Vera Nevill Part 30

They were not rooms that one would suppose any man would care to linger in in broad daylight; and yet Sir John remained in them now a days almost from morning till night.

He sat for the most part as he is sitting now--in a shabby, leathern arm-chair, stooping a little forward, and doing nothing. Sometimes he wrote a few necessary letters, sometimes he made a feint of reading the paper; but oftenest he did nothing, only sat still, staring before him with a hopeless misery in his face.

For in these days Sir John Kynaston was a very unhappy man. He had received a blow such as strikes at the very root and spring of a man's life--a blow which a younger man often battles through and is none the worse in the end for, but under which a man of his age is apt to be crushed and to succ.u.mb. Within a week of his wedding-day Vera Nevill had broken her engagement to him. It had been a nine days' wonder in Meadows.h.i.+re--the county had rung with the news--everybody had marvelled and speculated, but no one had got any nearer to the truth than that Vera was supposed to have "mistaken her feelings." The women had cried shame upon her for such capriciousness, and had voted her a fool into the bargain for throwing over such a match; and if a male voice, somewhat less timid than the rest, had here and there uplifted itself in her defence and had ventured to hint that she might have had sufficient and praiseworthy motives for her conduct, a chorus of feminine indignation had smothered the kindly suggestion in a whole whirl-wind of abuse and reviling.

As to Sir John, he blamed her not, and yet he knew no more about it than any of them; he, too, could only have told you that Vera had mistaken her feelings--he knew no more than that--for it was but half the truth that she had told him. But it had been more than enough to convince him that she was perfectly right. When, after telling him plainly that she found she did not love him enough, that there had been other and extraneous reasons that had blinded her to the fact at the time she had accepted him, but that she had found it out later on; when, after saying this she had asked him plainly whether he would wish to have a wife who valued his name, and his wealth, and his fine old house at least as much as he did himself, Sir John had been able to give her but one answer. No, he would not have a wife who loved him in such a fas.h.i.+on. And he had thought well of her for telling him the truth beforehand instead of leaving him to find it out for himself later. If there had been a little, a very little, falling of his idol from the high pillar upon which he had set her up, in that she should at any time have been guided by mercenary and worldly motives; there had been at the same time a very great amount of respect for her brave and straightforward confession of her error at a time when most women would have found themselves unequal to the task of drawing back from the false position into which they had drifted. No, he could not blame her in any way.

But, all the same, it was hard to bear. He said to himself that he was a doomed and fated man; twice had love and joy and domestic peace been within his grasp, and twice they had been wrested from his arms; these things, it was plain, were not for him. He was too old, he told himself, ever to make a further effort. No, there was nothing before him now but to live out his loveless life alone, to sink into a peevish, selfish old bachelor, and to make a will in Maurice's favour, and get himself out of the world that wanted him not with as much expedition as might be.

And he loved Vera still. She was still to him the most pure and perfect of women--good as she was beautiful. Her loveliness haunted him by day and by night, till the bitter thought of what might have been and the contrast of the miserable reality drove him half wild with longings which he did not know how to repress. He sat at home in his rooms and moped; there were more streaks of white in his hair than of old, and there were new lines of care upon his brow--he looked almost an old man now. He sat indoors and did nothing. It was April by this time, and the London season was beginning; invitations of all kinds poured in upon him, but he refused them all; he would go nowhere. Now and then his mother came to see him and attempted to cheer and to rouse him; she had even asked him to come down to Walpole Lodge, but he had declined her request almost ungraciously.

He never had much in common with his mother, and he felt no desire now for her sympathy; besides, the first time she had come she had been angry, and had called Vera a jilt, and that had offended him bitterly; he had rebuked her sternly, and she had been too wise to repeat the offence; but he had not forgotten it. Maurice, indeed, he would have been glad to see, but Maurice did not come near him. His regiment had lately moved to Manchester, and either he could not or would not get leave; and yet he had been idle enough at one time, and glad to run up to town upon the smallest pretext. Now he never came. It added a little to his irritation, but scarcely to his misery. On this particular afternoon, as he sat as usual brooding over the past, there came the sudden clatter of carriage wheels over the flagged roadway of the little back street, followed by a sharp ring at his door. It was his mother, of course; no other woman came to see him; he heard the rustle of her soft silken skirts up the narrow staircase, and her pleasant little chatter to the fat old landlady who was ushering her up, and presently the door opened and she came in.

"Good morning, John. Dear me, how hot and stuffy this room is," holding up her soft old face to her son.

He just touched her cheek. "I am sorry you find it so--shall I open the window?"

"Oh!" sinking down in a chair, and throwing back her cloak; "how can you stand a fire in the room, it is quite mild and spring-like out. Have you not been out, John? it would do you good to get a little fresh air."

"I shall go round to the club presently, I daresay," he answered, abstractedly, sitting down in his arm-chair again; all the pleasant flutter that the bright old lady brought with her, the atmosphere of life and variety that surrounded her, only vexed and wearied him, and jarred upon his nerves. She was always telling him to go somewhere or to do something; why couldn't she let him alone? he thought, irritably.

"To your club? No further than that? Why, you might as well stay at home.

Really, my dear, it's a great pity you don't go about and see some of your old friends; you can't mean to shut yourself up like a dormouse for ever, I suppose!"

"I haven't the least idea what I mean to do," he answered, not graciously; she was his mother, and so he could not very well put her out at the door, but that was what he would have liked to do.

"I don't see," continued Lady Kynaston, with unwonted courage, "I don't at all see why you should let this unfortunate affair weigh on you for ever; there is really no reason why you should not console yourself and marry some nice girl; there is Lady Mary Hendrie and plenty more only too ready to have you if you will only take that trouble----"

"Mother, I wish you would not talk to me like that," he said, interrupting suddenly the easy flow of her consoling suggestions, and there was a look of real pain upon his face that smote her somewhat.

"Never speak to me of marrying again. I shall never marry any one." He looked away from her, stern and angry, stooping again over the red ashes in the grate; if he had only given her one plea for her pity--if he had only added, "I have suffered too much, I love her still"--all her mother's heart must have gone out to him who, though he was not her favourite, was her first born after all; but he did not want her pity, he only wanted her to go away.

"It is a great pity," she answered, stiffly, "because of Kynaston."

"I shall never set foot at Kynaston again."

Her colour rose a little--after all, she was a cunning little old lady.

The little fox-terrier lay on the rug between them; she stooped down and patted it. "Good dog, good little Vic," she said, a little nervously; then, with a sudden courage, she looked up at her son again. "John, it is a sad thing that Kynaston must be left empty to go to rack and ruin; though I have never cared to live there myself, I have always hoped that you would. It would have grieved your poor father sadly to have thought that the old place was always to lie empty."

"I cannot help it," he answered, moodily, wis.h.i.+ng more than ever that she would go.

"John;" she fidgeted with her bonnet strings, and her voice trembled a little; "John, if you are quite sure you will never live there yourself, why should not Maurice have it?"

"Maurice! Has he told you to ask for it?" He sat bolt upright in his chair; he was attentive enough now; the idea that Maurice had commissioned his mother to ask for something he had not ventured to ask for himself was not pleasant to him. "Is it Maurice who has sent you?"

"No, no, my dear John; certainly not; why, I haven't seen Maurice for weeks and weeks; he never comes to town now. But I'll tell you why the idea came to me. I called just now in Princes Gate; poor old Mr. Harlowe has had a stroke--it is certain he cannot live long now, after the severe attack he had of bronchitis, too, two months ago. I just saw Helen for a minute, she reported him to be unconscious. If he dies, he must surely leave Helen something; it may not be all, but it will be at least a competency; and I was thinking, John, that if you did not want Kynaston, and would let them live there, the marriage might come off at last; they have been attached to each other a long time, and to live rent free would be a great thing."

"How are they to keep it up? Kynaston is an expensive place."

"Well, I thought, John, perhaps, if Maurice looks after the property, you might consider him as your agent, and allow him something, and that and her money----"

"Yes, yes, I understand; well, I will see; wait, at all events, till Mr.

Harlowe is dead. I will think it over. No, I don't see any reason why they should not live there if they like;" he sighed, wearily, and his mother went away, feeling that she had reason to be satisfied with her morning's work.

She was in such a hurry to install her darling there--to see him viceroy in the place where now it was certain he must eventually be king. Why should he be doomed to wait till Kynaston came to him in the course of nature; why should he not enter upon his kingdom at once, since Sir John, by his own confession, would never marry or live there himself?

Lady Kynaston was very far from wis.h.i.+ng evil to her eldest son, but for years she had hoped that he would remain unmarried; for a short time she had been forced to lay her dreams aside, and she had striven to forget them and to throw herself with interest into her eldest son's engagement; but now that the marriage was broken off, all her old schemes and plans came back to her again. She was working and planning again for Maurice's happiness and aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. She wanted to see him in his father's house, "Kynaston of Kynaston," before she died, and to know that his future was safe. To see him married to Helen and living at Kynaston appeared to her to be the very best that she could desire for him. In time, of course, the t.i.tle and the money would be his too; meanwhile, with old Mr. Harlowe's fortune, an ample allowance from his brother, and all the prestige of his old name and his old house, she should live to see him take his own rightful place among the magnates of his native county. That would be far better than to be a captain in a line regiment, barely able to live upon his income. That was all she coveted for him, and she said to herself that her ambition was not unreasonable, and that it would be hard indeed if it might not be gratified.

As she drove homewards to Walpole Lodge she felt that her schemes were in a fair way for success. She was not going to let Maurice know of them too soon; by-and-by, when all was settled, she would tell him; she would keep it till then as a pleasant surprise.

All the same, she had been unable to refrain from telling Helen Romer something of what was in her mind.

"If John does not marry, he might perhaps make Maurice his agent and let him live at Kynaston," she had said to her a few days ago when they had been speaking of old Mr. Harlowe's illness.

"How would Maurice like to leave the army?" Helen had asked.

"If he marries, he must do so," his mother had replied, significantly; and Helen's heart had beat high with hope and triumph.

Again to-day, on her way to her eldest son's rooms, she had stopped at Princes Gate and had alluded to it.

"I am on my way to see Sir John; I shall sound him about his intentions with regard to Kynaston, but, of course, I must go to work cautiously;"

and Helen had perfectly understood that she herself had entered into the old lady's scheme for her younger son's future.

Sitting alone in the hushed house, where the doctors are coming and going in the darkened room above, Helen feels that at last the reward of all her long waiting may be at hand. Love and wealth at last seemed to beckon to her. Her grandfather dead; his fortune hers; and this offer of a home at Kynaston, which Maurice himself would be sure to like so much--everything good seemed coming to her at last.

And there was something about the idea of living at Kynaston that gratified her particularly. Helen had not forgotten the week at Shadonake. Too surely had her woman's instinct told her that Maurice and Vera had been drawn to each other by a strong and mutual attraction. The wildest jealousy and hatred against Vera burnt fiercely in her lawless, untutored heart. She hated her, for she knew that Maurice loved her. To live thus under her very eyes as Maurice's wife, in the very house her rival herself had once been on the point of inhabiting, was a notion that commended itself to her with all the sweetness of gratified revenge, with all the charm of flaunting her success and triumph in the face of the other woman's failure which is dear to such a nature as Helen's.

She alone, of all those who had heard of Vera's broken engagement, had divined its true cause. She loved Maurice--that was plain to Helen; that was why she had thrown over Sir John, and at her heart Helen despised her for it. A woman must be a fool indeed to wreck herself at the last moment for a merely sentimental reason. There was much, however, that was incomprehensible to Helen Romer in the situation of things, which she only half understood.

If Maurice loved Vera, why was it that he was in Manchester whilst she was still in Meadows.h.i.+re? that was what Helen could not understand. A sure instinct told her that Maurice must know better than any one why his brother's marriage had been broken off. But, if so, then why were he and Vera apart? It did not strike her that his honour to his brother and his promises to herself were what kept him away. Helen said to herself, scornfully, that they were both of them timid and cowardly, and did not half know how to play out life's game.

"In her place, with her cards in my hand, I would have married him by this," she said to herself, as she sat alone in her grandfather's drawing-room, while her busy fingers ran swiftly through the meshes of her knitting, and the doctor and the hired nurse paced about the room overhead. "But she has not the pluck for it; his heart may be hers, but, for all that, I shall win him; and how bitterly she will repent that she ever interfered with him when she sees him daily there--my husband! And in time he will forget her and learn to love me; Maurice will never be false to a woman when once she is his wife; I am not afraid of that. How dared she meddle with him?--_my_ Maurice!"

The door softly opened, and one of the doctors stepped in on tip-toe.

Helen rose and composed her face into a decorous expression of mournful anxiety.

"I am happy to tell you, Mrs. Romer," began the doctor. Helen's heart sank down chill and cold within her.

"Is he better?" she faltered, striving to conceal the dismay which she felt.

"He has rallied. Consciousness has returned, and partial use of the limbs. We may be able to pull your grandfather through this time, I trust."

Put off again! How wretched and how guilty she felt herself to be! It was almost a crime to wish for any one's death so much.

She sank down again pale and spiritless upon her chair as the doctor left the room.

"Never mind," she said to herself, presently; "it can't last for ever. It must be soon now, and I shall be Maurice's wife in the end."

But all this time she had forgotten Monsieur Le Vicomte D'Arblet, whom she had not seen again since the night she had driven him home from Walpole Lodge.