Works of Ellen Wood, page 904
“Mother,” he said, “you seem to be in great distress of your own: for I cannot believe that any proceedings of mine would thus disturb you.”
“I am, Karl. I am.”
“Will you not let me share it, then? — and, if possible, soothe it? You will find me a true son.”
Mrs. Andinnian came back to her seat and replied calmly. “If you could help me in any way, Karl, you should hear it. But you cannot — you cannot, that I can see. Man is born to trouble, you know, as the sparks fly upwards.”
“I thought that I had offended you: at least pained you by my coming marriage. It grieved me very much.”
“My trouble is my own,” she answered.
Karl could not imagine what it could be. He tried to think of various causes — just as we all do in a similar case — and rejected them again. She had always been a strangely independent, secretive woman: and such women, given to act with the daring independence of man, but possessing not man’s freedom of power, may at times drift into troubled seas. Karl greatly feared it must be something of this kind. Debt? Well, he did not think it could be debt. He had never known of any outlets of expense: and surely, if this were so, his mother would apply to him to release her. But, still the idea kept coming back again: for he felt sure she had not given the true reason for wishing to keep him away from Foxwood, and he could not think of any other trouble. Sunk in these thoughts, he happened to raise his glance and caught his mother’s sharp eyes inquisitively fixed on him.
“What are you deliberating upon, Karl?”
“
“I was wondering what your care could be.”
“Better not wonder. You could not help me. Had my brave Adam been alive, I might have told him. He was daring, Karl; you are not.”
“Not daring, mother? I? I think I am sufficiently so. At any rate, I could be as daring as the best in your interests.”
“Perhaps you might. But it would not serve me, you see. And sympathy — the sympathy that my poor lost Adam gave me — I have never from you sought or wished for.”
She was plain at any rate. Karl felt the stab, just as he had felt many other of her stabs during his life. Mrs. Andinnian shook off her secret thoughts with a kind of shiver; and, to banish them, began talking with Karl of ordinary things.
“What has become of Ann Hopley?” he enquired. “She was much attached to you: I thought perhaps you might have kept her on.”
“Ann Hopley? — oh, the servant I had at Weymouth. No, I did not keep her on, Karl. She had a husband, you know.”
At ten o’clock Mrs. Andinnian wished him goodnight and good-bye, and retired. Karl sat on, thinking and wondering. He was sorry she did not place confidence in him, and so give him a chance of helping her: but she never had, and he supposed she never would. At times — and this was one — it had almost seemed to Karl as though she could not be his mother.
CHAPTER X.
Mrs. Andinnian’s Secret.
“WILL you take anything, Sir Karl?” —
The question came from Hewitt, who had looked in to ask for orders for the morning, arousing his master from a curious train of thought.
“I don’t mind a drop of hot brandy and water, Hewitt. Half a glass. Something or other seems to have given me the shivers. Is it a cold night!”
“No, Sir Karl; the night’s rather warm than cold.”
“Has my mother any particular trouble or worry upon her, Hewitt, do you know!” he asked, as he mechanically watched the mixing of the spirit and water. “She seems to be very much put out.”
“I have noticed it myself, sir; but I don’t know what the cause is,” was the answer. “For my part, I don’t think she has been at all herself since Sir Adam’s death. Loving him as she did — why, of course, sir, it was a heavy blow; one not to be got over easily.”
“And that’s true, Hewitt. How many servants have you here!” resumed Karl, asking the question not really with any particular care to know, but simply to turn the subject “There’s me and two maids, sir.”
“You and two maids!” echoed Karl, in surprise. “Yes, sir, me and two maids. That’s all; except the out o’ door gardeners.”
“But that’s not enough for Foxwood. It is only what we had in Northamptonshire. How does the work get done! Why does my mother not keep more?”
“My mistress says she can’t afford more, Sir Karl,” returned Hewitt, who seemed sore upon the point, and spoke shortly.
“But she can afford more,” returned Karl, impulsively; “a great many more. Her income is a large one now.”
Hewitt rubbed his bald head with an air of perplexity. Karl spoke to him of things that he would not have entered on with any less esteemed and faithful servant. Hewitt had been so long in the family that he seemed like an old confidential friend. From his boyhood’s days, Karl had looked up to Hewitt with respect. The man stood before his master, as if intending to wait and see him drink the brandy-and water.
“There can be no debts, you know, Hewitt,” spoke Sir Karl, hastily.
Hewitt did not evince any surprise whatever at the implied suggestion. It seemed to be rather the contrary.
“I have fancied that my mistress had some embarrassment on her mind, sir, such as debt might cause,” was the rejoinder, much to Karl’s astonishment. “I have fancied her money goes somewhere — though I should never hint at such a thing to anybody but you, sir; nor to you if you had not asked me. Perhaps Sir Adam left some debts behind him.”
“No, he did not, Hewitt. Any debts left by Sir Adam would have been paid out of the estate before it came to me. Plunkett and Plunkett informed me at once that there were no debts at all: except the costs of the trial.”
“Then it must be some that have cropped up since: that is, the claim for them,” surmised Hewitt. “It is what I’ve thought myself, Sir Karl.”
“But why have you thought it?”
“Well, sir, one can’t help one’s thoughts,” answered Hewitt, falling away from the question — but not intentionally. “One evening, sir, when my mistress seemed fit to die with trouble, I asked her if anything had happened to vex her: and she answered — after looking at me sternly in silence — No, nothing fresh; only some sorrow of a good many years ago. It was the evening after that gentleman called, Sir Karl: a gentleman who came and stayed with her ever so long.”
“What gentleman?” asked Karl.
“Some stranger, sir; I didn’t know him. He came up to the house and asked for Mrs. Andinnian. I told him (they were my general orders) that Mrs. Andinnian was not well enough to see visitors. Oh, indeed, he said, and asked to come in and write a note. I was standing by when he began to write it, and he ordered me to the other end of the room: I suppose he feared I might look over. It seemed to me that he wrote but one or two words, Sir Karl; not more: quite in a minute the paper was folded and sealed — for he told me to light the taper. ‘There’ said he, ‘take that to Mrs. Andinnian: I think she’ll see me.’ My mistress was very angry when I took it to her, asking why I disobeyed orders; but when she opened it, her face went deadly white, and she bade me show the gentleman up to her sitting-room. He was there about two hours, sir.”
Karl thought this rather strange. “What sort of man was he, Hewitt?”
“A well-dressed gentleman, sir; tall. He had had a hurt to his left arm, and wore it in a black silk sling. When he took it out of the sling to seal the note, he could hardly use it at all. It was that same evening after he had been, sir, that my mistress seemed so full of trouble: a great deal more so than usual.”
“Did you hear his name?”
“No, sir, I didn’t hear his name. A tray of luncheon was ordered up for him; and by the little that I heard said when I took it in and fetched it away, I gathered that he was a gentleman applying for the agency of your estate.”
“But I do not require an agent,” cried Karl in some wonder.
“Well, sir, I’m sure that’s what the gentleman was talking of. And my mistress afterwards said a word or two to me about the place being neglected now Sir Karl was absent, and she thought she should appoint an agent to look after it.” —
“But the place is not neglected,” reiterated Karl. “How long was this ago?”
“About three weeks, Sir Karl. I’ve not heard anything of it since, or seen the gentleman. But my mistress seems to have some secret care or uneasiness, apart from the death of Sir Adam. She seems always to be in an inward worry — and you know how different from that she used to be. It has struck me, Sir Karl, that perhaps that stranger came to prefer some claims left by Sir Adam.” —
Karl did not think this likely, and said so. But neither of them could be at any certainty.
“I wish you would write to me from time to time during my absence, Hewitt, and let me know how my mother is,” resumed Karl, dropping the unsatisfactory subject.
“And that I will with pleasure, Sir Karl, if you will furnish me with an address to write to.”
“And be sure, Hewitt, that you send to me in any trouble or sickness. I wish my poor mother’s life was a less lonely one!”
Hewitt shook his head as he left the room. He felt sure that his mistress would never more allow her life to be anything but a lonely one: the light of it had gone out of it for ever with her beloved son.
Sir Karl went up to his chamber shortly. Before he had well closed his door, a maid knocked at it, and said Mrs. Andinnian wished to see him. Karl had supposed his mother to be in bed: instead of that, he found her standing by the fire in her little sitting-room, and not undressed.
“Shut the door, Karl,” she said — and he saw that her face was working with some painful emotion. “I have been debating a question with myself the better part of this evening, down stairs and up — whether or no I shall disclose to you the trouble that is upon us: and I have resolved to do so. Of two evils, it may, perhaps, be the least.”
“I am very glad indeed, my mother.”
“Hush!” she solemnly said, lifting a warning hand. “Speak not before you know. Glad! It has been consideration for you, Sir Karl,” she added, in that stern and distant tone that so pained him, “that has alone kept me silent. You have no doubt been thinking me unnaturally cold and reserved; but my heart has been aching. Aching for you. If I have not loved you with the passionate love I bore for your poor brother — and oh, Karl, he was my firstborn! — I have not been so neglectful of you as you may imagine. In striving to keep you away from Foxwood, I was but anxious that your peace should not be imperilled earlier than it was obliged to be.”
“Let me hear it mother. I can bear it, I daresay.”
“You may bear it, Karl. A man can bear most things. But, my son, I dread to tell it you. You will regard it as an awful calamity, a frightful perplexity, and your spirit may faint under it.”
Karl smiled sadly. “Mother, after the calamities I have undergone within the past year I do not think Fate can have any worse in store for me.”
“Wait — and judge. Your anger will naturally fall on me, Karl, as the chief author of it. Blame me, my son, to your heart’s content: it is my just due. I would soften the story to you if I knew how: but it admits not of softening. What is done cannot be undone.”
Mrs. Andinnian rose, opened the door, looked up and down the corridor, shut it again, and bolted it. “I do not need to fear eaves-droppers in the house,” she observed, “and the doors are thick: but this secret is as a matter of life or death. Sit down there, Karl,” — pointing to a chair opposite her own.
“I would rather stand, mother.”
“Sit down,” she reiterated: and Karl took his elbow from the mantel-piece, and obeyed her. He did not seem very much impressed with what he was about to hear: at least not to the extent that her preparation seemed to justify. Each leaned forward, looking at the other. Mrs. Andinnian had her arms on the elbows of her chair; Karl’s were crossed.
“First of all, Karl, you will take an oath, a solemn vow to God, that you will never disclose this secret to any human being without my consent.”
“Is this necessary, mother?”
“It is necessary for you and for me,” she sharply answered, as if the question vexed her. “I tell you nothing unless you do.”
Karl rose, and took the oath. Resuming his seat as before, he waited.
No, she could not say it. They sat, gazing at each other, she in agitation, he in expectancy; and for a minute or two she literally could not say what she had to say. It came forth at last. Only four words.
Only four words. But Karl Andinnian as he heard them sprang up with a cry: almost as the ill-fated man Martin Scott had sprung, when shot to death by his brother.
“Mother! This cannot be true!”
Mrs. Andinnian went over to him and pushed him gently into his chair. “Hush, Karl; make no noise,” she soothingly whispered. “It would not do, you see, for the household to be alarmed.”
He looked up at his mother with a kind of frightened gaze. She turned away and resumed her seat. Karl sat still, tumultuous ideas crowding on him one after another.
“You should have disclosed this to me before I engaged myself to marry,” he cried at last with a burst of emotion.
“But don’t you see, Karl, I did not know of your intended marriage. It is because you have informed me of it to-night that I disclose it now.”
“Would you have kept it from me always?”
“That could not have been. You must have heard it some time. Listen, Karl: you shall have the story from beginning to end.”
It was one o’clock in the morning, before Karl: Andinnian quitted his mother’s room. His face seemed to have aged years. Any amount of perplexity he could have borne for himself, and borne it calmly; but he did not know how to grapple with this. For what had been disclosed to him ought to do away with his proposed marriage.
He did not attempt to go to bed. The whole of the rest of the night he paced his room, grievously tormented as to what course he should take. The wind, howling and raging around the house — for it was one of the most turbulent of nights — seemed but an index of his turbulent mind. He knew that in honour he was bound to disclose the truth to Colonel Cleeve and Lucy; but this might not be. Not only was he debarred by his oath; but the facts themselves did not admit of disclosure. In the confusion of his mind he said to his mother, “May I not give a hint of this to Lucy Cleeve, and let her then take me or leave me?” and Mrs. Andinnian had replied by demanding whether he was mad. In truth, it would have been nothing short of madness.
What to do? what to do? In dire distress Karl Andinnian strode the carpet as he asked it. He might make some other excuse, if indeed he could invent one, and write to break off the marriage — for, break it off to their faces he could not. But, what would be the effect on Lucy? Colonel Cleeve had not concealed that they gave her to him to save her life. Were he to abandon her in this cowardly and heartless manner, now at the eleventh hour, when they were literally preparing the meats for the breakfast table, when Lucy’s wedding robe and wreath were spread out ready to be worn, it might throw her back again to worse than before, and verily and indeed kill hen It was a dilemma that has rarely fallen on man. Karl Andinnian was as honest and honourable a man as any in this world, and he could see no way out of it: no opening of one. He might not impart to them so much as a hint of the dreadful secret; neither could he inflict the stab that might cost Lucy’s life: on the other hand, to make Lucy his wife, knowing what he now knew, would be dishonour unutterable. What was he to do? What was he to do? There was absolutely no loophole of escape, no outlet on either side.
Karl Andinnian knelt down and prayed. Man, careless, worldly man, rarely does these things. He did. In his dire distress he prayed to be guided to the right. But all the uncertainty came back as he rose up again, and he could not see his course at all. Very shortly Hewitt knocked at his door: saying it was time for Sir Karl to get up, if he would catch the passing train. When Sir Karl came forth Hewitt thought how very quickly he had dressed.
“It is a rough morning, sir,” said Hewitt, as he opened the hall door.
“Ay, I can hear that. Farewell, Hewitt.”
Delayed a tide by the non-controllable winds and waves, Sir Karl reached Paris only on the evening of the eleventh. He drove at once from the station to the Avenue d’Antin, and asked to see Lucy in private. Torn by conflicting interests, he had at length resolved to sacrifice his own sense of honour to Lucy’s life. At least, if she should not decide against it.
She was looking radiant. She told him (in a jest) that they had considered him lost, that all had prophesied he had decamped and deserted her. Karl’s smile in answer to this was so faint, his few words were so spiritless and subdued, that Lucy, a little sobered, asked whether anything was the matter. They were standing on the hearth-rug: Karl a few steps apart from her.
“What should you say if I had deserted you, Lucy?”
“I should just have said Bon voyage, monsieur,” she answered gaily, never believing the question had a meaning.
“Lucy, my dear, this is no time for jesting. I have come back with a great care upon me. It is a fact, believe it or not as you will, that I had at one time determined to desert you: to write and give you up.”
There was no immediate answer, and Karl turned his eyes on her. The words told home. Her blanched face had a great terror dawning on it.
“Sit down, Lucy, while you listen to me,” he said, placing her in a chair. “I must disclose somewhat of this to you, but it cannot be much.”
Remaining standing himself, he told her what he could. It was a most arduous task to speak at all, from the difficulties that surrounded it. A great and unexpected misfortune had fallen upon him, he said; one that from its nature he might not further allude to. It would take away a good deal of his substance; it ought in short to debar his marriage with her. He went on to tell of the conflict he had passed through, as to whether he should quit her or not, and of his final resolve to disclose so much to her, and to leave with her the decision. If she decided against him, he would invent some other plea to Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve for breaking off the marriage; or let the act appear to come from her, as she should will. If she decided for him, why then—”
