“Yes,” her sister agreed, “it does. Still he is an old man, and of course he now wants Duke to be recognised as his heir. That makes a difference. I should not think Mrs Shepton at all a lover of change. I daresay she will end her days at Wyverston. She has only been in two places in her life—first as nurse in one of the Gresham families, and then, after a few years of married life, as housekeeper at Wyverston. And her affections seem divided between the two families.”
“I don’t think she cares much about Bernard Gresham, our Mr Gresham,” says Evelyn. “It is Michael she is so devoted to, and that is natural, I suppose, as it was in his family she was nurse, though she had a good deal to do with Bernard too—he was so much with his relations as a child. She told me some interesting things about the Greshams, by-the-by. Did you know that Michael’s father was the elder brother, not Bernard’s, and that the grand-uncle—grand-uncle to these young men, I mean—from whom Bernard inherited Merle and all his wealth, left it away from Michael on purpose?”
“N-no,” Philippa replied. “At least I don’t know anything distinctly. Mr Gresham, in talking of his cousin one day, alluded to his having had troubles, and spoke of him as having behaved very well, or very unselfishly or something.”
How clearly she remembered the very spot at which they were standing—in the grounds of the old château—when Mr Gresham had alluded to Michael! “A bit of a hero,” he had called him, though he had added what, though vaguely, pleased her less, something about “quixotry.”
“That was nice of Bernard Gresham,” said Evelyn, “for the position is a delicate one, and many men without his good feeling and perfect good taste might almost have taken a dislike to Michael; the association of having in a sense supplanted him must be rather painful.”
“Supplanted him!” repeated Philippa. “I don’t understand what you mean?”
“Oh, no, of course—you know so little. It was this: Michael’s father was the elder brother, and though, by all accounts, very charming, he was terribly wild. He ran through all he had and half or wholly broke his wife’s heart. He died when Michael was about eighteen, leaving any amount of debts. They had been very well off, much better than Bernard’s parents, who were in India or somewhere—his father, that is to say—his mother died when he was born, and he was practically brought up at his uncle’s. Then his father died, just before Michael’s, so the two young men came next, though the property was not entailed. Well, the old uncle was furious at the way Michael’s father had behaved, but that would not have made any difference to Michael, whom he liked and respected. But he would do nothing to help to pay his dead nephew’s debts, and Michael and his mother were broken-hearted about them. Both on account of the disgrace to Mr Henry Gresham’s memory and also because some of the debts were unusually bad ones; he had borrowed money from all sorts of people who could ill afford to lose it, poor relations of his wife’s, even poorer people still, whom he had cajoled by his charming manners. It was actual ruin to several. Michael pleaded and pleaded with the old uncle till at last he got into a sort of rage and said that for peace sake he would pay them off, if Michael would renounce all expectation of being his heir. And Michael did, for his mother’s sake more even than for the other reasons, and he never let her know at what a cost his father’s memory had been cleared. She died soon after, in comparative peace of mind. And he had to face the world practically penniless. He knew it; he knew the old man would keep to what he had said, and he did.”
“Did he leave Michael nothing?” said Philippa.
“Nothing. His name was not mentioned in the will. The uncle might have modified it if he had lived longer, but he was very old and he died suddenly.”
“And,” Philippa went on, with some hesitation, “has her—has Mr Gresham done nothing for his cousin?”