THE WELLFIELDS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

STAGE II.—Continued.

[1]

THE WELLFIELDS.

STAGE II—Continued.

CHAPTER VI. IN DANGER.

When Nita and Jerome again arrived at the Abbey, they found that Mr. Bolton had returned from Burnham, and that the midday dinner, which was an institution in the family, was waiting for them.

[2]

‘Have you settled anything?—has Nita helped you?’ inquired Mr. Bolton.

‘Miss Bolton has been very kind indeed, and has probably saved me from wasting a great deal of my small stock of money,’ replied Jerome.

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bolton, appreciatively, ‘that’s always something gained.’

He asked his daughter what she was going to do that afternoon, and Nita said she was going to drive to the town of Clyderhow to do a little shopping.

‘Why Clyderhow? The shops in Burnham are a great deal better.’

‘Because I like the drive to Clyderhow,’ said Nita; ‘and there is a wonderful milliner there. Aunt Margaret got a bonnet from her with five ostrich tips in it, and a bird, and three bows of black satin ribbon, and a great deal of velvet, for the sum of two guineas.’

‘So you go by the quantity of stuff you get for your money when you choose bonnets?’ asked Mr. Bolton.

‘Aunt Margaret does. She likes plumes. I thought I might perhaps find [3] something sweetly modest and simple, with one feather and one bow, and a little flower or sprig for instance, for next to nothing.’

‘Is this shopping considered a secret service affair?’ inquired Jerome; ‘or may I go too, if I sit quite still while you are in the shop, and promise not to look that way?’

‘I am afraid you would think it a great bore,’ said Nita quickly, as her face flushed.

‘I suppose it was because I love to bore and afflict myself that I asked permission to go,’ he answered, with a smile.

‘I shall be most happy to take you if you would really like to go. Will you come too, papa?’

‘What an idea!—I hope not!’ thought Jerome, within himself, and Mr. Bolton was obliging enough to say:

‘I?—no. I never drive in the afternoon. I am going to my Italian, as usual.’

But as the carriage was not ordered to be round until half an hour after dinner, Mr. Bolton proposed to Jerome that they should take a [4] walk round the garden and have a cigar. Nita watched the two figures as they paced together towards the cloisters. The elder man, with the massive lines, broad, sturdy figure, somewhat below middle height, but still imposing in its power and strength; the somewhat bowed back and high shoulders; the round, bull-dog head, with its expression of dogged determination. The younger—Nita leaned against the side of the window and folded her arms, as she contemplated him with a strange mixture of sensations. What a contrast to that dear familiar figure of the man who was noted for his hardness and coldness to others, but who was so gentle, so tender and indulgent to her, and to the few friends who composed their small circle of intimates—a contrast indeed! The new-comer was—unconsciously she recalled those lines in ‘Esther’—

[5]

‘The panther in the wilderness!’ That was an evil comparison; surely he was good as well as beautiful. Was it really only yesterday that he had arrived—not yet twenty-four hours ago? And how long would he still be here? And what would the Abbey, everything be, when he was gone? She turned hastily away from the window, and would not venture another look.

The two men paced about the river walk for a time, till Mr. Bolton asked:

‘Do you know any of the people about here?’

‘I met an old acquaintance this morning—Father Somerville, from Brentwood.’

‘Somerville! You know him? Is he any favourite of yours?’

‘As to that, I can hardly say. I like what I have seen of him, but know very little of him. I fancy we have many tastes in common. He is a cultivated man, who has seen the world, I think.’

‘Ay, ay! he’s clever, is Somerville, and attractive too, I could [6] fancy. I never let any of those gentry inside my house.’

‘No?’ said Jerome, indifferently. ‘I hope you have no objection to your visitors knowing them, for I have promised to go and see him to-morrow.’

‘Oh, my visitors do as they please, I hope. So long as he does not darken my doors, it’s all one to me what he does. Nita, I am thankful to say, is not of an hysterical temperament, for all she is so slight and delicate. She has never displayed any tendencies to being over-religious, or going in for Ritualism or that kind of mummery; else I should have had to send her to a good sharp school.’

‘Miss Bolton has never been to school?’

‘No; her mother died when she was two. By that time I was a rich man; and as I knew I should never marry again, I took Nita’s education into my own hands. She will inherit my money and my property; and I have given her the education of a man of business. She will know to a fraction what she is worth; and if she falls into any snares, it will [7] be with her eyes open.’

‘That is well,’ said Jerome, gravely, wondering a little why Mr. Bolton, on so short an acquaintance, chose to discourse to him on this topic. And with Father Somerville’s advice fresh in his mind, he felt interested in that topic—wrongfully interested.

‘Your daughter will marry some one who will administer her fortune wisely, it is to be hoped,’ he said.

Mr. Bolton sighed. ‘I suppose she must marry,’ he said, slowly. A girl with that money ought to marry. One has heard of wealthy maiden ladies of large property living alone, and exercising power over all around them; but,’ he turned suddenly to Wellfield, ‘did you ever hear or read of one, in real life or even in a romance, who was not unhappy? I never did.’

‘I really don’t feel to know much about the subject,’ said Jerome, feeling that they were skirting delicate ground, wondering more and [8] more that Mr. Bolton spoke thus to him, of all persons.

‘Nita has told me about your sister, and your views about her,’ he went on. ‘I like you for your behaviour, Mr. Wellfield.’

‘I?’ stammered Jerome, surprised. ‘Miss Bolton must have misunderstood.’

‘No. She told me you had a half-sister, to whose use you intended to devote what money you had, while you sought for employment for yourself. I like to hear of a man treating his sister in that way.’

Jerome was silent—surprised. He felt his tongue tied. His natural impulse was to please, when his companion showed a predisposition to be pleased. He felt a desire to say something which should still further excite Mr. Bolton’s goodwill, and make him—Jerome Wellfield—feel on still better terms with himself. But the thought of Sara Ford rose up, and forbade him to do so. He continued his walk in silence.

‘I have a proposition to make to you,’ said Mr. Bolton, suddenly. [9] Jerome turned to him with his lips apart, and a quick inquiring look upon his face. Could it be that Father Somerville had the gift of second-sight?

‘It’s not a very brilliant proposition; and it is all founded on the assumption that you know nothing of business; no book-keeping for instance, no clerkship routine. Do you?’

‘No, I do not; I know absolutely nothing of those things.’

‘Well, if I found you capable—excuse my bluntness,’ he said, with the same pedantic little air which characterised his speech—‘we manufacturers are apt to be a little scornful of a want of practical talent; but if I found you capable, and you would care to try, I think I could find you some employment in my own office. But you would have to begin by learning the very elements of your work from my book-keeper and cashier. If you like to come over to Burnham two or three times a week, for a short time, and try, you are welcome.’

[10]

‘You are very kind!’ said Jerome, astonished: ‘I have no possible claim upon such——’

‘You do not in the least know my reasons for making you the offer,’ replied Mr. Bolton, with a calm superiority that made Jerome feel somewhat snubbed; ‘therefore, do not be in any haste to express your gratitude. My book-keeper will soon turn you out a finished article, if you are to be turned out at all.’

‘Sublime destiny! The gods might envy me!’ thought Jerome, within himself; but he said: ‘I shall accept your offer with gratitude. I do not know how I should have found anything, with my ignorance and my utter want of influence.’

‘That’s right! And in the meantime take holiday till next week, and enjoy yourself. There’s Nita’s phaeton going round, I see, and the groom; I suppose she will be ready.’

With which laconical dismissal of the whole subject, he led the way to the house again.

[11]

Nita drove a high phaeton, with a spirited pair of roans. In answer to Jerome’s suggestion that he should drive she looked so rueful that he laughed, saying:

‘If that is the case I shall be only too glad to be driven. I am indolent enough for anything.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ replied Nita, taking the ribbons. Very soon they were driving at a pleasant speed through the lanes leading towards Clyderhow, whose ancient castle, on a mound, confronted them for a great part of the distance.

‘What does Mr. Bolton mean, when he speaks of “his Italian”?’ asked Jerome, reflectively.

Nita laughed as she flicked the roans lightly.

‘Of course you would not understand,’ she answered. ‘Italian is papa’s favourite weakness. Did you ever see anyone so unlike Italy as he is? [12] Poor old dear! He always used to read in the afternoons, and one day he was perusing a little book aloud to me, and I was sewing. There came some allusion to “the fiery domes and cupolas of the city of Dis.” He asked me what it meant, and I told him about the “Inferno.” He said: “That’s very fine—those fiery domes and cupolas. I must know some more about it.” With which he took to studying Italian, and is now devoted to it. It is very seldom that he fails to give a few hours each day to it. He is translating the “Inferno,” in his rough, plodding way. I am glad he finds something to amuse himself with, for he has had a sad life.’

‘Sad? He has been unusually successful, has he not?’

‘Oh, in money-matters, yes. But my mother died just when he hoped to give her everything she desired—and more. And he was—he was very fond of her.’

‘I see! I might have understood that,’ replied Jerome; and then, after [13] a pause, ‘Mr. Bolton has been making very kind offers to me.’

‘Has he? What manner of offers?’

He told her.

‘Do you call that a kind offer?’ cried Nita impatiently, as her face flushed. ‘How could he suggest such a thing? Oh, really, how hard men can be!’

‘Perhaps you think he should at once have placed the half of his possessions at my disposal. Is it not better to be “hard,” as you call it, than an idiot?’

‘Well, I suppose it is. But life is such a mystery.’

‘As how—I mean how exemplified in my case?’

Nita laughed with a little embarrassment.

‘I never can explain things. But it is a mystery. You a clerk! What an idea! You must feel it to be absurd, yourself, don’t you?’

[14]

‘I have not thought much about it. It has to be done.

you know.’

‘Pray what would your sister say to it?’

‘Avice? Well, really, I don’t suppose she has any clear ideas as to what clerks are, or do. If I told her I was going to be a tailor, she would think it all right if I said so.’

‘Is she that kind of a sister?’

‘Yes,’ said Jerome, in perfect good faith. He imagined indeed that Avice was that kind of a sister; essentially the right kind of sister. Women ought all to be like that—blind to the faults of those they loved—when ‘those’ were men. The men to work, the women to admire; the workers to rule, the admirers to submit. It was a beautiful arrangement.

‘I daresay it is very nice in her to be like that,’ said Nita, ‘but if I had had a brother,I should not have been that kind of a sister at [15] all. I should have told him very plainly what I thought of his doings, and if I imagined that he was degrading himself, I should have told him that too.’

‘Would you, at the same time, have provided him with the means of acting up to what you considered a higher standard?’

‘It is a shame!’ Nita burst out almost passionately, after a pause.

How naïvely she showed her interest, Jerome thought, with a little sense of pleased, flattered self-complacency. How delightfully natural she was—and what a curious contrast to that woman whose proud lips had already confessed her love for him: to Sara Ford! His heart suddenly throbbed as he thought of her. Dangerous thought! He must not indulge in it, and accordingly, to turn the conversation, he said:

‘You have singular ideas on the subject of brothers and sisters, possibly because the relation is purely a matter of speculation to you.’

[16]

‘Oh no, it isn’t. Jack is my brother.’

‘John Leyburn?’ he asked, with a feeling of surprise that was not altogether pleasant. Sooth to say, he had forgotten Leyburn for the moment, and here he was suddenly cropping up again in a manner that was obtrusive—thrusting himself in where he was not in the least wanted.

‘John Leyburn—yes.’

‘Privileged young man! He seems to me, like most cousins, to make the most of his advantages.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Nita.

‘He takes every opportunity of lecturing you. And you—well, you are consistent, I must own; you do tell him very plainly what you think of him.’

‘Of course I do! and as for John’s lectures, I am accustomed to them by now. They mean nothing, except that we are great friends—more than cousins; in fact, brother and sister.’

‘And how long, if I may ask, has the fraternity been superadded to the [17] cousinship—and the friendship? It makes a complicated relationship.’

‘It never was superadded. It has always existed—for me.’

‘Always?’ echoed Jerome, vaguely displeased.

‘Yes, of course. I am nineteen, and John is twenty-eight. When I was born, we lived at Burnham, and so did the Leyburns. Uncle Leyburn married papa’s only sister, and was his greatest friend. They lived at Burnham too, then. John was nine years old then, of course. The first, or one of the very first things I can remember, is his showing me pictures of birds—he is mad about birds, you know—and taking me by the hand for a little walk, and playing with me in general. I suppose I was about three years old then.’

‘And Leyburn twelve. He was that age when I knew him, sixteen years ago. They had just come to Abbot’s Knoll. Yet I do not remember his [18] ever saying anything about you. Perhaps you occupied a smaller place in his heart than you imagine.’

‘Oh no!’ said Nita, with calm conviction. ‘He never talks much about things. He would not be likely to talk about me. He always gives his mind to what he is doing at the moment; and when he was playing and learning lessons with you, he would not talk about me. Besides, we were still at Burnham. But he was always kind when he came back to me. John taught me to read, and implanted in my mind that love of light literature which he now pretends to deplore—the great humbug!’

Nita laughed a pleased little laugh, speaking of a tender affection for the absent ‘humbug.’ The course which the conversation had taken grew less and less pleasing to Jerome. He felt a strong desire to displace John from his pedestal, or at least to make him, in vulgar parlance, ‘step down a peg or two.’ A spirit of perverse folly took possession of him. Leaning a little forward, and speaking in a discreetly low voice, [19] mindful of the groom who sat behind, he rested his elbow on his knee, and fixed his eyes on Nita’s face, saying:

‘Then he has never given you cause to suppose that a sister’s affection would hold a secondary place in his thoughts?’

‘You speak ambiguously,’ replied Nita, occupied in guiding her horses through a very narrow lane. ‘Sister’s affection—secondary place! I do not understand.’

‘Are sisters jealous when their brothers marry?’

‘Oh, I see! Certainly not, if they have any sense,’ was the most decided answer; ‘they may be angry, you know, if the wife their brother chooses is disliked by them; but if they have no ground for disliking her, they would be selfish and foolish, simply, to be jealous when their brothers married.’

‘You say John Leyburn is your cousin and your friend and your brother all in one. Suppose he took it into his head to get married—he must be [20] lonely in that great house of his by the river.’

‘If John were to marry,’ repeated Nita, slowly and pensively.

Her hands were fully occupied; for at this moment they were driving down a steep hill, and the roans were fresh. She could not have hidden her face, had she wished to do so. As her eyes met Jerome’s, a quick flush rose on her cheek—a flush which grew deeper.

‘If she cares for him, there can be no danger in my asking questions; she is in no danger with me,’ thought Wellfield, with characteristic indolence, and also with a characteristic wish to find out whether she ‘cared’ irrevocably for John Leyburn. And he said:

‘If John were to marry—yes. What is to hinder him? Would his wife consider him your brother? Would she see it in the same light, do you think?’

‘She would be a very nasty girl if she did not,’ said Nita, with a [21] heightened colour and flashing eyes, ‘when I should do all in my power to be kind to her.’

‘Oh, you would do all in your power to accomplish that? Then you would not mind if John got married?’

‘I should mind it very much if his wife were such an odious woman as you seem to think she would be. Stepping in and destroying——’

‘The friendship of a lifetime; breaking every social tie, and so on. Let us put it in another light. Suppose he married, and married some one of so generous a disposition as to wish him not to lose his sister——’

‘I should not call that generous, but merely decent and reasonable.’

‘Well, he marries this decent, reasonable woman, and then you marry. Do you think your husband would look upon John in the light of a brother?’

‘Mr. Wellfield, what strange questions you ask!’

[22]

‘Not at all. You would have to consider the subject when you married.’

‘But I am not going to be married. I know papa thinks I shall have to, but I don’t intend it at all.’

‘Intentions have less than nothing to do with such a matter. When you fall in love with some one, and he asks you to marry him, you will do so of course, since you are neither a nun, nor a lunatic, nor in any way a perverse or ill-conditioned person,’ he answered tranquilly, while Nita looked at him in startled amazement, her heart beating with the same strange sense of a thrilling new emotion as she had this morning experienced. In all their nineteen years of brother and sisterhood, John had never dared—was ‘dared’ the word to use? No—it had never occurred to John to speak to her in such a manner as did this man whom she had first met yesterday. Yet she did not feel resentment towards him, though she tried to think she did, and answered as if she did.

[23]

‘How can you speak to me in that manner? As if I had no strength of will—as if I were an idiot.’

‘Not at all; but as if you were, what you are—a woman, and a good one,’ he replied. Then, before she could answer, he went on: ‘But I think you want to shirk my question, Miss Bolton. You are afraid to look your position fairly in the face.’

‘I don’t see it.’

‘You have not told me what you would do in case the man you married refused, or was unable to see, John Leyburn in the pure white light of brotherhood.’