Court Netherleigh: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Let us go into the open air, Mary; to the quiet shrubbery. What I have to tell you, I will tell you there."

It was a most terrible thing to have come to pass. Better that the ill-fated Robert Dalrymple, when in the very act of self-destruction, had arrested himself, and prayed to God for deliverance as Mary Lynn seemed to have implored him to do in her dream.

And if any latent doubt lingered in the minds of fond relatives, this was to be extinguished. Some three weeks after the fatal night he was found in the water near Mill-wall: quite unrecognizable in himself, but identified by his clothes. The jury brought in a more merciful verdict than was passed on his uncle before him—"Temporary insanity;" and he was buried in the nearest churchyard.

As to his creditors, they were not paid. There was nothing to pay them with. With the exception, however, of his gambling debts, it turned out that Robert did not owe much. Mr. Grubb had got back Farmer Lee's five-hundred-pound cheque—and Mr. Grubb, Reuben, and Oscar, to whom it was alone known, kept that matter secret from the farmer and from the world.

Oscar Dalrymple had come into the Grange, and would take possession of it as soon as Mrs. Dalrymple could, at her convenience, move out. Oscar, cold and calculating though he was, could but come forward to Mrs. Dalrymple's rescue. It fell to him to keep her and her daughters now. He spoke to her in a kindly, generous tone, letting nothing appear of the inward wincing he possibly may have felt. She had absolutely no resource in the world, save Oscar. They had a distant relative indeed, one Benjamin Dalrymple, living in the West of England; a crusty old man, who was reported to be very rich, and had made his money at cotton-spinning; but this old man had created quite a deadly feud between himself and all the Dalrymple family; and Mrs. Dalrymple would starve rather than apply to him. Better be under an obligation to Oscar than to him: though she did not over-well like that. Oscar proposed (perhaps he felt he could do no less) that she and her daughters should still make the Grange their home; but Mrs. Dalrymple declined. A pretty little house on the estate, called Lawn Cottage, was assigned to her use, rent free; and two hundred pounds per annum. Oscar remonstrated against the smallness of the pittance, but she absolutely refused to accept more. With her poultry and fruit and vegetables, and the milk from her one cow, Mrs. Dalrymple assured him she did not see how she could spend even that. So she and her daughters removed to Lawn Cottage, and Oscar entered upon his reign at the Grange.

A year had gone by. London was in a commotion: nothing was talked of in its gay circles but the young and lovely bride, Mrs. Dalrymple. Peers were going mad for her smiles; peeresses condescended to court them. Panics do sometimes come over the fashionable world of this great metropolis: now it is a rage for speculation, like that railway mania which once turned people's sober senses upside down; now it is the new and very ugly signora who is ruling the boards and the boxes at Her Majesty's Theatre; now it is an insane sympathy—insane in the working—with all the black Uncle and Aunt Toms in the western hemisphere; but at the time of which we are writing, it was the admiration of one of themselves, a woman, the beautiful Mrs. Dalrymple.

She was charming; not because fashion said it, but that she really was so. Naturally fascinating, the homage she received in the gay world—a new world to her—rendered her manners irresistibly so. Some good wives, staid and plain, who had never been guilty of courting a look in their lives, and prided themselves on it, avowed privately to their lords that she laid herself out for admiration, and was a compound of vanity and danger; and the lords nodded a grave approval, and the moment they could get out of sight, went running in the wake of Mrs. Dalrymple.

A stylish vehicle, much favoured in those days by young fellows with little brains and less prudence, something between a brake and a dandy-horse, with two stylish men in it, especially in the extent of their moustaches, was driving down Regent Street. He who held the reins, Captain Stanley, was attending to some object at a distance rather than to his horse: his head was raised, his eyes were intently fixed far before him. A cab whirled suddenly round the corner of Argyle Place: Captain Stanley was too much absorbed to avoid it, and the two vehicles came into contact with each other.

No damage was done. All that came of it was a wordy war: for the cabman's abuse was unlimited, and Captain Stanley retorted in angry explosion.

"Is that the way you generally drive in London?" quietly asked his companion, as they went on again.