THE HEIR
In a little green box by the banks of the silver Thames, far from the busy haunts of men and commerce, yet near enough to a busy little county town not to be altogether cut off from the society of their fellows, there lived at the time of the death of the Rajah of Gumilcund, known amongst his Indian contemporaries as Byrajee Pirtha Raj, a widow and her son. They were English. The widow was of middle age. She had been handsome, and she was still comely and pleasant to look upon. The son had just turned his twenty-first year.
The two were somewhat of an enigma to their neighbours, one of whom—the well-known Lady Winter—used to say that the good folks of Surbiton and Kingston ought to be thankful to the Gregorys, without whose eccentricities they would not have had anything to talk about.
Now, it was very well that Mrs. Gregory did not hear this kind speech, for, however she may have affected her neighbours, it is very certain that she had not the least desire to be eccentric. And indeed the peculiarity which set all these busy tongues wagging had more to do with her son than with herself. His appearance, to begin with—how did he come to be so curiously, so abnormally, different from his mother? No one seeing them together could have imagined that they were closely related. She was one of those large, fair women—placid in temper and gentle in manner—who develop naturally out of the lily-white blonde of poetry and romance when she is foolish enough to step across the boundary that divides youth from middle age. He had the lithe figure, the olive skin, and the dark melting eyes that are supposed to belong to the great southern races.
The observant said there was something more. They said that the boy's expression of face divided him more completely from his mother than its colour and form. I am speaking now of his childish years. They say—I did not myself know him in these days—that there was a wonderful stillness, a curious, unchildlike spirituality about him; that he looked now and then as if his little soul were in the presence of visions which made the things of earth strange to him. This was noticed once to his mother by a garrulous neighbour, and the anger with which she received the remark was remembered long after in the neighbourhood. As a fact, the poor woman, placid as she seemed, had her own strongly-marked ideals. When her infant was born, and she called him Tom—a name which the neighbours said did not suit him in the least—she had visions of him in the future as a fair-haired, white-skinned Anglo-Saxon athlete, a cricketing and footballing hero, winning the plaudits of the crowd and provoking the envy of meaner mortals by his magnificent feats. Nature, however, had other views for the lad. But of this we shall see more hereafter. In the meantime it must be mentioned that the curious difference between the mother and son was not their only peculiarity. It was whispered that there was something strange—and we all know how much may lurk behind those two little words—in their past history. That Mrs. Gregory had spent several of her early years in India, where her grandfather, Sir Anthony Bracebridge, had been one of those fine old Anglo-Indian officers who by their military dash and political genius laid the foundation of the vast English empire that was then slowly growing up in the East; that her father had in his turn entered the service of the East India Company and won distinction; and that her husband, Captain Gregory, had belonged to the same order, and had been killed in one of the little wars about which no one in England knew anything;—so much everyone had heard, and this, it might have been thought, was sufficient for the most exacting of neighbourhoods. And no one, doubtless, would have asked for any more but for Mrs. Gregory's curious reticence with regard to the past.
She was naturally an expansive and garrulous woman. Everyone knew that. She was not in the least like Lady Winter, for instance, who measured her words carefully. She loved talking and kissing, and the genial company of intimate friends. Dearest Tom, and his little smart sayings, the house, the servants, the tradespeople, her own and other people's ailments; she was ready at any time to discuss these with effusion. But let one of her acquaintances touch upon India or her early years, and her lips were sealed immediately. So marked was this, that, curious as some of her neighbours were—and those were the days when India was, to the generality of people, a land of romance and mystery—it was tacitly agreed that it should not be mentioned before her, and so by degrees the gossip died down. Mrs. Gregory was an excellent neighbour and a genial companion. She had a pretty cottage, a good-looking, dutiful son, and she gave charming tea-parties. The neighbourhood accepted her and let her past alone. The coming of General Sir Wilfrid Elton and his family to Surbiton set tongues wagging again. Some one found out that the Eltons and Bracebridges were friends of old standing. Some one else suspected that Mrs. Gregory had not been particularly pleased when she heard they meant to settle near her, and two or three of the sensationally disposed looked forward to what they were pleased to call 'revelations.' None, however, came. The General was far too busy a person to gossip. Lady Elton, a pretty, timid, domestic woman, took to no one in the neighbourhood but Mrs. Gregory; and the girls either knew nothing, or had no inclination to tell what they knew. Our story dates from the summer of the Eltons' visit to Surbiton.
Tom Gregory, who was then just of age, had, in one respect, fulfilled the promise of his childhood. He was a handsome man for all that his beauty was not of that Anglo-Saxon type which was so dear to his mother's heart. An artist who met him one autumn day wandering by the riverside just as dusk had fallen, described himself as startled by his beauty. He attended one of Lady Winter's receptions later, and asked her in the presence of Miss Vivien Leigh, her pretty and eccentric niece, who the young Greek god of the river was. Her ladyship lifted up her eyebrows and wondered what upon earth he could mean. But Vivien smiled. 'He's met Tom Gregory in his boating flannels, aunt,' she said, in her light airy voice, which seemed always to have a ring of mockery in it. 'And do you know I think I shall keep the illustration; it's a remarkably good one. Which god, Mr. Walters—Apollo or Mars?'
'Scarcely Mars—not fierce enough; but the warlike element might develop. Educate him, Miss Vivien.'
'Mr. Walters,' said Lady Winter, holding up her finger reprovingly, 'my niece is quite naughty enough. She doesn't want any stimulating.'
I give this little scrap of gossip to show the effect which Tom produced in those days on some of the most stylish of his contemporaries. But although, not altogether, it must be confessed, to his mother's approbation, Tom had kept his remarkable appearance, he had changed in many ways from the beautiful boy who had woven golden visions in the garden by the river. He had been educated, and educated well. Acting on the advice of her friends, and chiefly of old Mr. Cherry, legal adviser of the Bracebridges for three generations, Mrs. Gregory had sent him first to a good preparatory school, then to Eton, and lastly to the University of Oxford, where he had just finished his term with credit. It was the general opinion that this elaborate and costly training, which was supposed to have eaten largely into Mrs. Gregory's slender resources, had been thrown away upon Tom, who declined to belong either to the church, the bar, or the army—the only professions which were in those days considered admissible for a gentleman. But Mrs. Gregory was satisfied. 'It has made an Englishman of him,' she said.
This was a little puzzling to the friend to whom the remark had been made. 'Why Englishman?' she said; 'he was English before.'
'I ought to have said "gentleman,"' she answered; 'but, to my mind, the one includes the other.' She was certainly no fool, this fair, placid-faced widow.
Unfortunately, to be an Englishman, or even an English gentleman, is not remunerative as a profession, and it having been constantly impressed upon Tom that, if he were ever to live in that atmosphere of refinement which is supposed to belong to a gentleman's condition, he must make money, it became necessary for him to cast about for some means of doing so.
He pondered for several weeks, visiting London two or three times in the interval. All this time he said nothing to his mother, and she, knowing his temperament, would not urge him to speak.
Then one evening he asked formally if he might have a little conversation with her, and she knew, by the light in his face, that he had come to a decision.
'Well,' she said, smiling, 'what is it to be? Will you take Mr. Cherry's advice and be a lawyer? He will help you, I know, for the sake of "Auld Lang Syne."'
'So he was kind enough to say,' answered Tom. 'But I thanked him and said "No." I should make a poor lawyer. I want something practical to do. If I were a rich man I should enter the diplomatic service. As I am poor, I wish to make myself an architect.'
'An architect!' cried his mother, wondering within herself what possible connection there could be between the two professions. 'A builder of houses, do you mean?'
'Houses, churches, cathedrals, playhouses, anything I may be put to,' said Tom, smiling at his mother's look of dismay. 'You see there is something permanently useful about building—always supposing that you build well—and it leaves the other half of the mind free.'
'The other half! What in the world do you mean, Tom?'
'I don't know that I am very clear about it myself, mother. But I think it will be good for me to have my fingers and the constructive side of my intelligence occupied.'
Of course Mrs. Gregory argued the point. She had never heard of a Bracebridge being an architect. Even the Gregorys, so far as she could learn, had always belonged either to the army or to one of the clerical professions. Were architects gentlemen? Did they take a place in society? Could they make money?
Her son quoted one or two great names out of ancient and modern history; but these did not satisfy her in the least. When he continued to urge his views she begged for time to consult their friends; but Tom would not hear of it.
'No, mother,' he said, 'this is a question for you and me, no one else. Can you put down the money'—he mentioned a comparatively small sum—'which will be necessary to bind me as an apprentice, and will you undertake to keep me for the next two years?'
'As to keeping you,' said the poor woman, tears filling her eyes, 'I should do that under any circumstances. What have I to live for but you? But——'
'Then, dearest mother, let us settle it so. In any case I shall not be losing my time. Every art acquired is an additional power and resource. If I find I am mistaken, if I wish to take up what you think a loftier walk of life, I can always do it; and, in the meantime, we are together.'
Yes, they were together, that was the great sweetener of everything; and she was not one to do battle for ideal excellence, or to stand firm against well-sustained importunity. 'After all it is you, not I, who are choosing a profession,' she said feebly. 'And—and—you are not quite like others. If things come to the worst——' And here she broke off and set her lips together, as if she had a secret to guard.
'If things come to the worst,' said Tom, who was accustomed to these little breaks, and did not mind them, 'we should manage to battle it out somehow, little mother. I am not in the least afraid.'
They arrived at this decision early in the spring. It was then that General Sir Wilfrid Elton, who was at home on a year's furlough from India, paid a visit to his old friend Mrs. Gregory, and fell in love with the cottage adjoining hers that had been empty since the previous summer. She was very frank in pointing out its deficiencies: the tumbledown condition of the fences and outhouses, the close neighbourhood of the river, the likelihood of damp. 'It would be pleasant to have neighbours,' she said wistfully, 'but I should be sorry for such old friends as Lady Elton and you to do anything so important with your eyes shut.'
'We shall certainly not do that,' said the General, with his hearty laugh.
'But consider the girls!' said Mrs. Gregory, a pink flush mounting to her face—the General was such a curiously quizzical man. 'This is a dull place for young people.'
'Dull!' echoed the General, clapping his hand to his knee. 'You have spoken the word. The good people in London have tired us out with festivities. Since we came home it has been one rush. Lady Elton is beginning to be sick of it, so am I. As for the girls, they must make the best of it. Two or three months of eclipse in holland frocks and brown straw hats will do the little monkeys all the good in the world.'
Of course there was nothing more to be said. Mrs. Gregory smiled sweetly, and with a tremor at her heart, and an unuttered hope that if Lady Elton and the General knew more about her former life than her neighbours—a circumstance concerning which she could not be perfectly sure—they would be discreet, entered, with the enthusiasm of a friend, and the practical ability of an experienced housekeeper, into the arrangements necessary to make the new ménage comfortable. As a fact the Eltons proved most delightful neighbours. Lady Elton and Mrs. Gregory struck up a friendship which, while it had the charm of novelty, drew much of its sweetness from the past. The girls, who were not little schoolmisses, as might have been imagined from their father's reference to holland frocks and straw hats, but young women ranging from twenty-two to seventeen, flashed in and out of the widow's rooms, dragged her off with them for picnics on the river, and filled up her somewhat barren days with the overflowings of their exuberant life. As for the General, who had become a great gardener in his retirement, he looked in upon his neighbour, as a general rule, once a day, to inquire after her health, and discuss the condition of their respective crops of roses and strawberries. Tom meanwhile came and went, going to town early in the morning and returning home in the evening. To the surprise of everybody he seemed to like the life. He showed a curious enthusiasm about his work, which he would call neither a business nor a profession, but an art. The evenings and the whole of Saturday and Sunday were his own property; and then he would doff his city clothes and put on the flannels that became him so well, and either spin himself up and down the river in his outrigger, to the admiration of the Elton girls, or dream on his mothers lawn, or take tea, a little primly, but withal satisfactorily, in their neighbour's charming rose-garden, whither his mother and Lady Winter, and Sir Reginald her son, and that pretty enigma, Vivien Leigh, would come; and sometimes after these tea-parties he would find himself strolling along the river with one of the girls—occasionally Grace Elton, oftener Vivien Leigh—while the ringing voices of the rest of their little party sounded behind them; until the sunlight faded, and the little stars twinkled out in the pale zenith.
And so we come to that memorable day in June, from which, as Tom was accustomed to say later, everything dated.
It was that loveliest moment of all the English year, when summer, which has been coquetting for weeks with the enamoured earth, breaking out one day into sunny smiles, and on the next hiding her sweet face in mists and clouds, has issued forth at last in her full beauty. In the irresistible magic of her presence the meadows had become gemmed with flowers; the beeches and elms, and even the tardy old oaks, which are of too ancient a lineage to be beguiled by mere promises, lifted up golden-green canopies to the heavens; the birds—nightingales and larks, and linnets and thrushes—made the copses and hedgerows resonant with joyful music. For three whole days the sky and the river had been penetrated with sunlight.
In weather such as this Tom Gregory spent as little time as possible in town. On the particular day which I am trying to recall he found, to his contentment, that there was not much doing, and he gained permission easily from the head clerk of his department to leave earlier than usual.
His mother was out when he reached the cottage—at Lady Elton's, the servant said. Proposing to himself to join her there a little later, he ran up to his room, threw off his city dress, put on his flannels and went out into the garden.
There was a certain tree at its further end, a weeping-ash with long pendent branches, under whose shadow it was often his pleasure to hide and dream. He would take out a volume of poetry—Shelley and Coleridge were his favourites—and lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his elbows, would read a few stanzas, just, as he would express it, to set himself going. After that, if he had nothing particular to think out, he would give a free rein to his fancy, which would range over heaven and earth with the unbridled, glorious luxuriance of youth. Meantime he would watch the waters as they flowed past his retreat, taking absent note of the procession of boats and the laughing music of young voices, which blended sweetly with the sighing of the wind and the chanting of the birds.
This evening, as he remembered later, he had taken out Coleridge. The volume opened of its own accord at that magnificent fragment, 'Kubla Khan.' He read it over twice, with that curious rapture of satisfaction which nothing but the greatest poetry can call out; and then the mystic imagery in its stately setting of miraculously beautiful words set his mind wandering on a wild vision quest of its own.
What the vision was, or whether he was bold enough to imagine that he could build
That dome in air—
That sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice—
I must not venture to say, lest I should suddenly find myself, 'like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,' floundering in depths whither few will care to follow me.
The dream lasted for an hour, and the boy came to himself with a start, for an image, which he did not in the least wish to detain, was haunting him. He sprang up, gave himself a shake like a dog after a swim, and went slowly towards the boat-house, murmuring, as he walked, the words which had called up the unwelcome image—
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
'I wonder why that always makes me think of Vivien Leigh,' he said to himself with a perplexed smile. 'I couldn't imagine her wailing for any one, least of all a lover, demon or human. Perhaps it's because she's a little inhuman herself. I'm sure she would have been put down as a witch in the middle ages.' He began to whistle a lively air to put Vivien out of his head. Then her image was expelled by another.
Her face resigned to bliss or bale—
Her face, oh call it fair not pale,
And both blue eyes more bright than clear,
Each about to have a tear.
'What a contrast!' he said to himself, as he stooped over his boat to loosen the painter. 'She is human—exquisitely, beautifully human.'
At this moment he heard his mother calling him, and, tying up his boat again, he went out of the boat-house and on to the lawn.
'Tom, Tom! where are you?' She looked flushed and excited and out of breath.
'Here I am, mother!' he said. 'I thought you were at the Eltons. I was just going to take my boat round and see if any one was in. You look tired, dear. Come and sit down by the river.'
'Oh, dear! I have had such a hunt for you,' she said. 'I went in to the Eltons after lunch to get them to show me a new stitch, and the girls and their father were out; he has gone to town, for a wonder. So Lady Elton and I sat chatting about old days, forgetting altogether how the time went, and then I came in to see about your supper, and Sarah told me you had been in an hour.'
'An hour or thereabouts, and I was just going out for a stretch. Can it be time for supper already?'
'No, not quite; but——'
And here she pulled up, for she perceived to her annoyance that Tom was not listening to her.
'Do you hear me, Tom?' she said. 'The post has just come in, and there is a letter——'
The boy held up his hand beseechingly. 'One moment, mother!' he pleaded. 'The letter will keep and that will not.'
Now Mrs. Gregory did not agree with him in the least; as a fact, she had come out to find him, being moved with an irresistible feeling of curiosity concerning the contents of his letter, which was of an unusual character, and addressed in an unusual hand. Tom had very few correspondents, and his mother generally knew from whom his letters came by merely glancing at them. But she knew from experience that Tom was not to be forced. Pliant as he seemed, there was a certain backbone of stubbornness about him. So, keeping herself in check as well as she could, she looked out at the sight 'which would not keep.' It was certainly a pretty picture. Anybody would have been bound to confess that. A pleasure-boat full of young girls, gliding softly along a broad tranquil stream; their light garments and brown and golden hair steeped in the rosy evening light. Of course it was pretty. Mrs. Gregory, who liked and admired the 'dear girls,' from beautiful Grace, the eldest, down to mischievous, tiresome, delightful Trixy, the privileged baby of the two establishments, thought it not only pretty but interesting. There was nothing new, however, nothing to provoke that irritatingly intense look on her son's face and delay the gratification of her curiosity.
But Tom! Ah! 'alchemy of youth and passion; how it transforms everything it touches!' To him not Cleopatra in her barge of state, floating proudly down her river to the strains of spirit quelling music, was so beautiful.
There were no less than five girls in the boat. Two of them had been rowing, and, as the impetus given by their last vigorous strokes carried it along, they leaned forward on their oars, gazing dreamily into the shadows; the third, a little golden-haired creature, lay in the bows with her face towards the water, and two sat in the stern—one, a royal-looking girl, whose tense expression, direct gaze, and upright attitude showed that she liked the post of directress steering; the other, a much softer, and, at the same time, a lovelier woman, sitting back with hands folded, and singing in a rich low voice a beautiful old English ballad.
As long as the voice could be heard and the boat seen the boy on the river bank looked out and listened. Presently the air carried the sounds away, and the outlines of the boat were lost in the shadows of the willows that fringed the opposite bank. Then he turned to his mother.
'Only the Eltons,' she said. 'I thought, from the way you called out, I was going to see something wonderful. My dear boy, for pity's sake, don't look so intense!'
'I am afraid I can't help my looks,' said Tom a little stiffly. 'Shall we go back to the house? It is getting damp here. You will be having your rheumatism again.'
'Yes, discretion is the better part of valour,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'Give me your arm, Tom. I am not so young as I was once. You know, dear'—apologetically—'you mustn't mind what I say about your looks. To me it is just the same, though, of course, I don't like to see you dreamy and romantic, for I know to what these things tend. I was so once myself.'
'And it hasn't brought you to any great harm, little mother.'
'I don't know that, Tom. However, I am a woman, and I had friends to look after me—not that they always—but that is neither here nor there. You, my poor dear, know what is before you. A man in your position, with his way to make in the world, must keep all his wits about him, or he will soon find himself nowhere.'
'A country about which I have always been rather curious,' said Tom, to whom these admonitions were not new. 'How if I tried a little wool-gathering, just to have a look in?'
'Oh, well, you may laugh; but you will remember my words some day, and I only hope it may not be too late for your own comfort. And now, perhaps, you will take your letter.'
'A letter for me!' said Tom. 'Why'—scrutinising it—'this looks important—blue paper, black seal!'
'I thought it rather funny myself,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'But don't stare at it, child! Open and read it!'
'Come inside first,' said Tom.
They went through a pretty little verandah, well furnished with plants, into Mrs. Gregory's drawing-room, which, though very far indeed from the daintily-æsthetic apartment that ladies haunt now, was pleasant and comfortable—well supplied with books in handsome bindings and fine engravings, and furnished with a low couch, an ottoman, and several lounging-chairs. Into one of these Tom plunged, and, having thrown down his boating-cap on the table, broke the seal of his letter. His mother, who was watching him curiously, saw his face flush red. Then she knew that there was something in his letter which surprised him. It seemed to her at that moment as if all the blood in her body were rushing to her heart, which bounded as if it would burst. The next thing she knew Tom was looking at her, with the strangest expression in his face.
'Did you know of this, mother?' he said.
'Know of what?' she cried. 'Oh, Tom! Tom! what is it? Something has happened!'
'Yes,' he said; and she fancied now that there was a curious, unusual glitter in his eyes. 'Something has happened.'
She caught at his arm. 'It is something dreadful. I am sure of it from your face.'
'Dreadful!' echoed the boy, breaking into a laugh which rang unnaturally in his mother's ears. 'I think few people would call it so.'
'But what is it? Oh, Tom!' besought the poor woman, as her son turned his soft meditative eyes upon her. 'Speak at once, and don't look at me in that way. Child! child! It is like a dream come to life again. I can't bear it. Tom, I say! Speak to me. God help me! He hasn't looked so since he was a baby.'
It was Tom's turn to look surprised. 'My dear mother,' he said soothingly, 'what is the matter? I am afraid I have been frightening you. It is very stupid of me; but the news in this letter is so extraordinary—so unexpected. I have read over the principal part of it twice, and I feel still as if I must be dreaming. But Mr. Cherry is a man of business; he would not be likely to make a mistake.'
'Mr. Cherry! Is the letter from him?'
'Yes; he tells me he is the agent and solicitor——Mother, what is it?'
'Nothing, dear, nothing—only you are telling the story rather slowly. Mr. Cherry, you say——'
'Perhaps you had better read the letter yourself, mother. I can't say I understand it quite.'
'Yes, give it to me! Quick! I hear the General coming up the garden. My dear boy, don't look like that before him—don't, for pity's sake!'
As she spoke she seized the letter, glanced over its contents, put her hands before her eyes as if the lamplight dazzled her, read it again, and then, with a cry of mingled joy and sorrow, flung herself into her son's arms.