THREE days passed and Ethel had regained her health and spirits, but Fred Mostyn had not called since the wedding. Ruth thought some inquiry ought to be made, and Judge Rawdon called at the Holland House. There he was told that Mr. Mostyn had not been well, and the young man’s countenance painfully confessed the same thing.
“My dear Fred, why did you not send us word you were ill?” asked the Judge.
“I had fever, sir, and I feared it might be typhoid. Nothing of the kind, however. I shall be all right in a day or two.”
The truth was far from typhoid, and Fred knew it. He had left the wedding breakfast because he had reached the limit of his endurance. Words, stinging as whips, burned like hot coals in his mouth, and he felt that he could not restrain them much longer. Hastening to his hotel, he locked himself in his rooms, and passed the night in a frenzy of passion. The very remembrance of the bridegroom’s confident transport put mur-der in his heart—murder which he could only practice by his wishes, impotent to compass their desires.
“I wish the fellow shot! I wish him hanged! I would kill him twenty times in twenty different ways! And Dora! Dora! Dora! What did she see in him? What could she see? Love her? He knows nothing of love—such love as tortures me.” Backwards and forwards he paced the floor to such imprecations and ejaculations as welled up from the whirlpool of rage in his heart, hour following hour, till in the blackness of his misery he could no longer speak. His brain had become stupefied by the iteration of inevitable loss, and so refused any longer to voice a woe beyond remedy. Then he stood still and called will and reason to council him. “This way madness lies,” he thought. “I must be quiet—I must sleep—I must forget.”
But it was not until the third day that a dismal, sullen stillness succeeded the storm of rage and grief, and he awoke from a sleep of exhaustion feeling as if he were withered at his heart. He knew that life had to be taken up again, and that in all its farces he must play his part. At first the thought of Mostyn Hall presented itself as an asylum. It stood amid thick woods, and there were miles of wind-blown wolds and hills around it. He was lord and master there, no one could intrude upon his sorrow; he could nurse it in those lonely rooms to his heart’s content. Every day, however, this gloomy resolution grew fainter, and one morning he awoke and laughed it to scorn.
“Frederick’s himself again,” he quoted, “and he must have been very far off himself when he thought of giving up or of running away. No, Fred Mostyn, you will stay here. ‘Tis a country where the impossible does not exist, and the unlikely is sure to happen—a country where marriage is not for life or death, and where the roads to divorce are manifold and easy. There are a score of ways and means. I will stay and think them over; ‘twill be odd if I cannot force Fate to change her mind.”
A week after Dora’s marriage he found himself able to walk up the avenue to the Rawdon house; but he arrived there weary and wan enough to instantly win the sympathy of Ruth and Ethel, and he was immensely strengthened by the sense of home and kindred, and of genuine kindness to which he felt a sort of right. He asked Ruth if he might eat dinner with them. He said he was hungry, and the hotel fare did not tempt him. And when Judge Rawdon returned he welcomed him in the same generous spirit, and the evening passed delightfully away. At its close, however, as Mostyn stood gloved and hatted, and the carriage waited for him, he said a few words to Judge Rawdon which changed the mental and social atmosphere. “I wish to have a little talk with you, sir, on a business matter of some importance. At what hour can I see you to-morrow?”
“I am engaged all day until three in the afternoon, Fred. Suppose I call on you about four or half-past?”
“Very well, sir.”
But both Ethel and Ruth wondered if it was “very well.” A shadow, fleeting as thought, had passed over Judge Rawdon’s face when he heard the request for a business interview, and after the young man’s departure he lost himself in a reverie which was evidently not a happy one. But he said nothing to the girls, and they were not accustomed to question him.
The next morning, instead of going direct to his office, he stopped at Madam, his moth-er’s house in Gramercy Park. A visit at such an early hour was unusual, and the old lady looked at him in alarm.
“We are well, mother,” he said as she rose. “I called to talk to you about a little business.” Whereupon Madam sat down, and became suddenly about twenty years younger, for “business” was a word like a watch-cry; she called all her senses together when it was uttered in her presence.
“Business!” she ejaculated sharply. “Whose business?”
“I think I may say the business of the whole family.”
“Nay, I am not in it. My business is just as I want it, and I am not going to talk about it—one way or the other.”
“Is not Rawdon Court of some interest to you? It has been the home and seat of the family for many centuries. A good many. Mostyn women have been its mistress.”
“I never heard of any Mostyn woman who would not have been far happier away from Rawdon Court. It was a Calvary to them all. There was little Nannie Mostyn, who died with her first baby because Squire Anthony struck her in a drunken passion; and the proud Alethia Mostyn, who suffered twenty years’ martyrdom from Squire John; and Sara, who took thirty thousand pounds to Squire Hubert, to fling away at the green table; and Harriet, who was made by her husband, Squire Humphrey, to jump a fence when out hunting with him, and was brought home crippled and scarred for life—a lovely girl of twenty who went through agonies for eleven years without aught of love and help, and died alone while he was following a fox; and there was pretty Barbara Mostyn——”
“Come, come, mother. I did not call here this morning to hear the Rawdons abused, and you forget your own marriage. It was a happy one, I am sure. One Rawdon, at least, must be excepted; and I think I treated my wife as a good husband ought to treat a wife.”
“Not you! You treated Mary very badly.”
“Mother, not even from you——”
“I’ll say it again. The little girl was dying for a year or more, and you were so busy making money you never saw it. If she said or looked a little complaint, you moved restless-like and told her ‘she moped too much.’ As the end came I spoke to you, and you pooh-poohed all I said. She went suddenly, I know, to most people, but she knew it was her last day, and she longed so to see you, that I sent a servant to hurry you home, but she died before you could make up your mind to leave your ‘cases.’ She and I were alone when she whispered her last message for you—a loving one, too.”
“Mother! Mother! Why recall that bitter day? I did not think—I swear I did not think——”
“Never mind swearing. I was just reminding you that the Rawdons have not been the finest specimens of good husbands. They make landlords, and judges, and soldiers, and even loom-lords of a very respectable sort; but husbands! Lord help their poor wives! So you see, as a Mostyn woman, I have no special interest in Rawdon Court.”
“You would not like it to go out of the family?”
“I should not worry myself if it did.”
“I suppose you know Fred Mostyn has a mortgage on it that the present Squire is unable to lift.”
“Aye, Fred told me he had eighty thousand pounds on the old place. I told him he was a fool to put his money on it.”
“One of the finest manors and manor-houses in England, mother.”
“I have seen it. I was born and brought up near enough to it, I think.”
“Eighty thousand pounds is a bagatelle for the place; yet if Fred forces a sale, it may go for that, or even less. I can’t bear to think of it.”
“Why not buy it yourself?”
“I would lift the mortgage to-morrow if I had the means. I have not at present.”
“Well, I am in the same box. You have just spoken as if the Mostyns and Rawdons had an equal interest in Rawdon Court. Very well, then, it cannot be far wrong for Fred Mostyn to have it. Many a Mostyn has gone there as wife and slave. I would dearly like to see one Mostyn go as master.”
“I shall get no help from you, then, I understand that.”
“I’m Mostyn by birth, I’m only Rawdon by, marriage. The birth-band ties me fast to my family.”
“Good morning, mother. You have failed me for the first time in your life.”
“If the money had been for you, Edward, or yours——”
“It is—good-by.”
She called him back peremptorily, and he returned and stood at the open door.
“Why don’t you ask Ethel?”
“I did not think I had the right, mother.”
“More right to ask her than I. See what she says. She’s Rawdon, every inch of her.”
“Perhaps I may. Of course, I can sell securities, but it would be at a sacrifice a great sacrifice at present.”
“Ethel has the cash; and, as I said, she is Rawdon—I’m not.”
“I wish my father were alive.”
“He wouldn’t move me—you needn’t think that. What I have said to you I would have said to him. Speak to Ethel. I’ll be bound she’ll listen if Rawdon calls her.”
“I don’t like to speak to Ethel.”
“It isn’t what you like to do, it’s what you find you’ll have to do, that carries the day; and a good thing, too, considering.”
“Good morning, again. You are not quite yourself, I think.”
“Well, I didn’t sleep last night, so there’s no wonder if I’m a bit cross this morning. But if I lose my temper, I keep my understanding.”
She was really cross by this time. Her son had put her in a position she did not like to assume. No love for Rawdon Court was in her heart. She would rather have advanced the money to buy an American estate. She had been little pleased at Fred’s mortgage on the old place, but to the American Rawdons she felt it would prove a white elephant; and the appeal to Ethel was advised because she thought it would amount to nothing. In the first place, the Judge had the strictest idea of the sacredness of the charge committed to him as guardian of his daughter’s fortune. In the second, Ethel inherited from her Yorkshire ancestry an intense sense of the value and obligations of money. She was an ardent American, and not likely to spend it on an old English manor; and, furthermore, Madam’s penetration had discovered a growing dislike in her granddaughter for Fred Mostyn.
“She’d never abide him for a lifelong neighbor,” the old lady decided. “It is the Rawdon pride in her. The Rawdon men have condescended to go to Mostyn for wives many and many a time, but never once have the Mostyn men married a Rawdon girl—proud, set-up women, as far as I remember; and Ethel has a way with her just like them. Fred is good enough and nice enough for any girl, and I wonder what is the matter with him! It is a week and more since he was here, and then he wasn’t a bit like himself.”
At this moment the bell rang and she heard Fred’s voice inquiring “if Madam was at home.” Instantly she divined the motive of his call. The young man had come to the conclusion the Judge would try to influence his mother, and before meeting him in the afternoon he wished to have some idea of the trend matters were likely to take. His policy—cunning, Madam called it—did not please her. She immediately assured herself that “she wouldn’t go against her own flesh and blood for anyone,” and his wan face and general air of wretchedness further antagonized her. She asked him fretfully “what he had been doing to himself, for,” she added, “it’s mainly what we do to ourselves that makes us sick. Was it that everlasting wedding of the Denning girl?”
He flushed angrily, but answered with much of the same desire to annoy, “I suppose it was. I felt it very much. Dora was the loveliest girl in the city. There are none left like her.”
“It will be a good thing for New York if that is the case. I’m not one that wants the city to myself, but I can spare Dora STANHOPE, and feel the better for it.”
“The most beautiful of God’s creatures!”
“You’ve surely lost your sight or your judgment, Fred. She is just a dusky-skinned girl, with big, brown eyes. You can pick her sort up by the thousand in any large city. And a wandering-hearted, giddy creature, too, that will spread as she goes, no doubt. I’m sorry for Basil Stanhope, he didn’t deserve such a fate.”
“Indeed, he did not! It is beyond measure too good for him.”
“I’ve always heard that affliction is the surest way to heaven. Dora will lead him that road, and it will be more sure than pleasant. Poor fellow! He’ll soon be as ready to curse his wedding-day as Job was to curse his birthday. A costly wife she will be to keep, and misery in the keeping of her. But if you came to talk to me about Dora STANHOPE, I’ll cease talking, for I don’t find it any great entertainment.”
“I came to talk to you about Squire Rawdon.”
“What about the Squire? Keep it in your mind that he and I were sweethearts when we were children. I haven’t forgotten that fact.”
“You know Rawdon Court is mortgaged to me?”
“I’ve heard you say so—more than once.”
“I intend to foreclose the mortgage in September. I find that I can get twice yes, three times—the interest for my money in American securities.”
“How do you know they are securities?”
“Bryce Denning has put me up to several good things.”
“Well, if you think good things can come that road, you are a bigger fool than I ever thought you.”
“Fool! Madam, I allow no one to call me a fool, especially without reason.”
“Reason, indeed! What reason was there in your dillydallying after Dora Denning when she was engaged, and then making yourself like a ghost for her after she is married? As for the good things Bryce Denning offers you in exchange for a grand English manor, take them, and then if I called you not fool before, I will call you fool in your teeth twice over, and much too good for you! Aye, I could call you a worse name when I think of the old Squire—he’s two years older than I am—being turned out of his lifelong home. Where is he to go to?”
“If I buy the place, for of course it will have to be sold, he is welcome to remain at Rawdon Court.”
“And he would deserve to do it if he were that low-minded; but if I know Squire Percival, he will go to the poor-house first. Fred, you would surely scorn such a dirty thing as selling the old man out of house and home?”
“I want my money, or else I want Rawdon Manor.”
“And I have no objections either to your wanting it or having it, but, for goodness’ sake, wait until death gives you a decent warrant for buying it.”
“I am afraid to delay. The Squire has been very cool with me lately, and my agent tells me the Tyrrel-Rawdons have been visiting him, also that he has asked a great many questions about the Judge and Ethel. He is evidently trying to prevent me getting possession, and I know that old Nicholas Rawdon would give his eyelids to own Rawdon Court. As to the Judge——”
“My son wants none of it. You can make your mind easy on that score.”
“I think I behaved very decently, though, of course, no one gives me credit for it; for as soon as I saw I must foreclose in order to get my own I thought at once of Ethel. It seemed to me that if we could love each other the money claims of Mostyn and the inherited claims of Rawdon would both be satisfied. Unfortunately, I found that I could not love Ethel as a wife should be loved.”
“And I can tell you, Fred, that Ethel never could have loved you as a husband should be loved. She was a good deal disappointed in you from the very first.”
“I thought I made a favorable impression on her.”
“In a way. She said you played the piano nicely; but Ethel is all for handsome men, tall, erect six-footers, with a little swing and swagger to them. She thought you small and finicky. But Ethel’s rich enough to have her fancy, I hope.”
“It is little matter now what she thought. I can’t please every one.”
“No, it’s rather harder to do that than most people think it is. I would please my conscience first of all, Fred. That’s the point worth mentioning. And I shall just remind you of one thing more: your money all in a lump on Rawdon Manor is safe. It is in one place, and in such shape as it can’t run away nor be smuggled away by any man’s trickery. Now, then, turn your eighty thousand pounds into dollars, and divide them among a score of securities, and you’ll soon find out that a fortune may be easily squandered when it is in a great many hands, and that what looks satisfactory enough when reckoned up on paper doesn’t often realize in hard money to the same tune. I’ve said all now I am going to say.”
“Thank you for the advice given me. I will take it as far as I can. This afternoon the Judge has promised to talk over the business with me.”
“The Judge never saw Rawdon Court, and he cares nothing about it, but he can give you counsel about the ‘good things’ Bryce Denning offers you. And you may safely listen to it, for, right or wrong, I see plainly it is your own advice you will take in the long run.”
Mostyn laughed pleasantly and went back to his hotel to think over the facts gleaned from his conversation with Madam. In the first place, he understood that any overt act against Squire Rawdon would be deeply resented by his American relatives. But then he reminded himself that his own relationship with them was merely sentiment. He had now nothing to hope for in the way of money. Madam’s apparently spontaneous and truthful assertion, that the Judge cared nothing for Rawdon Court, was, however, very satisfactory to him. He had been foolish enough to think that the thing he desired so passionately was of equal value in the estimation of others. He saw now that he was wrong, and he then remembered that he had never found Judge Rawdon to evince either interest or curiosity about the family home.
If he had been a keen observer, the Judge’s face when he called might have given his comfortable feelings some pause. It was contracted, subtle, intricate, but he came forward with a congratulation on Mostyn’s improved appearance. “A few weeks at the seaside would do you good,” he added, and Mostyn answered, “I think of going to Newport for a month.”
“And then?”
“I want your opinion about that. McLean advises me to see the country—to go to Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, cross the Rockies, and on to California. It seems as if that would be a grand summer programme. But my lawyer writes me that the man in charge at Mostyn is cutting too much timber and is generally too extravagant. Then there is the question of Rawdon Court. My finances will not let me carry the mortgage on it longer, unless I buy the place.”
“Are you thinking of that as probable?”
“Yes. It will have to be sold. And Mostyn seems to be the natural owner after Rawdon. The Mostyns have married Rawdons so frequently that we are almost like one family, and Rawdon Court lies, as it were, at Mostyn’s gate. The Squire is now old, and too easily persuaded for his own welfare, and I hear the Tyrrel-Rawdons have been visiting him. Such a thing would have been incredible a few years ago.”
“Who are the Tyrrel-Rawdons? I have no acquaintance with them.”
“They are the descendants of that Tyrrel-Rawdon who a century ago married a handsome girl who was only an innkeeper’s daughter. He was of course disowned and disinherited, and his children sank to the lowest social grade. Then when power-loom weaving was introduced they went to the mills, and one of them was clever and saved money and built a little mill of his own, and his son built a much larger one, and made a great deal of money, and became Mayor of Leeds. The next generation saw the Tyrrel-Rawdons the largest loom-lords in Yorkshire. One of the youngest generation was my opponent in the last election and beat me—a Radical fellow beats the Conservative candidate always where weavers and spinners hold the vote but I thought it my duty to uphold the Mostyn banner. You know the Mostyns have always been Tories and Conservatives.”
“Excuse me, but I am afraid I am ignorant concerning Mostyn politics. I take little interest in the English parties.”
“Naturally. Well, I hope you will take an interest in my affairs and give me your advice about the sale of Rawdon Court.”
“I think my advice would be useless. In the first place, I never saw the Court. My father had an old picture of it, which has somehow disappeared since his death, but I cannot say that even this picture interested me at all. You know I am an American, born on the soil, and very proud of it. Then, as you are acquainted with all the ins and outs of the difficulties and embarrassments, and I know nothing at all about them, you would hardly be foolish enough to take my opinion against your own. I suppose the Squire is in favor of your buying the Court?”
“I never named the subject to him. I thought perhaps he might have written to you on the matter. You are the last male of the house in that line.”
“He has never written to me about the Court. Then, I am not the last male. From what you say, I think the Tyrrel-Rawdons could easily supply an heir to Rawdon.”
“That is the thing to be avoided. It would be a great offense to the county families.”
“Why should they be considered? A Rawdon is always a Rawdon.”
“But a cotton spinner, sir! A mere mill-owner!”
“Well, I do not feel with you and the other county people in that respect. I think a cotton spinner, giving bread to a thousand families, is a vastly more respectable and important man than a fox-hunting, idle landlord. A mill-owning Rawdon might do a deal of good in the sleepy old village of Monk-Rawdon.”
“Your sentiments are American, not English, sir.”
“As I told you, we look at things from very different standpoints.”
“Do you feel inclined to lift the mortgage yourself, Judge?”
“I have not the power, even if I had the inclination to do so. My money is well invested, and I could not, at this time, turn bonds and securities into cash without making a sacrifice not to be contemplated. I confess, however, that if the Court has to be sold, I should like the Tyrrel-Rawdons to buy it. I dare say the picture of the offending youth is still in the gallery, and I have heard my mother say that what is another’s always yearns for its lord. Driven from his heritage for Love’s sake, it would be at least interesting if Gold gave back to his children what Love lost them.”
“That is pure sentiment. Surely it would be more natural that the Mostyns should succeed the Rawdons. We have, as it were, bought the right with at least a dozen intermarriages.”
“That also is pure sentiment. Gold at last will carry the succession.”
“But not your gold, I infer?”
“Not my gold; certainly not.”
“Thank you for your decisive words They make my course clear.”
“That is well. As to your summer movements, I am equally unable to give you advice. I think you need the sea for a month, and after that McLean’s scheme is good. And a return to Mostyn to look after your affairs is equally good. If I were you, I should follow my inclinations. If you put your heart into anything, it is well done and enjoyed; if you do a thing because you think you ought to do it, failure and disappointment are often the results. So do as you want to do; it is the only advice I can offer you.”
“Thank you, sir. It is very acceptable. I may leave for Newport to-morrow. I shall call on the ladies in the morning.”
“I will tell them, but it is just possible that they, too, go to the country to-morrow, to look after a little cottage on the Hudson we occupy in the summer. Good-by, and I hope you will soon recover your usual health.”
Then the Judge lifted his hat, and with a courteous movement left the room. His face had the same suave urbanity of expression, but he could hardly restrain the passion in his heart. Placid as he looked when he entered his house, he threw off all pretenses as soon as he reached his room. The Yorkshire spirit which Ethel had declared found him out once in three hundred and sixty-four days and twenty-three hours was then in full pos-session. The American Judge had disappeared. He looked as like his ancestors as anything outside of a painted picture could do. His flushed face, his flashing eyes, his passionate exclamations, the stamp of his foot, the blow of his hand, the threatening attitude of his whole figure was but a replica of his great-grandfather, Anthony Rawdon, giving Radicals at the hustings or careless keepers at the kennels “a bit of his mind.”
“‘Mostyn, seems to be the natural owner of Rawdon! Rawdon Court lies at Mostyn’s gate! Natural that the Mostyns should succeed the Rawdons! Bought the right by a dozen intermarriages!’ Confound the impudent rascal! Does he think I will see Squire Rawdon rogued out of his home? Not if I can help it! Not if Ethel can help it! Not if heaven and earth can help it! He’s a downright rascal! A cool, unruffled, impudent rascal!” And these ejaculations were followed by a bitter, biting, blasting hailstorm of such epithets as could only be written with one letter and a dash.
But the passion of imprecation cooled and satisfied his anger in this its first impetuous outbreak, and he sat down, clasped the arms of his chair, and gave himself a peremptory order of control. In a short time he rose, bathed his head and face in cold water, and began to dress for dinner. And as he stood before the glass he smiled at the restored color and calm of his countenance.
“You are a prudent lawyer,” he said sarcastically. “How many actionable words have you just uttered! If the devil and Fred Mostyn have been listening, they can, as mother says, ‘get the law on you’; but I think Ethel and I and the law will be a match even for the devil and Fred Mostyn.” Then, as he slowly went downstairs, he repeated to himself, “Mostyn seems to be the natural owner of Rawdon. No, sir, neither natural nor legal owner. Rawdon Court lies at Mostyn gate. Not yet. Mostyn lies at Rawdon gate. Natural that the Mostyns should succeed the Rawdons. Power of God! Neither in this generation nor the next.”
And at the same moment Mostyn, having thought over his interview with Judge Rawdon, walked thoughtfully to a window and muttered to himself: “Whatever was the matter with the old man? Polite as a courtier, but something was wrong. The room felt as if there was an iceberg in it, and he kept his right hand in his pocket. I be-lieve he was afraid I would shake hands with him—it is Ethel, I suppose. Naturally he is disappointed. Wanted her at Rawdon. Well, it is a pity, but I really cannot! Oh, Dora! Dora! My heart, my hungry and thirsty heart calls you! Burning with love, dying with longing, I am waiting for you!”
The dinner passed pleasantly enough, but both Ethel and Ruth noticed the Judge was under strong but well-controlled feeling. While servants were present it passed for high spirits, but as soon as the three were alone in the library, the excitement took at once a serious aspect.
“My dears,” he said, standing up and facing them, “I have had a very painful interview with Fred Mostyn. He holds a mortgage over Rawdon Court, and is going to press it in September—that is, he proposes to sell the place in order to obtain his money—and the poor Squire!” He ceased speaking, walked across the room and back again, and appeared greatly disturbed.
“What of the Squire?” asked Ruth.
“God knows, Ruth. He has no other home.”
“Why is this thing to be done? Is there no way to prevent it?”
“Mostyn wants the money, he says, to invest in American securities. He does not. He wants to force a sale, so that he may buy the place for the mortgage, and then either keep it for his pride, or more likely resell it to the Tyrrel-Rawdons for double the money.” Then with gradually increasing passion he repeated in a low, intense voice the remarks which Mostyn had made, and which had so infuriated the Judge. Before he had finished speaking the two women had caught his temper and spirit. Ethel’s face was white with anger, her eyes flashing, her whole attitude full of fight. Ruth was troubled and sorrowful, and she looked anxiously at the Judge for some solution of the condition. It was Ethel who voiced the anxiety. “Father,” she asked, “what is to be done? What can you do?”
“Nothing, I am sorry to say, Ethel. My money is absolutely tied up—for this year, at any rate. I cannot touch it without wronging others as well as myself, nor yet without the most ruinous sacrifice.”
“If I could do anything, I would not care at what sacrifice.”
“You can do all that is necessary, Ethel, and you are the only person who can. You have at least eight hundred thousand dollars in cash and negotiable securities. Your mother’s fortune is all yours, with its legitimate accruements, and it was left at your own disposal after your twenty-first birthday. It has been at your own disposal WITH MY CONSENT since your nineteenth birthday.”
“Then, father, we need not trouble about the Squire. I wish with all my heart to make his home sure to him as long as he lives. You are a lawyer, you know what ought to be done.”
“Good girl! I knew what you would say and do, or I should not have told you the trouble there was at Rawdon. Now, I propose we all make a visit to Rawdon Court, see the Squire and the property, and while there perfect such arrangements as seem kindest and wisest. Ruth, how soon can we be ready to sail?”
“Father, do you really mean that we are to go to England?”
“It is the only thing to do. I must see that all is as Mostyn says. I must not let you throw your money away.”
“That is only prudent,” said Ruth, “and we can be ready for the first steamer if you wish it.”
“I am delighted, father. I long to see England; more than all, I long to see Rawdon. I did not know until this moment how much I loved it.”
“Well, then, I will have all ready for us to sail next Saturday. Say nothing about it to Mostyn. He will call to-morrow morning to bid you good-by before leaving for Newport with McLean. Try and be out.”
“I shall certainly be out,” said Ethel. “I do not wish ever to see his face again, and I must see grandmother and tell her what we are going to do.”
“I dare say she guesses already. She advised me to ask you about the mortgage. She knew what you would say.”
“Father, who are the Tyrrel-Rawdons?”
Then the Judge told the story of the young Tyrrel-Rawdon, who a century ago had lost his world for Love, and Ethel said “she liked him better than any Rawdon she had ever heard of.”
“Except your father, Ethel.”
“Except my father; my dear, good father. And I am glad that Love did not always make them poor. They must now be rich, if they want to buy the Court.”
“They are rich manufacturers. Mostyn is much annoyed that the Squire has begun to notice them. He says one of the grandsons of the Tyrrel-Rawdons, disinherited for love’s sake, came to America some time in the forties. I asked your grandmother if this story was true. She said it is quite true; that my father was his friend in the matter, and that it was his reports about America which made them decide to try their fortune in New York.”
“Does she know what became of him?”
“No. In his last letter to them he said he had just joined a party going to the gold fields of California. That was in 1850. He never wrote again. It is likely he perished on the terrible journey across the plains. Many thousands did.”
“When I am in England I intend to call upon these Tyrrel-Rawdons. I think I shall like them. My heart goes out to them. I am proud of this bit of romance in the family.”
“Oh, there is plenty of romance behind you, Ethel. When you see the old Squire standing at the entrance to the Manor House, you may see the hags of Cressy and Agincourt, of Marston and Worcester behind him. And the Rawdon women have frequently been daughters of Destiny. Many of them have lived romances that would be incredible if written down. Oh, Ethel, dear, we cannot, we cannot for our lives, let the old home fall into the hands of strangers. At any rate, if on inspection we think it wrong to interfere, I can at least try and get the children of the disinherited Tyrrel back to their home. Shall we leave it at this point for the present?”
This decision was agreeable to all, and then the few preparations necessary for the journey were talked over, and in this happy discussion the evening passed rapidly. The dream of Ethel’s life had been this visit to the home of her family, and to go as its savior was a consummation of the pleasure that filled her with loving pride. She could not sleep for her waking dreams. She made all sorts of resolutions about the despised Tyrrel-Rawdons. She intended to show the proud, indolent world of the English land-aristocracy that Americans, just as well born as themselves, respected business energy and enterprise; and she had other plans and propositions just as interesting and as full of youth’s impossible enthusiasm.
In the morning she went to talk the subject over with her grandmother. The old lady received the news with affected indifference. She said, “It mattered nothing to her who sat in Rawdon’s seat; but she would not hear Mostyn blamed for seeking his right. Money and sentiment are no kin,” she added, “and Fred has no sentiment about Rawdon. Why should he? Only last summer Rawdon kept him out of Parliament, and made him spend a lot of money beside. He’s right to get even with the family if he can.”
“But the old Squire! He is now——”
“I know; he’s older than I am. But Squire Percival has had his day, and Fred would not do anything out of the way to him—he could not; the county would make both Mostyn and Rawdon very uncomfortable places to live in, if he did.”
“If you turn a man out of his home when he is eighty years old, I think that is ‘out of the way.’ And Mr. Mostyn is not to be trusted. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could see him.”
“Highty-tighty! He has not asked you to trust him. You lost your chance there, miss.”
“Grandmother, I am astonished at you!”
“Well, it was a mean thing to say, Ethel; but I like Fred, and I see the rest of my family are against him. It’s natural for Yorkshire to help the weakest side. But there, Fred can do his own fighting, I’ll warrant. He’s not an ordinary man.”
“I’m sorry to say he isn’t, grandmother. If he were he would speak without a drawl, and get rid of his monocle, and not pay such minute attention to his coats and vests and walking sticks.”
Then Ethel proceeded to explain her resolves with regard to the Tyrrel-Rawdons. “I shall pay them the greatest attention,” she said. “It was a noble thing in young Tyrrel-Rawdon to give up everything for honorable love, and I think everyone ought to have stood by him.”
“That wouldn’t have done at all. If Tyrrel had been petted as you think he ought to have been, every respectable young man and woman in the county would have married where their fancy led them; and the fancies of young people mostly lead them to the road it is ruin to take.”
“From what Fred Mostyn says, Tyrrel’s descendants seem to have taken a very respectable road.”
“I’ve nothing to say for or against them. It’s years and years since I laid eyes on any of the family. Your grandfather helped one of the young men to come to America, and I remember his mother getting into a passion about it. She was a fat woman in a Paisley shawl and a love-bird on her bonnet. I saw his sister often. She weighed about twelve stone, and had red hair and red cheeks and bare red elbows. She was called a ‘strapping lass.’ That is quite a complimentary term in the West Riding.”
“Please, grandmother, I don’t want to hear any more. In two weeks I shall be able to judge for myself. Since then there have been two generations, and if a member of the present one is fit for Parliament——”
“That’s nothing. We needn’t look for anything specially refined in Parliament in these days. There’s another thing. These Tyrrel-Rawdons are chapel people. The rector of Rawdon church would not marry Tyrrel to his low-born love, and so they went to the Methodist preacher, and after that to the Methodist chapel. That put them down, more than you can imagine here in America.”
“It was a shame! Methodists are most respectable people.”
“I’m saying nothing contrary.”
“The President is a Methodist.”
“I never asked what he was. I am a Church of England woman, you know that. Born and bred in the Church, baptized, confirmed, and married in the Church, and I was always taught it was the only proper Church for gentlemen and gentlewomen to be saved in. However, English Methodists often go back to the Church when they get rich.”
“Church or chapel makes no difference to me, grandmother. If people are only good.”
“To be sure; but you won’t be long in England until you’ll find out that some things make a great deal of difference. Do you know your father was here this morning? He wanted me to go with you—a likely, thing.”
“But, grandmother, do come. We will take such good care of you, and——”
“I know, but I’d rather keep my old memories of Yorkshire than get new-fashioned ones. All is changed. I can tell that by what Fred says. My three great friends are dead. They have left children and grandchildren, of course, but I don’t want to make new acquaintances at my age, unless I have the picking of them. No, I shall get Miss Hillis to go with me to my little cabin on the Jersey coast. We’ll take our knitting and the fresh novels, and I’ll warrant we’ll see as much of the new men and women in them as will more than satisfy us. But you must write me long letters, and tell me everything about the Squire and the way he keeps house, and I don’t care if you fill up the paper with the Tyrrel-Rawdons.”
“I will write you often, Granny, and tell you everything.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you come across Dora Stanhope, but I wouldn’t ask her to Rawdon. She’ll mix some cup of bother if you do.”
“I know.”
In such loving and intimate conversation the hours sped quickly, and Ethel could not bear to cut short her visit. It was nearly five when she left Gramercy Park, but the day being lovely, and the avenue full of carriages and pedestrians, she took the drive at its enforced tardiness without disapproval. Almost on entering the avenue from Madison Square there was a crush, and her carriage came to a standstill. She was then opposite the store of a famous English saddler, and near her was an open carriage occupied by a middle-aged gentleman in military uniform. He appeared to be waiting for someone, and in a moment or two a young man came out of the saddlery store, and with a pleasant laugh entered the carriage. It was the Apollo of her dreams, the singer of the Holland House pavement. She could not doubt it. His face, his figure, his walk, and the pleasant smile with which he spoke to his companion were all positive characteristics. She had forgotten none of them. His dress was altered to suit the season, but that was an improvement; for divested of his heavy coat, and clothed only in a stylish afternoon suit, his tall, fine figure showed to great advantage; and Ethel told herself that he was even handsomer than she had supposed him to be.
Almost as soon as he entered his carriage there was a movement, and she hoped her driver might advance sufficiently to make recognition possible, but some feeling, she knew not what, prevented her giving any order leading to this result. Perhaps she had an instinctive presentiment that it was best to leave all to Destiny. Toward the upper part of the avenue the carriage of her eager observation came to a stand before a warehouse of antique furniture and bric-a-brac, and, as it did so, a beautiful woman ran down the steps, and Apollo, for so Ethel had men-tally called him, went hurriedly to meet her. Finally her coachman passed the party, and there was a momentary recognition. He was bending forward, listening to something the lady was saying, when the vehicles almost touched each other. He flashed a glance at them, and met the flash of Ethel’s eyes full of interest and curiosity.
It was over in a moment, but in that moment Ethel saw his astonishment and delight, and felt her own eager questioning answered. Then she was joyous and full of hope, for “these two silent meetings are promises,” she said to Ruth. “I feel sure I shall see him again, and then we shall speak to each other.”
“I hope you are not allowing yourself to feel too much interest in this man, Ethel; he is very likely married.”
“Oh, no! I am sure he is not, Ruth.”
“How can you be sure? You know nothing about him.”
“I cannot tell HOW I know, nor WHY I know, but I believe what I feel; and he is as much interested in me as I am in him. I confess that is a great deal.”
“You may never see him again.”
“I shall expect to see him next winter, he evidently lives in New York.”
“The lady you saw may be his wife. Don’t be interested in any man on unknown ground, Ethel. It is not prudent—it is not right.”
“Time will show. He will very likely be looking for me this summer at Newport and elsewhere. He will be glad to see me when I come home. Don’t worry, Ruth. It is all right.”
“Fred called soon after you went out this morning. He left for Newport this afternoon. He will be at sea now.”
“And we shall be there in a few days. When I am at the seaside I always feel a delicious torpor; yet Nelly Baldwin told me she loved an Atlantic passage because she had such fun on board. You have crossed several times, Ruth; is it fun or torpor?”
“All mirth at sea soon fades away, Ethel. Passengers are a very dull class of people, and they know it; they rebel against it, but every hour it becomes more natural to be dull. Very soon all mentally accommodate themselves to being bored, dreamy and dreary. Then, as soon as it is dark, comes that old mysterious, hungering sound of the sea; and I for one listen till I can bear it no longer, and so steal away to bed with a pain in my heart.”
“I think I shall like the ocean. There are games, and books, and company, and dinners, and other things.”
“Certainly, and you can think yourself happy, until gradually a contented cretinism steals over you, body and mind.”
“No, no!” said Ethel enthusiastically. “I shall do according to Swinburne—
“‘Have therefore in my heart, and in my mouth, The sound of song that mingles North and South; And in my Soul the sense of all the Sea!’”
And Ruth laughed at her dramatic attitude, and answered: “The soul of all the sea is a contented cretinism, Ethel. But in ten days we may be in Yorkshire. And then, my dear, you may meet your Prince—some fine Yorkshire gentleman.”
“I have strictly and positively promised myself that my Prince shall be a fine American gentleman.”
“My dear Ethel, it is very seldom
“‘the time, and the place,
And the Loved One, come together.’”
“I live in the land of good hope, Ruth, and my hopes will be realized.”
“We shall see.”
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