A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 1 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

She felt instinctively that no other woman would ever become the wife of Matthew Kelvin so long as Eleanor Lloyd remained unmarried; and this feeling it was that was at the bottom of the plot for inducing Pomeroy to make love to the latter. That dangerous rival once out of the way for ever, Olive's ambitious scheme would not look so entirely hopeless as it did just now.

Chagrined as Olive was at having to quit her cousin's roof with the hidden purpose of her life no nearer its accomplishment than before, she yet acknowledged to herself that she would much rather go to Stammars than anywhere else. She had all a woman's curiosity to see that other woman about whom she had been told so much, and who had been in her thoughts, day and night, ever since she had heard the first mention of her name. At Stammars, too, she would have an opportunity of seeing Matthew now and then when he should come there to visit Sir Thomas on business. Then, she would be on the spot, ready, with deft fingers, to tie up any threads of her plot which might be accidentally broken, or to hasten Pomeroy's footsteps along the path she wanted him to tread, should it prove needful to do so. In any case, she need not stay there longer than was necessary for the carrying out of her own views. At any time she could pick a quarrel with Lady Dudgeon, throw up her situation, and go back for a while to the shelter of her aunt's roof.

Five days after her cousin's return, Olive Deane found herself duly installed in her new home, and two days after that Mr. John Pomeroy made his appearance at Stammars.

Mr. Kelvin, despite his irritation and chagrin at what had taken place during his absence, did not fail to carry out the promise he had made to his mother. The situation was still open, and Sir Thomas at once promised it to Pomeroy. Then Kelvin wrote to the latter, telling him when he would be expected at Stammars, but not in any way alluding to the loan of fifty pounds. As a matter of course, on passing through Pembridge, Gerald called to see Kelvin, but the lawyer was not at home--purposely. He had done his duty by his mother, but he had no wish to see the man who had caused him so much annoyance; he only hoped that Pomeroy would do nothing to disgrace his recommendation. For the present he washed his hands of him.

Mr. Kelvin had not been without his own thoughts all this time as to the course he had taken at Olive's suggestion in keeping from Miss Lloyd the contents of the sealed packet sent him by Miss Bellamy. He was not usually a man whose mind vacillated with regard to any of his intentions or purposes. "There's no shilly-shallying about Matthew," his mother would often say. "When he sees his point he goes straight at it: fire and water would hardly keep him back."

But in this matter of the sealed packet he did shilly-shally painfully, blowing hot and cold by turns, making up his mind one day that he would tell everything, and being as stedfastly determined the next that he would do nothing of the kind. He was not unaware of the meanness of what he was doing; it was altogether foreign to his notions of right and wrong, to act with anything but the strictest honour towards his clients, rich or poor. Still, about this particular case there was something so exceptional as to remove it out of the ordinary category of purely professional business--that is what he said to himself: but the real reason was that his own feelings were more deeply interested than they had ever been before. Under such circumstances it is by no means difficult to argue oneself into the belief that although the action on which we are engaged may not be positively meritorious, it is, at least, one from which no one will suffer. "I am only doing Miss Lloyd a negative wrong," Kelvin would sometimes say to himself. "If anything, she ought to thank me for keeping the secret from her as long as possible." Having put off the revelation for so long a time, he shrank more than ever from telling her now. One morning on getting up he would swear to himself that he had never loved Eleanor Lloyd as he loved her now: next morning he would vow that he had never hated any human being as he hated her. He had been rendered very wretched by Miss Lloyd's rejection of his suit; but with all his unhappiness he had never till now lost his own sense of self-respect: not that he would have admitted for a single moment that he had so lost it. He made believe, even to himself, that it was still as safely in his possession as ever it had been. But the acute consciousness of its loss which came over him at odd times--only to be at once thrust into the background with a firm hand--by no means tended to mitigate the intensity of his determination to be avenged, in one form or another, on the woman to whom he owed this strange new feeling, which not seldom made him shrink within himself, as though he were in reality little better than a whipped cur.

Stammars, the residence of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, was, as a family mansion, still quite in its infancy, being something under twenty years old. Sir Thomas had stuck to the old house as long as it was safe for him to do so; but when, during a night of terrible storm, a great part of it was blown about his ears, he began to see that it would not be advisable to delay his removal much longer. So, on a windy knoll about half a mile from the old house, the new mansion was built. It was built with all modern conveniences and appliances. The rooms were large and lofty, and had huge plate-glass windows with venetian blinds. Round about were gardens, and shrubberies, and hothouses, with a view beyond over miles of pleasant Hertfordshire scenery. Everybody expressed themselves as being enchanted with the house, and yet everybody felt that it lacked one essential. There was no homelike comfort about it. Whether it was that the rooms were too big and the fire-places too few; whether it was that the house was built so high above the surrounding country as to be exposed to every wind that blew, and so had never been able to get itself warmed through; or from whatever other cause it might arise, certain it is that Stammars never seemed otherwise than cold and comfortless. Each room in the house seemed to have its own particular draught, while the wind seemed to be for ever playing at hide-and-seek up and down the great wide corridors and staircases, banging every now and then a bedroom door, or creeping with snake-like motion under any piece of carpet that had not been firmly nailed down.

The old mansion of Stammars had dated back for upwards of four centuries, and had originally been the home of the Fyzackerleys, one of the most ancient families in the county. So ancient, indeed, had the Fyzackerleys at length become that they had died out, and the estate had been brought to the hammer. The fortunate purchaser was the present Sir Thomas's grandfather, at that time a sugar refiner in the Minories, and some five years subsequently Lord Mayor of London. While filling the latter office he had the good fortune to be knighted, and later still by two or three years he was created a baronet. Why such an honour had been conferred on the worthy but obscure sugar refiner, no one seemed to know. There was some question about it at the time, and certain people went so far as to whisper that the baronetcy had been given in return for a loan of twenty thousand pounds made to a certain august personage, who would have found repayment of the same a somewhat inconvenient matter. But such a report was probably the invention of pure malice. Be that as it may, the sugar refiner took his title and his money down to Stammars; and there he died, and there in due course he was buried. After him came his son, and then, in the ordinary course of events, his grandson, the present Sir Thomas Dudgeon and the third baronet of that name.

Sir Thomas, at this time, was close upon sixty years of age, and was a short-statured, podgy man, with white hair, and a red, good-natured face. He almost invariably wore a black tail-coat, black waistcoat, pepper-and-salt trousers, and shoes. He wore starched check neckcloths, and pointed collars that nearly touched his ears. His hats were always of fluffy, white beaver and as they were very rarely brushed, they gave him a certain shaggy and unkempt appearance. He had a trick of whistling under his breath when he had nothing better to do, and of jingling the keys and loose change in his pocket. It was a peculiarity of Sir Thomas that his shoes always creaked when he walked. No one could tell why every pair of shoes that he had should do so, but they did. At Stammars everybody was so accustomed to this creaking that if by any possibility he had become possessed of a noiseless pair, his family would certainly have been alarmed: they would have taken it as an omen that something dreadful was about to happen. It was told in Pembridge as a good thing that when Sir Thomas was presented to his Sovereign, his shoes creaked so loudly that the eyes of all the great functionaries were turned on him in horror; but that the little man backed smilingly out of the royal presence, blandly unconscious of the consternation he had excited. When we first make his acquaintance he had just been elected member for Pembridge, in place of the late Mr. Rackstraw, who had represented that borough for more than twenty years. Parliament would meet in February, when the family would go up to town, and Sir Thomas would take his oaths and his seat, and do his best to justify the hopes of his Pembridgian supporters, that he would speedily become one of the shining lights of his country's senate.

Lady Dudgeon was a tall, large-boned woman, some half dozen years younger than her husband. She had a loud, rough-edged voice, and a magisterial cross-examining manner. She was never happier than when laying down the law to some of her servants or dependents, or scolding them for an infringement of one or another of the innumerable rules and regulations with which she strove to fence round the daily lives of all those over whom she had any control. Had she been a man, Lady Dudgeon would infallibly have developed into a Justice of the Peace, and as such have been a terror to all the evil-doers of the neighbourhood. With two exceptions, everybody at Stammars, her husband included, stood in awe of her. Those exceptions were her eldest daughter, Sophia, aged thirteen; and Eleanor Lloyd.