“I am setting you down as nothing of the sort, Mr Wagram,” she answered steadily, “nor do I know anybody in this world more competent to advise me or anyone else. Yes; you are right; I will follow your advice. But I may come up to Hilversea, and help occasionally when I am not wanted in Bassingham, mayn’t I?”
“My dear child, of course; we are only too glad. You know, I was not putting it to you in your own personal interest. In such a matter nothing personal comes in, or ought to. But there—I seem to be preaching again.”
The step Delia had taken involved upon her far less of a trial from those among whom she moved than she had expected. Old Calmour had been nasty and jeering on the subject, and in his cups had been wont to make exceedingly objectionable remarks and vulgar insinuations; but such to the girl were as mere pin-pricks now. Moreover, Clytie had on every occasion quelled, not to say flattened, him with all her serene but effective decisiveness; and the egregious Bob was in a state of complete subjection, as we have shown. To Clytie herself the whole thing was a matter of entire satisfaction, for she regarded it as a step, and a very important one, in the direction of furthering her own darling scheme; which scheme, by the way, did not seem to progress with the rapidity she would have wished.
“You must force the pace Delia,” she said. “The thing’s hanging a little more than I like. You’ve got a first-rate cut in, and you ought to be able to capture the trick. Force the pace a little more; you’re not making the most of your opportunities.”
“You’re wasting a deal of capacity for intrigue, Clytie,” was the answer. “There’s nothing ‘hanging,’ no pace to force, and no trick to capture, as I’ve told you before.”
The other looked at her, shook her pretty head, and—being at times inclined towards vulgarity—winked.
And then upon Hilversea and its surroundings and dependents fell another bolt—swift, sudden, consternating. The old Squire was dead.
He had passed away in his sleep, peacefully and painlessly, for the expression of his fine old face was absolutely placid and almost smiling; and from Wagram downwards the bolt shot hard and grievous through many a heart. Not only of those belonging to the immediate neighbourhood did this hold, for in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the chapel what time the solemn High Mass of Requiem—sung by the dead man’s lifelong friend, Monsignor Culham—was proceeding, not a few strange faces might have been discerned; faces of those whom Grantley Wagram and his son had benefited—in some instances even to the saving of life, where, but for such benefit, the means of preserving life by affording the requisite conditions would have been lacking.
Very different, too, to the cortège which we saw issue from these doors a few months back is this which now comes forth to lay the dead man in his last resting-place in the little consecrated graveyard beneath the east window of the chapel, but no less solemn. The glow and splendour of light and colour, the mellow flooding of the summer sunshine are no longer here, and the gurgling song of full-throated thrushes is hushed. Instead, the frost and stillness of a winter noon, and an occasional sob as the coffin is lowered into the grave, while the chant of the Benedictus rolls forth mournful and grand upon the crisp air, so still that the lights borne on each side of the great crucifix burn with scarce a flicker, and the celebrant, vested in a black and silver cope of some richness, sprinkles—for the last time with holy water the remains of Grantley Wagram, now laid to his final rest.
“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
“Anima ejus, et animae omnium
fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam
Dei requiescant in pace.”