In the Dead of Night: A Novel. Volume 3 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

“Now you get me in a corner. But I must again crave your indulgence, and ask you to let the mystery remain a mystery a little while longer. If you have sufficient faith in me, why, take my advice. If not—you will simply be missing a chance of making an odd thousand or so.”

“And that is what I can by no means afford to do,” said the Squire with emphasis.

The result was that a week later some forty or fifty men were busily at work cutting the turf and digging the foundations for the score of grand new villas which Mr. Culpepper had decided on building at Prior’s Croft.

Everybody’s verdict was that the Squire must be mad. New villas, indeed! Why there were hardly people enough in sleepy old Duxley to occupy the houses that fell vacant as the older inhabitants died off.

“That may be,” said the Squire, when this plea was urged on his notice; “but I mean to make my villas so handsome, so commodious, and so healthy, that a lot of the old rattletrap dens will at once be deserted, and I shall not have house-room for half the people who will want to become my tenants.” So spoke the Squire, putting a brave face on the matter, but really as much in the dark as any one.

But if there was one person more puzzled than another, that person was certainly Mr. Cope the banker. He had ascertained for a fact that within a few days of their interview—their very painful interview, he termed it to himself—his quondam friend had actually become the purchaser of Prior’s Croft; and what was a still greater marvel, had actually paid down two thousand pounds in hard cash for it! And now the town’s talk was of nothing but the grand villas which the Squire was going to build on his new purchase. Mr. Cope could hardly credit it all till he went and saw with his own eyes the men hard at work. Still, it was altogether incomprehensible to him. Could the Squire have merely been playing him a trick; have only been testing the strength of his friendship, when he came to him to borrow the five thousand pounds? No, that could hardly be; else why had his balance at the bank been allowed to dwindle to a mere nothing? Besides which, he knew from words that the Squire had let drop at different times, that he must have been speculating heavily. Could it be possible that his speculations had, after all, proved successful? If not, how account for this sudden flood of prosperity? For several days Mr. Cope failed to enjoy his dinner in the hearty way that was habitual with him: for several nights Mr. Cope’s sleep failed to refresh him as it usually did.

Although the Squire’s heaviest burden had been lifted off his mind with the payment of his sister’s money, he had by no means forgotten the loss of his daughter’s dowry. And now that his mind was easy on one point, this lesser trouble began to assume a magnitude that it had not possessed before. He could not get rid of the thought that there was nothing but his own frail life between his daughter and all but absolute penury. A few hundred pounds Jane would undoubtedly have, but what would that be to a young lady brought up as she had been brought up? “Not enough,” as the Squire put it in his homely way, “to find her in bread-and-cheese and cotton gowns.”

But what was to be done? Life assurance was out of the question. He was too old and too infirm. There was nothing much to be got out of the estate. It was true that he might thin the timber a little and make a few hundreds that way; but the heir-at-law had too shrewd an eye to his own ultimate interests to allow very much to be done in that line. Besides which, the Squire himself could not for very shame have impaired what was the chief beauty of the Pincote property—its magnificent array of timber.

There was, perhaps, a little cheese-paring to be done in the way of cutting down domestic expenses. A couple of servants might be dispensed with indoors. The under-gardener and the stable-boy might be sent about their business. The gray mare and the brougham might be disposed of. The wine merchant’s bill might be lightened a little; and fewer coals, perhaps, might be burnt in winter—and that was nearly all.

But even such reductions as these, trifling though they were, could not be made secretly—could not be made, in fact, without becoming the talk of the whole neighbourhood; and if there was one thing the Squire detested more than another, it was having his private affairs challenged and discussed by other people. And what, after all, would the saving amount to? How many years of such petty economy would be needed to scrape together even as much as one-fourth of the sum he had lost by his mad speculations? It was all a muddle, as he said to himself; and his brain seemed getting hopelessly muddled, too, with asking the same questions over and over again, and still finding himself as far from a satisfactory answer as ever.