor He was wholly delightful, full of sympathy for her, and as Edmund was not there to run risks of contamination by his uncle's dangerous and persuasive influence, she could permit herself to enjoy his reprehensible society without misgiving. If she had a weak spot in her heart, it was for this good-for-nothing to whom, if the years taught no wisdom unless to live for the moment be the truest wisdom of all ! they were yet so lenient that he hardly looked out of his teens, and had kept unimpaired the boyish good looks which stood him for fortune, and a thousand " good fortunes " to boot. Poor Roddy, with the slow, pleasant voice, who, if he had ever made any apology for his life, or had the grace even to see that it needed apology, would have pleaded, I doubt not, that he was the Pilgrim of Love ! Love, like wisdom, was justified of her children, and love was abiding. It was not his fault if the object of love must change, and the inconstancy of the lover be the chief earnest of his constancy. In some such perverse and whimsical way he would have argued. " I make," he said, " a distinction between riding away and riding on. I only plead guilty to riding on." Mrs. Alton had long since ceased to judge him by ordinary standards, or indeed to judge him at all. There were laws Roddy seemed to be outside them. Moreover, as life had taught her to gauge something of the essential difference between one nature and another, so had she divined the astounding divergence of individual experiences. That all things do not happen to all men was a conclusion she had come to as the sum of her observations, and Roddy, who could not help being Roddy, was of the kind to which things do happen. So much a clear-sighted sister might guess. Anyway, and let his morals and the excuses that Successor 175 were to be made for them be what they might, she was unfeignedly glad to see him. He was of her own flesh and blood. To him she could unburden her soul and say what she could not write. " My poor old Susan," he said, from time to time. "There's nothing to say," she said. "One has not even the right to be disappointed. One had no right to expect and one didn't expect. Roddy, we've never been time-servers, any of us. You know that. Only it seemed as if Edmund must . . . didn't it ? It was like finding one had drawn the number next to the prize in a lottery." As for a moment she thought of what she had gone through, she allowed herself an " Oh ! " and an " Oh ! " Roddy had seen Lord Alton in Belgium the year before, and said he had thought him much changed. He had kept out of his way, however, and did not know the third Lady Alton by sight. Like Lady Winstaple, the " Old Woman of the Hill," he said it was impossible to keep up with the wives of a man who was always replacing one by another. " This one, all the same," he said, " must be allowed to have justified him." " She appears certainly to have justified herself," said his sister. The talk veered round to Edmund, for whom his uncle had the liveliest sympathy. " Poor young Edmund," he said, " it was damned hard lines. How did he take it ? " " One gets a knock or two in life," said Mrs. Alton. "One may as well learn early as late to take what comes." "He stood up to it, I'll swear. Took it without flinching." " He didn't fail me." i7<* ITbe Successor " He's a Carmelin," said his uncle. Mrs. Alton shook her head. " An Alton," she corrected him, and looking at his handsome face, smiled as she remembered some words from the memorable interview with Lord Alton. She had deprecated, she remembered, the suggestion that Edmund might take after her family. Her poor dear father she had said, or poor Roddy as one who should add, " God forbid ! " ? c No, no, Roddy, an Alton, not a Carmelin." Roddy said the boy might do worse than take after the Carmelins. Mrs. Alton met her brother's fine eyes in a looking glass, and smiled again. " Wretch," she said, " I'm not denying you looks. As a family, you've enough and to spare poor old father ; Caroline, till just before she died ; and you, of course. Edmund has looks, I'm thankful to say, but somehow he doesn't get them from us. I'm even glad that he's fair." Though Edmund was fair, however, and Roddy was dark, and though Edmund was so like the Altons, who, in turn, were so unlike the Carmelins, there were yet points of resemblance between Mrs. Alton's son and her brother. Strangers observed them people who did not see the two often. There were moments, indeed, when Edmund was remarkably like his Carmelin uncle. " I'm sorry he's not here," said Mr. Roddy. " I should like to have seen him." " I'm sorry too," said Mrs. Alton. " I should have liked you to see him. All the same," she added, "as you know, I'm always rather relieved when you don't." Her brother smiled. " I should do him no harm." " Dear Roddy ! " said Mrs. Alton. TTbe Successor 177 But he was as impossible as ever, and before he left wanted to tell Mrs. Alton one of his adventures must tell her! " When I was at Bruges . . ." he began. Mrs. Alton put up her hand. She knew his adventures but too well. " Last summer," he began again, " when I was at Bruges . . ." Mrs. Alton would not listen. There, he declared, she was wrong, for he had, he said, such a little story to tell of silence and mystery and the night as Boccaccio, at one end of the line of story-tellers, or De Maupassant at the other, would have rejoiced to find to his pen. " Boccaccio himself," he said ; " or coming down a few centuries, De Maupassant. Either would have jumped at it." Mrs. Alton did not doubt him, but would not hear, though she laughed. "Silence and mystery and the night," he repeated. " You don't realise ! Boccaccio, I tell you. De Maupassant. . . . Think ! Someone I never saw . . ." " Be quiet," said Mrs. Alton. " You are abandoned abominable ! Is it any wonder that I don't want Edmund to see more of you than is necessary ? " She was cheered, nevertheless, by his visit. Time now began its usual beneficent work. With Edmund growing up under her eyes, and showing himself more and more capable of looking life in the face on his own account, it did not seem long before she was able to regard what had happened with equanimity. Partly to tide over the most difficult period of all, partly because her boy's words on an open day had not fallen on deaf ears, she contrived to scrape together enough to allow the house to be put into the hands of M 178 TTbe Successor paperers and painters. The work of choosing, the very inconvenience of the business itself, interested her and helped her. The weeks slipped imperceptibly into months, the months into a year, two years, and Edmund his uncle's thousand pounds having duly come to him -was presently a freshman at Balliol. She heard of her sister-in-law's " successes " with quiet amusement, but as of happenings infinitely remote. If she permitted herself a jest or two upon the subject, it was as one who jests upon that with which he has little concern. Poor Alton, it was clear, had been a disadvantage to his wife, since, standing now upon her own merits, his widow found foothold ! The Miss Wraysburys plied her assiduously with news which she never asked for, and upon which, in her answers to their gushing letters, she seldom commented. Merring- ham, she heard, was never empty of parsons. Edward again, who, patron though he was of several livings, had not cared much for parsons! Their place, he used to say, was the pulpit rather than the drawing-room ; and he would, if he could, have curtailed their occupation of that but he, to be sure, was not " churchy." Lady Alton, vice-reigning at Merringham, was nothing (did report speak true) if not " churchy " a very bulwark of what, in an elegant moment, she was said to have called the Sacred Edifice and carried on Sundays, with her scent bottle and her pocket handkerchief, a prayer book of monumental proportions adorned with the smallest possible coronet and the largest possible cross. All this came as gossip from a far country. Curzon Street was nothing to Merringham ; and Merringham now nothing to Curzon Street. Time went on. The Wraysburys fell off in their correspondence, finding it somewhat one-sided perhaps. People ceased to speak to Mrs. Alton of her relations upon flimsy pretext or ZTbe Successor 179 none, and, hanging on to them, to look sympathetic and be irritating. Edmund's letters breathed Oxford, and Oxford, and Oxford youngness, the joy of living, the world for a football ; and Merringham, no longer a thought at the back of all other thoughts, drifted further and further away. CHAPTER IV So for a few years yawned the breach between the Altons de Merringham and the Altons, and so might the breach have continued indefinitely to yawn, if on a day and at an hour when circumstances took a couple of distinguished travellers through Oxford, Edmund had not chanced to be at the station. He had come to pick up a parcel which he knew to be waiting for him, and as it was some time in forthcoming, he had strolled out on to the platform. A lady, from the window of a first-class carriage in the train which had just come in, was trying to attract the attention of either or each of two persons : a young woman her maid presumably whom she appeared to have despatched to the bookstall with incomplete instructions, and the boy from the refreshment room, whose back, by the natural perversity of things, was towards her. Another young woman who seemed to be a nurse, and on whose knee sat a little girl of three or four years old, was respectfully pulling her mistress by the sleeve with a "Let me, your ladyship. Let me." Edmund, who saw and heard what was passing, proffered his services. "If you would ask that tiresome boy with the tray to come here," the lady said gratefully. " My little girl wants a bun. Thank you! And further, if it would not be troubling you too much, you see the young woman in black by the bookstall? would you add to my obligation to you by asking her to come to speak to me ? " i So trbe Successor 181 Edmund, assenting politely, was moving away when a porter, who had come up behind him and was waiting, touched his cap and said : " Alton, sir ? Did you say Mr. Edmund Alton, sir ? The parcel is here." "All right," Edmund said. "I'll see to it in a moment." He hurried after the boy with the buns, and having despatched him up the platform, went over to the bookstall to deliver his message. The lady meanwhile was repeating the porter's words to the porter : " Alton, did you say ? Edmund Alton ? " The maid, with a "Very good, sir, thank you," hurried back to her mistress. Edmund, looking round, found himself face to face once more with the porter, who in turn had a message for him. " Wishes to speak to me ? Very well," he said, and went back to the carnage, concluding as he did so that the lady had exaggerated views on the subject of the thanks which small services demanded. The maid, with a handful of silver and more directions, was already on her way back to the bookstall. Edmund, as he approached the carriage, became conscious that he was being looked at curiously. The little girl, kneeling now on her nurse's lap, was at the open window by her mother. Edmund had an impression of solemn eyes with mischief in them, and the underneath more or less of a penny bun. The lady was speaking. " I have a fancy," she said, " to know whom I have to thank." "You have not to thank anyone," said Edmund; " but my name is Alton Edmund Alton." In a moment he knew. This was his aunt, and the 1 82 ZTbe Successor Bun (with the beautiful eyes) was his cousin. It occa- sioned him, therefore, no surprise, though some small inward excitement, when he heard himself identified as the lady's nephew. " By marriage," she added, but she put out a gracious and most beautifully gloved hand. She looked at him with interest, but did not, it is perhaps worth noting, appear to be affected by anything deeper or less transient than such small fluttering of the surface emotions as any unexpected meeting might have caused her. The dominant note of her aspect was that of a sort of beneficent complacence. She was elaborately dressed. Edmund had an impression of furbelows, laces, and sumptuous appointments generally. " My nephew by marriage, if you are indeed Edmund Alton, for I am Lady Alton de Merringham, and this is your cousin Gundred. Say how do you do to the gentleman, darling." The little girl extended her unoccupied hand. Edmund took it in his. When he had shaken it she retained hold of his finger, and for as long as the train stopped she held it. Whether or not the child's action had any part in determining Lady Alton's attitude, I cannot say, but Edmund saw that she eyed him kindly. Perhaps, however, as he was exceptionally well favoured, and a nephew of whom any aunt might reasonably be proud, his looks, of which he was wholly unconscious, had something to do with her graciousness. He thought her " not half bad " not quite a lady, perhaps, in the sense in which his mother was a lady, but " not half bad." Vague benevolences and cordialities seemed to pervade her. " I wonder," she said, " whether Mrs. Alton would spare you to us some time or other for a little visit? Successor 183 You have never seen Merringham, have you ? Oh, well, not since you were a little boy. Not, anyway, in my time. Your uncle's health was uncertain for so long his last few years, indeed. Aren't you thought very like your father? There is a portrait of him in the dining-room that you remind me of you may have heard. Indeed, your uncle always said you promised to be like his brother. You must come and pay us a little visit some day if, as I say, your mother will spare you to us. You remind me much more of the picture of your father than of her. You hardly remind me of her at all." " I'm sorry for that," said Edmund. He was trying to think of whom it was that, as he looked at his little cousin, he himself was vaguely reminded. " I should like to be like my mother. Like my father, of course, but like my mother too/' " Ah, well, perhaps you are a little when you speak. But, to be sure, I have seen your mother so seldom. She has so rarely honoured us with a visit." She was carrying the war into the enemy's country, and perhaps thought better of doing so, for abruptly she turned the conversation to Gundred, who was becoming more and more absorbed in her new relation. "We're taking this little person to the sea," Lady Alton said. " I've had a illness," said Gundred, speaking for the first time. Her mother smiled. "Nothing infectious," she said to Edmund; and to Gundred in parenthesis : " An illness, darling." " A nillness," said Gundred. " A little feverish cold," said Lady Alton indulgently ; " but sea air was prescribed for her. I had a wish to see the Welsh coast, so we're going to Llandudno. To-day, 184 ttbe Successor of course, we only go as far as Shrewsbury, believe in rushing things ; do you ? " But Gundred, having found her tongue, had begun to talk, and the few minutes that remained before the train started were filled by her. She showed Edmund her bangle and her little blue brooch, and an infinitesimal scar on her little fat wrist, which, she explained, was her burn. She had also, she said, a bruise and a bump. Her mother and the nurse and the maid, who had returned from the book-stall, watched her, smiling. " The jolliest little kid," Edmund was saying to him- self, and in anticipation to his mother "the jolliest little kid. The prettiest little thing you ever saw." When the moment for farewell came, and the guard's whistle sounded, Gundred, told to say good-bye to him, threw her arms round his neck. So tightly did she hold him that, the train beginning to move, he was forced, amid shouted " Stand backs ! " to take his place for a moment upon the step. Gundred's arms were unclasped from about him by the excited women in the carriage, and he stood down. In doing so, however, he nearly lost his balance, floundered for an instant . . . but kept his feet. Those who saw, perhaps, had the worst of the incident. Lady Alton gave a little cry and shut her eyes. People sprang to the windows. All was well ; but for many years Gundred clung to the belief that she had nearly been answerable for his death. Edmund calmed excited officials, waved his hand to the departing train, and trying to look as if he had not overheard the remark of a motherly spectator, who didn't wonder his friends wanted to kiss him, went back for his parcel. Lady Alton, meanwhile, was giving Gundred admonishment. " Oh ! " she said, " oh ! " her hand to her heart. " You Successor 185 shouldn't, my dear darling ; you really shouldn't. It was most dangerous. You must never again ; never again from a railway train. If he hadn't recovered himself, or had stumbled or slipped, I hesitate to contemplate what would have happened. I shudder to think/' " He'd a-been killed to a certainty, your ladyship to a perfect certainty. Oh, it was naughty of you, my precious ! " " Killed dead ? " asked Gundred. " Killed dead," said her nurse. " Like a door nail ? " That was what dead things were as dead as in the nursery or the course of a walk flies or butterflies or little field-mice, and once a beautiful robin redbreast. You touched them, and they did not move. They were said then to be dead as a door nail. " Luckily, he managed to keep his feet," said Lady Alton. " He was most mercifully and spared," said the nurse, " but the turn it gave us all ! " " I feel it still," said Lady Alton. The immediate result of this was that luncheon was eaten a little earlier than had been intended ; the more indirect, but the further reaching, that Edmund remained in a mind out of which he might else have slipped. So it came that the tentative invitation which she had given on the spur of an expansive moment became actual, and Edmund found himself asked to name his own time for a visit to Merringham, The note, which was cordial, ended with a postscript : "Your little cousin specially hopes that you will come." Mrs. Alton heard of the friendly encounter at the station with interest, some amusement, and an open 186 C&e Successor mind. She was not surprised that her boy should have made, as it was evident that he had made, a favourable impression upon the unaccountable lady. You had only to see Edmund. But somehow it was not a little diverting. Lady Alton, she doubted not, felt that with the little Baroness beside her she could afford to over- look family feuds. Bygones were to be bygones ? Hatchets buried ! It seemed so. Well, why not ? Time had taken the sting not only out of a dis- appointment which, as she had herself said, she had had no right to feel, but even out of what she had had every right to feel the peculiar maliciousness of Lord Alton's attitude towards her on the day when, knowing what he knew, he had kept silence the longer to laugh at her. That indeed had been difficult to forget. She had no wish however, to maintain hostilities. She wrote Edmund her views, bidding him go to Merringham by all means if his aunt should renew or substantiate her invitation. When, therefore, the definite invitation came he accepted it wondering a little what there would be to " do " and named the beginning of September for his visit. September that year came in crowned with sunshine and the fruits of the earth a ripe month, a rich month, a month of plentiful harvest. Smiling skies were over a smiling land as Edmund was borne by a fast train towards the home of his fathers. He had parted with a friend at Lucerne after a happy and extremely healthy three weeks in Switzerland, and half regretted an engagement which brought him back to England. He looked forward however, rather than back, and interested himself with conjectures as to what it would be " like " at Merringham. He had been told to bring a gun, so he supposed he might expect a go at the TTbe Successor 187 partridges. His tennis racquet and his fishing-rod were in the rack over his head. At the station he was met by a carriage, and was soon bowling over smooth roads, and behind a pair of fast- trotting cobs to his destination. He recognised old landmarks from the time when in his childhood he had been with his mother a yearly visitor at Merringham. The roads were much as he remembered them, but the hills were not so high in which respect it is probable that the hills suffered by his recent experience of mountains. But what a country it was, what a country! It was green with pasture where it was not yellow with corn. He felt something of what his mother had felt when she looked at the view on the day of her "temptation." A land truly which the gods had blessed ! Presently he was at the entrance to the park, which had been approached from the west side, where there was no lodge. When the footman got down to open and shut the gate, Edmund stood up for a moment and looked about him. He wanted to see if he remembered what had been to him as a child a place of enchantment, and wonder and delight. Yes, he remembered the park. It was as it had always been, nor, as he was borne to a click-click of hoofs on yellow roads, through nearly two miles of it, did it appear to him to have shrunk. The greensward in undulating lines, with here a gnarled oak or a clump of beech trees, there a stretch of bracken, seemed boundless as ever. Nothing was changed. There was the old scurry of bob-tailed rabbits as the carriage passed ; the same perfunctory trotting away of the deer when the herd was surprised on the open. The bridge over the stream greeted his eyes next, and the sight of the lake. A few minutes later he was at the house. i8S tlbe Successor There was the sound of the bark of a dog, followed by another sound, the scamper of feet upon a polished floor, and an excited little figure in blue flung itself into his arms. Behind her was someone in whom, from the old days, he recognised Balderton, and who, appearing as she did before the butler and the footman could reach the door, must have been listening in company with her young mistress for the sound of the wheels on tha gravel. CHAPTER V WHEN Edmund looked back upon this visit to Merringham, it was Balderton, and always Balderton, who stood out most clearly from among his impressions. Perhaps because after Gundred she was the first to give him welcome? Perhaps because in Merringham as he had known it neither Gundred nor Lady Alton had any existence! Like the servants, his uncle's wives might come and go. Balderton, like the house itself, was abiding. Whether or not it was with a deliberate intention of giving him welcome that she had met him with Gundred upon the threshold, he was not able to determine. Curiosity regarding him, or more probably devotion to her little mistress a devotion which was apparent in all that she did, and which would dispose her to enter in sympathy at least into the little girl's obvious excitement had part, he was inclined to think, in the motives which prompted her action. There she was, anyway, and when, with a frank " How do you do, Balderton ? I'm very glad to see you again ! " he put out his hand, she looked not surprised but gratified, as she curtseyed over it, and in curious old-fashioned terms bade him welcome to the house of his fathers. She scanned him eagerly, seeking and finding, as he guessed, likenesses for him to his father and the two uncles he was said so strongly to resemble. Something like the outward expression of a misgiving passed, he fancied, over her face for an instant, and caused him, 189 i9 Ebe Successor when he thought later that he saw the same look again, a vague wonder. She bent quickly and kissed Gundred, who had hold of her hand and of his, and the servants appearing at this moment, she delivered him over to their ministrations and withdrew, her keys jingling softly. She went, if he could have seen, to the dining-room, and stood silently and for many minutes without moving under the restored picture of his father. Even then Edmund was impressed. Though she had passed from his sight, and he had no knowledge of her movements, he yet had sense of her even after he had been ushered into the drawing-room, where Lady Alton, rustling in silks and laces, and expressing in every look and gesture a complacent self-satisfaction which seemed to radiate vague well-wishings and benignities, received him cordially. The great windows were open to the terrace, the tea-table placed near to them. A garden hat with hanging pink ribbons lay on a sofa at hand. Lady Alton, who had had her own tea, bade Gundred ring for more, which appeared almost at once, and then, while she asked him of his journey and the like, she took her place at the glittering table and officiated gracefully amongst the cups. In her manipulation of them she crooked her fingers, he observed, and was perhaps altogether rather more "elegant" than was strictly needful. But he was not in a mood to be critical. Summer scents and sounds came in from the garden. There was a delightful coolness and airiness about the room itself Lady Alton's shady hat contributing even in a measure thereto and he was pleasantly hungry and thirsty. Tea had never tasted better than that which he was drinking, and the bread and butter and the Successor 191 cakes with which Gundred most engagingly plied him taking toll herself, with her mother's smiling permission, from a plate or two were delicious enough to have engendered indulgence, if any had been necessary. Fido, to whom he had now been made known, danced about him, begging irresistibly, and died for Gundred and the Queen. Edmund at tea, and with Balderton hovering interestingly at the back of his mind, was enjoying himself. That evening, Lady Alton said, there would only be themselves with the exception of the Rector of Little Merringham, who was coming to dinner. The next day she had arranged for him to shoot, if that was agreeable to him, with some neighbours whom she named. There would be other shooting to be had if he cared for the sport. A few people were coming to stay in the course of the next day or two, and there were garden parties at Merringham and elsewhere in prospect. She hoped he would not find his stay very dull. " But we are quiet people," she said, " and our friends are kind enough to take us as they find us." Edmund made some suitable rejoinder. He was not afraid now that his stay would be dull. Merringham was a place of many delights. The gardens, as he saw them from the window, were gay with flowers to attune the mind to pleasantness. A gardener passed, tending what should please. The sun was shining. "Now you must eat a peach," Lady Alton said. "Your dear uncle was very proud of our peaches. They have been thought to be fine. Give your cousin a plate, and a knife and fork, darling. Let me see how well you can carry them. Now the peaches. Both hands, dear ; that's right. Or perhaps he would ratber have an apricot or some grapes ? " But Edmund preferred a peach and took one, adrnir- Successor ing it as he did so. It was indeed such a specimen of the fruit as any fruit grower might have been proud to claim to his harvest, and like some others which Lady Alton may or may not have remembered, might have represented the peach for all time in a picture of still life, Grapes, apricots, and greengages, all exquisite of their kind, were on the table from which Gundred had taken and to which she returned the dish safely. The natural beauty of these things contrasted oddly with the singular gaudiness of the dessert dishes upon which they reposed. Edmund, in spite of his disinclination to aught that savoured of cavilling, found himself glancing at his plate. Later he learned that it was vain to ignore eccentricities in his aunt's taste, which, controlled no doubt to con- siderable extent in the life of her husband, were not now to be overlooked. Queer little tuppenny - halfpenny " ornaments," for instance, stood cheek by jowl with objects of art which, even in his inexperience, Edmund could conceive to be of long and discriminating accumu- lation ; and grandiloquent plushes and satins warred here and there with faded but precious brocades. Lady Alton bought largely at bazaars. When Edmund had finished tea he was shown his room a big oak-panelled chamber, overlooking the park whence presently he descended to rejoin his aunt and Gundred, whom he found on the terrace. Lady Alton wore the garden hat with the fluttering ribbons which he had seen in the drawing-room, and in it looked like a somewhat mature Watteau shepherdess as she played with her little daughter. Gundred ran to him as soon as she espied him. She was caught up, kissed, and lifted to his shoulder. Holding her there he ran with her, to her screaming delight. She had no fear. His h^t flew off. She tlbe Successor 193 clasped her arms round his head, more by way of expressing the ardour of her affection than for support. She had little gold bangles on her wrists, and one of them pressed his forehead so that a little mark was made upon it. Lady Alton looked on smiling. " Isn't she very heavy ? " she said from time to time, as they returned to her or she came up with them. " Isn't she too heavy for you ? " or, " Don't let her tire you," or, " You must be very strong, are you not ? " She looked at him with something of admiration. Lord Alton, as we know, had been a variation from the Alton type, and here was the type in perfection. Making due allowance for period, Edmund repeated in his appearance certain of the family characteristics as they were exemplified in half-a-dozen portraits which hung upon the walls of the old house. Careful study of such records (in the interests of Gundred) had made Lady Alton familiar with them. She was not stupid or blind. She was confronted with what she must necessarily have seen. Small difficulty to trace like- nesses for Edmund ! Yet no revulsion of feeling took place to disturb her equanimity. She could look at him with complacent approval, as one who, in tune with pleasant things and pleasant thoughts, looks at a pleas- ing prospect or what else is impersonal and gratifying to the eye. Lord Alton had said she was wonderful. Her detachment was complete. She showed Edmund the gardens that day, as Solomon may have shown his gardens to the Queen of the South. Like her, he felt that, modest in all probability as was Merringham compared with many and many another place of which he knew the name, though no more as yet than the name, the half had not been told him. The spell of the gorgeous evening was upon him. N 194 ^ be Successor Gundred, on foot now, ran before. She ran back every now and then to point out this or that to him, to seize his hand, and, when her excitement outsped the pace her leisurely mother was setting, to pull him along with her. Thus she dragged him a ready slave to her imperious willing to see the view which his uncle had shown to his mother. " A view," his aunt said, as, overtaking the pair, she sat down upon one of the stone seats " a view which has been thought fine, and which your dear uncle may be said to have discovered." She explained to him, as Lord Alton upon a memor- able day had explained, how the trees had grown up and stultified the scheme of his ancestor who had designed that part of the gardens. " The end of this terrace was evidently planned for nothing else than to command the stretch of country before you. Ah ! everyone admires Merringham. How fond your uncle was of it every stick and stone ! Yes, darling, you may stand upon the parapet if Cousin Edmund is kind enough to hold your hand." Edmund lifted the child up on to the broad grey stone. He put his arm round her. The stillness of evening was settling upon the land. The shadows were lengthening, and the light was golden with a tinge of pink. The sun, eclectic in his favours, picked out a wood here, a bit of upland there, as if for benison. The air was extraordinarily clear. You could see to the edge of the world. Edmund stood silent. He knew, as his mother had known when it was she who had stood where he was standing, that not all that was visible was Merringham ; but in the exceeding loveliness of the scene was some- how comprised all that held the spirit of the place, and all, anyway (his mother's thought, if he had known it !), Successor 195 was Merringham's to see was Gundred's was the little child's beside him. Without a thought of himself, this made Gundred seem wonderful. " I was sure it would please you," said Lady Alton. " I take particular delight in this spot myself. To me it is indissolubly associated with your uncle." She said " indiss0/ubly," as Edmund could not help noticing. He found himself hoping that Gundred had not observed the false accent, and then smiled as the absurdity of the apprehension struck him. But he hoped that when the time came for a governess she might have the good fortune to fall into the hands of a gentlewoman. It was his first experience of certain feelings which, hardly realised as yet, were at times to define them- selves clearly. Lady Alton, profoundly unconscious of what was passing in her nephew's mind, continued to give utterance to amiable sentiments and commonplaces. She bade him look at the bees, whose hives stood in a row under the wall ; and she paraphrased the estimable Dr. Watts. She had something to say about the calm of the evening, which for her, she said, turned the thoughts to peace. Resting upon her elbow, and looking approvingly at the landscape, she declared herself thankful to live in so beautiful a world. Gundred, tiring presently of the parapet, was put down. She wanted to be shown the gold fish in the basin of the fountain, and to show them to Edmund. " We mustn't tire Cousin Edmund," said her mother. "It will soon be time to dress for dinner, and I daresay he has seen enough for to-day." But Cousin Edmund, though it seemed to him that he had seen a good deal, was not tired. " Well, just the gold fish, then. But isn't this nurse 196 ttbe Successor coming for somebody ? Isn't it ? I think it is, Shall we keep the gold fish for to-morrow ? " A figure had appeared upon the steps. Gundred flew to Edmund's hand. No, no ! Her mother had said she might show him the gold fish. " Just the gold fish," she said, and looked to him for support. " The gold fish, please ! " said Edmund. There was nothing that he wanted so much as to see the gold fish. If he did not see the gold fish he would not be able to sleep that night. " Five minutes, then, nurse," said Lady Alton in- dulgently. " And you needn't wait. I shall be coming in then. I will bring the Baroness to you." The five minutes were extended to ten. When the gold fish had been duly admired, there was the fountain itself, which had to be turned on for her ; then turned off that she might see it stop, then turned on again. After that, unheard-of delights ! What it was to have a newly discovered cousin ! Edmund was found to have the power of making the water do wonderful things such as it never did for the gardeners, who were generally requisitioned to work the magic key which set it playing. He could make it jump high or low, die down to a gentle gushing, uprise suddenly to startle you. " Again," said Gundred, " again ! " and shouted with laughter. Her glee was infectious. Lady Alton, protesting that it was time to go in, but unwilling to set a term to delight so inspiriting, let her stay from minute to minute. Edmund, laughing like a school boy, and keenly enjoying the little girl's amusement, anticipated a tussle of wills when the final moment should arrive. There was nothing of the sort. Zlbe Successor 197 " Now," Lady Alton said. He turned off the fountain. Gundred watched it dwindle, " helped " him to take the iron key from its socket and put it away, and giving him one hand, trotted round cheerfully to give her mother the other. So the three walked up to the house: Lady Alton, Gundred, Edmund Gundred holding a hand of each. There was something singularly intimate in the appear- ance they presented as they walked thus. Here was a family party, a stranger would have said, though he would have been puzzled, perhaps, to determine how the members of the little company were related. Between two of the three there was no resemblance; between other two, something of resemblance, though not much ; between the remaining two, of the combina- tions possible to the number, as much resemblance as might exist between persons differing from each other in every particular, but recalling a common third. That the three which we have thus been separating into pairs at our pleasure, should stand to each other in the relations respectively of husband, wife, and child, was as impossible as that they should be mother, daughter, and son. Yet each of these hypotheses, howsoever instantly to be rejected, would have presented itself to the speculative observer. The little group, then, may be said to have looked united. There was one who thought so, and marvelled, though she held her peace. Perhaps it was Lady Alton's shepherdess hat which gave to her face the peculiar serenity of the face on a bon-bon box. Not a care was behind that smiling exterior to cloud it. She who saw, and who, if she had not lived in a house of many pictures, might have been expected to know more of the art of the bon-bon box than of eighteenth century France, could have pointed to a picture or two 198 ftbe Successor by Watteau or Fragonard or Pater in her late master's special collection which presented faces of like unshadowed complacency. She might then, if her education had allowed her to go a step further, have drawn many interesting inferences, and learned some- thing of the influences of laxer times. But if she thought of the picture it was but to find the nearest comparison for a face as she saw it, and she went no deeper into the matter nor into side issues at all. The three, meanwhile, were smiling as they approached the house one boyishly, as at the second's chatter; the second of very youngness and lightness of heart ; but (and this it was which filled her with amazement) neither was smiling more naturally or with less complete disingenuousness than the astonishing third. Edmund and Gundred became conscious at the same moment of someone behind the curtain in one of the windows. " Balderton, Balderton ! " cried Gundred, and ran into the house. But Balderton was not at the window when she reached it. She was in the hall, however, where Gundred found her a moment later, and was folded in her arms. " Did you want me, my darling ? " " I only saw you looking at us," said Gundred, and burst into accounts of her cousin's exploits with the fountain. Balderton said " Oh ! " and " Just fancy that," and " Up to the sky and then down again. Dear, dear ! dear, dear!" "Were you wanting me?" asked Gundred slyly, a moment later. There was sometimes what was called a " Good-night " biscuit in Balderton's room. "I'm always wanting you, darling. You're just the light of my old eyes . . ." tTbe Successor i$$ The rest of what she said was murmured under her breath. Edmund, who had followed Gundred out into the hall, did not hear it. But Gundred was nearer and heard. " Why did you say that ? " she asked. "Say what?" " ' God forgive me,' " said Gundred, quoting conscientiously. "Did I, dear?" said Balderton. But she addressed herself to Edmund for answer. " It is difficult not to risk spoiling this young lady," she said. "You will come to believe that, sir, if you don't believe it already." She looked at him curiously. CHAPTER VI EDMUND'S visit passing pleasantly was, to outward seeming, uneventful. He had two or three days' shooting, and acquitted himself well, to the gratification not only of himself, but of such as had known his father, and had looked to see a sportsman in his father's son. The knowledge that he had his father's reputation to live up to, to say nothing of his sporting uncles', put him on his mettle, if it also made him a little nervous, and he was glad to find that he was thought to have given a satisfactory account of himself. He heard himself called the " right sort," a " chip of the old block," an "Alton for you," and gathered that it was pretty generally agreed that he would " do." It would be idle to pretend that he was not elated. Contemporaries of his father's, who had not cared much for the late lord, wrung him cordially by the hand. Time was, said one of them, bolder or less discreet than the rest, but happily into his private ear time was when they had looked to to see him young Edmund's boy (his father, it seemed, had been known as young Edmund) reigning at Merringham. "Your uncle, though, with the help of your third aunt, changed all that." To this, Edmund, who felt that the speaker's goodwill towards him was making for delicate ground, said nothing, and was glad that his youth made excuse for him in his momentary lack of a suitable rejoinder. In truth, he was somewhat taken aback, and could have thought of nothing to meet the case. He was relieved, 200 Ube Successor aoi therefore, when the conversation was changed. But he had been made to feel that if " things had been other- wise," he would have been welcomed at Merringham for his own sake as well as his father's, and incidentally had been allowed to divine something of the attitude of the county towards the lady whom his indiscreet friend had spoken of as his third aunt. He might have had more shooting, but felt that of the ten days of his visit he must not absent himself for more than a reasonable number. The guests of whom his aunt had spoken had duly arrived, and proved agree- able, if they were in no way remarkable. All came from the neighbourhood from which circumstance it may be conjectured that outside the calling radius of Merringham Lady Alton had not many acquaint- ances. There were the widow of a bishop and her two daughters ; an old admiral, who had known the Carmelins, and asked cordially for his mother, and slyly for his Uncle Roddy, of whom Edmund, by the way, reminded him a little, he said ; a young soldier from the Depot ; a weather-beaten Diana, of imperturbable good-humour and no particular age or sex ; and, that the scriptures of the gossiping Miss Wraysburys might be fulfilled, a brace of the local clergy. It was not, perhaps, such a party as the hostess of these days would have collected for the entertainment of a young guest during his stay, but it served its purpose well enough. At the garden party and the three dinner parties which followed, Edmund, playing host for his aunt with becoming modesty, enjoyed further popularity and won golden opinions. He played tennis with the younger members of the party, and croquet, a game then in its decline with the elder. Archery at this time had gone out, but there were still targets at Merringham ; and Lady Alton> *62 tTfoe seeing a certain elegance in what she called the Pastime, was trying to revive it. With such amusements, and Gundred for a perpetual plaything, the time did not hang heavily upon his hands. The ten days were extended to a fortnight. He was urged to stay longer. The child, indeed, had cast a spell over him. He found stories to tell her, developing an unsuspected talent as the need arose. Thus he discovered that he knew all about the fairies who dwelt in the heart of the flowers. More, he could tell of a race of little prickly beings who lived under certain weeds nettles, for instance. Then the gold-fish, Gundred learned from him, served for steeds to the water-elves who inhabited the fountain, but who only rode out on very wet days when you were indoors, or when the wind made such a ripple on the water that you could not see down into it. On ordinary days, as you might see for yourself, the gold-fish were riderless, which "just showed," he said. Gundred readily accepted such " evidence " as conclu- sive, realising, perhaps, that you had to accept some- thing, or there could be no stories, and there were stories . . . such stories ! When Edmund had got to the " And so they married and lived happily ever after- wards " of one, Gundred would demand another. " When people marry do they ..." she broke off one day to ask breathlessly. " Do what ? " said Edmund. " Live happy ever after ? " " Oh, always ! " said Edmund. Gundred considered. " I nearly killed you," she said, following what train of thought it would be impossible to say. " Anyway, I might have done you a injury." " A injury," said Edmund. " Dear me ! a injury ? " trbe Successor *<>$ " Nurse says so," said Gundred solemnly ; " a vital injury." And with " nurse," whom she quoted, meant mortal, no doubt ! Edmund laughed. The idea of Gundred in connection with injuries tickled him hugely. He dropped a line for a probable bite. " Shall we say an injury ? " he said, smiling, as Lady Alton upon a similar occasion had said " an illness." Gundred took the bait at once. " A ninjury," she said, to his delight, as before she had said " a nillness." He swung her off her feet, held her shoulder-high, kissed her. "You're the rummest little beggar," he said; "the rummest, and the prettiest and the dearest." If she had indeed done him a " ninjury," mortal or vital he laughed again at the thought he felt that it would have been easy to forgive her. He remembered Balderton's devotion to her, and understood it. Had she not said to him in so many words that he would come to understand it presently, if he did not already. Small difficulty to understand ! Not for a day or an hour did that wonderful September fail of its promise. The days were the days of June. There were starlight nights to draw you into the gardens, and later to keep you from your bed. Edmund, retiring with the rest, but reluctant to part with each day while the summer should last, would lean from his window and breathe the air deeply into his ardent young lungs. With the scent of the roses which climbed to a foot or so below him were those fragrances peculiar to Merringham of which his mother, less sensitive though she may have been to such influences, had yet been conscious upon the autumn day of her trial. In the semi-darkness he would 204 Hbe Successor surrender his mind to lazy activities bred of his mood and the hour. . . . It was presently the last night of his visit. The rest of the party had dispersed the day before, and Lady Alton, at closer quarters with him than she had been since the evening of his arrival, had disarmed by her graciousness whatever there may have been that was derogatory in his estimate of her. For even involuntary lapses in loyalty towards her, when little errors of taste or of breeding had jarred upon him, he took himself to task. How still it was without and within how still ! The moon, rising, vanquished the stars almost as he looked. He watched the light spread and the shadows shift their places. The park then, white in the pale radiance, with patches of inky blackness under the trees and where the ground was uneven, stretched to the horizon and seemed boundless. A night-jar called. The sound recurring at brief intervals laid stress on the silence. Edmund at his window kept vigil, communing, however unconsciously, with the night and his boyish soul. Gundred, in her nursery, slept the flushed sleep of healthy childhood. Lady Alton, in her sumptuous bedroom and the hands of the long-suffering Bonner, disrobed leisurely, and soon, too, would be sleeping. Edmund, Gundred, Lady Alton . . . one roof over all. In the housekeeper's room, from which opened the linen closet upon one side and the little panelled chamber in which she slept upon the other, Balderton, like a sentinel at his post, or, more aptly, like one whom Ube Successor 205 his lord at his coming should find watching, was yet astir. This was the hour when she made up the books, which, kept in her neat crabbed hand, and showing never a blot nor a smear, were balanced to a farthing. This was the hour when such work was done as she would entrust to no hands but her own. There was linen at Merringham from the days of fine linen. If you had looked at the table-cloths and napkins on the fragrant shelves of the linen press, the sweet-smelling towels and sheets and pillow-cases, you might, with keen sight, have arrived at a conclusion as to how the strange little woman employed herself when the rest of the household slept. There were hands in plenty to have done the work for her, and we need not suppose she allowed them to be idle. But certain things no one might touch. Here were darnings, if you looked for them, such as the needles of few could have executed fine drawings, hardly to be detected for cunning and subtlety. Long after the sounds had ceased in the house, and the last candle was extinguished, one lamp would be burning under its green cardboard shade. Overseeing, directing, controlling ; counting, comparing, balancing; guarding, renewing, preserving, Balderton laboured early and late; Lord Alton had not over- rated her services. She, at least, whenever it should be asked of her, would be found ready to give account of her stewardship. . . . On this particular night, her books made up for the day, she was engaged on some repairs of more than usual delicacy. The clock ticking loudly upon the mantelpiece was almost the only sound which broke the stillness. As on the night of Lord Alton's death, there were periods to be measured by minutes when, for any sound that she made to proclaim her presence, the room might have been supposed empty. Her needle 206 Ube Successor travelling slowly through cambric was scarcely audible ; her breathing wholly inaudible. To one pausing, say, on the threshold, the rustle of her dress when she moved in her chair would have come as a surprise, and the sudden rattle from her work-box, when she rummaged in it for this or that, as a thing unexpected, startling. The rest was a silence so profound that in it the call of the night-jar, considerably more distant here than from the room in which Edmund hearkened to it, was yet discernible. It was perhaps the intricacy of the work upon which she was engaged that caused her usually smooth forehead to wear such a frown. She could work and think, however. Her face, if she had raised it, would have been seen to be seamed as with care. It was late when she finished what she was doing. She smoothed her work out and examined it mechani- cally. For a moment or two she seemed not able to see, and with a little exclamation of impatience passed her hand over her eyes. She picked at a stitch or two with the point of her needle, and looked again. Then taking a square inch or so of the material between the first finger and the thumb of each hand, she strained it gently. A pucker hardly to be detected disappeared. She did not seem wholly satisfied even then, but deciding, probably, that she could do no more that night, she gathered up her work, and taking the lamp with her, went to the adjoining room. She unlocked one of the great presses which lined the walls, and restored what she had mended to its place. At the sight of the laden shelves, before which she lingered, her face gradually cleared. The appeal of flax to her was never made in vain. Her fingers touched the linen reverently, and with a movement almost caressing. . . . Here in the linen closet the night-jar calling in the park could be heard distinctly. Balderton, who had Ube Successor 207 been dimly conscious of it while she worked, now became actively aware of it. As she stood contemplating the things which her soul loved, she listened. She liked the sound. As it had seemed to Edmund upstairs to make the silence more silent, so for her it pointed the stillness of the sleeping house. Noiseless herself in all her movements, she had affinity with the stillness, and if for that reason alone she took pleasure in being up while others slept. When she had locked the doors of the cupboard and returned the key to her pocket, she went to the window and opened it. As she did so, another sound smote her ear a sudden and sharp sound, small but penetrating, the first of a series of little agonised squeals from somewhere near-by in the garden. She knew what it meant a rabbit caught and struggling in a trap set by one of the gardeners. A memory stirred within her. She shut the window quickly, but found she had not shut out the sound. The crying was piteous. It beat against the glass . . . against her. She stood irresolute, arguing with her softness of heart. Rabbits could not be allowed on the flower-beds. There they were vermin, and like other vermin must die. But the cries, and the memory of other cries. . . . She took up the lamp and went quickly from the room. As she reached the hall, someone was running downstairs in the darkness. Her lamp showed her Edmund. He recognised her. "There's a poor little devil of a rabbit caught in a trap under my window," he said. " Before I go to bed I've got to knock it on the head." Balderton did not say that he ought not to have troubled himself. Without speaking, she led him quickly to a side door which communicated with that part of the 208 Ube Successor garden whence she judged the sound to proceed, and drew back the bolts. Edmund stepped out into the moonlight. Balderton, standing in the doorway, watched him run down the path. She was now in the very grip of a memory. What was happening had happened before. Edmund was bare-headed, and having just begun to undress, was in his shirt sleeves and collarless. He had not waited for his coat. Even to smallest detail was an incident of long ago repeating itself. . . . Thirty years back just such a little squealing had disturbed her. A hundred other such squealings must have been heard by her in the course of the years between, but across them, as across a gulf, it had been to the cry of one particular rabbit that her thoughts had been transported to-night. Why? Who shall say? The breeze, perhaps, was in the same quarter ? The trap by chance in the same spot ? Who could tell what combination of circumstances made for similarity? She had remembered before she saw Edmund, or knew that anyone had heard the sounds but herself. That was strangest of all. Balderton closed her eyes for a moment. Thirty years back a young man, comely in his half-dress as this one, had hurried through that very door on a like errand of mercy. Thirty years back she had waited, as she waited now, for a little burst of keener squealing which should precede silence. Edmund came back to her in a few minutes. He held a dead rabbit in his hand. " Poor little beast ! " he said. A moment or two ago its little frightened heart had been thumping against his palm. "Ah," Balderton said, as she saw it, " they've gone back to the old traps. His lordship would not have them used." Ube Successor 209 They stood for a few seconds discussing snares and the little dead animal. " But you'll catch cold, sir," said Balderton. Edmund shook his head. Balderton looked at his healthy face. No, he would not catch cold. But he came in and she bolted the door. He still held the rabbit. "What shall I do with it ?" he said. " I'll take it," said Balderton. " I beg your pardon, sir, I was forgetting." She took it from him. " Your father," she said, " came down one night just as you've done to-night. He had heard a rabbit squealing, and couldn't sleep till he'd put it out of its pain. I met him in the hall as I met you. He was in his shirt-sleeves just as you are yourself, sir. That's thirty years ago, sir. When I look at you it might be yesterday, or rather it might be to-night it might be this minute, and you might be my Mr. Edmund, sir. It makes one think, sir." Edmund looked at her with interest. " He couldn't stand it either ?" " He couldn't bear the thought of anything suffering, sir. Sport, he said, was different. We stood talking, Mr. Edmund, as you and I are talking now. Sport was different. It was the thought of anything dragging out time in pain. Those were his words as near as I can remember them." " I wish I had known my father," said Edmund. " You are so like him, sir. Doesn't Mrs. Alton think you like ? " " Yes. More latterly, I think. Lady Alton said so too when I first met her." " She never saw him," said Balderton. " She has only o 2io abe Successor pictures to go by. That's not the same as flesh and blood." She was waving her mistress aside. "She never saw him," she said again. "And it doesn't do," she added, " to be seeing likenesses all the time. They're family things and they're odd things, and you never know where they may take you. My lady is a great one for likenesses." Balderton's manner was hard, but not disrespectful. " A year or two back it was all likenesses for a baby who was pretty much like most babies, but not just then like anyone else. Well, one might say now that she was like you, sir. There is a look . . ." "Quite probably though of course one never sees these things oneself. Still, cousins generally have some traits in common." " Just so, sir, and you may see one likeness sometimes through another. You're like enough to all the Altons, sir, but you're like your mother's family too like Mr. Roderick Carmelin as I remember him. So as the little Baroness is like you, and you are like him, we shall be finding her like him next." " She is rather like him," said Edmund. " Why," he added, remembering, " that is who she's like.'.' The elusive thing had been puzzling him. " I've seen it since I've seen you, sir." " Rummy," he said, " for though he's my relation and she's my relation, he and she are no relations." " So where would likenesses lead us ? " said Balderton. She looked at him blankly. But as she looked her face softened. Something that was maternal came into it, and her tone when she spoke next had lost its harshness. "When you came in at the door, sir, a fortnight ago . . ." She broke off, and there was a moment's pause. " You ttbe Successor 211 shook hands with me, sir. It was that, I think, partly. Your father and your uncles always shook hands with me when they arrived from anywhere even his lordship. It came naturally to them, as it were. And you looking like one of them did the same thing. I hadn't seen you since were a little boy, but if only by that, sir, I should have known you for one of the race, sir, which I have had the honour to serve." It was in tune with something of strangeness in the meeting of these two in the sleeping house that they presently found themselves in the dining-room, standing under the picture which had played its part, however passively, in the affairs of the family. Balderton, tilting the cardboard shade, held the lamp so that the light was thrown on to the canvas. Directed thus, the light caused the seams in it to show more than they showed by day. Out of a pause Edmund heard himself saying : " How did it happen ? " He thought Balderton gathered herself together to speak. " We shall never know, sir. But his lordship was not himself neither then, as I think, nor to the day of his death. He was never quite like other people. He had much to try him, and always one vexation. You never knew how he would take anything. Something had happened to upset him that day. I am as sure of that as that I stand here. He was ill afterwards, as you have heard. But he wasn't himself, sir not then nor to the hour he died. If he had been himself . . .'' She stopped, and there fleeted across her face that expression which he had remarked on the day of his arrival. A child's painted ball lay on the sideboard under the picture. Gundred, Edmund remembered, had brought it in with her to luncheon, and some trifling difficulty 2i2 ttfoe Successor having arisen in connection with it, one of the footmen had been told to put it away till the meal should be over. By chance it had been overlooked, and had lain on the sideboard ever since. It broke the thread now of what Balderton had been saying : "My little mistress will be looking for this in the morning, sir. She generally runs into my room the first thing when she comes down." Edmund waited, looking up at the seams in the picture. Some change, however, had come over Balderton, or he thought so. " His lordship was ill when the accident happened. No one was with him. We found him unconscious, and the picture torn as you see." Her arm may have been aching. She put the lamp down, and the tilted shade slipped back into its place. The effect of this was to plunge the picture into darkness. They stood talking for a few moments longer, but something seemed to have come between them. What Balderton said was not what she had been going to say. The intimacy of the last few minutes had received a check, and Balderton had receded from him. Her face when he searched it for explanation was inscrutable, and the strange interview ended in a constraint which even the sight of the little dead rabbit, lying where Balderton had placed it in the hall, was not able to dispel. CHAPTER VII LADY ALTON'S life was fuller now than in days when the hostility of a favoured servant had had the power to annoy her, and her serenity too deep-rooted a thing to be easily shaken. It was some time, therefore, after the going of Edmund from which date, as uncomfortable consideration made her afterwards aware, the disturbing change actually took place before she became conscious of something that was disquieting in Balderton's look, and in her attitude generally. If, off hand, she had given the matter a thought indeed, she would probably have believed herself proof against influences of the kind. As she would have supposed herself released by custom, circumstance, education even, from the petty thraldom of sensitiveness to the opinion of inferiors, so would she assuredly have supposed herself quit once for all of morbid apprehensions. Had a qualm assailed her ? since the early qualms to the onslaught of which illness and a backward spring had conspired to expose her ? In lonelier moments even ? In the watches of the night ? In dark days or the long summer evenings ? Never ! She appeared to have reasoned things out to good purpose. Her sleep was unbroken. The beauties of sundown, if we are to believe her, attuned her mind to thoughts of peace. Beside Gundred, then ? Face to face with young life happy, guileless, unquestioning ? We have heard her call Gundred a sacred charge. Face to face, then, with Edmund ? With Balderton, we have seen her give him her hand. 213 214 ZTbe Successor What, moreover, as we may reasonably pause here to ask, had the lady to fear? A glance at the situation would have given her, of the original protagonists, one silent, the other silenced. Lord Alton de Merringham, dead as the Andover or the Redruth of Angerstown (poor, unsatisfied ladies !), could not speak if he would. Susan of the erstwhile sharp tongue had taken her defeat whatever she may have suspected, or refused to suspect, of the means used to defeat her and treated the contest as over. Whom else? Herself, Edmund, Gundred and somewhere, at a venture, a gallant whom we know nothing about, but may guess at, a seeker after adventures, a light-lover, anyway. . . ! Of these might any one be thought likely to move ? Not Edmund, who was unsuspecting as poor, innocent Gundred herself. Not the stranger, who in the obscurity which enshrouded him knew as little of the mischief he had wrought as we know of him. Not Lady Alton, one would have thought, who might surely at this length of time wipe her mouth with a " Tush ! " and a " God hath not seen ! " We upon our part may put two and two together, and to such a making of four, as, adding a fourth to the trio we have seen hand in hand, gives us pause indeed . . . but what should arrest Lady Alton on her tranquil and prosperous way? What move her out of it? Disapproval, however, is an insidious thing, working oddly, and when she became aware of the new unfriendliness of one whom she had thought long since to have conciliated, she found herself, to her surprise, at close quarters with a formidable menace to her peace. Edmund had been gone a month when she first noticed what she was soon constrained to attribute to his recent presence. So taken aback was she that she thought she must have been mistaken. She saw Balderton with Ube Successor 215 Gundred, and was sure she had been mistaken. She saw Balderton alone, and knew that she had not. The servants were surprised suddenly to find amusements being planned for them. A detachment was sent in a brake to a neighbouring fete ; another to an entertainment at Westerton Derbolt in connection with the bazaar for the organ fund. " In the winter," Lady Alton said to Dunwich, William and James being by " in the winter you shall have a ball. It is time we thought about such little pleasures. His lordship, I know, would have wished it. There hasn't been a servants' ball in my time, but there shall be this year. I will speak to Mrs. Balderton about it, and you must talk it out amongst yourselves. Just think it over, you know, and let me know when you all think would be the best time, and I must see if I can manage it. I think you all know I like to give you what little recreations are in my power about Christmas, I thought, or the New Year. I daresay I may be entertaining myself just then, but we must try and manage, mustn't we ? I like you all to be happy." Thoughtfulness thrice thoughtful ! What had come to her? William's pleasant impudent face, when Dunwich glanced at him, was one large wink. Lady Alton smiled and went a benevolent way. She was not less exacting, as Bonner could have testified, but she had assumed a giving mood. She sent for Mr. Linster, and spoke to him provisionally of the ball. He would help her to arrange it when the time should come ; and was she doing all that she should for the tenants ? " It is here," she said, " that I miss the guiding arm so much of Lord Alton. He always knew so exactly the right thing to do. I should like there to be no discontent on the estate. . , ." 216 TCbe Successor There was none, Mr. Linster assured her. Farmers, of course, always grumbled a little, but while there were half-a-dozen applicants for any farm that became vacant, there could be no complaints worth serious consideration. As in Lord Alton's time, every farm was let. "Ah, I know," said Lady Alton, "that the land is rich and fertile, and that here at Merringham we are abundantly blessed. I know, too, that in your hands the tenants are sure of fair treatment. I do not forget how high an opinion my husband had of your discretion. But is there anything that I personally could do ? Any little attention that I could pay them, and that they would like? I do, of course, call on them all from time to time, and take the little Baroness, or send her with her nurses. But anything further is there anything further that I could do to please them ? " Mr. Linster thought not. There was nothing left undone, he assured her, to promote the well-being of anyone on the estate. He did not think that Lady Alton could do more than she did. The yearly dinner was an institution. There were little bounties to the poorer members of the community at Christmas which never failed to give satisfaction. On the farms any reasonable grievances were met. " Your tenants indeed think themselves fortunate," said Mr. Linster. " Still, anything that I could do . . ." said Lady Alton vaguely. Mr. Linster reached for his hat. " We must not spoil them," he said. " Lady Wrays- bury has a new agent over at Rookhampton. He complains, I hear, that Merringham is continually held up to him as an example." "Oh, Rookhampton," said Lady Alton. "If the ttfoe Successor 217 property is run on the same lines as the house. . . ! Yes, I think we can do better than Rookhampton. Still, anything that I can do . you will remember, Mr. Linster, will you not ? " " I shall remember." Lady Alton considered. She seemed to have something yet to say. " For yourself, Mr. Linster," she said, after a brief pause, "you are happy with us here at Merringham, are you not ? " " I should think myself hard to please if I were not," he said, smiling. " It's that I do so realise my responsibilities," she said plaintively. " I feel them, and try to discharge them as best I can. People, I daresay, seeing me in society " she had not forgotten apparently the novelettes of earlier days " think I live only for such things, and that I have not a care in the world. How little they know ! Situated as I am, the management of the estate during the Baroness's minority must naturally be a heavy burden. My dear husband was taken from me at the time when most of all I needed him. I live now but for the little Baroness, and to nurse the property for her. Whatever I think Lord Alton would have wished, it is my endeavour to do. I put my duty to him as I think a wife should before any personal considerations . . ." Lady Alton paused, and Mr. Linster said " Quite so." " One should," she said, " should one not ? " Mr. Linster said " Certainly." " I am in the position of regent, as it were, for my child Queen Regent, I might almost say, perhaps," she smiled sadly, " and as I should like my regency to be wise, so I should like it to be happy. I think in this life one should do all one can to make others happy. 218 Ube Successor I like to see cheerful looks and bright faces about me." Mr. Linster's face, as its owner left the library where the interview had taken place, wore in its amused smile the equivalent, perhaps, of the impudent William's engaging, if undignified, wink. But Lady Alton might breathe benevolences and beneficences as she would, Balderton's look did not soften towards her. To her disquieted fancy it held an unfriendliness more potent than in the days of its early hostility. The thing became a fret and a touch on the raw, and a vexation of spirit. She tried to ignore it. Why should it trouble her? What weakness did her position confess to that it should affect her ? To dispose of it finally. What was it this imagined antagonism ? Balderton had always been odd a reserved and a strange person, with thoughts too deep for guessing and a nature difficult to understand. Why should she (Lady Alton) suppose that her housekeeper avoided her, spoke to her as little as might be, retired into herself at her approach ? But Balderton did avoid her. The fact was incontestable. Then why should she care ? What was Balderton to her ? She had but to give her " notice," if need be. A servant, after all, like the other servants, she could be sent packing like any one of them with a month's wages any day of the year. But that, as Lady Alton knew with a tightening of the muscles of her heart, was just what Balderton was not, and her dismissal, summary or otherwise, was exactly what could not be thought of. Balderton, Lord Alton had said, should leave Merringham but at her own wish. She remembered the day of his saying so. How could she forget, or expect to forget ? it was the day of the saying of nothing! She knew, as Balderton also knew, it is probable, that she would not dare to ttbe Successor dismiss her to disobey what in effect was her husband's command. Balderton, Lord Alton had said, would die at Merringham. She remembered the prophecy. It, too, held an uncompromising injunction. Useless to tell herself that Balderton could be parted with. Balderton could never be parted with. The knowledge was not such as to calm her. Lady Alton disquieted was Lady Alton ill. It became patent that something was amiss with her. Harassed Bonner suggested a doctor. Lady Alton would not hear of a doctor. There was nothing the matter with her, she declared. She was a little run down a little " below par " but it was nothing. What should be the matter with her? Bonner did not know, and appealed to the ceiling. " Very well, then," said her mistress irritably. There was no pleasing her. It was a return to the old days. " She was just like this," Bonner said downstairs "just exactly like this after the little Baroness was born. I'm sure when I first came she used to give trouble enough for twenty; but that was nothing to what it was after the baby arrived. It was dreadful. She wouldn't eat then, if you remember, and she's not what you would call a small eater in general. She hasn't touched her morning tea for a fortnight. I don't know what's the matter with her, I'm sure." " It was all talk of a ball for us a week or two back," said Dunwich " a ball, and liking us to have our little natural pleasures." "Well, it isn't now," said Bonner. "It's fret, fret, fret, about everything." It was true ; fretfulness took the place of considered graciousness, benevolence made way to contrariety. She said no more about wishing to be surrounded with 220 Ube Successor happy faces, about what she could do to promote universal contentment, and the like. She was the Lady Alton of the exacting days, with the Lady Alton of the days of the dominion of phrases and a phrase, superadded. What ailed her ? Yet what was so palpable to her that the conscious- ness of it became a very obsession, was probably perceptible to no one else in the house. Balderton, to all appearance, went her accustomed way. There was nothing in her mien or her behaviour that was unusual to outward seeming. If an aloofness came into her face when her mistress addressed her it was such that her mistress alone perceived it. It might hold unspeakable things . . . condemnation . . . the fixing of a gulf . . . it was for one only. Impossible for that one not to suppose deliberate intention in what was so unswervingly precise. If Lady Alton could have persuaded herself that any one else shared these looks with her she could better have borne them. Gundred at this time had a curious mother, who petted her or sent her from the room. It was not easy for a little girl to be "good" just then. What you were kissed for yesterday, was said to be "troublesome" to-day. You were told to go to Balderton for your noise, dear, was distracting or not to spend all your time in the housekeeper's room ! You were told that you were your mother's joy or pride, the light of her eyes, all that she had to live for, and straightway were cried over irritably as if you were nothing of the sort. There were other perplexities. You were talked to a great deal about Balderton ; were asked if you loved her, and why ? Better than the other servants ? That was right. Balderton was so good and kind. It was right that you should love her. Balderton was not like anyone else. There were few Baldertons in the world. TTfoe Successor 221 Papa had said there was no one like Balderton. You must always be nice to her, and do what she told you, and treat her as a dear friend. When this seemed to be settled, you were told that you were much too fond of servants' society, and must remember who you were. A lady's place was the drawing-room. You would learn no good from inferiors, who were a mischievous, gossiping set. All of which was perplexing. If there had been anyone to observe Lady Alton just then he must have seen that she had difficulty in keeping off the subject of her housekeeper, who appeared to exercise an irresistible fascination for her. She talked of her directly or indirectly a dozen times a day. With visitors even she contrived to lead the conversation round to her. " My housekeeper says," were words often on her tongue ; or " Leaving everything to Balderton as I do my old housekeeper . . . ; " or "Anything that I want to know I ask Mrs. Balderton the advantage of having someone about one who has lived all her life with the family." Then darkly she would hint that it was possible to keep servants too long. "They mean no harm, but get a little beyond themselves. Sometimes I question the wisdom of letting servants grow old in your employment." Why did she not ask the old woman point-blank what she meant by her conduct ? " Have it out " with her . . . demand and insist upon an explanation ? Why not, indeed? There were days when a question was almost wrung from her jerked from her lips. She got as far as " Balderton ! Balderton ! " one day, but retired in disorder before Balderton's chilling " My lady ? " " Nothing," she said, " nothing ! I forget what I was going to say." So things went on. The summer, which broke 222 Ube Successor suddenly after Edmund's visit, had given place to a wet autumn, which was followed in turn by a more than usually dispiriting winter. If Merringham had a fault, it was that it often rained there. Lady Alton, at the mercy of herself and the elements, went from room to room on wet days as at a time which we remember. Why had Lord Alton died, thus to leave her to bear alone a burden too heavy for her? It was cruel unjust. . . . She cast about her for distraction. Gundred as an interest had helped her before. She began again to point likenesses. She seized now upon the absent Edmund and pressed him into the service. That till that moment (oddly enough) she had not observed in him even so much resemblance to her little daughter as in point of fact he did bear to her, did not hinder her protestations. " I think her so like her cousin," she said to Gundred's nurse. "All the time Mr. Alton was staying here I found myself remarking it the strong family likeness. Something that isn't in anything that you can take hold of for he is fairer than she is but that is quite unmistakable. You must see it everyone must, don't you think ? " The nurse, ready to assent to anything, hesitated here. She did not forget that once in her readiness she had betrayed herself into finding the little girl like one or other of Lord Alton's former wives. " Her little ladyship's so much darker, my lady, isn't she ? Her eyes are brown, and Mr. Alton's are blue . . ." "Don't I say so?" said Lady Alton sharply. "It isn't a question of colour likeness never is. Why, I'm fair myself, and I suppose the Baroness is like me. It would be surprising if she were not. What I refer to is something in expression, I think a movement of Ube Successor 223 the features, perhaps. Well, well, one person sees these things, and another does not." Gundred's nurse put her head on one side to consider. She could find likenesses for her little mistress to pictures. That was easy enough. One picture was pretty much like another. But with living faces it was different. " The chin, perhaps," she hazarded. " Yes, the chin," said Lady Alton doubtfully. " The Baroness's chin and Mr. Alton's have just the same curve." " The chin," said the nurse " of course the chin ! I wonder I never noticed it." But it was not the chin. They had both chins. There, so far as that feature was concerned, the resemblance began and ended. Yet there was a likeness for such as might see. Unable to keep away from her, or from her own thoughts, Lady Alton put the question to Balderton. " Yes, my lady. I've seen it some time." Lady Alton looked at her with astonishment. Had she been mistaken after all ? " There," she said triumphantly. " Haven't I always said? And Mr. Alton's such an Alton from head to foot, isn't he? I fancied somehow I know, of course, how much you think of the Altons and this great house that you didn't think the little Baroness was quite like her ancestors. But this proves it." " I don't think her like them," said Balderton. Lady Alton searched her face. " But you said she was like Mr. Edmund." 11 Not through the Altons.' " How else could she be ? " " How can I say, my lady ? " "But he is such an Alton/' persisted Lady 224 TTbe Successor Alton. " Everyone says so. Hardly even like his mother." Balderton's small eyes were upon her. " Did your ladyship ever see Mr. Carmelin ? Mrs. Alton's brother." Lady Alton shook her head " No, my lady ? " " No. Why ? " " Only that Mr. Edmund reminds me of him," said Balderton. " I understood your ladyship to speak of Mrs. Alton." Lady Alton looked at her as if she did not follow. But Balderton made no attempt to explain, and she went back to her contention that any likeness to Edmund upon Gundred's part must prove the exist- ence of a likeness to the Altons. " It must be so." " I see no likeness," said Balderton. " None." Her look and her tone were alike uncompromising. Lady Alton had difficulty in preventing her eyes from faltering. It chanced, however, that Gundred herself ran up at this moment, and Lady Alton, clutching maybe at what saved the situation, saw that the old woman's face underwent an instantaneous and wonderful change. She meant no harm, then? could mean no harm while she could look so at Gundred. The affection of her barren years was lavished upon the little girl for any to see. Thus she could mean no harm. Yet what did she mean ? A likeness, and no likeness ! The cold and hard look for her mistress . . . but the melting and the gentleness for her mistress's daughter. The things were not of a piece. Could they be thought of a piece or made to agree ? Lady Alton, apprehensive, unnerved, driven, did not TEbe Successor 225 abate her self-torment. What, she asked herself again and again, could be the workings of Balderton's mind ? not seeing that Balderton, who served a house and not an individual, might yet be drawn in two ways. Even now the strange lady's misgivings could in no sense be said to be upon injured Edmund's account She had disposed of him as we know, holding him no concern of hers, and passing him over to the tender responsibility of his dead uncle. That the Abomination of Desolation sat where it should not (let him that readeth understand indeed !) seems not to have been for her comprehension at all nor, as it affected Edmund, the enormity of the wrong which had been committed. As the child of her husband's wish, Gundred was to her distorted vision veritably perhaps her husband's child, and the proper, if not the lawful, inheritor of his name and substance. If she could not appreciate her offence at the hundredth part of its gravity, she was neverthe- less acutely and grievously troubled. To be in the dark, as she found herself, was to be the prey to every bewilderment Balderton's allegiance must be, must it not, to Edmund or to Gundred ? Foolish to have let her see Edmund, who should have remained for her but a name and a recollection of a small boy. Foolish to have allowed the handsome Alton inside the gates, since it was, as she guessed, to have allowed him to become a living soul, and not a living soul only, but also his father's son. Balderton might not have loved Lord Alton, faith- fully as she had devoted herself to his service, but she had always loved his handsome brothers Edmund, if Lord Alton had been right, most of all. Here was Edmund, as even Lady Alton could see, come to life. What wonder if Balderton, who, if she knew if she knew ! could not be expected to understand, should look to the very stones of Merringham to cry out! Did 226 ZTbe Successor she know ? Could she know ? How could she know ? It was Edmund for her or Gundred. No likeness . . . none! and the bitter look. She knew! and it was Edmund. But the sudden and wonderful change at Gundred's appearing. It was Gundred . . . and did she know ? What to think ! What to think ! Fate, it may be seen, with its usual irony was avenging Mrs. Alton almost in kind. On the memorable day of the bewilderment which Lord Alton had planned for her most deliberately and maliciously, if chucklingly, and with his tongue in his cheek Mrs. Alton had not suffered more by uncertainty. Mrs. Alton's conscience, however, was clear. Wherein, howsoever shamefully (though she did not know it) she was being treated, she had had the unspeakable advantage of her adver- sary. Lady Alton's conscience could not be said to be clear. It had not troubled her, but it could not be said to be unsmirched. It was now, when disordered and unarmed she was least able to meet the attack of an enemy so insidious, that it found her out and accused her. She was in church one Sunday morning when familiar things became unfamiliar. The Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots of the Ten Commandments con- fronted her ; took sudden meaning. It was not whether Balderton knew or did not know that mattered : not Balderton nor human judgments at all. Thou Shalt ! Thou Shalt Not ! It was as if she had heard for the first time. Thou Shalt Not ... and she Had ! The Prayer- book with the large cross and the infinitesimal coronet slipped from her hand. And that, by curious chance, was the day when the Rector of Merringham felt it to be his duty to refuse a member of his congregation the Sacrament. CHAPTER VIII POOR Matty Henster did not trouble church much as a rule. Life at the tumbledown cottage was a haphazard thing, into the unconsidered scheme of which the obvious respectabilities hardly entered at all. Lee Henster, who poached notoriously and disappeared for months together, did not set his offspring any very meritorious example. Mrs. Henster, sly, comely, indifferent, bothered her head about appearances as little as he. The children, as was natural, followed in their parents' footsteps. Not a church-going lot the Hensters. But Matty, the eldest of the brood, who, under the influence of a former schoolmistress, had for a brief period in her little wild life shown glimmerings of a feeling for religion, and had even allowed herself, con- trary to all family traditions, to be confirmed, had gone strawberry-picking in the summer ... to find herself presently in need of spiritual consolations, for physical reasons which by the winter were all too apparent. Mr. Silarian found himself in a difficult position. The tumbledown cottage was practically closed against him. Mrs. Henster, who held the debatable ground upon which it stood to be out of his, as of every other jurisdiction, and did not encourage visitors, was not to be run to earth. The children, whose father was generally wanted for something, were scouts of Nature's own making. There were always half-a-dozen little tatterdemalions, brown as the countryside, to scent any unwelcome approach and give warning. The girl herself, looking 227 228 ZTbc Successor defiant denials when the thing became a village scandal, avoided him, but continued her shy visits to his church. He had made fruitless expeditions to her home, and many ineffectual attempts to waylay her, when, the talk in his parish being most rampant, the unhappy girl, to his horror and amazement, must needs present herself at the Communion rails to participate in the holiest rites of his Church. Poor Matty ! It was a dreadful moment. Who shall say what blind achings had screwed her courage to the desperate step ? Did she seek absolution or to strike a blow at public opinion ? Was it an act of self-abasement or self-assertion ? of piety or defiance ? Mr. Silarian, horrified out of his wits, could not determine nor either of his sleek young curates. His first " No, no!" was almost inaudible to his own ears. Matty Henster, having got quickly to her knees, did not look up. The curates exchanged dismayed glances. One of them advanced, and stood back. A flurried communicant, meaning no harm, probably, but acting in sheer nervousness, moved hurriedly away from her. Another, who had been making for the place on the other side of her, paused, and chose a spot further along the line. There was thus a space on each side of her which no one filled. She might have been an infected or even an infectious person. She became conscious of her isolation suddenly, and raised her eyes. The curate who had advanced before took a nervous step forward, looking hesitatingly to his superior for direction. Mr. Silarian recovering him- self, and motioning him aside with a wave of his book, went over to where Matty was kneeling. He bent and said something in a low voice to her. She looked dazed, and did not move. The pause was so long that people in the body of the church became aware of it, and all eyes were on the TTbe Successor 229 chancel. From the great Merringham pew Lady Alton was watching the scene fearfully with reluctant but fascinated gaze. The clergyman's voice was heard again. " I will see you in the vestry," it was heard to say. " I cannot give you the Sacrament. Wait for me after the service. I must speak to you." There was a painful silence. For a few moments no one moved. Mr. Silarian touched Matty gently on the shoulder, and signed to her to withdraw. " At the close of the service," he said kindly. Still for a moment or two she did not move. She seemed not to understand. Then suddenly she stumbled to her feet, and groping her way like one obstructed by darkness or too great light, made for the door. No one^ when the latch had been heard to yield to her trembling ringers, could have supposed her to be waiting in the vestry. Someone rose and closed the door which she had left open, and the service proceeded. That there was a meeting of such churchwardens as were present to consider what was to be done is a matter which does not concern us. Poor Matty Henster herself, hiding in the woods for the rest of that day, and for many days afterwards, while her case was being talked out by people who did not, nor could ever, come within a hundred miles of understanding it, hardly con- cerns us either. What does concern us is that Lady Alton has an illness a crisis of nerves, a " taking." Mr. and Mrs. Silarian, calling at Merringham that afternoon to discuss the distressing situation, were grieved to learn that Lady Alton was indisposed. She had returned from church that morning con- siderably upset, Dunwich said, and had not been at all herself since lunch. Mr. and Mrs. Silarian were full of solicitude. No one, they declared, could be 230 Ube Successor surprised. An incident had occurred of a peculiarly unfortunate nature, as Dunwich doubtless had heard, and it was not to be wondered at that one of her delicate sensibility should have been affected by it. Would Dunwich convey to Lady Alton their sympathy and their regrets ? Mr. Silarian would give himself the pleasure of calling the next day in the hope of finding her better well enough even, perhaps, to see him. Lady Alton saw no one the next day, nor the next, but on the day after that Mr. Silarian was admitted. Not to acquit the Miss Wraysburys wholly of ex- aggeration, it was yet not an unusual thing to find more than one parson in any room in which Lady Alton was receiving. The present occasion was the clergy's own. If the tumbledown cottage was upon any man's land, it was upon Lady Alton's. If the regrettable incident of that Sunday morning touched any member of the cloth it touched all. Mr. Silarian found sitting with Lady Alton, Archdeacon Witton- Wilson, Lady Henry's cousin, who had driven over from Norton-under- the- Hill, and Mr. Minory of Westerton Derbolt. " Ah, here," said the Archdeacon genially, " is our brother to speak for himself." Lady Alton gave her visitor a nerveless hand, and responded a little peevishly to his enquiries after her health that there was nothing the matter with her, and that she was "far from well," were statements which she made almost in a breath. Mr. Silarian feared, as he shook hands with the Archdeacon and Mr. Minory, that the recent painful scene was responsible for their friend's most regrettable indisposition. Lady Alton said: "Oh, I don't know; it is the weather, I think. I was run down before that." The talk quickly ranged itself round poor Matty ttbe Successor *$i Henster. Mr. Silarian's action, it may be said at once, was approved, generally speaking, by his critics. (That his friends were his critics was incidental to their calling and the nature of the case.) No other course, the Archdeacon declared, had been open to his good friend. What he himself could not understand, however as with some bluffness he " confessed " was how things should have come to this pass at all. Here, he implied, though he did not say so in so many words, was a young woman who obviously had strayed from the paths of right, but who appeared, in presenting herself at the Holy Table, to have sprung a mine upon her spiritual pastors and masters. Mr. Silarian chose partially to misunderstand, or rather to understand but partially he could not, of course, acknowledge himself taken to task. He answered the spoken words in saying that strawberry- picking was like hop-picking, a sort of picnic. The strawberry beds were twenty miles off in the adjoining county. The pickers camped out in the neighbourhood of their labours, or lodged with the local cottagers. There was, he feared, no one to look after them. It was a sad state of things a state of things which in the hop-growing districts he believed to be even worse. It was a rough class which went working in the fields, and the conditions of the work, he was afraid, were sub- versive of morals. He enlarged on the theme. He knew but too well what he was talking about, for a former curate of his own had come to him from a parish in Kent, and told a sad story of the standards of conduct which prevailed amongst the members of the yearly incursion. The Archdeacon's unspoken words he answered with- out as he hoped appearing to be conscious of them. The peculiar difficulty of the case, he said confidentially, 232 ttbe Successor lay in the anomaly of the Hensters' position. Who was to look after people who refused to be looked after? They were not exactly in any one's parish. Not one of them as a rule came to church. The door of the tumble- down cottage was shut, as he dared say Lady Alton even knew, to visitors. It had proved impossible to get a word with either the unhappy girl or her mother. They were half gipsy, he believed, and thought nothing of spending a night in the woods. " Your keepers," said the Archdeacon, turning to Lady Alton, " would have something to say to that." Mr. Silarian was of opinion that if the Hensters could elude him, they would not have much difficulty in eluding keepers. " They are sad poachers," said Lady Alton, " but my husband never allowed the keepers to be hard on them. There have always been Hensters or Lees he is Lee Henster, you know at No Man's Corner. It is a tradition. We must not be too much down on people who have been denied our own advantages." She spoke with an air of mild remonstrance. Vague charitablenesses were in her manner, and gentle expostulations. " We must make allowances," she said to Mr. Silarian, and " must we not ? " to the others. " Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Silarian, " all due allowances every allowance, in fact," but looked surprised. Was she teaching him his duty ? lessons in Christian forbearance ? This was hardly what he had expected of the Lady Alton of the monumental cross and the infinitesimal coronet. The Prayer-book which was well known to everyone had seemed symbolical of an attitude. Here was a lady who went back, as it were, of the Attitude. " A certain responsibility seems to me to attach to Successor 233 checking impulses towards good," she said, but depre- catingly, as one who ventures upon another's territory. " The poor creature meant well. One can't help seeing that. What else could have induced her to go up with the rest ? It must have required some courage. Shall we not encourage endeavour . . . aspirations . . ." She paused for a word. " Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Silarian again. " We should be very careful how we deal with the fledgling soul. An untimely rebuff may, as you suggest, lead to consequences disastrous as they are far-reaching. I should be the last to put an obstacle in the way of any poor sinner who turns, however hesitatingly, to the light. But I should have failed in my duty to the office which I fill if I had permitted what, in the circumstances, would have been a profanation of the Holy Table. I think the Archdeacon and Mr. Minory will agree with me." Mr. Minory agreed the Archdeacon with an evident mental reservation. " The girl's attitude," went on Mr. Silarian, " if it means anything, means defiance and denial. I have no evidence of her repentance or of any determination upon her part to lead a new life." "Then you mean to go on refusing her the Sacrament ? " Lady Alton looked at him anxiously. " I have no choice." The Archdeacon here broke in with something of impatience. " But I suppose the girl will be reasoned with. Oh, yes, I know she avoids you." His tone, its veiled impatience notwithstanding, was quite moderate. " They all do avoid one in such cases. But it must be possible sooner or later to see her. Hide-and-seek is a game which cannot be prolonged indefinitely." V 234 ftbe Successor Lady Alton turned towards him. He was speaking a temperate word for the sinner. Lady Alton, by her expression, might have been supposed to be looking that he should say more. ' Yes, sooner or later you will see the poor girl," she said vaguely. " Of course," said Mr. Silarian, who still looked surprised ; " of course ! But I have been up twice to the cottage since Sunday without success. So has Mr. Acres. So has Mr. Naseby. Mrs. Silarian walked up yesterday evening, but found no one, though there were evident traces of the family in the immediate neighbourhood. I have written both to the girl's mother and to the girl herself. I hardly expect any answer. Things are thus at a deadlock, as you see." " A difficult case," said Mr. Minory judicially " a difficult case." " A most difficult case," said Mr. Silarian, " We can only wait our opportunity. I have the satisfaction, I may say, of knowing that I have the approval of the Bishop, though the incident naturally cannot be too greatly deplored." Mr. Silarian pointedly omitted to look at Archdeacon Witton-Wilson. He felt a little sore. The visit was not turning out as he had expected. He could not think that Lady Alton (who, as we know, had been called a Bulwark of the Church) was doing herself justice. Her thoughts, to his surprise, seemed to run more on Matty Henster herself than upon the ecclesias- tical side of the regrettable occurrence of the preceding Sunday. She had subscribed in a manner to the Archdeacon's reprehensible detachment. What business had he to make his mental reservations ? Mr. Silarian, who had promised himself glorious talkiflcation at trbe Successor 235 Merringham, had found himself, though all professed to approve him, put, so to speak, on his defence. But though an undercurrent of discord might be dis- cernible, there was no want of unanimity between the three clergymen when it came to the question of the solution of the problem which poor Matty had set for herself and for all of them. "What?" asked Lady Alton, when Mr. Silarian, sticking to his guns, had repeated that he must continue to refuse Matty the Sacrament " what could the poor girl do?" The good lady was certainly not doing herself justice. She seemed now to be at the mercy of her nerves. She turned from one to another. Matty, they all said, must marry the man who had betrayed her. Lady Alton had no need to be told. It was the old solution of all. She would have suggested it herself a few years back. " If," Mr. Silarian said, " she had come to me married, I should not have felt myself justified in refusing her." " Certainly not," said the Archdeacon. Mr. Minory, who had not spoken much, except to agree with everybody, said that in the lower walks of life many marriages, unfortunately, were made upon such a basis. We must not, he said, look for too fine feelings. Thus many a child who would otherwise have been nameless came into the world able to look it in the face, and many a girl was spared shame. It was, before all things, desirable that the young woman should marry the father of her expected child as soon as possible. Lady Alton made a little movement with her eyebrows and hands. " And if the poor thing doesn't know . . ." 236 TTbe Successor Mr. Silarian and Mr. Minory looked shocked. " Oh," they said almost together, " I hope it isn't as bad as that." Was this Lady Alton at all ? Mr. Silarian was asking himself. He had expected her to be outraged. Her suggestion was almost indelicate. He could think of no one, of his decorous acquaintance, who would have ventured to express such a thought, except Lady Winstaple perhaps, who, great lady though she was, was often and notoriously bluff to coarseness ! Lady Alton, of all people, who had normally an almost hyper-delicacy the ultra refinement, if Mr. Silarian had been able to appreciate subtleties, of the not-quite-sure Lady Alton, of all people ! " I mean it might be difficult to trace him," she said. The Archdeacon smiled. " The difficulty, in the first instance, seems to be to trace her," he said. Mr. Silarian did not know which shocked him most, the lady's essential and unaccountable lack of " retire- ment," her virtual defence of the young person, or the Archdeacon's levity. But Lady Alton clearly was not herself. She was really ill feverish, if he mistook not, from the touch of her hand when, tea having been brought in, she gave him his cup. She took none herself, he remarked, a thing which he had never known her to do before. She waved in the direction of the plentiful cakes and foods generally, but ate nothing. "I am afraid," he said with concern, "that all this talk has been too much for you." A weight seemed to be upon her. Under it she chafed or was appealing. " No, no," she said, answering him after an interval. "Why should it be?" Successor 237 Gundred came in presently, and made a diversion. She had been out, and looked the picture of health and vigour. Lady Alton's eyes rested upon her contempla- tively in an interval of quietude. She might have been considering her in the light of something which had preceded her entrance. She sighed and withdrew her eyes, which became exercised as before. Edmund was mentioned. The three visitors had met him during his stay at Merringham, and all had something to say in his praise. Lady Alton joined absently, but un- grudgingly, in the chorus. It was not, we may gather, with Edmund that she was concerned. That she was " concerned," however, was as obvious as that she was irritable, nervous, and ill. CHAPTER IX SHE was veritably ill by night, and Balderton, invaluable as we know in the sick-room, was constrained to repent her (partially, at least) of the evil if evil there were in her attitude towards her mistress and showed herself a tower of judicious strength. From no one else presently would a fractious patient take medicine or nourishment, or listen to reason. The going of the parsons had been the signal for violent hysterics, culminating in a series of fainting fits. Bonner in an emergency could hardly be said to exist. She hung or wrung her hands, and made futile suggestions, and wept. Balderton said, " Come, none of this nonsense ! It's her ladyship's ill, not you, and I'm not going to have two on my hands. If you can't be of use, go and sit in your bedroom and send someone to me who can. Stop crying this minute." " Oh, Mrs. Balderton," sobbed Bonner, " how can you be so unkind to me ? You do speak so sharp." " Then don't be a fool," said Balderton ; " and here you, Anna, help me to get her ladyship to bed." Bonner at that pulled herself together. It should never be said that her place was usurped, or her duty shown to her by a housemaid by even an upper housemaid. Her place (she might have been quoting or paraphrasing Lady Alton herself upon an occasion altogether remarkably like the present !) her place, she said was at her mistress's side. If Mrs. Balderton 238 Ube Successor 239 wanted help, she was the one to apply to. Indeed, it was she who was indebted to Mrs. Balderton for hers. She was sure she was very much obliged to Mrs. Balderton. " Oh, we'll all thank and apologise to each other afterwards," said Balderton. "Just now we've got to get our lady to bed." Which was done. Dr. Amberley was sent for, and Lady Alton's serious and somewhat obscure illness may be said to have begun in earnest. She was ill for five weeks, during which time Balderton was in almost constant attendance upon her. Incidentally it may be said here that the thanks and apologies which had to be exchanged amongst the servants, the routine of whose days was upset, were spread over the whole of the period. Bonner, excellent lady's-maid as she was, had small talent for nursing, and the less competent she showed herself the more tenacious was she of what she con- sidered her rights. Anna had "feelings." She didn't mind what she did. She was ready to go on till she dropped. She was never one to take upon herself . . . but when Miss Bonner looked at her like this, and spoke to her like that well, one had one's duty to oneself to to think of ... and so on, and so on. Balderton, if she had not had her grim humour to back her and a very genius for management, would have had a difficult task. Lady Alton, who, when she was not bewailing her illness, was protesting that there was nothing the matter with her, set her face, like Lord Alton (of sheer mimicry, it is probable), against professional nurses. She had Balderton, Bonner, Anna, Emma what more could she want? She had Balderton. She wanted and would have no one but Balderton. Balderton, sceptical as she was, and at heart modifying 240 TTbc Successor nothing in her estimates and judgments, allowed her expression to soften. Suffering was always a passport to her pity, if not to her sympathy. Lady Alton became the trapped rabbit to whose pain it was in her power to put a term. Lady Alton, in the arrogance of high health, might suppose herself to have neither rteed nor fear of her. Then Balderton could be pitiless. Lady Alton sick was almost at her mercy. The odd little woman could spare. She smoothed the crumpled pillow, and, as she brought cool and capable hands to such ministrations, so mentally did she bring a soothing and reassuring influence to bear upon the patient's troubled spirit. What went on inside the burning yellow head who shall say? It grew less yellow as the days added to each other. Time enough for lotions and washes when its aching should be cured. Lady Alton tossed and turned and sighed. Moving from side to side, she would break off in her complaints to say that Mr. Silarian was a hard man. She did not like Mrs. Silarian, whose bonnets, she had always said, were unsuitable for a clergyman's wife. Oh, had he called again indeed ? No, she did not want to see him. She disapproved of his action in connection with that poor girl at No Man's Corner. She was not sure that she should be able to bring herself ever again to take the Sacrament from his hands. He incurred the greatest responsibility, she considered, in checking the poor creature's little leanings towards better things. She had said so, and would say so again. Poor, misguided girl ! She had disappeared, had she ? Small wonder, and small blame to her. Balderton heard without comment. She could always get behind her own silence, so to speak, and it was plain that it eased Lady Alton to talk. At any moment now ZTbe Successor 241 she could have known the truth had she chosen, and there was one day when it was her conviction that she even warded off a confession. She did riot wish to know. Suspicion was trial enough for her since she had seen Edmund, and she had no intention of sharing her mistress's burden. She might accuse ; she was not going to be a partner, howsoever unwilling, to knowledge. Lady Alton, " harping " upon Mr. Silarian and his action till it might have been supposed to have bearing upon her very illness, no longer eyed Balderton uneasily. She seemed, for the time being at least, to have forgotten Balderton's recent attitude, and to take her interested allegiance to herself for granted. She meant, she said, to befriend Matty. If the girl could be traced, some employment should be found for her upon the estate. " I shall interest myself in the poor little nameless baby, if only to show Mr. Silarian my opinion of the course he has chosen to take. Who is Mr. Silarian ? a man we appointed ourselves ! Such a return for his lordship's good nature ! To think that I, the Lady of the Manor, cannot go to my own church without being exposed to such a scene. I've a very good mind to stand godmother upon my word, I have. And I shall make Matty Henster a present. I shall send her mother ten pounds." So she played off one thought one frame of mind even against another. A few days later her tune had changed a little. Perhaps, after all, it would be better if Matty could find and marry her baby's father. Mr. Silarian might so far be right. She did not exonerate him from blame. His judgment had been wholly mistaken and wholly reprehensible. But, for everyone's sake, it would be best perhaps if the young woman could be respectably married. She, upon her part, would like to do what 242 Ube Successor she could. There should be twenty pounds to give the young couple a start when proofs should be forthcoming of their marriage. That, she supposed, would satisfy even Mr. Silarian. Twenty pounds indeed, she did not mind making it forty. Mr. Linster, who could manage most things, should take the matter in hand. Upon this, as rowers upon their oars, she rested for a while, and let herself drift in the direction in which the impetus of so much activity should take her. It took her into quieter waters, and to the region of the Fixed Idea. The Fixed Idea ? That was it. Dr. Amberley might visit her, feel her pulse, take temperatures, pre- scribe ; Balderton, with the assistance of Bonner and Anna and Emma, might nurse ; it was the Fixed Idea, when all is said and done, and the Fixed Idea only, which drew her out of the storm and stress of illness to convalescence. She sent for Mr. Silarian, and made an invalid toilet. She chose a pink silk bed-jacket with wide hanging sleeves, and tied a becoming lace scarf over her head. Thus, propped up with pillows, she received him. She put out a white hand. " I've been thinking a great deal about the subject of our last conversation," she said, when she had answered his enquiries and heard his solicitude "a great deal. As I have lain here " (time was when she would have said " laid ") " I have turned many things over in my mind. It is, I think, when our frail bodies are ill that our minds are sometimes most active." " Illness is ofttimes sent to us," said Mr. Silarian clerically, " that things may be made plain." Lady Alton considered this, and her face brightened. " Ah ! you think so ? " she said, after a moment. "You believe that too?" " We may not understand at the time. Here we see TTbe Successor 243 through a glass darkly. We can only grope after the truth push blindly towards the light." " How true how true that is ! But light at special times is vouchsafed to us." She fell into his phrase- ology. " Our eyes are opened, our path shown to us." " Thus our afflictions," said Mr. Silarian, " are often, if we could but know, blessings in disguise." They both grew expansive. Lady Alton spoke of the " thorny " cross, the pitfalls which " bestrewed " the way ; Mr. Silarian of the need of " guidance," the neces- sity for the upholding of authority, the wisdom of the Church's teaching, and ended by quoting at some length from the Communion Service. Cut-glass bottles and many silver things were upon the table by the bedside. A bowl of damask roses was amongst them, and the fragrance of these and of other flowers rilled the room. A pleasant room, Mr. Silarian thought incidentally a pleasant room in which to be ill. Lady Alton could have told maybe of days and of nights when one room would have seemed the same as another. She heard his quotations with something of a return to her uneasiness. The words, awful if they had any meaning, were in tune with the spirit of the words which had upset her. " ' Or else,' " continued Mr. Silarian impressively, " c come not to that holy table lest . . .' " and laid stress on the warning. And again, "'. . . we kindle God's wrath against us ; we provoke him to plague us with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death.' " The words lost nothing on the lips of Mr. Silarian. Lady Alton gave a little shudder. The "Thou shalt not " of her undoing rose up against her again. Thou Shalt Not ... and she Had ? Was she of the Children of Disobedience for whom the Denunciations had been framed ? Thou Shalt Not ... to have dared in the face 244 TOe Successor of that ! She held her breath. She had a vision of the church, and experienced once more the sense of hearing for the first time. It was the familiar become suddenly unfamiliar that had been frightening. " Thou shalt not . . . Thou shalt not ! " Had she never heard before ? But Matty Henster, who had been the unconscious means of pointing the horrors of that day, came now to her rescue. Lady Alton remembered what it was that had led to Mr. Silarian's presence. "Yes," she said quickly, "just so. I see that there was perhaps no other course open. As I have said, I have thought a great deal while I have lain here, and I have that poor girl much on my mind. I wanted to ask you. I thought perhaps I ought to do something. In my position, perhaps, it almost devolves on me. If they were anyone's tenants, you see, they would be ours. Now I thought perhaps of offering something to start the pair if they married to set them up, so to speak." She looked at Mr. Silarian for encouragement. " Quite so," he said, " quite so. Most desirable." " It is on her account," continued Lady Alton " on hers solely. Men can look after themselves. It may be weak of me, and I daresay it is, but I can't bear to think of anyone being kept outside the pale denied the privileges of the Church. Evidently the poor girl has felt her situation keenly ; and that she has a desire for better things has, I think, been amply shown. She has disappeared, I hear, but I have very little doubt that if we make it known that there is something waiting for a young couple anxious to turn over a new leaf and make a fresh start, all will be well." Mr. Silarian bowed his approval. Here was the solution of the difficulty. His ruling was upheld. All was well. " That's settled, then," said Lady Alton, " I shall put trbe Successor 245 the matter into Mr. Linster's hands so clever he is in carrying things through. But now there is just one thing I want to know. I have the girl's case at heart, and act solely, as I say, in her interests." " Just so," said Mr. Silarian, and wondered what was coming. " What you've just been saying about ' eating and drinking your own damnation ' is so dreadful," said Lady Alton. " It is shocking to think of such things Sundry kinds of death too ... so alarming ! Now this poor girl might look in vain for the father of her child of her expected child, I ought to say. It is not a probable contingency, I hope, but it is a possible one. She might look in vain, do you see ? " Mr. Silarian waited for her meaning. "Supposing," said Lady Alton "supposing she should not be able to find him. ..." She raised herself a little in the bed and twisted the rings with which her fingers were loaded. Her eyes were occupied with the stones. " If the man was not to be found," said Mr. Silarian, " there would be nothing to be done." It seemed pretty clear. "But the girl herself?" said Lady Alton, without looking up. "I tell you, I am thinking of the girl." " I don't think I understand." " If she looked for him and could not find him . . . she might come to you then with a clear conscience, might she not ? " " She could not be blamed for not being able to find him." " What you have been saying would not then apply to her? You would not feel obliged to refuse her the Sacrament ? " " N-no," said Mr. Silarian. " No." Lady Alton, who had raised her eyes, looked at him 246 ttbe Successor as if she expected that he might recant. But he did not. " No," he said again more firmly. " Or if," said Lady Alton, " for any reason she should find he was unable to marry her ? " " Unable ? " " He might be married already. He might be dead ... a dozen things." " No," said Mr. Silarian. " Or even unwilling," said Lady Alton, who seemed determined to have the matter settled once and for all. " He might decline merely refuse point-blank." " No," said Mr. Silarian again. " If I were convinced that she was penitent, and had done or was doing her best to retrieve her position, I should not feel myself justified in refusing her." Lady Alton gave a sigh of relief, and leant back amongst her pillows. She seemed satisfied, and dis- missed the subject. She hoped to be about again in a few days, she said, and would go and see Mrs. Silarian as soon as she felt able. Mr. Silarian admired her roses. They were pretty, were they not ? The colour so deep and rich, and the scent of them, as he said, like the breath of a garden. She chose out three or four of the finest, and begged that he would take them to Mrs. Silarian, with her love. " With my love," she repeated, CHAPTER X MATTY HENSTER, thanks to Mr. Linster's cleverness and good offices, married her man, and the marriage may even be said in the long run to have turned out well. Work was found for a decent enough young labourer on one of the farms, and the tumbledown cottage relieved of an inmate. Everyone was satisfied : Matty, who, run to earth, had shrugged her shoulders with a " Well, settle it among y' ; " the young labourer, who had " been thinking it was time " he should be "getting married to someone"; Mrs. Henster, who didn't much care one way or the other, but was not in the main opposed to respectability made worth while ; and, wholly and unreservedly, Mr. Silarian, who claimed, indeed, under Providence, thus to have brought things to their happy issue. Lady Alton professed herself gratified (by post), and made her presentation duly by Mr. Linster, with many gracious messages. But, in point of fact, Matty's part was played, and played out so far as Matty herself was concerned on the day when Mr. Silarian answered her patroness's questions, and Mrs. Silarian was sent damask roses. Lady Alton, the Fixed Idea permitting, went to early service on the first available Sunday after the events here set forth. Upon that Sunday also, at the later service, a Member of the Congregation (who, it may be said, was not Matty) desired to return Thanks to Almighty God for Late Mercies Vouchsafed to her. On 247 24$ ftbe Successor the Sunday following, Gundred and her nurses occupied the great pew alone. Lady Alton had gone abroad. And now was to be observed the beginning of a notable change in the course and the conduct of Lady Alton's life. Since the death of Lord Alton she had lived almost wholly at Merringham. A yearly pilgrim- age to the seaside with Gundred in the interests of young health, and an occasional visit to London upon her own account, represented the extent of her journey- ings afield. Now, however, of a sudden, as it seemed, she altered all that. The brief travels upon which she set out after her convalescence and the marriage of Matty proved, in effect, to be the first of a series of wanderings which were to spread themselves over a very considerable period. Fixed ideas do not lightly possess you. "Change of air" covered her first pilgrimage. She had been rather seriously ill, and nothing was more natural than that she should feel the need of what is prescribed for most convalescences and many ailments. Lady Alton came home from her trip well, but preoccupied. She had been " abroad," but Bonner had to tell of nothing in particular. They had visited this place and that as, by the way, in the wanderings after Lord Alton's illness. " It put me very much in mind of that time only there wasn't his lordship, of course, nor yet Mr. Berners. Still, somehow, it was like . . ." "Of course it was like, if you went to the same places," said Balderton. "I don't know that it was altogether that," said Bonner. In saying which, as Balderton came subsequently to believe, Bonner touched upon more than she suspected. Half unconsciously, as Edmund's visit slipped into tEbe Successor *w the past, half by force of circumstance, Balderton had allowed her austerity to relax. A glance which Lady Alton had bestowed upon her as she greeted her on her return the furtive, reconnoitring glance of one who takes rapid survey of a situation had not been lost upon her, and though she realised that her mispress was reassured by what she saw, she had suffered it to be so, and foreborne to harden her face. To what good, after all, to express what she felt to feel even what, for a time, she had expressed ? What was done was done. She had had time for thought. There were things in life which, once effected, were irremediable. Hours of calm thinking had yielded her that, and she was too wise to mistrust her own wisdom. After the moment in which her feelings had so nearly betrayed her into avowals which even if she could have substantiated them she would always have regretted, she had not wavered. Nothing could be done then or ever. From the moment of Gundred's birth nay, from the moment of Lord Alton's death, the wrong was unrightable. As she had looked on, so she must continue to look on. . . . The active protest of her look and manner was allowed to fall into abeyance. But like Matty Henster, if she had known it, and with Matty Henster, too, it had played its part. Lady Alton had not been back a month before she left home again. This time she was away but a few days. She had had a fancy, she said, to run up to town. Natural enough. Again, what more natural? Thenceforward, however, this was a "fancy" that would often take her, and quite an appreciable part of her time, as Balderton began to see, was spent, and to be spent, away from Merringham. In the following summer she visited several of the English watering- places, staying a week or so at each. She passed most s$a tbe Successor of the autumn at Brighton. A list of the places she went to at one season or another during the next few years would have held most of the names that would easily occur to the polite tripper. Anyone able to watch her closely would have seen that she scanned faces for a face. She was not restless, however, nor hurried. She had set herself a task, one might have supposed, and was performing it. In other respects, meanwhile she had resumed her ordinary ways if perhaps with an added zeal. The Prayer-book, with the large cross and the infini- tesimal coronet, seemed once more to sum her up, to present her, to speak for her. More than ever was she a Bulwark of Sacred Edifices. She lent her drawing-room for drawing-room meetings. She opened bazaars. She was on church committees. Christmasses and Rasters and Harvest Thanksgivings were decorated from out of the treasure of the Merringham gardens and hothouses. Balderton, seeing everything, knew not what to make of her. As before, with returning health her mistress seemed relieved of some pressing " necessity." Was it to unburden herself? Whatever her need had been, it was no longer pressing. She was able in some way to pacify, assuage, or silence it. Like the fasting woman at the fair, who cannot be caught eating but loses no flesh, she had some secret source of nourishment. Whence did she draw her support? She was in the prime now of her life and her looks. The tendency to the over-emphasis, which was as surely in store for her as overblowing to the rose, was not yet too pronounced for comeliness. She was thus a hand- some woman, of generous but shapely proportions, and not more vulgar in appearance than many a one whose birth and breeding are unimpeachable. She held ttbe Successor m herself very upright, and what dressmakers would have called her " figure " was much to the front. There was something about her withal which, in a discreet and ladylike way, was mildly challenging. Emma and Anna wondered sentimentally why she did not think of marrying again. She was young for a widow. <{ And not so bad-looking either," said William, with a wink. " 7 wouldn't mind marrying her." Which was William's polite way of not saying exactly what he meant. These remarks did not reach Balderton, who would have known very quickly how to deal with such impertinences. But the thought of marriage was presently in the air. It came to her of its own accord. Lady Alton was "coming out" a good deal, wasn't she? She had always been over-dressed, over-coifed, over- scented, but there was a difference . . . something in Lady Alton herself. She wore almost habitually the look with which she had come in from the drive which Lord Alton had bidden her take on the day of her illness. Balderton, at this period, was perpetually reminded of that day. If Lady Alton was thinking of marrying, however, she was taking her time about it. She went away and away, and came back and came back, and Gundred leaped up the years. Gundred was ten in what seemed no time to those about her, if ages to her. She was no sooner ten than she was twelve ; twelve, than she was fifteen ; fifteen, than Lady Alton, in short, took her time. Still and still, she put off the moment of her over- blowing, kept an expectant air, and went away and away. Was the thought of marriage influencing her indeed . . . keeping her young, sustaining her ? Then Successor what hindered ? Time might be kind, but she had none to lose. She would soon have a grown-up daughter. Gundred's nurses long since had made way for a governess the governess, temporarily, for Paris and a finishing school. Lack of suitors ? No. For in the course of the years, as Balderton had reason to believe and not from the hints only which her mistress, in con- fidential mood, would drop from time to time more than one aspirant to the lady's hand haH presented or attempted to present himself. It was common talk in the neighbourhood one summer that the local M.P. would have liked to represent his county at and from Merringham Park, rather than The Fernery, Westerton Derbolt. A certain impoverished landowner would no f take " No " for an answer. Meek Mr. Minory even was said to have pretensions. There were others. But the lady would have none of them. The confidential mood grew with her. She came, we must remember, of a class not much above that of those who served her a class addicted to confidences. " If I ever did think of marrying again," she said to Balderton one day " if I ever could bring myself to contemplate such a thing, I should want to choose my husband for myself." " Yes ? " said Balderton. Lady Alton was smiling. "Marriage," she said confidentially, "does seem in some ways forced upon a woman, doesn't it ? She feels the need of a strong arm. She was not meant to stand alone. When my baby was born they used to say to me, I remember, that women were meant to be mothers. So they are, and they're meant to be wives too. Don't you think so ? " Balderton conceded that, everything else being equal, they were meant to be both. She did not say what she Successor 253 might have said even when Lady Alton, enlarging upon the theme, went on to say that children were intended to have parents. " Not to lose them," said Lady Alton, " one or other . . . not to lose them. I can think of nothing sadder. People marry again in the interests of their children a great deal oftener than people think : a widower to give his child the advantage of a mother's love ; a widow to provide hers with a father." She paused, and repeated pensively: "A great deal oftener, believe me, than people think." " I daresay," said Balderton. " There are those, to be sure," continued her mistress presently, "who do not hold with approve, I should say, of second marriages. Whether in general they are desirable is, of course, questionable what they call in law, I think, a a mute point." The term did not sound quite right, and Lady Alton repeated it with a " Some such expression " for safety, and passed on. " In many cases, I daresay, they are not. But when one is quite, quite free " she lowered her voice to a still more confidential tone "when one is quite, quite free . . ." but broke off to say : " Won't you sit down, Balderton. I haven't had a talk with you for a long time. Sit down." " Thank you, my lady, I prefer to stand." " As you like," said Lady Alton graciously, " as you like," and proceeded : " . . . quite free, I was going to say, it alters the aspect of the case altogether. Some husbands, you see, taking the possibility of their pre- decease into consideration, lay restrictions upon their wives. Lord Alton de Merringham did nothing of the kind. He was a generous, noble man a nobleman, in fact, in the truest and best sense grateful to me, too, as I think, for what I had done or was to do for him, 254 ftbe Successor He provided for me amply, without stipulation of any sort or kind, and quite independently of his successor. If anything had happened, if the Baroness had not survived her birth, or had succumbed in infancy, or or anything dreadful like that I should still be a rich woman, and free to do as I liked. So if I wanted to marry again, or ever, as I say, could bring myself to contemplate such a step, there would be nothing to prevent me." She looked at Balderton, who said : ". Just so, my lady, just so." " I don't think I ever could," said Lady Alton, twist- ing her rings. " I don't think I ever could. But if I could, I shouldn't believe in taking the first that offered. A woman known to be wealthy runs risks. There won't always be Merringham, of course, but there's the Dower House for life, and I could buy or could build. There are some I could name who wouldn't be averse to hang- ing up their hats here even with the knowledge that the peg would eventually have to be changed. . . ." She smiled significantly. " Not one and not two," she added. Her thoughts seemed to afford her satisfaction. She delved in her mind for some moments, the smile playing round her lips. " No, no," she said presently. " I should want to choose for myself. Why should the choosing be all done by the man ? The man thinks he has only to open his mouth. The effrontery ! I've hardly patience. . . . So it won't be just anyone that likes to ask if it's any- one at all. Why should the asking either be all in the mouth of the man ? I shall never be made to see that. I can imagine circumstances in which the woman might have the best right to speak. Can't you ? Can't you yourself, Balderton ? " She spoke half playfully, and Balderton smiled, if a Successor 255 little grimly, as she said that the proposal, she believed, was generally supposed to come from the man. " Supposed," said Lady Alton. " Supposed ! There we are at once ! And why after all ? The man might have least to offer. The woman's very means and position might stand in her way, and in his way too. I think if the rank were higher on the woman's side it might even be her duty to take the initiative. Any way, I consider that she might break the ice." She gave a little laugh, and gathered up her gloves the interview had been taking place in the housekeeper's room and her umbrella and her muff; whatever she had put down when she came in with her confidences. <: But all this about marriages and marrying," she said, " is talking in the air, for of course I haven't a thought of anything of the kind . . . not a ghost of a notion." " Oh ! haven't you, my lady ? " said Balderton, when the door had closed behind her. " Have you not, indeed ? " It had been clear enough before that. What was surprising was, that the time was allowed to pass. A plump woman could generally find a husband a plump rich woman always. But this talk of choosing ... of speaking even, if need be ? Had she some particular person in view ? There seemed to be more to know now than at the time of her mistress's illness, when, as she still believed, she might have known everything if she had consented to listen. Could there be more to know ? Balderton was puzzled. Lady Alton might not speak quite what was in her mind, but Balderton had a pretty shrewd suspicion that her words, even when they were most extravagant, had some bearing upon thoughts which occupied her, and motives which underlay her actions. Words with her might be used 256 tTbe Successor to conceal thought, but if so, they pointed the existence of the thought they concealed. Second marriages were often made in the interests of the children of the first ! Balderton was to understand that her young mistress was not being forgotten on the contrary, was being considered. The widow, forsooth, to provide a father for her child ! What stuff and nonsense were here ? What fiddlesticks ? A father for her child ! Balderton stood still, the finger of a mittened hand to her lips. The words arrested her. A father for her child ! Not . . . Not. . . . Oh, surely, surely not ! . . . Lady Alton could not be thinking . . . ! She held her breath, and sank into a chair. That would be another pair of shoes altogether. That, with a vengeance, would be putting a thought into words speaking the truth to hide it. Could she be thinking . . . ? Was it possible ? Yet choose for herself . . . and not anyone that offered . . . and speak if need be ... take the initiative. . . . Then what did she go away for ? go here, there, and everywhere ? Balderton was pulled up short. She got up and went in search of Bonner, whom she found in the work-room sewing buttons upon her mistress's gloves. After a few preliminaries, with which we need not concern ourselves, she brought up the subject of the lady they served in their different ways. Bonner went about with her. Bonner knew perhaps without knowing so much as that there was anything to know ! But Balderton's remarks and casual ques- tions drew forth no mention of the name she might have expected to hear. Lady Alton abroad had kept a good deal to herself at first, making a few hotel acquaintances, but not many, and meeting a few friends. Now, of course, she knew a good many more people, and would come across them. Any particular people ? Oh ! Successor 357 the So-and-So's and the So-and-So's, and Mr. This and Colonel That. Bonner reeled off some names, adding another from time to time as it occurred to her after she had come to an end of those she knew best. No mention of the name. If it had been amongst those familiar to her, Balderton must have drawn it She ventured to speak it, and saw that it conveyed nothing to Lady Alton's maid. Something else she learned, when in her perplexity she had permitted herself to ask a further question. " What does she do with herself mostly ? " It was rarely now that she talked, and Bonner was flattered. " Oh, I don't know. There's plenty to do. There's plenty of life in some of these places. Always some- thing to see or to do. She never seems at a loss. She just looks about her. I think she likes doing that better than anything else. If it's a place where there are steamers she'll go and watch them come in. She likes to see the people who arrive. ' Now, Bonner,' she'll say, 'we'll go and see the boat come in' or the diligence " (Bonner said " dillyjonce "), " or whatever it may be. I used to think she was looking for someone." " Looking for someone ? " " And once I thought she thought she'd found him," said Bonner, smiling at a recollection. " Ladies are funny things to have to do with." " Him ? Who ? " said Balderton. Bonner laughed. " Oh, I don't know," she said. " It was only my idea. We were at Folkstone seeing the packet off, it was, that day and somebody went down the gangway just at the last moment (I didn't see him myself), and she said c Oh ! ' just like that, and I looked at her and said ' My lady ? ' and she was looking hard at his back which was 258 tCbe Successor disappearing, and she didn't seem to hear me, but looked and looked. But he didn't appear again. Well, what made me think was that we crossed ourselves by the next boat, though I don't believe we'd been thinking of any- thing of the sort before, and went on to Paris, where it certainly did seem as if she was looking for someone. Oh, no, of course we didn't see him again, whoever he was. And we've gone on suddenly to other places often enough since then. It was only my idea." " No, you hadn't much to go on," said Balderton. She thought for the rest of the day. Looking? Seeking? That, at least, did not agree with the theory which had sent her to Bonner. It dis- posed of it rather. Seeking ? She would not have far to seek. How could she be seeking ? Unless. . . . Balderton, going to her linen closet that night, came to a standstill with a jerk. " Good gracious," she said to herself, " it can't be that she doesn't know ! It can't be ! It can't be that I know what she doesn't. . . ." It seemed, however, as time went on and Gundred grew up, and Lady Alton continued what, if it was not a search, was remarkably like one, that Balderton verily must and did know what her mistress did not as if Lady Alton, in other words, prime mover though she was and had been throughout, changer of destinies, tamperer with eternal truths, knew less than her house- keeper who rarely moved beyond the four walls of her room, and whose opportunities for acquiring knowledge of what went on outside her narrow sphere were as circumscribed as those of the old woman who lived in a shoe. TTbe Successor 259 " They must marry," Balderton said to herself. " Oh, they must marry. It's the only way to right it. They must marry." But she did not mean Lady Alton and whom Lady Alton might be seeking. CHAPTER XI SHE meant Gundred and Edmund. She did not fear reluctance upon the part of her young mistress. She had laid her own plans too cleverly for that. Since Edmund's first visit to Merringham ; during the two years which, for reasons which she was able to divine, elapsed before he was asked there again ; between each of his subsequent visits before absence from England kept him away, and during the whole period of his absence, she had kept his memory green for him. It had not been difficult. With such looks as his, he seemed made for the fairy prince of a little girl's tales of wonder and enchantment. He was the hero presently of the boy's books which were the next phase in a young literary life. When he was attached to the Embassy in Vienna, and Gundred was reading her first novels, he was stalking through them all on his long legs. It had been easy enough to keep him in a plastic mind. And he ? Who shall say ? He was " boy " to her " girl " in her childhood. If a couple of young souls divided by a few negligible years had ever seemed of an age and an accord, and of common and indistinguishable interests, it was this pair of playmates and comrades. He was "boy" to her "girl" indeed " boy " to her "boy "in the boyish days when she scampered through the holiday hours with flying locks, and climbed trees ! There were bird's-nestings then. Edmund knew by 260 TObe Successor 261 instinct where the rarer birds nested. There were long mornings ; risings at five or six sometimes to a first breakfast, spread overnight in the schoolroom, to which Balderton, stealing in, would add hot things of her own preparing; wonderful returnings at nine to demolish a second with appetite in the dining- room ; there were enthralling forenoons in the saddle ; afternoons with a rod and line, and such school-room teas ! A breathless Gundred would fly to her Balderton to tell. One, in all this, was scarcely less ardent than the other. " Boy " to her " boy " then. But " man " to her " maid " ? Ah ! that was the question. At least he was not married. There was a hope so long as he was not married. Not Mrs. Alton herself had followed his fortunes with keener interest than Balderton. From Oxford, Fate being kind to him, he had passed in time into the Foreign Office the opportune death of a distant relation of his mother's having eased the family resources, and pro- vided him with the wherewithal which allowed him to think of the Diplomatic Service. Significant, indeed, of the power of money that, by the unexpected posses- sion of a few hundreds a year, a career, as it is called, should have opened before him who else must have been content with whatever should promise a livelihood ! Mrs. Alton, if she was not overburdened with money even then, had plenty of interest in influential quarters ; and Edmund, his foot once upon the ladder, had not stood still. His appearance and his manner made ready friends for him. He had a quiet way of doing the right thing in the right way as a matter of course, without fuss or ferment and wholly unconsciously that gained him the confidence of his chiefs. He was said to have "brains," a "head on his shoulders," "stuff" in him, "grit," and much else. Nor when his qualities had 262 ttbe Successor begun to be recognised did he incur the jealousy of his fellows. A natural simplicity (he had the frank eyes of a boy all his life) and a very modest estimate of his own abilities were attributes, characteristics call them what you will which stood him, had he known it, in good stead. Well, there are men marked to get on ; Edmund, by tacit or applauding consent, was allowed to be one of them. He went ahead by undis- puted, if unwitting and involuntary, right of something conferred upon him by Fate or the stars at his birth. Gundred mounting the years spoke of him constantly. Balderton had rejoiced to find not so very long since that she still hugged a belief that she had nearly caused his death. Nothing could be better. With a nice discretion and a clear conscience (for she knew Edmund as she knew her young mistress), the old woman fostered not that thought exactly, but such thoughts. Merringham, for example, might have been his for nearly half his life had seemed like to be his. " He might reasonably have hated me," Gundred said. " If he had been someone else," said Balderton, smiling. There was just one Mr. Edmund in the world. Balderton could always see him best standing in the moonlight with the little dead rabbit in his hand. But together the old woman and the young girl could see him in a dozen ways ; swinging across the park with a dog at his heels and his gun under his arm ; riding to a meet, spic and span, keen as Gundred beside him on her pony ; coming back from his day's hunting splashed and ruddy ; or in his flannels (a summer view of him), tilting his straw hat over his eyes, It was to Balderton that Gundred talked of him, not to her mother. Edmund, in point of fact, did upon his part think of Successor 263 Gundred thought of her as much as even Balderton could have hoped. Some of the happiest hours of his life were those in which he shook off a few years to be a child with her at Merringham. He had watched her course as Balderton had watched his. More intimate acquaintance with his aunt did not dispose him to regret an inability to like her wholly. As he came to know her better he sought less to excuse himself for what was instinctive, still less to take himself to task. What it was, indeed, that made the thought of Gundred's close association with her distasteful to him, he could not have told. He only knew that every time he saw the little girl he feared to find traces in her of her mother's influence. The anxiety made Gundred very dear to him. What did he fear ? To find Gundred dressed in plush? She wore serge, cool linens, brown holland. To hear her say " sufficient " for " enough," " commence " for " begin," or (more terrible still !) " whyever " ? She said none of these things. By what marvel did she escape them? Was it the Alton influence as against the Mason? Merringham itself? Merringham, he thought, and presently Miss Moberly, the wise and discerning gentlewoman into whose hands by good fortune she fell for her training, and with whom, during her mother's frequent absences, she was inevitably so much thrown. These, and always, and always Balder- ton. Merringham was Merringham, and an education in itself. Could one live the impressionable years in such surroundings untouched by the gracious spirit which pervaded them? Miss Moberly understood by intuition what the situation asked of her. Balderton was Balderton, as Merringham was Merringham, and held the traditions of the house. Three influences against one. There was his own influence, too, if he had known it. 264 Ube Successor The years gave him confidence. Gundred was to preserve her individuality, and express not her mother's nature but her own. His affection for her increased. As it had been Gundred who (with Balderton in the background) had first welcomed him to Merringharn, so was it always Gundred who met him on the threshold in her childhood, and at the station in her pony-cart as she grew older. As she grew older. That was the devil of it . His last visit, when Gundred was sixteen and looked seventeen, had warned him that he was in danger of growing too fond of her. Gundred, on the verge of womanhood, was of a type less rare in Southern than in Northern latitudes. Her development had been unusually quick, and at an age when most girls are fat to awkwardness " great lumps " or thin to boniness " all legs and elbows " she was rounded and slender as a Frenchman's conception of an odalisque. Her skin was fine as satin ; her muscles firm as her splendid young flesh. Her hair, which was dark and abundant, grew rather low upon her forehead the whiteness of the skin at the roots showing the clear steel-blue tinge of perfect health. A sleeping roguery was in the velvety shadows of her eyes. Such was Gundred verging upon womanhood. One who saw her later, and whose knowledge of her sex was not inconsiderable, saw in her attractive and dangerous quality a menace to the peace of mind not of those only who should come in contact with her. If thought this one, gauging her looks with a respectful (happily) but a practised eye if she should not have the good fortune at the outset to marry a husband she could care for, there would be trouble in and out of Merringharn. But he, knowing too much, perhaps, and too little, con- founded the individual with the type. Edmund had ilbe Successor 265 awakened suddenly to a disturbing sense of her beauty. He had carried her, swung her off her feet, wrestled with her a dozen times, when upon a day so small a thing as her hand on his arm troubled him. He experienced a moment of acute if divine emotion, and had to turn from her to hide his face till he should be able to compose it to some semblance of calmness. The recollection of that moment was often in his thoughts. It meant, did it, that the pleasant hours were over ? That the happy comradeship of the years must go, with the happy years themselves ? At the time there had seemed no alternative. If to see Gundred was to love her, he must not see her. He remembered how a sleepless night had determined him to cut his visit short. The day which followed was indelibly impressed upon his memory. He remembered every moment of it. It was a Gundred day from earliest dawn. Was there indeed some accord between them that she, knowing nothing of what had happened, should also upon that day have been impelled to rise with the sun ? The dew was on the grass when he stepped out on to the terrace, and he remembered the look of it, and of the drops which glittered upon every leaf. All night his windows had been open to the stars, but refreshment unspeakable was in the air of the new-born day. Here on the terrace the air was clear as spring water ; over the park hung gentle vapours which the sun, gaining strength, would presently disperse. The deer were awake, the birds, and the bees, but not, he thought, a human being. This was the hour when the round world is the heritage of whomsoever will rise from his bed to receive it. Edmund, looking at everything as one who sees for a first or a last time, walked out a few yards into the sunshine. His shadow, like the shadow of everything else, was long before him. The warmth 266 ZTbe Successor of the sun on his bare head in the surrounding coolness was a pleasant thing of which he was dimly conscious. He walked to the end of the terrace, and finding himself confronted there with the shady side of the house, he turned about and went down to the lower garden. Someone was moving about the gravel paths Gundred. " Eddy ! " she cried. Pleasure was in her cry, but hardly any surprise. It was as if she had been expecting him. " I knew," she said, " I knew . . ." and broke off smiling. They stood facing each other like Adam and Eve in the empty world. There was not even a gardener stirring yet. Wild things, tame in the stillness, came near, taking no heed of two who seemed as much as themselves a part of the life of the early day. A robin alighted almost at Gundred's feet. A squirrel sat up and looked round a few yards from each of them. For a moment or two neither spoke Edmund because his heart was beating so fast that he could hardly have found a voice ; Gundred possibly because something in his look kept her silent. "What made you get up?" Edmund said at last. His voice sounded husky in his ears. He had not taken in her words. " I was so broad awake," she said, hesitating. "You hadn't been sleeping?" She looked at him quickly. " Why ? " she said. "Hadn't you?" Edmund did not answer. " I dreamt you called me," she said then. " I was fast asleep when I thought I heard my name, ' Gundred ! Gundred ! ' quite clearly. It awoke me. I knew, of course, that you hadn't called me, but I couldn't sleep after that. I I was as broad awake as if you had." Successor 267 She glanced at him shyly, as he thought, for the first time in her life. " You have often enough," she added. " I've never gone to sleep after you called me." It was true. Half a dozen times in the bird's nesting days he had knocked at her door with a subdued shout. Gundred was not a light sleeper. But though nurses and maids might be hard put to it out of the holidays to have her in time for breakfast, Edmund had never had to call her twice never even to call to her ! With a sudden feeling of exultation he realised the fulness of his power. Never, if he chose to call her, would he have to call twice never in all the years that were to come. And never as a rider to this thought came another never, because she was Gundred, because all that his eyes might rest upon was hers, might he call to her again. He could not tell her then that he was not going to stay his time out. Afterwards he believed that though he had not told her she had known it. He pulled himself together. There should be no cloud over this day. If afterwards it should seem to have been the day when in Paradise their eyes had been opened to the knowledge of good and evil, no shadow should darken it while it lasted. What should they do with themselves in a world that belonged to them ? For more than an hour it would be theirs wholly, for hours almost their own. While they deliberated, they walked down to the lower terrace and to the stone seat at the end of it. Already the mists were lifting. " A gun for the rabbits, Gunny-one, or a rod for the fish ? " He shook his head almost as he spoke, and answered himself. 268 TTbe Successor " No, why should we kill anything ? To-day we won't hurt any living thing. Well live, and let live. What shall we do, then, as killing's barred ? You shall choose." She thought busily for a moment or two. Edmund waited. She would think, he said to himself, never fear, and tried to think of her thoughts that he might not think of his own. 11 Tell you what, Eddy-one ! " she said at last. " What's ' what,' Gunny-one ? " " Wait here. Don't move till I come back." She was gone in a moment. He lighted a cigarette and waited. Five o'clock struck some ten minutes later as she reappeared. She carried a basket. " Eat that," she said, giving him a biscuit. " We've got a long walk before us." She looked at his shoes. " That won't do," she said. " What a donkey I am ! You might have been getting ready all this time. Boots, Eddy ; it will be wet in the fields drenching in this dew. Thick ones ; and a hat. Off you go ! Quick ! " He obeyed her as he had obeyed her years before, without question, and came back almost before she expected him. He found her resettling her basket, into which she appeared to have crammed a variety of things. A napkin covered the whole. She tucked in the edges of it as she saw him. " Now," she said. He took the basket from her. " Turn about," she stipulated. He nodded. " You promise ? " "Very well." "We're going to breakfast up on Abbot's Peak." They dropped into the park where the wall, under Successor 269 which the bee-hives stood, was lowest, and began their walk. The wet grass was cool to their feet as they followed their long shadows over the undulating ground. They went down to the brook, and though thereby the way was made a little longer, followed the course of it upstream to where it entered the park. They were rewarded by the glimpse of an otter in one of the deeper pools. Twice they saw a kingfisher, and once a heron rose at their coming, and took its straggling flight across the sky like some embroidered bird trailing across a screen. A mile or two of meadow land after they had left the park of pasture where the cattle looked after them with soft eyes, or young horses followed them inquisitively, and a hare or two was started, brought them to the high road, which they followed till they came to a lane, down which they turned presently to find themselves amongst the heather. Here the character of the landscape changed. For the green of the fields there was purple, with here and there the yellow of abundant gorse. The sun was hot now, and the tangle of the heather dry underfoot. The air was laden with sweet smells. Bees, some of them from Merringham maybe, were busy amongst the myriad bells. Resisting the temptation to sit down and rest, they pushed forward. They were hungry now even Edmund and the thought of breakfast was incentive to energy. Presently they were climbing. Their feet slid upon slippery roots and mosses. Wider and wider the land- scape opened about them. They were making for a rock whence the ruins of a monastery beside a little pine wood commanded the surrounding country. The last half mile was steep climbing, but at last they were there. The delights of the meal that was prepared there and 270 TTbe Successor eaten under the blue of the sky are scarcely to be told in words. Edmund, his vigorous health, the exercise, and the exhilarating properties of the air combining to give him respite by suffering the body to triumph momentarily over the spirit, was to look back to just one breakfast in all his life. Gundred's basket held everything. Even in her haste she had forgotten nothing, and had "raided" to some purpose! Edmund, despatched to fill a " folding " kettle at the spring which once had supplied the monks with water, came back to find a spirit-lamp lighted and something cooking in a diminutive frying-pan over the flame. Bacon, by all that was glorious ! It mattered nothing that, to boil the water, the frying-pan had to be displaced, and to rechauffer the cooling bacon, the kettle. The great kitchen range at Merringham, with its array of gleaming copper pots and pans, had never had part in the preparation of a meal which was more appreciated. %< I didn't wait to cut it thin," said Gundred of the frizzling thing, the scent of which was mingling with the hundred scents of the hillside. " Thick or thin," he said, " it was an inspiration." The tea did not taste more metallic than any tea made in a tin kettle and drunk out of doors. Edmund pronounced it excellent, and asked for more. The Merringham bread tasted at all times like no other bread that he knew. They ate and looked out over the world. It was no longer quite their own. On a road down in the valley they could see a waggon lumbering, the team straining in the sandy soil. Smoke was rising from the chimney of a cottage. Human sounds had taken their place amongst those that were to be heard if you listened for them in the silence. Ube Successor 271 But behind his pleasure in an hour which had allowed him a spell of forgetfulness, behind the pleasant hunger which could so easily and so pleasantly be satisfied, were the hunger which could never be satisfied at all, and the pain of the knowledge that all was changed, and that the happy, careless days were over. Gradually, like one who, waking from slumber, becomes conscious of some pain that has not slept with his sleeping, he had wakened to recollection. Gundred's hand, palm upwards, lay near him on the grass. A few hours back he would have taken it. The sight of it now it was browned a little with the sun like the hand of a boy, but exquisitely fashioned brought a sudden dimness to his eyes. He must go, there was no doubt about that go, and not come back till he was cured of this folly. He had not even the excuse of youth for it. Not for him was the beauty which hurt him so grievously. Another's to wake the sleeping princess with a kiss . . . with kisses feather-light upon the finger-tips ... or, the face buried humbly even and with tears in that open hand, with kisses where the flesh was golden-pink in the palm. Could he bear it ? Oh, Gundred ! (The wonder of a name !) Gundred ! Someone else would come to woo you, to wed you someone else, by right of those accidents of birth or of fortune which are in no one's control. . . . But would he love you as you were loved at that moment? would he know you as he did who had seen your beauty grow, your body and your soul unfold like the petals of a flower ? A little sound escaped him. Gundred looked up. She had been lying still, with her hat tilted over her eyes. She pushed it back. " Don't move," he said huskily ; " don't move ! " " Eddy, what is it ? " 272 Ube Successor He turned from her. " Don't speak to me," he said, " for a moment." He turned over upon his face on the turf. If she had touched him he must have cried out. He knew that she was looking at him. He could feel her eyes upon the back of his head, but he did not see that in an instant they had filled with tears. He did not know what Balderton knew, or what rightly or wrongly Balderton had been doing. What he knew was that unaccount- ably he was making a fool of himself, and that he must go tenfold must go, for what was so unexpectedly happening. He recovered himself in a few seconds, but neither spoke of what each must have known was uppermost in the mind of the other. " Now," Edmund said at last, " oughtn't we to be making a start?" They packed the basket. There was a sense as of performing last rites in the putting away of what a short while since they had unpacked apparently so lightheartedly. "We might be wanting these things, or they could stop here till they were fetched," said Gundred doubt- fully, when all was done. "They would be quite safe." Edmund did not say that they would not be wanting them, but as much to make talk (to make talk with Gundred !) as for the sake of prudence, said that some tramp might find and make off with them. " We'll leave them at the cottage down there," said Gundred. " One of the men can ride over for them this afternoon." They walked back in unaccustomed silence. Edmund left the next day, and Balderton, surprising the unfamiliar in her young mistress's look, had so TTbe Successor 273 much to go upon. It would not be Gundred who would be reluctant. God grant that it would not be Edmund. Something had happened. She was sure of it when he did not come at Christmas, at which season she knew that he was to have had some leave, nor at Easter, nor the summer following. Something had happened, but there was plenty of time. Edmund, Gundred Gundred, Edmund . . . Balderton repeated the names as if, by such yoking, the two who bore them might be drawn together repeated them as one who invokes the saints, or like a prayer. Then quite suddenly something else happened. Lady Alton, who had been abroad, flounced home in curious spirits to decide that Gundred, who was to have waited for her presentation in the spring, should come out at Merringham, and have a preliminary canter. Balderton recognised the signs of some fresh development, and waited. 'We'll have a ball," Lady Alton said to her Gundred being at Scarborough, where she was pursuing holiday studies with Miss Moberly, and whence she was now to be recalled " a party, rejoicings. We are only young once. We have lived perhaps almost too quietly at Merringham. Something is expected of us. Why, I might like a little excitement myself. Sometimes I really hardly feel older than my own daughter. Sometimes , . ." She broke off. " So the sooner the better," she said, after a little pause. " This autumn October; I shall lay myself out to make this party notable. I know charming people to ask the advan- tage of going about as much as I do. We'll have young people and a few of maturer years. Oh, I know charming people ! " She wanted excuse for a party ! s 274 Ufoe Successor "Mr. Edmund, I hope," said Balderton vaguely, while she wondered. "Oh, yes," said Lady Alton lightly. "Mr. Edmund, I daresay." She did not seem to be thinking of him. " We must see. To think that I should have a daughter grown up approaching a marriageable age ! I feel, I declare, quite excited. There are moments in one's life, aren't there, at which one seems to have reached a turning-point or a a goal or something. Such a one must come to a mother, I think, when she brings out her daughter and sees the results of her labours, and if such a time should coincide with a point, as it were, in the life of the mother herself. . . ." She paused again as Balderton said, " My lady ? " " Ah, well," said Lady Alton, " I was thinking that it would seem as if Providence, watching over all things, did favour the right did crown, so to speak, our poor efforts with blessing." " Yes ? " said Balderton; She would understand, she supposed, in due time. Her thoughts fled to Edmund in Vienna, to Gundred at Scarborough victims both. But they did not just then fly to one who, equally with them, and little as he knew it, was victim and sport of an untoward fate. CHAPTER XII RODDY upon a journey of curiosity Edmund's engaging but reprehensible uncle, Mrs. Alton's beloved but unsatisfactory brother was little changed from Roddy as we may remember him upon a visit of condolence. The years still dealt gently with this gentleman, and at an age for which no one would have given him credit he kept his hair and his fine teeth, and even his slim figure. Contemporaries of his were elderly men ; he barely looked middle-aged. Yet he could hardly be said to have spared himself. He had wandered far and wide in the time that had elapsed since we met him in Curzon Street, pursuing a fortune that never was overtaken, and doubtless finding his diversions by the way. He was a rolling stone, however, which, if it gathered no moss, rolled so smoothly and pleasantly down the hillside as never to damage itself, and so ornamentally as to justify in appearance, at least, its downward career. And what was he doing now? doing now in that galley a first-class carriage in a train bound for Westerton Derbolt, junction for Broadhanger, Upton, Queen's Horton, and Merringham. If there had been any to put the question to him, he would probably have answered in his slow pleasant voice, and with an amused smile, that he had been asked to Merringham for the functions connected with the coming out of his nephew's cousin, and was on his way to fulfill the obligations he 275 276 tlbc Successor had incurred in an unguarded moment in accepting the invitation. But what was he doing? He could hardly have told you. Following up an adventure? Not the kind of adventure, then, to which he was accustomed. The summer which was over had supplied him with an adventure of sorts for all that. He had had what he could not but believe was an offer of marriage and from no less a person than his sister's extraordinary sister-in-law, whom by the merest chance in the world he had met at a little German spa! The lady, whom he had never seen before, arriving suddenly at Baden Dordlich, where, for some trifling ailment, he was undergoing the cure of the moment, had to all appearance been struck by something in him or in his appearance, and had hardly released him from her sight till he had been given (as he had to think, laugh as he would) a chance of refusing her! He could laugh still. An offer of marriage. Think of it ! Had he accepted ? Or had he, with a " This is so sudden " (which it was !) asked for time? He scarcely knew. He was at that moment on his way to Merringham for nothing else, he believed, but to find out. Yet something did give the encounter in retrospect, anyway, and its preposterous developments apart the air of an adventure : something in the circumstances of their first meeting, after a glimpse which he had caught of her on her arrival in passing a hotel omnibus on its way from the station ; something in connection with the surprise with which one at least of the two had heard the other's name. What had happened? Baden Dordlich was at the back of Godspeed, where an arrival was an arrival, and the sight of a " civilised " head (the colour of a new penny, if you please, in that year of grace !) an event to Ufoe Successor 277 mark the day which held it. You may gauge the resources of Baden Dordlich. There is a depth to be sounded there, as Mr. Carmelin could have told you at which, to the male visitor, a head which has taken the trouble to be not quite of the colour which Heaven made it, will seem a head which respects itself. So much for the glimpse preliminary which sufficed to rouse his curiosity ! The lady's luggage, and maid, and appointments generally, were of the important kind which inspires respect amongst hotel officials. He had not been surprised then to hear at his hotel (there were only two hotels of any standing) that a great English lady had arrived at the other, but got no nearer to her name that evening than the " Hortense Meringue" Ladee Hortense Meringue of a French waiter's attempt at it, or the "Altode Meringer" of a German. So came it that meeting the lady herself next morning he did not know who she was. What characterised the encounter made it different from the thousand and one encounters of travellers who, meeting by hazard, are presently to learn that indirectly they are known to each other ? He could not tell. He had just taken his first glass of water, and was going for his prescribed walk in the gardens when he came face to face with her. She was coming down the path which he was going up. Now she at that moment might conceivably have been in his thoughts. It seemed impossible that he whom, as far as he knew, she had never seen before should have been in hers. Yet in the moment which made the curious impression upon him, it was as if she had recognised him. More, she looked as one looks who comes unexpectedly upon something or someone that he is thinking about or even looking for. There was what he described to himself as the oddest little moment, and each said, " I beg your 278 TTbe successor pardon ! " It was not till afterwards that he saw that the very apologies were, upon the face of things, without reason, for though they had both, as he believed, had the sense of having come to a standstill or otherwise behaved unusually, they had not, when he came to think of it, done anything of the sort ! Half an hour later after an interval during which he had had the strange but in some sort entertaining feeling of being watched from a distance, from as near as might be, from divers points of view she had approached him upon a pretext veiling but thinly an obvious desire to make his acquaintance. He would overlook her unconventionality, would he not? He was, she thought, an Englishman. Did he by chance speak German ? She was at Baden Dordlich to replace a pet dog of the breed for which the Grand Duke who took his name from the place, as doubtless he was aware, was famous. Her own little dog had been dead some years. She had loved him greatly, and was hoping to be able to get one as like him as possible. She did not expect to have any difficulty in her negotiations, but was an indifferent German scholar, and if she should find it impossible to make herself understood, might she might she venture to ask the assistance of a compatriot ? Roderick Carmelin, secretly amused, had professed his readiness to render any help in his power. That, the lady said, was very kind of him. She was afraid he would think her very extraordinary. They had never met before, she thought? No? Then, that she might not be supposed to have any " anterior " motive (had he mistaken her, or did she mean " ulterior " ?) she must tell him her name. She was Lady Alton de Merringham. Lady Alton de Merringham ! (She had said " anterior " probably !) Lady Alton de Merringham ? Ube Successor 279 Then they were known to each other by hearsay indirectly, even, connected. Known to each other ? connected ? He had just said, she thought, that they had never met before. Had they ? No ? Had they ? He was sure ? She persisted, and broke off with a Then then who was he ? Roderick Carmelin, he told her. Carmelin ? Carmelin ? Roderick Carmelin ? Then he must be ... Mrs. Alton's brother, he said. Mrs. Alton's brother. Edmund's uncle . . . For a minute or two she seemed taken aback. An appreciable time passed, during which she searched his face more or less furtively, and exclaimed at the " extraordinariness of it all " more than once. He was too old a traveller, perhaps, to be as much struck with the coincidence as she. " But you're no relation," she said, after a pause, and gave a little laugh. It was as if she had arrived at a conclusion which relieved her. " I thought, do you know, for a moment that you must be." " None." " Still, it's extraordinary," she said. They met again in the afternoon. Together the next morning they chose the pretty but weasely little creature which was to take the place of another of the same species, which in its lifetime had borne the name, it seemed, of Fido. She told him much about Lord Alton, and a good deal about Gundred. She spoke of Edmund. She regretted an "estrangement" which in the later years of her husband's life, and since his deplored death, had somehow kept her and his sister apart. She knew nothing of the causes of what no one regretted more than she. Edmund, she was glad to say, was allowed to go to them. They were very fond of 280 ZTbe Successor him at Merringham. Everyone spoke highly of him, and it rejoiced her to know that he was getting on so well. Great things were prophesied for him. His mother and his uncle must be proud of him. Who knew but that, if his father had lived, Merringham and Curzon Street might never have been disunited. Daily the lady grew more confidential. He was pleasantly entertained. She was made up of con- tradictions. With that in her look to challenge and provoke you, she was of a monstrous and surprising respectability. Never in his life had he met anyone so respectable. A suspicion of levity in his tone sent her retiring into impregnable fastnesses of decorous reserve ; the hint of impropriety in a word or the turn of a phrase brought down fluttering but protesting eyelids. Yet she was scarcely retiring. From telling him about herself, Guridred, Merringham, her difficulties, interests, pursuits, she went on to tell him about her circumstances with stress upon the liberality of her late husband's provision for her. Her purpose became unmistakable, if it was somehow a thought half-hearted. She did not waver. He must get tired, must he not, of his wandering life ? Did he never get tired of it? Never wish to anchor himself, so to speak ? Think of of settling down ? A week, to Mr. Carmelin's amusement, brought them to that ; a fortnight to something even more definite, with some talk of his soul in between, and the saving graces of the life domestic. (There must come a time, for example, when this world would fail us. Such an hour came, she believed, to each one of us. But first there was vouchsafed to us sometimes an opportunity for making our peace with Heaven. Well for us if we recognised such opportunity when it came. Ah, he need not smile. She was serious. But why should she think ? . . . Ah, she was shaking her head over trfoe Successor 281 him, she feared she knew but too well.) He hardly knew what to make of her. Had she a " mission " ? If so, it was a mission out of which the spirit had evaporated. She was a trifle mechanical. Yet . . . and yet again ! She spoke of loneliness upon the day, a woman's need of a Strong Arm, her own unfettered position. . . . And he ? He had feigned innocence but was going to Merringham. We need not suppose that he had committed himself. Too old a bird this to be caught with chaff! The idea was preposterous, unthinkable, out of the question, but somehow he wanted to hear more of it ... to see her again. Here he was, anyway, in the train on a journey of what? Sentiment? He was heart-whole. Discovery ? Hardly. Curiosity ? That or nothing. If she had not been an Alton, or he had not been a Carmelin, he might perhaps have allowed himself to give something not unlike consideration to the thought of a change in his lot ; for, to the polite libertine who has formed no ties, there comes in time, if not neces- sarily the hour when, the world bidding fair to fail him, he turns for solace to thoughts of the heaven which he has neglected for so long a sense, yet, of dissatisfaction with the conditions of his life, and a consequent hanker- ing for the security of a home and the more abiding comforts of domesticity. Lady Alton, in what had at the time the semblance of an aside, but was not in effect far from being the motive of her whole discourse, had found there the weak spot in his armour. Roderick Carmelin, repenting him nothing, was nearing the parting of the ways. Meanwhile, he was also nearing his destination. From old times, when before and after his sister's marriage he had stayed often enough at Merringham, 282 Ube Successor he recognised stages upon the route. Edmund's father had been his friend. Poor Edmund he meant Edmund's father and poor Edmund too ! That was how many years ago ? More than he could afford to count. Poor Susan (from whom he had borrowed so often !), how shabbily for all her pluck, and her present comparative prosperity notwithstanding, how shabbily life had dealt with her ! He passed the later years in review, considering them as they regarded Merringham, and chuckling once more over a recent use of the word " estrangement " in con- nection with them. He and she, he fancied, would have something to talk over perhaps laugh over when he saw her on his way back. She knew of his projected visit, for he had not accepted the invitation without writing whimsically to sound her first upon the subject, and receive her " Go, by all means." Of course he must go, she said, and afterwards he must come and tell her all about it. How much he should be able to tell her he did not quite know, but though she would not listen to all his stories there would assuredly be something which could be told to such a sister as his. She had expressed no surprise, perhaps because nothing that happened to her brother could ever surprise her ! Here, meanwhile, was Culverton Regis, which he remembered well. Twenty minutes now would see him at Westerton Derbolt. Momentarily the country was growing more beautiiul. A recollection of the exceeding beauty of Merringham came to him, as the character of a landscape, which he recalled as he saw it again, established itself. He put down the papers which he had not been reading, and turned more directly to face the window. Where else, in or out of England, would you find such a country ? A tree or two of the trees was already flaming in its autumn dress presage of ZTbe Successor 283 the near days when the wooded hills would be a medley of exuberant colours. The sight of so much beauty, with the knowledge that Merringham, like a jewel in exquisite setting, was in the very heart of it, smote him with a momentary pang for his sister's disappointment such a pang as Edmund might have felt if he had not been Edmund, and Susan in her heart of hearts must have felt, though she might not have acknowledged it. But dear Susan (our traveller could never be serious for long!) how funny she was! funnier in the old days before she put a curb on her tongue. " Brood Mare ! " He must remind her of that . . . and something in the very early days about "Injured Expressions!" He laughed to himself. It is significant that he approached Merringham in the spirit of laughter. CHAPTER XIII So while Edmund kept silence in Austria, obstinate, deaf alike to invitations and appeals, and Gundred in England, sore to heartsickness, showed at succeeding intervals an interested, indifferent, rebellious, excited, but always beautiful face, Roddy, the stranger of Balderton's surmismgs, the gallant, the light-lover (but also, as has been hinted and little as she guessed it, in this case the innocent victim of circumstance), neared Merringham, where Lady Alton was walking on air. Lady Alton, expecting him, trod nothing less buoyant. She had not looked so young or so well for years. She was like a ship nearing the haven, a horse turned towards home, a maid who awaits her lover. It was as if she had reached the hour of her triumph. Had she not reached it? Heaven indeed was smiling upon her, as she had hazarded to Balderton had smiled upon her, promised to smile to the end. All her phrases had justified themselves. Lord Alton had died happy. Everything was for the best. What had to be not only was to be, but had been. Now she was entering upon her rest. Now she was reaping her reward. She looked back and saw how guardian angels had watched over her. Who had guided her if not angels and ministers of grace? Difficulties had assailed her. She had been enabled to over-ride them. The terrors of hell had gotten hold of her. She had been shown how to shake them off. Like Jonah's gourd as suddenly, anyway Matty Henster in her hour had been raised 284 Ube Successor 285 up for her admonishment ; more, for her guidance. Impossible not to see a Decree, a Pre-ordination, an All-wisdon in all that had happened and in poor Matty's case the very finger of God. God worked, we all knew, in strange ways, choosing the humblest instru- ments for His inscrutable purposes " frail earthen vessels," as the hymn told us, " things of no worth ! " For what else in the day of doubt and fear had the gipsy girl come into her life ? God was very good. The hairs of our heads were numbered. A sparrow did not fall to the ground without His knowledge . . . and were we not indeed much better than they? Thou Shalt Not . . . and she Had. But the Almighty, in raising up a fellow- sinner for her example, had shown her not only the way she should take, but a sign. The message was plain. No obscurities. No veiled meanings. Do this. A faith- ful servant had but to obey. What were God's priests if not His mouthpiece ? Matty must marry be willing to marry her man, they said. Upon the face of things and without prejudice, could it be other than for her sake that Matty had first to find him had even to find him ? Roddy, meanwhile, had reached Westerton Derbolt, where he changed trains. Here a talkative clergyman, with a face like a good-looking bun, and a name like the name of a note-paper, got into conversation with him. This person, after some remarks upon the state of the weather, a little volunteering of the information about himself which put Roddy in possession of his name Silurian was it ? Silarian ? something of the sort and a few civil generalities, alluded to the coming festivities at Merringham. " You, sir, I can see are to be one of the party." Mr. Carmelin bowed. " Though why you should think so . . . ? " he hazarded vaguely. 286 ttbe Successor The clergyman smiled, waving his hands. " As Rector of Merringham," he said, " I naturally see a good deal of the family. The living indeed is, as you probably know, in their gift. I have known Lady Alton de Merringham since she came here as a bride, and the young lady who is to come out at the ball to-morrow night from an infant. Anyone, sir, could see that you were a relation. Though I have not yet the pleasure of knowing your name, I could not be mistaken." Roddy lazily put him right, disclaiming relationship with Lady Alton's family, and blood relationship with the Altons. His fellow-traveller seemed surprised, continued to be surprised for as long as they journeyed together ; could not, he said, as they were parting at Merringham Station, get over his surprise. No relation to the young lady, to be sure, as brother-in-law of her late father's brother ; no relation at all to her, albeit uncle to her cousin ; yet the likeness was extraordinary. Any- one might be pardoned for making the mistake. Was he not commonly thought very like her ? Roddy, inwardly damning his persistence though wholly good- temperedly remembered dimly to have heard that Edmund had said that Gundred reminded him of his uncle. " It is most remarkable, sir," said the clergyman. <c Really, sir ? " said the layman. The clergyman was met by a lady in a pony chaise, and a carriage from Merringham was waiting for the Merringham guest. The two parted to go their separate ways, and Roddy would have thought just then little more of the matter if, as the pony chaise drove off, he had not seen that he was being volubly discussed by its occupants. He conceived an amiable dislike of the Rector of Merringham. tlbe Successor 287 He got into the carriage, and was driven, like Edmund before him, through scenery which he recognised yard by yard. Rubber tyres made the wheels noiseless on the well- kept roads. The carriage was a new one, or had lately been re-lined, and it was perfect in all its appoint- ments. Life, he perceived, was a smooth thing at Merringham. In course of time they turned into the park. What a splendid expanse of it ! In contemplation of it, he forgot what had exercised him. In the twilight it seemed to stretch to the horizon. Well to be the favoured young woman to whom all this belonged, together with the right to pass on her name in good time to her offspring. A lucky young woman ! He began to be curious to see her. Common report gave her looks. Her curious mother, in urging him to come to Merringham, had expressed a wish that he should see her. She did not know why, but she would like him to see her. She was proud of her ; it was that, she supposed. Gundred, she said, was such a daughter as any parent might be proud of. When she was not talking of herself, indeed, the lady had talked of her daughter, and therefrom of the happiness of parentage. Gundred had come to her he had heard perhaps ? at a time of great sorrow. Mr. Carmelin probably knew she was a posthumous child. But of course he must know. Was he not connected with the family ? There was some- thing singularly sad, then, to a woman in the thought that her child could not know its father singularly sad. And such a child . . . ! Oh, he must really see Gundred ! Well, that was what he was now going to do. Entertaining to hear from a stranger that she resembled him ! 28$ tlbe Successor There was an air of preparation over Merringham when it came into sight. Too big a house to need the ease and aid of tents or outbuildings for its enter- tainments, it yet bore signs of the approaching festivities. A small forest of palms, destined probably for the ball-room and the passages, stood under cover of the twilight at a side-door. An awning had been erected over the great hall-door itself ; and as the carriage came round the curve in the drive, a small army of gardeners, engaged in carrying pots of flowers into the hall, stood back in line upon each side of the threshold. Through an avenue of men and boys holding hot- house flowers of divers descriptions, from scarlet geraniums to the odd-looking orchids of Mrs. Alton's aversion, Edmund's uncle stepped into Merringham. The accident gave his entrance, as he was amused to think, the air and the aspect of no ordinary arrival. A new combination for Merringham. The first in its hour had been strange enough : Edmund, Gundred, Lady Alton ! That, in its hour, had been strange enough strange enough surely ! But Lady Alton, Gundred, the new-comer. . . . Could one roof cover these ? Balderton, in the housekeeper's room, sat raging and frozen too ; her eyes shut, cold hands to a burning head. Roddy, crossing the hall in the wake of the butler, and becoming conscious as he did so of sounds be- tokening a full house, found himself wondering what his hostess would look like out of the hotel surroundings into which she had seemed to fit so admirably. In Merringham, as he saw it again, he began to see her less easily. ZTfoe Successor 289 He was shown into a small room where a tea-table stood near a blazing fire. He was being asked whether he would like anything stronger than tea, and was deciding, as the hour was late, in favour of sherry and bitters, when Lady Alton appeared. She greeted him, her two hands outstretched. " Welcome ! " she said, smiling. " Welcome to Merringham ! " There was that which was proprietory in her manner in the intimacy even of the small room. He was her special guest, and she had prepared a bower for him. The fire gave him welcome, even as herself, the tea-table temptingly beside it, its slender burden of porcelain and silver shining and sparkling in the dancing light. Tea-time was over by an hour or more. This was a traveller's own little private tea if he cared to have it. He was half regretting, in the snugness of the cosy room, that he had decided for wine (which asked other surroundings), when the sight of the butler reappearing with his cocktail, and of a footman respectfully waiting in the background for his keys, reminded him of the comparative nearness of dinner and of the duty he owed to his appetite. Lady Alton, meanwhile, looked her part better than he would have expected. The carriage of her elaborate head gave her something of a grand air, if always with a suggestion of pinchbeck behind it. Probably she was better-looking now than she had been as a younger woman. Viewed with unprejudiced eyes, she was comely enough, and to see her radiant for you in the world who were but the acquaintance of a chance meeting, tended, if you were not without your natural vanities, to show her in a favourable rather than an unfavourable light. She had a dozen good points. He stood with his back to the fire. It was very 290 Ube Successor pleasant in the warm room. While he answered hospitable questions about his journey, and told her what he had been doing with himself since they parted at Baden Dordlich, his eyes wandered round the walls. He remembered some of the pictures, here one and there one looking, as he mentally realised, to days when his hostess, to all intents and purposes, had not had any existence. Here were portraits of the Andover, whom he had known, and the Redruth. Unlikely that in Lord Alton's lifetime these had hung side by side as they did now. Here they were, however, and Blanche, Lady Alton, sat under them ! Here, near at hand, was a small picture of Edmund's father as a boy, which might have been a picture of Edmund himself at the same age. Then it was another picture which caught his eye Lord Alton a portrait which we may recognise as the original of the crayon drawing before which Gundred had once been danced and dandled in Lady Alton's boudoir. The painting occupied a place of honour over a writing-table. As a work of art, it was no great thing, but as a presentment of the ferrety little man, it had a verisimilitude which might be superficial, but which was striking. Lady Alton followed his eye to it. You could hear the small voice as you looked, recall little tricks of speech and manner. The pinched nose, the skin tightly stretched across the bones of the forehead, the pink-rimmed eyes, all seemed to give you the man. That in reality they gave you but the husk, the kernel being absent the essential air of refinement which had characterised Lord Alton, and made his insignificant appearance distinguished did not prevent the likeness from being remarkable. The man was there without his subtleties, without his humour, his temper, his mettle, without the perverse and whimsical soul which, Successor 291 making him capable of unspeakable things perhaps, explained, if it could not justify him. An indifferent picture, if not a downright bad one but physically the man was there. Bared of his attributes, Lord Alton was not pleasing. Something of futility marked him. Not, one would have said, a man to take a woman's fancy ; not a type to perpetuate notably, perhaps, not a type to perpetuate. " You remember him well ? " Lady Alton asked, in the subdued voice which a certain sort of person thinks it necessary to assume in speaking of the dead. " Oh, very well ! That, though I should say it hardly expresses him, brings him vividly before me." " I think it good," Lady Alton said. " It was the last portrait of him done about a couple of years before he died. I forget the artist's name, though he stayed here to do it. Such sums as they get, some of these painters ! Lord Alton did not think very much of it himself. Of course, it's not flattering." She smiled as at a recollec- tion, and continued after a little pause : " I said so at the time, I remember, and my dear husband was quite impatient with me, as if that hadn't been what he meant, or I had missed the point or something. He said 'Flattering!' I remember, just Ike that 'Flattering! as if one wanted a pretty picture ! ' Then, as I said to him, what did he want? For it was exactly like him. No, I must say I always thought it very good. I have a copy of it in my own sitting-room." They looked up at the indecisive face. Roddy was thinking that he understood Lord Alton's impatience. It was improbable that the artist's jest was deliberate or even conscious. He had painted in good faith, but if he had wanted to score off an enemy by exposing him, by holding up the mirror to nature at a disadvantage, 292 Ufoe Successor he could not have painted to more judicious and malicious purpose. Meagreness was the keynote of his record and message meagreness, arrested development, insignificance. Mr. Carmelin's eyes were upon the picture when the door opened, and there came in Gundred. CHAPTER XIV IT was the wrong moment to see her for the first time, or it should not have been Roddy just then who saw her. It was like looking from death to life. The contrast was startling. Gundred's thoughts might be with Edmund in Vienna ; her appearance suffered nothing, but had the peculiar warmth and glow which no distemper of mind or body ever took from her, and which made her beauty so unusual and so telling. (There were those who were never to be " able " to admire her the Miss Wraysburys, for instance, who thought such excess of good looks hardly ladylike, and one or two others.) She was like some young wild but gentle thing of the fields and woods. Inevitable that Roddy, as Roddy, looking from the picture to her, and with goodness knows what knowledge of life to make for cynicism, should at least take note of unlikeness so remarkable. No one else, perhaps, would have observed it, and not even he if, at the moment of her entrance, his mind had not been full of Lord Alton as the picture falsely, but also horribly truly, presented him. Observe it he did, however, with (morally) his tongue in his cheek, and an imaginary and freakish glance from the tail of his eye, not at Lady Alton, but at the lady of the remarkable behaviour at Baden Dordlich. This in the briefest moment, and without any perception of whereto such thinking must lead him. He hardly formulated his thoughts, indeed there was not time and maybe was conscious just 294 tlbe Successor then of no more than a curious impression, and his usual inclination to levity. But as Gundred gave him her hand and looked into his eyes with eyes which, though she did not know it, and he did not know it either, were so perilously like his own it was of a stranger impression still that he became conscious. His mood underwent a rapid and unaccount- able change. Later, he felt that he had known something at once not the unthinkable truth, but that at least which, when the truth came to him, inconceivable as it seemed, incredible almost, confirmed and established it. It was, as he expressed it to himself afterwards, as if he recognised his kind ... so that before Gundred spoke he had divined what the sound and the tone of her voice would be. When she spoke, as she did almost immedi- ately, her voice and a certain eager but unhurried way that she had of speaking were as things with which he was already familiar. Feelings of sympathy for and with her, of lively kindliness towards her, mingled with his admiration of her, and with another feeling. He believed, to his surprise, and yet which was more sur- prising still not wholly to his surprise, that he had an intimate understanding of her. He knew, for example, in fewer minutes than he stayed hours at Merringham, that though a serviceable enough affection might exist between her and her mother, there was no really close accord. The two, if he was not mistaken, looked at life not only from different points of view, but from different planes. There was something ridiculous about Lady Alton ; something which always inclined him to laughter. When she was elegant, and said "sufficient " for " enough," " request " for " ask," " endeavour " for " try," he wanted to answer her in mischievous kind with such flowers of speech as " comprehend," " commence," " evince " ; to drag a church into the conversation, that he might call it a ttbe Successor 295 " place of worship " ; a funeral, that he might speak of the " obsequies " ; a burial, to call it an " interment," Gundred no more than he could overlook what was so obvious. She and her mother were two. Yet he could see that she owed not a little to a mother who had much to transmit. Her bold outlines she owed to her modified as they were in her own young case her straight back, the carriage of her shoulders. The mother laid stress, perhaps, upon what the daughter only suggested. Making every allowance for the difference in their ages, he saw that Gundred had improved upon all that had been handed down to her ; but that Lady Alton was largely represented in her daughter was indisputable. Gundred was welcoming him to Merringham too differently somehow from her mother. She was telling him that Edmund spoke of him often. That in itself he gathered incidentally was passport to her good-will. But . . . what was it about her? She affected him differently from anyone he had ever seen. Thence he thought of Edmund, and felt sure that in different sort still she must affect him also must if he knew anything of one strain of the blood which ran in his veins ! Not the usual girl from the school-room by any means; not one to be held by the conventions of a stupid world, or be content to let the joys of life pass her by. She was made for the great happinesses, and someone (it was then that he read or mis-read her) was bound to suffer for her ! But in the strange moment of his insight, when the veil seemed raised, "he guessed at another Gundred too, who, if she was to make sore hearts, was of the kind whose own heart would ache in the process. This or that ? Which was the real Gundred ? Both. Her look quickened at his ! Surely, as he held the hand she had extended, her look quickened, and something of his own 296 tTbe Successor unaccountable sense of spiritual kinship came to her also ! Unconsciously he let his eyes rest on the picture from which he had withdrawn them at her entrance, and reluctantly still without thinking it out to its conclusion found himself again with his first thought. " Oh," she said, as if answering it, and following the direction of his eyes as her mother had done, " I don't believe that was like my father. I am certain that it was a libel upon him. I know it is a favourite of yours, mother, but I don't like it. We must show Mr. Carmelin the one in the library." "Ah, that one the one in the library looks so grave," said Lady Alton. " This one is smiling a little. That's why I like it. He always had his joke though half his jokes, I'm bound to say, I couldn't make head or tail of. He often laughed when he was in good health. This one has the nearest approach to a smile. I can't see much wrong with it." Gundred shook her head. He looked away from the portrait with a feeling of relief, and went back to her gladly. (Pleasant things for him always, smooth things, the easy way !) She held him as music may hold you. It was not entirely that she was beautiful. Over and above beauty, she had a quality which he was quick enough to recognise. The magnetism of her personality was potent, and in the capacity (happily) of Edmund's uncle rather than of Roderick Carmelin, he found him- self under the spell of it, and wondering no longer how Edmund regarded her, but whether a potential if not an actual ardour in his feelings towards her might not have to do now with his absence ? As these thoughts passed through his mind, he became conscious that Lady Alton was watching him ttbe Successor 397 attentively had been watching him, indeed, since her daughter came into the room. She was proud of her, he supposed, and was trying to gauge the impression she made upon one who saw her for the first time. There was small fear that Gundred would not be admired. She compelled admiration. Lady Alton, however, looked from one to the other. A little scratching at the door and a diminutive bark outside made a diversion. Fido the Second was admitted, and introduced to the kind gentleman who had helped to choose and to buy him. He was so small that his mistress had had no difficulty in smuggling him into the country. " I gave you a dear little sleeping draught, didn't I, my sweet, and just put you into the inside of my jacket. Nobody guessed you were there, did they, and we had no bother." Gundred, whom Edmund's uncle had from the first reminded of Edmund, thinking of the other Fido who had skipped and danced about Edmund's long legs, and died for Queen Victoria, wandered to Vienna while her mother talked. "Edmund," she was saying to herself, "Edmund, why aren't you here ? Cruel ! You know I want you. I know you want me. Dear Edmund, why aren't you here?" Long, long thoughts for no one's reading ! But, pensive for the moment and tragic, she looked more unlike the picture than before, and this was what Edmund's uncle could see, and saw. It was not till Roddy went to his room, where the footman who had unpacked for him was laying out his things, that he realised what it was that had entered his mind at the sight of Gundred. He came to a 298 trbe Successor standstill on his way to the dressing-table. The footman, one Frederick, a new-comer, spoke down- stairs of a gentleman so absent that you had to speak to him twice before he heard you. " A white waistcoat, sir ? " No answer. " Will you wear a white waistcoat, sir ? " " A white waistcoat ? " Edmund's uncle came back, as we may remember Edmund's other uncle upon a notable day to have come back, as from a great, great distance. "Eh? White? Black? I don't know. Leave them there. I'll see presently." "Very good, sir," said Frederick. "Dinner is at a quarter-past eight, sir," and withdrew. " All right ! All right ! " said Roddy to the closing door. When it had closed and he was alone, some minutes passed before he began to dress. What he had noted so lightly was threatening by that time to trouble him. He had never taken Lady Alton seriously. To him she was still not Lady Alton at all, but the Head which had been at the pains of dyeing itself, the extraordinary Encounter at the springs, and even more extraordinary Proposal. Of her, then, as of the passer-by or of anyone else who is unknown to you, all things were conceivable. But of the mother of Gundred. . . . In the light of the half-dozen wax candles which illumined the room (the same which Edmund had occupied upon his first visit, and from which he had heard the cries of the trapped rabbit), Edmund's uncle showed an absent and perturbed expression very unlike that with which he had stepped into Merringham. What had happened to him? Guessing nothing, did tlfoe Successor 299 he yet see himself trapped ? Was it a way of escape that he was seeking as his forehead wore this unusual frown? If so, it was only to find himself confronted first by one and then by the other of the two thoughts which beset him. Each in its separate way seemed to be disturbing. In the old-fashioned grate the fire ticked and clicked pleasantly to have called the attention of anyone less preoccupied to itself. Padding about on the soft carpet when at length he had begun to dress he heard it, perhaps, for he stopped before the hearth from time to time and looked deeply into the red heart of the coals. He saw Gundred there maybe, as everywhere else. But with the face of Gundred behind it, beside it, over it was the face of the picture. The sharpness of the contrast was insistent. Then what of it ? What, in Heaven's name, of unlikeness ! Not one child in twenty resembles its parents. Unlikeness was nothing less than nothing. He argued with himself warmly. He particularly disliked disagreeable things, and if he was stumbling upon upon anything, it was extremely disagreeable. But unlikeness as of kind . . . difference of species ! A grape of a thorn ? A fig of a thistle ? There were mezzotints on the walls, some that he knew, some that he did not know, some that he saw were rare indeed. The candlesticks were Battersea enamel. Some bits of Staffordshire pottery stags, dogs, sheep were upon the mantelpiece. A stag had lost its antlers. The great four-post bed had purple hangings. These things he remarked absently, with the nice appointments of the room generally. And if, urged his thoughts the while if so, why then Edmund . Successor Good God ! what was this that he was thinking ? He pulled himself up with a jerk. This idea of his was horrible. What imp of mischief had put it into his head ? It was monstrous. There were no grounds for it. It was iniquitous even to give it so much attention as to combat it. There had never been any talk, any breath of suspicion? Abominable, then, to fancy, imagine, invent . . . He did not silence his thinking. And so we have Roddy at Merringham, and not only at Merringham but, by accident and something which was not accident, upon the trail of that which he did not even suspect. CHAPTER XV MR. CARMELIN came but Mr. Carmelin went. It was many months before Balderton got the explanation of that episode. Then, on a day, Lady Alton said out of a silence : "Why does Matty Henster -Matty Jake, I should say never come to church ? She's been a respectable married woman these fifteen years. Why does she never take what she was once refused ? She could now. She could have done so directly she had made up her mind to marry the father of her child directly she had made up her mind even to look for him." Balderton sent her thoughts back across the years, and they took her to the scene in the church and to an illness which had attacked one who had been witness of it an illness of the kind known as obscure. They might have taken her a little further still without overstepping the mark, and have shown her her own attitude towards her mistress after the coming and going of Edmund, when feelings beyond her control had almost betrayed her into foolishness irremediable. They took her far enough for her purpose. Lady Alton had uprisen from her sick bed to begin what had assuredly been a quest. After fifteen years she had found what she sought ... to no purpose, it had seemed. To no purpose ? Lady Alton's speech was illuminating. The little old woman grew more and more silent. Her spirit shone out of bright eyes which nothing 301 302 Ufoe Successor escaped. The fires of life might burn low ; they burned clear like a fire of coals on a winter's night. Her health was wonderful. Her skin was becoming like parchment ; it was ivory white in the light of the lamp by which she balanced her books. She crooned to the linen sometimes as she tended it, much as she would have crooned to a child little old songs that her own mother had taught her who in turn had learned them from hers. They were of so long ago that they seemed to belong to a different dispensation. They came back to her now. But she relaxed nothing of her hold upon life. One thing when time and her mistress's quiescence had shown her that after all there was to be no amazing complication by marriage one thing she did not under- stand : why, if Mr. Carmelin was all that her horror painted him, he should have come to Merringham at all. Sometimes she wondered if, thinking she knew everything, she did not indeed know but a part. There was that in his conduct which had shaken her certainty. Watching him as closely as might be when, on the morning after his arrival, she had had an opportunity of observing him as he walked with her young mistress on the terrace under her window, she had stored food for thought. What were these puzzled looks which he turned on her? wondering looks, tender, questioning, something apprehensive ? . . . looks impossible, she would have supposed, to the scoundrel she thought him. At the moment she had held her breath, not for this just then, but for what the night might bring forth. The house was full of strangers the party (Lady Alton's circle having enlarged considerably since the days of Edmund's first visit) drawn grandly from new acquaintances of travel. Small matter if strangers saw what was plain for all to see. They would not trbe Successor 303 interpret. But at the ball there would be those who knew the intimate history of Merringham who would not, by a confusion of ideas natural enough to outsiders, account for the evidences of their senses by supposing Mr. Carmelin to be the young Baroness's uncle. Mr. Carmelin might be almost Gundred's uncle as she, calling him Uncle Roddy for Edmund's sake, laughingly declared him. In reality, he was nothing of the sort. The night, then, must bring forth something. But the night brought forth nothing. Mr. Carmelm, suddenly and surprisingly pleading illness, did not appear at the ball. Could he, ne'er-do-well as he was known to be, have come innocently to Merringham ? Could he have been ignorant of the truth till he found himself face to face with it ? Was it conceivable ? possible ? There were things which even Balderton was never to know. For the rest, Gundred occupied all the old woman's attention. At an age when other girls are hardly out of the school-room, Gundred was called upon to make decisions for life. Two people wanted to marry her. The love affairs of a pair of most desirable young men began at Gundred's first ball and ended there, if either of them could have been induced to believe it. Gundred hunted that winter. Her suitors waylaid her as she rode to a meet, forestalling one the other when it was possible, glaring at each other when they met, and laying the foundations of an enmity which presently divided two houses. For years there was a coldness between Lady Abbotswood and Lady Henry Witton-Wilson, by reason of young Lord Abbotswood's opinion, upon the one hand, of Mr. Witton-Wilson's ideas of honour ; and of Mr. Witton-Wilson's, upon the other, of Lord Abbotswood's notions of fair-play. Gundred would have neither of them. She was even a little bit cruel. 304 TTbe Successor Lady Alton awaking was mildly remonstrant. For some time she was too much taken up with her own recent disappointment to concern herself actively in the affairs of her daughter. Duty and inclination for once had lain in the same direction. She had thought so much about the extraordinary circumstances of her meeting with Mr. Carmelin that she had really come to look upon him as her fate. All other considerations apart, he was such an one as any woman might have chosen. In a measure she might be said to have chosen him. There had been a sense of wonder unspeakable in the consciousness of knowing what no one else knew in the world. Waiting then she was elated, expectant, excited. The issues were with Heaven, but he would surely see wisdom. She had been prepared for hesitation. It was but seemly that he should hesitate, having everything to gain. She would wish it ... but he would not be there if he had not understood. Yet he came and he went. The air upon which Lady Alton was walking let her down to the earth somewhat suddenly. When at length, however, it became clear that he had gone for good, backing out of that to which at Baden Dordlich he had seemed not disinclined to commit himself, Lady Alton, injured, plaintive, mildly piqued, but bearing no malice, began to look about her. Her conscience at any rate was clear. She was no Naaman to demur when Heaven spoke by the mouth of its prophets, and had not demurred. She had fulfilled her directions as she had received them to the letter. Not her fault that her efforts were fruitless ; not her fault that he who should have supported had failed her. As she was relieved of her quest, so was she absolved of her trespass for ever. Gundred, meanwhile, was refusing fine chances. She Ube Successor 305 was over-young to think of such things, but woman was born to marriage as the sparks fly upward. Lord Abbotswood was Lord Abbotswood. What had Gundred against him ? Nothing. Mr. Witton-Wilson, then? " Nothing," said Gundred ; " but I don't want to hear of him. Of either of them of anybody." Something ailed her. So much even her mother was presently to see. Gundred, little as she might show it, was suffering indeed. She rode hard often merely that she might tire herself; walked far and walked long that she might find sleep in the long nights. Let no one in years to come tell Gundred that youth does not suffer ! Gundred knows better! Later years might bring her sorrow she was to know no acuter pangs than stabbed her young heart at this period. What was Edmund doing, and what? Whom was he making happy by his presence unhappy by his absence? Who touched his hand, looked at him, heard his voice? She was glad that she did not know, yet felt that she would have walked barefoot to London to see someone who had seen him. A vision that she had of him constantly showed him to her lying face downwards on the turf, with the early morning sun on his hair finding gold in it his face hidden. She heard his voice as she had never heard it before. ... It wrung her heart to know that she had made him suffer and gave her a sense of exultation also. She was very unhappy. She rose early one day to take the walk which they had taken together upon that last morning. All was changed. Winter bemeagred the day, grudging it light to begin with, and wrapping everything in a sombre greyness. Trees and shrubs looked shrunken, as if at the touch of the chilly air they had drawn themselves V 306 Ube Successor in, shivering. For the silver mists of an enchanted hour fog hung over the park. There was little animal life stirring. Gundred made for the stream and followed it. Stillness everywhere not the throbbing stillness of summer, but silence that was a weight on the spirit. The trees dripped. All that you touched was cold and wet. Here, in course of time, was the high road where she had insisted on taking her turn at carrying the basket. She smiled as she remembered. He had put it down as he got over a low wall, and she, reminding him of his promise, had taken it. They had had a little tussle, out of which she had come triumphant. Here was the lane. Here the heather country. Here at weary length Abbot's Peak. Ichabod ! But she knelt upon the wet turf, and kissed it where his face had lain. " What did you see ? " She asked it under her breath. "What did you see when he turned his face from me?" Oh, that wonderful day, when the world had belonged to them ! He had belonged to her too, then. It was because he belonged to her, and because he knew that she belonged to him, that he had turned from her. Why had she let him? Now he was out of reach. It she could have back but one day in her life ! She knew as well as if he had told her why he had gone away. He had gone away to cure himself would stop away till he should know himself cured. That was the hard thought of all ; that she would not see him till he had ceased to love her. She thought of the brave days. She had loved him, she believed, all her life. Looking back, there did not seem to be a time when she had not loved him. If he succeeded in curing himself, could she bear it. ... Balderton saw the empty weeks pass, aching for her. Successor 307 but biding her time, glad while she grieved to recognise her handiwork the results of her deliberate purpose. If he suffered too, as she fervently believed, a part might be saved ... a remnant so as by fire. " Only wait," she said to herself, addressing her young mistress in imagination. " Only wait. He shall come to you, darling. If I have to tell him, he shall come to you. He is strong enough, big enough, man enough. His father's son, my dear one. You will see, he will come to you." She watched for a movement on the part of Lady Alton. The days and weeks passed. The movement was long in coming, but came. Lady Alton, her occupation gone, and turning to Gundred, perceived at last that Gundred's energies were flagging. It was to her housekeeper that she had to go for counsel. " It isn't that she is ill," she said ; " though you could hardly tell if she was ill. It's something about her. Young girls should be happy. I don't like to think she's not happy. She used to be so happy such a happy child." Balderton said nothing. " Is it change she wants ? I would take her abroad if I thought so ; though, for my own part, I feel as if I should never want to leave home again. Is it change ? " " It isn't change," said Balderton. " She misses her schoolfellows, perhaps, or Miss Moberly. I would have Miss Moberly back as a companion for her if I thought that. She likes study books and things and German music. . . . There again ! Her heart's out of her music. She hasn't touched the piano for weeks. She used to be singing all day. Does she ever sing now? It it makes me 308 Ube Successor unhappy. I don't feel very bright myself. We all have our sorrows, and I don't complain. But there are times when everything seems to go for nothing all one's little endeavours. Oh, not any one thing or any other. Not anything that you can put your ringer on, and say this ails you or that. You seem to lose your grip on life, that's all." Lady Alton's eyes filled with tears whether for pity of herself or of Gundred it would have been difficult to say. She dabbed them with a lace pocket handkerchief. "She refuses people the highest in the land and without even consulting me. If she had been a little older, either of them would have been all that I, as her mother, could have wished for her. Either ! It isn't every girl who has such chances. Almost before she is out, too. Some mothers might be tempted to bring pressure to bear on her. I don't attempt to coerce her. I only wish her to be happy. If there was anything that I could do ! Hasn't she all that she wants ? " Lady Alton was at a loose end. This seemed the moment. "Is that perhaps what ails her?" said Balderton. " Has she more than she wants, and less ? " Lady Alton questioned her with her eyes. " What she has stands maybe in the way of what she wants." " How can that be ? " "Have you wondered, my lady, why Mr. Edmund wouldn't come to the ball ; why he hasn't been here all this time ; why he won't come ? " Lady Alton's look tightened on her. Balderton smoothed her silk apron with her mittened hands. They were very old hands, but very full of life. " You think that too ? " Lady Alton said doubtfully. Balderton said nothing, tlbe Successor 309 "Of course it would be out of the question," said Lady Alton. " Mr. Edmund might think so," said Balderton. The year dragged, halted, " hopped and went one." The winter, like that which had preceded Gundred's birth, seemed like to be interminable. Lady Alton came to the housekeeper's room again. She was obviously unsettled. Fido the Second was in her arms, but she regarded him with little interest. " He's not what the other Fido was. He was a little gentleman. This one I don't know. I can't attach myself to him in the same way. There, go down ! Your hairs come off on my sleeve. I daresay I shall give him away." She said one thing and another, beating plainly about the bush. " I'm sure I don't know why you should think that about Mr. Edmund," she said at last. Then it was that Balderton spoke showing no more of her hand than seemed to her good (since to have insisted, as she believed that she had it in her power to insist, would have been to risk that upon the part of her mistress which must above all things be guarded against) spoke temperately, reticently, wisely, till Lady Alton, her face brightening from moment to moment, thought that an alliance for Gundred with Edmund (a veritable Alton we must remember, with shrewd Balderton) was the one thing of all that was desirable, and a solution of difficulties which were not even troubling her. Balderton had gauged her accurately, chosen the right moment to strike. But perhaps this was the moment when the old woman whose life had shown her strange people marvelled most of all. CHAPTER XVI LADY ALTON at Merringham might go a complacent way, planning benevolences, reconciliations, and (inci- dentally) even reparation of sorts for that which was irreparable, there was one who could not take things so lightly. Roddy, by reason of the knowledge with which his ill-starred visit had saddled him, went the way of the damned. Wherein, perhaps, is instanced an essential difference in consciences. He did nothing foolish. Death was not the way out, though there were days when he would gladly have put an end to a plague of thinking. It needed not that he should look at Lord Alton's will (as he did on his way through London) to know that nothing could be done. Nothing could be done, nor for obvious reasons could anything have been done if anything had been possible. At Merringham it had been but a step from the per- sistent thoughts which had haunted his dressing to the amazing truth. His second day gave it to him suddenly under the restored picture of Lord Alton's brother small things leading up to it, unheeded if steadily. Then as in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye. . . . And after- wards he was to ask himself whether he had not known from the beginning. Good God ! as he thought of it, might not Adam awaking out of deep sleep so have wondered about Eve before he learned that she was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh ! He had known, known, known, from the moment he saw her. 310 ZTbe Successor $n The night was a horror of blackness. His first impulse had been to see Lady Alton, and confront her with what he knew. He wanted no confirmation from her lips. He knew, but too well, what had befallen him. One folly out of all his life had sprung upon him to overwhelm him. But what in Heaven's name had she sought him out for ? He need never have known, and she, knowing, felt apparently no misgiving. What had she brought him to Merringham for? where he had learnt what perhaps even there might have escaped him. He could not tell. A blind fury possessed him. Merringham stifled him. He wanted to get away from it ... only to see that he must neither upset Lady Alton nor even leave suddenly. He could not appear at the ball, nor if there was that in his face which who ran might read was it advisable that he should. But there must be no risk of disturbing the existing tranquillity. It did not take him long to see that the tranquillity which existed must never be disturbed at all. He must stay his time out till next day that was and get away without appearance of having made any discovery. All night long he heard the beat of the dancers' feet and the sound of the music. He was to learn soon enough the torment of sleepless nights. He walked up and down his room in the firelight like some caged animal. He was supposed to be suffering from neuralgia, and he did not care if he was heard. The remedies which Lady Alton had sent up to him, with many messages of sympathy and regret, stood on a table. A rose which Gundred had sent to him from her bouquet lay beside them crushed by his handling. All night long dance tunes fine tunes to set young feet tapping and all night long the thought of Edmund, 312 tXfoe Successor " Oh, my God," he said to himself, " what have I done to bring this on me ! " There was no sense in it. It was not even retribution. A horrible chance had chosen him for its sport. There was nothing even to be learned from the blow it had dealt him. Dance tunes, dance tunes, this one and that, and a throb in the old timbers of the house. Sometimes he put his fingers in his ears, but when he could not hear the tunes he could feel them. He could see Lady Alton going about smiling amongst her guests. . . . He left the next morning before anyone was stirring, taking first the precaution of writing a colourless note to his hostess, which, without giving a hint of the knowledge which had come to him, should summarily dispose of any extraordinary ideas she might have in her head. A pencilled line from her, written overnight and brought to his bedside in the morning, had begged him to stay. He made his excuses. He was better, well enough to travel, and must go. He had been glad to see Merringham again, he said, as he was so little in England that it was unlikely that he would have an opportunity of seeing it again only sorry that he had been robbed of so much of an agreeable visit, and missed by ill-luck the very thing for which he had been invited. He regretted not to see her again before leaving. And then he went his way to face himself as he was, and life and the future. ( Mrs. Alton, meanwhile, in Curzon Street waited in vain for his promised visit. She wanted to see him not only for his own sake, but that she might have an outlet for an anxiety which she was feeling at this time upon Edmund's account. Edmund would not come to Ubc Successor 313 England, and a fortnight which she had spent with him recently in Vienna had shown her that which she could not but view with concern. Nothing definite passed between them, but Mrs. Alton did not need to be told when the mystery of mysteries had got her son by the throat. For the first time she found herself necessarily, as she conceded outside his confidence, and suffered what every woman suffers for her son, and by him, when she knows that another woman's seal is upon him. Whose ? He did not tell her. Whose, that by reason of it his days should be lean? Gundred's? A little thinking told her whence he had first come, shackled. She watched for Roddy, and waited. The days passed. He was to have stayed two or three at Merringham, not more, and then to have come to see her. Why didn't he come? He must know that at least she was full of curiosity to hear what had taken him there. In describing his meeting with her sister- in-law at Baden Dordlich, he had hinted at things for her private ear. He and she were to have laughed together. There was always something to laugh over with Roddy on the rare occasions when she saw him. She was in truth unable to conceive what took him who never paid visits to Merringham ... to Merringham, of all places under the sun ! A week passed. He did not write. Then came a letter from one of the Miss Wraysburys, describing the ball: " We did not take a party as, strictly speaking, we don't go to balls. Mamma made an effort. We wore blue. It was all most beautifully done. Mamma could not help asking herself whether perhaps it was not even a little over-done. Such a profusion of flowers^ and so many hot dishes at supper not just one or two, as 3*4 Ube Successor most people think are as much as is necessary, and the band from London ! But why wasn't Edmund there ? That was what everyone was wondering. As her nearest relation, of course. But perhaps he couldn't get away. Lady Alton de Merringham was in white velvet, and really would have looked very well if she had not worn quite so many diamonds. We wore our pearls. Mamma would have preferred her in black. The debutante seemed to be very much admired. Harry Witton-Wilson, we thought, paid her a great deal of attention, and so did young Lord Abbotswood but he, of course, is such a boy. We have ourselves always said how nice it would be if Edmund and she but perhaps that's not to be thought of." Mrs. Alton snorted, but read to the end. Not a word of Roddy till the postscript : " We have just heard that Mr. Carmelin was there, or was to have been there. We did not see him." Perhaps he had not gone after all. Nothing, however, accounted for a silence which was maintained. When time went on and he neither came nor wrote, she began to feel a little bit "hurt." Presently she heard casually that he had been at Merringham, and she heard of the " indisposition " which had kept him from the ball. Indisposition? Oh, headache, or gout, or something. Her informant was not sure. Nothing serious, anyway. Unlike Roddy, if he had been there, not to have written ! She had often enough been without his address before, for months at a time, but never by chance when she had particularly wanted to see him as she did now. She wrote to his bankers, to find that they for the ttbe Successor 3 i s moment a moment numbering months ! did not know it either. She wrote to his club where presumably her letter lay, for she got no answer. She did not think he had been really ill at Merringham, or someone would have communicated with her. There was nothing to do but to wait. She was reminded of other days when she had waited. Curzon Street was little changed. She had lost one or two of her neighbours. Old Lady Boscombe was dead the behaviour of whose housemaids she recalled to that day ! A hatchment had been up for another Lord Tantamont, and the race was extinct. But the Tantamont knocker survived, and the rare milkwoman, who, coasting the railings squarely on sturdy legs, her milk-pails hanging from a yoke, was yet to be seen in Mayfair, if nowhere else in all London. Rather persistently now, for no apparent reason, Mrs. Alton's thoughts began to run upon days which she had supposed forgotten. If such a thing were possible, one might almost believe them to have been directed thither by the sustained thinking of one who was verily sick with much thinking. Against her will she found herself constrained to go over ground which she had considered once and for all abandoned. She would be reading or at work in her snug little drawing-room when she would think of it suddenly, not as the room in which she passed a considerable part of her time, but as that in which upon a day some twenty years back she had put pen indiscreetly to paper. Or she would come in from shopping to see in a casual telegram lying upon the hall-table, not a replica of the thousand and one telegrams which she had received in the course of her life, but of just one telegram that which had announced the death of her brother-in-law. She dined out, to find that a dinner-table was decorated with orchids. trbe Successor Things thus seemed to be working round to some- thing, or, more accurately, seemed afterwards to have been preparing her, first for a letter which she now got from Merringham, and then for that of which it was the direct, if also the indirect, precursor. Who wrote to her from Merringham, and why ? Lady Alton to suggest that bygones should be bygones ! Mrs. Alton's eyebrows went up as she read. At this length of time? There was more, however, to come. Lady Alton went straight to the point. There had lately come to her knowledge the existence of an attachment which appeared to have sprung up between her daughter and Mrs. Alton's son, by reason of which two young persons were, she believed, very unhappy. Mrs. Alton passed her hand across her eyes as if to clear her vision . . . and read on. One of these was over-young yet to think of marriage, but if at the end of a year or so the two young people for Lady Alton thought she might still speak of Edmund as young were of the same mind, she wanted Mrs. Alton to know that she for one would raise no obstacle to their marriage, but on the contrary would regard it as the outward and visible sign of a reconciliation which she had long desired and hoped for. Mrs. Alton's eyebrows ran up her forehead almost to her hair. It was more than the unexpected which happened. She read the letter again ; after that again ; many times. She ate little breakfast that morning. Walking eased her ; physical exercise. She took her thoughts with her to the furthest parts of the park to Kensington Gardens, to distant streets. So had she walked once before. Edmund, with nothing to give and everything to get never ! Edmund ? Never ! She laughed to herself. TTbe Successor 317 She ate her lunch mechanically, and saying that she was not at home to visitors, went up as mechanically to the drawing-room, where the sounds of Curzon Street came to ears that did not hear them. She did not even hear the hansom which stopped at her own door, and scrambled back with difficulty to the present when her parlourmaid, having used her own discretion, announced Mr. Carmelin. It was a moment before she took in that it was her brother at last. " Roddy ! " she cried, " Roddy ! The person in all the world whom I wanted to see. Wretch ! why haven't you been to see me all this time ? I've been wanting to ask you a dozen things . . ." She broke off as she saw what a man looks like when sleep has deserted his eyes. CHAPTER XVII " IT'S Edmund," he said ; " I can't get him out of my head." " Edmund ! " said Mrs. Alton. She looked at her brother with something of alarm. " What has happened, Roddy ? " She drew him down on to the sofa beside her. " Nothing has exactly happened. Nothing will happen, because nothing can, and also in a way because nothing must." " But Edmund ? " she said. " You spoke of Edmund . . ." A horrible fear came to her that Edmund was ill, and that his uncle had come to tell her. " No, no ; Edmund's all right. It isn't anything about him. I haven't seen him. I couldn't go to see him either. I didn't come to see you because I couldn't. I've come now because I couldn't keep away any longer. There's nothing the matter with me, except that I can't sleep. I've seen doctors. I've been in Paris since I left Merringham. I got back this morning." He got up and walked to the hearth, where he stood desultorily. He took up one of the Dresden figures which were on the mantelpiece, and turned it over and over in his hands. Mrs. Alton watched him a little nervously. She was fond of her china. " Look here, Susan," he said suddenly, " I can't tell you. You've got to know somehow without my telling you." 318 TTbe Successor 3*9 Mrs. Alton nodded quickly. She forgot Lady Alton's letter ; forgot everything, wondering only what was coming. " There was a story that I wanted to tell you once which you wouldn't listen to. Do you remember ? " Mrs. Alton frowned a little as she tried to think. " It's a long time ago," he said, to guide her. She shook her head. " Oh, think ! It was just after Edward Alton died. I came to see you. We talked about Edmund." " I remember something. Yes. I've no doubt I was right not to listen. You don't want me to hear it now?" " I couldn't tell it as I could have told it then. It's so long ago that I myself have almost forgotten it." "I remember something," said Mrs. Alton again. " I do remember. You said Boccaccio might have fathered it." " Did I ? He might. It was more like some of the moderns, for all that the Frenchmen . . . De Maupassant, perhaps." "You spoke of him too," said Mrs. Alton. "It comes back to me." " Entirely ? " " I think so. I didn't hear it, remember. What you said about it comes back to me. What made me refuse to listen, indeed." Roddy said nothing for a moment or two. He put the figure back on to the mantelpiece. " The drugs they give you to make you sleep aren't a bit of good," he said irritably. He looked about. Something was disturbing him. A little clock ticked busily upon a writing-table. "Any sound . . ." he said ; "you don't know what it is. May I stop it? There was a dog that barked in Paris. I had to change my 320 zrbe Successor room. I can't dine in some of the restaurants because of those ventilating things that go round. Sometimes the sound of footsteps in the street . . . ! Mr. Hyde or was it Dr. Jekyll? trampled a child to death. I believe she had nails in her boots, and walked just in front of him or just behind him." " My poor Roddy ! " said Mrs. Alton. She was seriously alarmed. " She may not even have had nails in her boots. So that she walked just in front of him or just behind him. Oh!" He shuddered and gave a little laugh. " Have you ever seen Gundred ? " he said abruptly. " No," said Mrs. Alton. " Photographs of her ? " " Yes, one or two. Edmund has some." She looked about her at photographs which stood on a table, as if amongst them she expected to see those that were in her mind. "There are none here," she said. "He has them in Vienna. They are all of her as a child." " Photographs might not have it," Roddy said. " Have what ? " said Mrs. Alton. She was beginning, uncomfortably, to wonder whether his brain was affected. " Has he ever described her to you ? " " Oh, yes. But you've seen her, haven't you ?" " What did he say ? " "What did he say? Oh, that she was dark and tall, I think. Rather like you, he said. Rather like . . ." The words died on her lips. She bent forward a little. Her brother met her eyes. There was a long pause. Roddy turned to the mantelpiece and began mechanically to rearrange the Successor 3" figures. He took one here, one there, put a pedlar to talk to a courtier, a water-seller to a harlequin. He made groups ; dispersed them. Mrs. Alton watched him stupidly. " But it's impossible," she said at last. He shook his head and went on with what he was doing. " That's just what it isn't," he said. " Everything else improbable, inconceivable, incredible almost. Not impossible. On the contrary, it was just possible, and it happened. Do you think if there had been any way out I should be like this? There's no loophole. At least, there's none for me. There may be for her." Mrs. Alton did not quite follow. " For her ? " she said. What she had to tell Roddy was at the back of her mind. "Oh, well ..." he said. He pushed the figures from him as if he had done with them. "There is always a saving doubt. * It's a wise father ' and so on. She doesn't appear to realise, anyway." "But . . ." The " Buts " crowded upon her as once before in strangely different case. The "But" with which she began a sentence which was not finished attempted to hold them all, and could not. She stopped, face to face with the incapacity of mere words to express. There were objections and bewilderments which she could not even formulate. " If there had been any way out of believing it . . ." Roddy said " any way for me, I mean. There wasn't. You haven't seen Gundred or you would know, and Edmund has seen her from a child, and has lost sight of what he seems to have had at least a glimpse of. Why, x 3*2 TTbe Successor strangers a man in the train ! Those are the people these things strike. I shouldn't have dared to show at the ball after I knew even if I could have gone through with it, which I could not. It was rather a knock-down, as you may suppose/' It was difficult (and seemed impossible) to know where to begin. " But likeness, Roddy," Mrs. Alton said" likeness ! " " That's what I told myself. Nothing, nothing if it were only likeness. ... It isn't only likeness. I might not have seen that. One doesn't to oneself. She didn't, thank God ! in me to herself, or herself to me, and it was a whole day before I saw what was staring me in the face. Indeed, it was Caroline that I thought her like Caroline, before she was ill and lost her looks before I saw suddenly that it was myself. But it isn't only likeness. I can't explain. I knew when I saw her." " What did you do ? " " I didn't do anything. There was nothing to be done. But I'd give ten years of my life to have it out with her." He was speaking of another " her " now. Mrs. Alton did not need to be told. " I may keep my ten years," he added. He did not look good for so many just then. His sister's heart smote her even as she wrestled with a bewilderment which did not allow her to think of more than one thing at a time. She had never felt so helpless. Roddy took a few steps up the room. "That's what amazes me," he went on presently "amazes me! She goes about smiling doing kind things, I can see, respected probably in a way, and liked in a way. She doesn't appear to see. I don't believe she does see. She can't see. Why, she spoke tTbe Successor 323 of Edmund ; told me she was fond of the boy. Nothing happens to her. And here are we you, and I, and Edmund, when he knows, if he is to know, which is what I am here for forced, in spite of ourselves, to help her." " To help her ? " "You'll see, when you've had time to think. All our hands are tied. We're bound to a conspiracy of silence." There was another pause. Mrs. Alton filled it for herself. Her thoughts had been moving round the days which she had hoped were banished for ever from her mind, and now sped to them automatically. Her " Buts " then had been upon the other side. She had not let herself think. . . . Oh, outrage that had robbed Edmund of his heritage ! She was filled with resentment. " If it's true," she said. " If it's true . . ." " It is true," Roddy said very quietly. " That has got to be accepted without any proofs. There are no proofs ; there couldn't be any. But it is true. If you saw Gundred you would know. Oh, I don't know that you would. I had to. It was indescribable . . ." He seemed to be going to say more, but broke off. Mrs. Alton's eyes pondered her brother. " You do understand, don't you ? " he said, some minutes later. "You are though this isn't the point, or even important you are understanding me ? " " You ? " " Me. I suppose no one would think that I had any right to expect you to get over this to me. I do expect it." Seconds which would have been ticked away by the clock he had stopped passed silently. 324 ttbe Successor " I do expect it," he repeated. I am understanding you. I don't admit that it isn't important. It makes all the difference. I hardly connect you with what has happened. But oh, Roddy, Roddy ! " " No," he said, answering her thought, " I can't learn any lesson. What has happened to me to poison the rest of my days might just as well not have happened to me. Don't even misinterpret my motive in telling you. I may get some sleep to-night as the result of your knowing. It will be as the result of your taking it as I knew you would take it. What I have just been saying is not in the nature of the confession which is good for the soul. What I have had to face isn't punishment either. Don't think that. A horrible trick is played one by a sort of wanton fate laughing in its unholy sleeve. Nothing so senseless and illogical could be looked upon in the light of retribution. If I have been taught anything, it is that I am capable of emotions that I did not suspect I had it in me to feel. It is like like life, I suppose, that it should show one good, only to deny it to one ! You've little reason to think kindly of Gundred though, as far as she is concerned, you've as little reason not to. Oh, you're different from other women, Susan ! I don't really have to remind myself of that. If you saw Gundred you would see her as she is ; and as you would see her as she is, you would know that it costs me something to know that I can't see her again. That is what I should not have believed." He leant on his elbow for a moment, and looked into the fire. " I understand one or two things that I have never understood before things that have even bored me a little." "What sort of things?" Successor 325 " Things about parents. Their pride in their children, for one thing. If you could see Gundred. Oh, Susan ! " Mrs. Alton's eyes, which had been dry, filled with sudden tears. "If you could see her! I don't know how she is what she is. How she escapes but she has escaped. You believe it?" Mrs. Alton did not speak, but she nodded. She knew from Edmund that Gundred had "escaped." It was even his word. " The two of us. Oh, my God, Susan, what chance had she ? Well, she has. The flower sometimes grows on the dunghill." " Ah, please, please ! " " It's true. I understand the instinct to shelter too. Why you, for instance, never wished Edmund when he was a boy to see more of me than he could help. No," as his sister put up her hand, "let me say it I understand it. I even think you were right. It is the outlook that matters, and I'm ready to believe that mine is all wrong. But that is neither here nor there. What is here and what is there, what is everywhere, is Edmund as he is affected. I can't get him out of my head. What's to be done, Susan, when nothing can be done ? Is he to know, or isn't he ? " Silence fell between them. Mrs. Alton had not had time to realise yet the lull bearings of what she had learnt. Edmund to know? Or not to know? She could not determine. Her brain refused to work for her. Relevantly or irrelevantly, a recollection of the smell of hothouses came to her thrust itself upon her ; and then it was a memory of the view from the terrace at Merringham which pushed its way into her mind. Flying thoughts caught her up, made her fly with them 326 Zlbe Successor whither they would. Lady Wraysbury's brougham had had a green cloth lining. She had changed her gloves going and coming. She had not been allowed to see Balderton. " It was my letter, then," she said to herself. " It was my letter." It seemed to her as if she had always wondered. Presently she was making ineffectual efforts to set aside what she knew to be sealed. " But I don't understand," she said. " Did she not know you?" " Not who I was. It was a surprise to her some- thing of a shock. Even I could see that. I couldn't interpret, of course, as I could afterwards." There were many questions, inevitably "You've forgotten my story the conditions, that is, of what I did not tell you," the answer to some of them. "But I still don't understand. You meet, and she asks you to Merringham ! Why ? Why if ... Surely one would have supposed . . ." Roddy had his own views upon this a point which puzzled him considerably. He was a long time in answering. " I believe it was her conscience," he said at last. " Her what ? " Mrs. Alton said faintly. " Her conscience," he said. " At some time or other when exactly, I don't know it has accused her. How shall I make you understand ? I believe she was looking for me in a desultory sort of way. She had at some time or other had qualms not about Edmund. About herself. Her own trespass. Not even the fraud at that. Her trespass. The twopenny-halfpenny well, I won't say it. I think I think she thought we ought to marry." Ube Successor 327 Mrs. Alton looked at him blankly. Her mouth twitched at the corners. She experienced an almost overpowering inclination to laugh. There was a quality in the situation, grim as it was, that made for laughter. The tragedy, by reason of this, impotently wrote itself comedy. Comedy ! The " most lamentable," but comedy ! " I could laugh," she said. " I could laugh and not stop." "I have laughed," said Roddy. "Those were my worst days." Mrs. Alton's face changed. " Oh, my dear Roddy ! " she said. " My dear Roddy, I am forgetting you. You've got to get well. You've got to sleep, Roddy. Your eyes haunt me. They look so tired. Where are you staying ? We'll send for your things. I'll have a room got ready for you. You must come here. We'll nurse you back to health." She would not take a refusal. It was a relief indeed to get up and ring; to speak for a moment or two of other things in the interval of waiting for the maid's appearance ; and, when she appeared, to give directions. It was as Mrs. Alton was speaking that her eye fell upon Lady Alton's letter, which she had been carrying about with her all day. An hour or so ago she would have scouted the idea that anything could happen to her to banish it even momentarily from her mind. She did not break off, but finished giving her orders. While she made the necessary arrangements, Roddy wrote a note to be taken round to the hotel at which he had intended to stay, explaining his change of plans, and directing that his things should be sent on to Curzon Street. "They know me," he said. "There won't be any difficulty." 328 Ube Successor Tea was brought in then, and Mrs. Alton had to wait till they were alone again to give her brother the letter. " This settles it about Edmund," Roddy said when he had read. " It's out of our hands." CHAPTER XVIII EDMUND with nothing to give . . . Edmund's mother knew her son. But Edmund with everything . . . and it was Balderton who had not misjudged him. Edmund faced things, and saw what there was to face. His concern was for Gundred, whose well-being hung by the precarious thread of her mother's extra- ordinary conscience. How precarious this thread was, and how extraordinary the conscience (by the tortuous workings of which the lady was able to hold herself absolved !), he did not know as we know, or he had perhaps been tenfold concerned. But for this conscience he would never have known anything at all. Merringham, through the years, had successfully guarded a secret which to all seeming was safe for all time. There was not, indeed, any reason why it should ever have come to the knowledge of anyone least of all to the knowledge of the one in the world who was part of it. But the lady has, as we have seen, a " taking " ; looks over her shoulder ; must needs herself stretch out a hand to what lies safely behind her to draw it into the light of day. So courageous a sinner as she had shown herself . . . and to have lacked the final courage of inaction ! She had only not to move and had moved ! Only to hold her breath and (virtually) must cry out ! If Edmund had known the steps by which his present "knowledge" was arrived at, he would have thought Gundred's peace of mind precarious indeed. What he 3 2 9 33 ttbe Successor knew of human nature made him think it sufficiently hazardous. Nothing could be done, but things might happen. If anything ever threatened, he must have power to avert it. Gundred's position must be unassail- able. There was one way to make it so. He loved her too well to care what might be said. There were other things to face. Mrs. Alton trembled for him. "Shall you be able? It's for all your life. You'll always know. She won't know. In married life even the happiest allowances have to be made." " This will be the happiest," he said, smiling gravely. She knew what he felt, but had to warn him. " I know how much you care for her. I haven't any doubt that she is all that you think her. But we are strange creatures. There will be days when she will try you bear with me, Edmund there will be days when the woman you hold dearest on earth will exas- perate you. It won't be her fault. We are variable, the strongest of us. It seems to be conceded now that we are even entitled by our natures to be variable. Well, there will be days. . . . And you will only be human. And she will only be human, and won't know. Won't know, remember, what you have done for her, and what you are doing. Then shall you be able . . . ?" " I should not perhaps, if we were talking of anyone but Gundred." " It won't be only Gundred. There'll be someone who is not on a very high plane, or very understanding of nice feelings. It won't have been for Merringham, and all that Merringham means. I know that. It won't have been to try lamely to put things even distantly right for yourself incidentally, when we're all dead and gone, it will have put them right in a way for your children ; but it won't have been for that. Successor 33 i I know what it will have been for, but she won't. The discipline won't be light on occasion." Edmund shook his head. It was not going to be very easy, but it was not, he believed for reasons connected with Gundred going to be as difficult as his mother feared. If, however, her worst fears were to be justified if he had known then and there that they were to be justified his course would still have been plain. Gundred was not what she supposed herself. He could not endure the thought of the false position in which she stood. This and without any posing, as we shall believe, if in the few glimpses we have had of him we have learned to know him at all this was far more disturbing than the knowledge of the monstrous wrong which had been done to himself. Not that he failed to realise the extent of the wrong. A night, sleepless as one of the nights which his Uncle Roddy had known, showed it to him in its entirety, with much else as well. He wrestled with it, but in the end he prevailed. It did not bear thinking about. He was going to put it from him ; going to be able to put it from him as completely, he hoped, as if it had never been. He had that to give which no one else could give. What matter what the idle and ignorant might say of him ? He exulted in the thought of his power. So it came that Gundred, standing listlessly one morning looking at the view from the terrace, turned at the sound of a footfall to see Edmund, and saw that in his face which put colour into a bleak day. Winter held the earth, but there was spring in her heart spring in Edmund's. And so it came that Balderton, working through the years for a definite end, was in fulness of time to sing her Nunc Dimittis. She lived to see Lady Alton, as the strange lady let herself go, overblow at 332 TTbe Successor the Dower House, lose something of her veneer of refinement, but never to any appearance or purpose look back ; to see Edmund, by reason of her, exercise an amazing self-control more than once, patience, a wonderful forbearance; but she lived to see Edmund and Gundred happy, and to dandle their son in whom ultimately the diverted succession must right itself automatically in her arms. Truth out of a lie ? It seemed so. Those who knew understood ; Roddy, the other side of the world ; Mrs. Alton in Curzon Street. It was to be " all the same a hundred years hence." All the same ! All the same ! Then was the " irony of it all " complete ? Not quite. It was after Balderton's death, and when thus the last possible menace (which was no menace) to Lady Alton's peace of mind was removed, that there came into the lady's eyes a troubled look. Edmund, coming back from Haltsburg-Wissenstein, where he was British Minister, saw it at once. She would look at him ; look at Gundred. Something troubled her. It fell to him to soothe her as David soothed Saul. THE END "Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited ', Perth, A Selection from Hutchinson'a Colonial Library, iv. HAYES, F. W. Qwynett of Thorohaugh HYNE CUTCLIFFE The Lost Continent The Filibusters HYRST, H. W. Q. Chasma JEROME K. JEROME Paul Kelver KENEALY, ARABELLA Woman and the Shadow A Semi- Detached Marriage Charming Renee The Love of Richard derrick KENNARD, Mrs. EDWARD The Motor Maniac KILMARNOCK, LORD Ferelith LE QUEUX, WILLIAM The Seven Secrets Of Royal Blood The Gamblers The Under Secretary MARCH, E. 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A Stormy Voyager A Victory Won The Ne'er Do Weel Wyndham's Daughter A Son of Erin The Burden Bearers An American Woman TEARLE, CHRISTIAN The Vice Chancellor's Wai* TWEEDALE, VIOLET The Honeycomb of Life WALLACE, EDGAR Unofficial Despatches WHITE, PERCY The New Christians WILSON, AUGUSTA EVANS A Speckled Bird YOXALL, J. H. Alain Tanger's Wife ZOLA, EMILE The Mysteries of Marseilles A Love Episode The Ladies' Paradise The Monomaniac LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34, 35 & 36, PATERNOSTER ROW E .NEWMAN