Chapter XVII
My affairs stood thus. I proposed to marry Miss Gascoyne if I could, but I had no notion of breaking with Sibella.
All this time I was closely debating which of the obstacles in my way I should remove next.
There had been three Henry Gascoynes. The youngest was gone. There remained two, and one of them, nearly ninety, was scarcely worth considering. He was hardly likely to marry, and if he did so children were almost out of the question, although I had not made myself acquainted with his physical condition and method of life. He lived the existence of a recluse on a miniature estate somewhere in the lake district. None of the Gascoynes that I was acquainted with had ever met him.
The remaining Henry Gascoyne was a parson and a childless widower. He was sixty-two years of age. His cure was in Lincolnshire, and one of the very few livings still worth having. The eminently spiritual method of selection practised by the Established Church was testified to by the fact that the living had been the gift of his wife’s father, and the claims of a curate who had done the work of the parish for thirty years, representing the valetudinarian and octogenarian vicar, had been passed over. Country livings are an appanage of family, not of church. Even that good old-fashioned custom, however, is going with the diminution in the value of tithes. It is no use struggling to retain what is not worth having.
Henry Gascoyne must be my next victim if I were not to play the coward and draw back, wasting so much good work already done. The very “if” that entered into my mind warned me that my nerve could not endure for ever. I had thought the preservation of nerve merely a question of self-control, but as I grew older I realised that there were many and complex human emotional developments in perpetual siege of that valuable attribute.
One thing at a time, and as it would not be advisable to try my luck with Miss Gascoyne just yet, I decided to devote myself to inquiring into the affairs of the Reverend Henry Gascoyne.
Each undertaking of the kind became more and more difficult to manage. An introduction to the Reverend Henry Gascoyne would tie my hands. My presence on the occasion of a third Gascoyne dying a tragic death might become the subject of remark, and once the hue and cry was raised evidence might accumulate rapidly enough, and, as is often the case, most unexpectedly. Even Ughtred Gascoyne’s death might become a support to suspicion, though there might never be any direct proof that I had had a hand in it. Indeed, it was prolonged reflection on this matter that made me realise that my nerve was not an impregnable fortress.
Still, I could not draw back. What duty is to many people my ambition was to me. It had to be gone through, though hell fire waited for me when it was attained. It was not that I was incapable of rehearsing the penalties of failure, but that I realised that if once I let my imagination loose among such possibilities chaos would ensue.
I took down Crockford’s and perused it. The Reverend Henry Gascoyne had been ordained at twenty-three. Evidently the valetudinarian rector was on his last legs at the time, and it had been advisable to have his successor in readiness. On going into the matter it turned out to be as I expected. After spending two years as curate of a smart West End church he had stepped into the living of Lye.
Lye was in Lincolnshire. If I wished to discover further particulars about my reverend cousin there appeared to be no other way than by going down to the village. I was not at the time quite as free as I had been formerly. Mr. Gascoyne had grown to expect me on Sundays, if not to lunch, to dinner, and I think he considered it as somewhat of a slight if I did not appear. I was looked upon as the son of the house, and he certainly had a right to expect something of a son’s duty in return for the uniform kindness he had shown me. Not that he was likely to display resentment at my going out of town for a day or two, but it would involve explanations, and explanations involved deception, and deception involved the danger of being found out. To say I was going to one place when I was going to another meant the possibility of being discovered, and so far I had kept singularly clear of petty deception.
I decided that some friends in a humble walk of life might be useful, and invented a family called Parsons, the name suggested by the quarry I was hunting. They had, I explained, been good to me when I was a poor lad at Clapham, and had now gone to live in the country. To avoid committing myself I wrote down every particular about them which I might be questioned on, and learned them off by heart. I introduced their name casually into the conversation at dinner at the Gascoynes’.
Yes, I told them, in replying to questioning, there was Mrs. Parsons and her son and a daughter. Mr. Parsons was dead. His son had always loved the country, and having inherited a small farm from an uncle, he and his mother and sister had gone to live on it. Was the daughter pretty? I did not know. I had not seen her for some years, and girls change so. The son was the same age as I was. No, we had not gone to the same school, and he did not know Grahame Hallward. Our acquaintance had come of our living near each other.
I changed the subject as soon as possible.
Soon after I found occasion to say that I had met young Parsons in London, and that he had asked me to go down and spend a few days at their farm near Norwich. I felt the whole thing to be lamentably clumsy. It would have been better to get to know someone near Mr. Gascoyne’s rectory, but it was done, and as soon as I had finished with the Parsons family I intended to ship them all off to Canada, where there are as many farms as the imagination can desire.
When I declared that I must accept their invitation, or Mrs. Parsons and her children would be hurt, I fancy Miss Gascoyne’s face lighted. I was sure that she had endowed me with all sorts of good qualities to which I could lay no claim. She was touched at my consideration for the Parsons’ feelings. She was a woman incapable of giving love where she could not give respect.
The world only knowing me through the medium of a trial for murder has no doubt made up its mind that anyone who could respect me must have been a very bad judge of character. The world, however, is not itself a very good judge of character. To man, his fellow-creatures are as a rule divided into two classes, viz.: the penny plain and twopence coloured. If Mr. Brown has been found with Mr. Jones’s wife, Mr. Brown is a complete and wholly irreclaimable blackguard. That he has been an honest citizen, an attentive husband, and an irreproachable father hitherto counts for nothing. These virtues only aggravate the offence, inasmuch as they are shown by the nature of his guilt to have been mere hypocrisies. Public exposure is the real guilt in his fellow-men’s eyes. The old, old crime of being found out is the unforgivable offence. They know in their hearts that he is rather a fine fellow, that his slip is what might have happened to any of them. They have probably some such little liability still unpaid standing to their own account, but this does not make them one whit the less severe in judging their foolish fellow who has been discovered. It is thus. A man who has been in the dock and has been convicted loses the right to claim any virtues. As for a man who has been convicted of murder! What can be said for him? Just as he has been found guilty of the crime the law holds most wicked, so must he be capable of committing all those crimes which murder is supposed to take precedence of.
Yet Miss Gascoyne was right, and the world was wrong. She had seen the best side of me, and—at the risk of appearing egotistical and conceited—there was much to respect in my character, especially as seen by her, and it was by no means all spurious virtue. I had a sound judgment. I was no snob, and I was not only well read, but I had musical accomplishments, which—strange in a woman of her birth and country breeding—she did not despise. She deemed me loyal, and so I was, with limitations. Above all, she loved me—of that I was now sure—and everything I had to show in the shape of goodness shone, as will do the deeds of her lover in the eyes of woman. She took a much truer view of my character than the public have done so far. I was kind-hearted; this she had discovered for herself, and, curiously enough, without my putting the fact too obviously before her.
I already saw myself married to her, and I could not help thinking of the importance it would give me in the eyes of the world to have been accepted by the beautiful Miss Gascoyne, who had refused almost the finest match in England. People would hardly credit it, and it certainly was necessary to know Miss Gascoyne in order thoroughly to understand her action.
I went on my visit to the imaginary Parsons family, and when I returned was compelled to invent still further details for Miss Gascoyne’s benefit. She was interested in everything I did, and asked all manner of questions about them, down to minute details as to what young Parsons grew most on his farm.
“Really,” I laughed, “I didn’t ask.”
“That’s not very like you, Mr. Rank. You generally want to know everything. Your capacity for picking up information has always surprised me.”
“We were too occupied in talking over old times,” I answered, and the conversation was diverted to a good-natured bantering on my inquisitive ways.
I had, however, seen the Reverend Henry Gascoyne, and had even heard him preach. The village of Lye lay right out in the midst of the fens of Lincolnshire. In the autumn—the time at which I visited it—it looked well enough, but in the winter I should think it must have been dreary beyond description. The village itself clustered round the church, a fine old building dating from about the year twelve hundred. It was partly in ruin; indeed, it was a question whether it had ever really been completed. The interior depended for its beauty on the design, for it had all the coldness and inhospitable aspect of the average English country church where the incumbent has been untouched by the High Church movement. There was a Communion Table which might have been anything, but for its position, and a dusty Litany lay on the desk. The walls were covered with memorials to the Hutchins, the family of Mr. Gascoyne’s wife, from whom he had received the living.
There was a brand-new bronze tablet—somewhat of a relief after the black-edged marble mementoes of the rest of the Hutchins family—to the memory of Mary Gascoyne, the beloved wife of Henry Gascoyne, incumbent of the parish, with a space for the name of the Reverend Henry when he should be carried, by a power stronger than his own, from the comforts of Lye Rectory to that land, the glories and happinesses of which he expatiated upon every Sunday, but which he was in no hurry to set out for.
The Reverend Henry was none of your new-fangled parsons who carry the teachings of the New Testament uncomfortably into private life. As for testing social conditions from the Book of Books, it had never entered his head. Christianity was an ideal, and you were to get as near to it as possible. As parson, the only difference between himself and his parishioners lay in the fact that it was incumbent upon him to preserve a greater staidness of demeanour than the neighbouring gentry. Not that he was nearly as staid and solemn as his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Hutchins, who sat in the family pew on Sunday mornings and evenings, a monument of respectability and convention.
Neither, judging by the somewhat florid colouring of his face, did the Reverend Henry hold with temperance doctrines. Indeed, I heard that this matter caused some dispute between him and Sir Robert Hutchins, and that the brothers-in-law were not on the best of terms. It pleased Sir Robert Hutchins to hold a sort of informal service in the village schoolroom every Sunday afternoon, when those who were of a Methodistical turn of mind could hold forth and give addresses and so work off their schismatic steam. Sir Robert was of opinion that the Reverend Henry should have fallen into line with his truly statesmanlike scheme, but the Reverend Henry was in the habit of spending his Sunday afternoon with his port, gazing sleepily from his long dining-room windows across the pleasant Lincolnshire landscape, and he informed his brother-in-law that he was not sure that loyalty to the church would permit him to sit and listen to the outpourings of Mr. Butt, the carpenter, or Mr. Shingle, the village grocer; and that a really well thought out and carefully delivered sermon was a greater strain than his brother-in-law had any conception of. He declared that it very often took the whole afternoon before his nerves had fully recovered from the effort. At this Sir Robert murmured something about clergymen being always so ready to take care of those bodies which they taught other people to despise. Then the Reverend Henry grew mightily offended, and replied with cutting sarcasm that he knew that Nonconformity usually had a contempt for the appointed ministers of the church, but that if his brother-in-law wished to show his contempt he had better withdraw to West Lye on Sundays, where there was enough irreverent and blasphemous Psalm-singing and taking of the Lord’s name in vain to satisfy the most egotistical of schismatics. But even when he expressed himself in this highly independent and manly fashion he was so completely the slave of convention as to feel that it was highly improper for an incumbent to be speaking to his patron in such a way; the patron of a living standing—in the sort of nebulous hierarchy which he had constructed in his own head—somewhere between the parson and the Deity.
All of this information I obtained at the village inn from general conversation. It appeared to have been conveyed to the community from the servants at the Rectory and the Hall, and had evidently lost nothing in the telling.
I attended the service, and saw my reverend cousin for the first time. I am bound to say I rather liked him, in spite of the suggestion of good living in his face. He looked frank and honest. He conducted the service in a nice, gentlemanly way, and preached an exceedingly good sermon on scandal and tale-bearing. There appeared, from the knowing looks of the parishioners, to have been some special scandal of late in the village, for everyone glanced at his neighbour as much as to say, “I hope this will be a lesson to you for the term of your natural life.”
I seated myself behind a pillar so that I could get a good view of the parson when he was not looking, and could disappear from sight when his gaze wandered in my direction.
The service over, Mr. Gascoyne retired through the Rectory garden in the company of a lady and a young girl, who I afterwards learned were his sister and her daughter. He was a great sportsman and an excellent shot, but I suppose in deference to his cloth he drew the line at eating the game he killed. From what I could gather I should think he was quite alive to the humour of this inconsistency.
I wandered about the churchyard and watched the verger lock the great doors and shuffle out of the wicket gate across the dusty road to his cottage. A silence descended over the village. As I walked round and round the church, pretending to be absorbed in the gravestones, I was racking my brains for some means of carrying out my design on the estimable cleric who was at that moment sitting down to roast mutton and claret as a preliminary to his afternoon port.
Two schemes arose in my brain simultaneously. At the west end of the church there were some ruined arches, which were no doubt the ruins of the unfinished north and south transept. I looked at them with interest. The stonework was crumbling woefully, and it would not be a very difficult matter to detach a brick. The decaying masonry also suggested that it would be easy to climb to the top of the arch, where there was a buttress, the shadow of which might at night furnish absolute concealment to anyone bold enough to scale it. A large stone thrown accurately on the head of anyone passing beneath it would be almost bound to kill. It was a risky proceeding. Anyone coming from a certain part of the village would inevitably use the short cut, and pass under the arch on the way to the Rectory. How was I to know, however, when the Reverend Henry was likely to pass that way, especially as from all accounts he very seldom went out at night? It seemed as if I should have to give this idea up. I had to consider also that the arch would be by no means a very pleasant thing to climb, and that it might come to the ground under my weight. The risks of the stone not falling on the right spot were also great. On the other hand, it would be sure to look like an accident.
The other method was suggested by my seeing the vestry window open. Looking in, the first thing that struck my eye was a table by the window, on which were a bottle and glass. They had stood at the preacher’s right hand during the sermon, and the Reverend Henry had more than once had recourse to them. Was it possible to doctor the water? The Rector would at least have a dramatic death in the pulpit. I could not help smiling at the idea of his tumbling down the pulpit steps in the midst of one of his most eloquent periods. It was worth thinking out.
There was no more to be done at the moment, and as I did not wish to become well known in the village I returned to London.
The next time I went into the district I intended to stay at a small place some distance off, and use my bicycle.
On my arrival in town I was compelled, as I have said, to give a minute account of the establishment of the imaginary Parsons.
Sibella was also anxious to know why she had not seen me for three whole days, but I evaded her questions, and did not let myself in for a repetition of the Parsons inventions.
About this time I was, through no wish of mine, introduced to Lord and Lady Gascoyne. They had, since Miss Gascoyne’s arrival in South Kensington, called every now and then on Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne, and had, I believe, taken a great fancy to the household. Lady Gascoyne, dark, brilliantly pretty—the word beautiful would have been out of place—was an American of very questionable birth, and had recognised at once the real breeding that characterised her husband’s unpretentious relations. She was very anxious for Miss Gascoyne to visit them. Would they not all come to Hammerton? Lord Gascoyne warmly seconded the invitation. Miss Gascoyne excused herself on the ground of mourning. Lady Gascoyne had herself lost a brother, and her eyes filled. He had been her father’s joy and hope. It was for him the money had been made. She would not have been so rich if darling Louis had been alive, but she would willingly give up all her fortune if it could bring him back. I am afraid that if poor Louis had not died and left his sister sole heiress it was hardly likely that she would have been Lady Gascoyne. But they appeared to be a devoted couple, and she talked almost incessantly of the little Viscount Hammerton, and Lord Gascoyne himself talked of the child a great deal. Mrs. Gascoyne, although the most delightful woman imaginable, was, after all, of bourgeois extraction, and was somewhat impressed by the Earl and his lady. She invariably gave me detailed accounts of their visits, and was hoping that Mr. Gascoyne would accept the invitation to Hammerton. Lady Gascoyne was going to bring little Lord Hammerton to see her. At this Mrs. Gascoyne’s eyes filled with tears, thinking of her own boy, and I suppose I ought to have felt uncomfortable.
We were all sitting peacefully one Sunday afternoon not making the least effort to entertain one another, the surest sign of a perfect community of feeling. Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne were dozing on each side of the fire. I was reading a book, and Miss Gascoyne was writing letters, when Lord and Lady Gascoyne were announced.
“And I’ve brought Simmy,” said Lady Gascoyne, placing a bundle of lace in Mrs. Gascoyne’s arms. “Our engagements for the afternoon fell through, so we thought we would run over and see if you were in. Very rude, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Gascoyne was holding Simeon, Viscount Hammerton, to her bosom. She was a woman who had been destined by nature to be the mother of many children. There is no mistaking the woman who is above all things a mother when she has a child in her arms. She cannot assume anything in the way of attitude which is not protective.
Mr. Gascoyne introduced me, and with characteristic good taste made no mention of my being a distant cousin. I fancy when Mrs. Gascoyne said, “Israel, come and admire the baby,” Lord Gascoyne looked a little perplexed, as if it were a surprise to hear the name out of Petticoat Lane. I went over, and was presented to Lady Gascoyne.
She gave me a little bow, very courteous, very distant, full of that exaggerated reserve assumed by American women who have matched themselves with a great position.
“I do not suppose you are interested in children,” she said.
“On the contrary, I love them, don’t I, Mrs. Gascoyne?”
“Mr. Rank adores them, Lady Gascoyne. He positively rains coppers on poor children.”
This was perfectly true. How far my interest went beyond delight in their beauty I cannot say. I sometimes wonder how anyone can love anything but children. Their delicacy and sweetness are so exquisite compared to the faded or grosser beauty of their elders.
I held out my arms, and to Lady Gascoyne’s great surprise took the child with perfect confidence from Mrs. Gascoyne. I fancy Lady Gascoyne was somewhat alarmed, but, mother-like, could not help feeling flattered. As for Simeon, Lord Hammerton, he held out a little fat hand, and clutched a piece of my cheek cooing wildly. I walked up and down the room whilst the ladies laughed.
“By Jove,” said Lord Gascoyne, “that is more than I care to do, Marietta. I am afraid he has marked your cheek, Mr. Rank.”
“Oh, that is nothing.”
“We shall never get to the end of your abilities,” smiled Miss Gascoyne.
“What a splendid father you will make,” laughed Lady Gascoyne, and she held out her arms to the child, but as I placed him in them his infant lordship set up a shrill cry, which was immediately subdued when I took him again and resumed my promenade with him.
There was a chorus of astonishment.
“Really,” said Lady Gascoyne, “I shall have to engage you as nurse, or are you mesmerising Simeon? Is he mesmerising you then, darling?”
His lordship did not condescend to answer, but lay in my arms gazing at her placidly. He dozed off, and I returned him to his mother. He woke up, however, as they left, and held out his arms to me to be taken.
“I shall always believe that you are a mesmerist,” laughed Lady Gascoyne, as she said good-bye.
And thus it came about that I was introduced to Lord Gascoyne, and had to make my plans accordingly. I began to think it very hard that none of the family would die off naturally. It was really surprising how many people there were to get rid of, and on paper they had seemed so few.
I had by this time made up my mind that if opportunity occurred to propose to Miss Gascoyne I would do so. I had received so many proofs of her liking for me that I had come to the conclusion that I might just as well try my luck now as wait. The evening of Lord and Lady Gascoyne’s visit furnished the opportunity. It was after dinner, and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne were dozing over the fire. Miss Gascoyne and I had retreated to the billiard-room, where I sat and smoked cigarettes, while she worked and talked to me. I was always very much at ease in her company. The dignified repose which she emanated was eminently to my liking. It was certainly a great contrast to the electrically charged atmosphere of Sibella’s society.
“I am afraid I shall not know how to leave my aunt and uncle,” she said. “They grow nervous at the mere idea.”
“Is there any need why you should leave them?” I asked.
“Well, of course I am very devoted to them, but at the same time I think I am of rather an independent nature.”
“You mean that you would prefer an establishment of your own?”
“Well, yes, you see I have been spoilt. I have tasted freedom. Of course it will be difficult to explain to my aunt and uncle that I am quite devoted to them, that I am perfectly happy here, and yet that I want to set up my own house.”
I laughed.
“Yes, it will be rather difficult, although at the same time I perfectly understand what you mean.”
“I suppose it seems unnatural for a single woman to want a place of her own; at any rate, until she’s thirty.”
“It doesn’t run in the blood. A bachelor takes a private apartment, a spinster goes and lives in a boarding-house.”
“I am afraid it is quite true,” she answered, laughing, and then, with that perfect frankness about her sex which was one of her characteristics, she added, “But we spinsters—at least, that is, the poor ones—have to get ourselves husbands. It is potential matrimony that fills the boarding-house.”
“You consider matrimony a woman’s vocation?” I asked.
“I do.” And she looked grave.
My heart beat a little faster. I had made up my mind to put the question. I continued: “And do you think marriages are happier if based on a community of interests or on a passionate attachment?”
She looked at me honestly.
“I think,” she answered, “it is as impossible to generalise about marriage as about other things. It only leads to false conclusions. Of this, however, I am sure—if, when the flush of passion is past the interests of husband and wife lie apart, their chance of happiness cannot be very great. Don’t you agree?”
I did agree, and embroidered her conclusions with even stronger argument. I was never cynical if I could help it with Miss Gascoyne; it made her uncomfortable, and she had once told me that she believed all cynics were rogues with a white feather. At least, she had read so somewhere, and it had struck her as being true.
I went on to the discussion of romance. I talked vaguely of men who had loved women infinitely above them.
“Even,” I ended, “as I love you, have always loved you, shall always love you. I suppose I ought to have kept silence, but I believe you are generous enough not to be angry with me for wishing you to know how much I value you above all other women.”
I turned away apparently overcome, and watched the effect of my speech in a looking-glass.
She was very moved, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Why should you not tell me?” she murmured, after a pause. From my point of vantage I could see in her face that my cause was a winning one.
“I ought not to have told you. I have hardly a shilling in the world. I owe everything to Mr. Gascoyne, whilst you——” I broke off.
“Do you think women only value love when it is accompanied by worldly advantage? Surely you are doing us an injustice. Won’t you believe?”
I turned on her eagerly. Really, now I come to think over the whole scene, I must confess I played it uncommonly well. I was of course in love with her. She did not rouse fire and passion in me as Sibella did, but I was certainly in love. At the same time, I had none of the modest views about myself to which I had pretended, and it is decidedly difficult to play a half genuine love affair with the tongue in the cheek.
I was somewhat afraid to take her in my arms; she had always been so very stately, but I was surprised at the abandon with which she gave herself to me. It was only for a moment, however; the natural dignity of the woman reasserted itself.
“What on earth will they say?”
“I don’t think they will mind; they will only be surprised.”
I did not think Mr. Gascoyne would be at all annoyed, but I had a sort of idea that Mrs. Gascoyne would not be pleased.
“Shall we tell them?”
I knew that she was a woman who would demand courage from the man she loved even in little things.
“Why not?” I said.
So we walked into the drawing-room, and I said boldly: “Edith has promised to be my wife.”
Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne, awaked from their after-dinner slumber, gazed at us in astonishment.
Mrs. Gascoyne’s face said as plainly as words could have done, ‘What, refuse Mr. Hibbert-Wyllie, and accept Israel Rank; why, what are you thinking of?’
Mr. Gascoyne looked from one to the other several times before he spoke, saying finally, as he took her hands in his: “My dear, if I had thought of it at all I should have thought that you were the woman to prefer love and the approval of your own conscience to rank and wealth.”
Mrs. Gascoyne, woman-like, could not forgive an event of the heart which she had not foreseen.
“Of course you know your own affairs best, but——” She paused, evidently changing her mind, and, being one of the sweetest women in the world, rose, and kissing Edith, said: “My dear, I hope you will both be very happy, and, after all, as Mr. Gascoyne says, position and wealth are not everything.”
I think the dear lady derived a certain satisfaction from the idea that our quartet would not be broken up. Certain it was that her rancour, if it could be called by such a harsh name, was short lived, and she entered into our schemes very heartily.
The next morning at the office Mr. Gascoyne called me into his private room.
“My wife and I have been talking things over, and we think it just as well that you should be told our intentions towards you. I hope this business will be yours one day, and I am sure there is no one we should wish to benefit more by what we have to leave than Edith’s and your children.”
I stammered out my thanks, for I was really moved, and for a moment could not help thinking of the son he had hoped would succeed him.