“I want to look over them again—there are some words in the duplicates up-stairs I don’t feel quite sure about,” said Mr Summerhayes.
“But, Tom, you told me they were irrevocable, and never could be meddled with,” said Mary, with a sudden flush of burning colour, which passed away immediately, leaving her very pale. It had been all her comfort for many a day to think that those deeds were beyond her power—or his—to change. She could not help trembling in this sudden terror. She had no confidence in her own power to resist him—and, alas, but a wavering, uncertain confidence in him, that he would be able to resist the temptation of securing, if a change were possible, a stronger title to all the authority and power he at present, in her right, possessed.
“Do you imagine I want them meddled with?” said Mr Summerhayes. “I don’t think women understand what honesty or honour means,” he added, in his harshest tone. “I suppose you believe I am ready to perjure myself, or break my word, or do anything that’s base, for a bit of your estate.”
“Indeed, Tom, I never thought anything of the kind,” said poor Mary, faltering; but she had thought something of the kind, though her thoughts were incapable of such decided expression, and the tremor in her voice betrayed her.
“That’s how it always is,” said Mr Summerhayes, without any passion, but with a concentrated sneer in his voice; “a woman who has anything always suspects her husband of an intention to rob her. Though she may have lived with him for years, and known his thoughts and shared his plans, and thought him good enough to be her companion and protector, the moment she recurs to her money he becomes a robber, and nothing is too base for him to do. No,” he went on, breathing out a long breath of indignation apparently, and offended virtue; “I don’t want to alter the deeds—but I want to read over one clause with Gateshead, to make sure it’s all right. You would not like your children to go to law about it after you are dead?”
“No,” said Mary, with a slight shiver; her fears and her imagination were roused. She, of course, knew nothing about the law, except a general impression that it was never safe to have anything to do with it. She had, however, an unreasoning faith in the efficacy of anything solemnly signed and witnessed, which, notwithstanding, if anybody threw the least doubt upon that document, changed instantly into a total scepticism and unbelief of any value in it at all. She jumped at conclusions, as is the habit of women; and from the most perfect confidence in the security of Fontanel, instantly plunged into the wildest uneasiness about it, and already saw herself compelled to alienate the inheritance from her children;—and all this because Mr Summerhayes had remarked some expression in one clause which struck him as of doubtful meaning,—at least that was all the actual foundation upon which Mary could build her fears.
So it was with feelings of an extremely mingled and doubtful character that she proceeded with her arrangements for the birthday fête, which, to tell the truth, Mr Summerhayes had strongly opposed—he could not very well have told why. Charley was the heir of the estate—as indisputable as if his father had been still its master; yet there was a great difference; and perhaps the stepfather did not feel himself quite equal to the necessary speeches, nor to the cordiality which would be required of him on such a day. Mr Summerhayes had managed everything so completely in his own way—he had felt the house so entirely his own these five years, which yet was not his own, nor vested in him by any natural right—that the idea of acknowledging as much virtually, if not in distinct words, by this public recognition of the heir, galled him strangely. He would rather have gone out of the way; but as he could not go out of the way, he adopted, half unconsciously, the only mode that remained of making himself disagreeable—he found out that possible flaw in the deed. Probably nothing further was in his thoughts than to express the discontent in his mind, and throw a little shadow of insecurity upon the festivities which were sacred to the too-confident heir. Like an ill-tempered father keeping up his power by a vague threat of altering his will, Mr Summerhayes waved his threatening flag over the heads of the family at Fontanel by this faint cloud of suspicion thrown upon the invincible certainty of the deed. He meant nothing more; but evil thoughts are suggestive, and have a wonderful power of cumulation. Perhaps he did mean something more before old Gateshead, whom, on other occasions, he did not hesitate to call an old fogy, was disembarked from his old-fashioned chaise at the door, two days before Charley’s birthday. The firm was Gateshead and Gateshead—but Europe and Asia are not more unlike than were its two members. The elder was, as Mr Summerhayes succinctly expressed it, an old fogy—the other, an acute and tolerably accomplished young man of the world. Mr Courtenay Gateshead, in ordinary cases, was Mr Summerhayes’s favourite, and was honoured with his confidence; but on this special occasion old Mr Gateshead—whose acuteness was somewhat blunted by age—who was a wonderful gossip and genealogist, and who had the most profound respect for the superior legal knowledge of the master of Fontanel, who had once been of the Inner Temple—was, as an old friend of the family, the selected guest.
Mr Gateshead arrived with a big portmanteau and a little tin box. He was rather nervous about this little tin box. He carried it into the drawing-room with him, where he went on his arrival, being a great deal too early for dinner, as old fogies, who are not much wanted in the drawing-room, generally are. But Mary was very glad to see him, as an old friend, and looked at him with a kind of half-conscious appeal in her eyes, of which Mr Gateshead was totally unaware, and which he would have been completely bewildered by could he have seen it. He made some absurd mistakes to be sure. He called her Mrs Clifford, even in Mr Summerhayes’s presence; and then, instead of prudently ignoring his mistake, begged her pardon, and laughed and talked of his bad memory. But the tin box was a heavy burden on the old man’s mind. Every ten minutes or so, he paused in his talk, which was voluminous, to say, “Bless my soul, where is that box?” and to shift it from the table or chair on which he had placed it, to a chair or table nearer. The box oppressed him even in the midst of the gossip in which his soul delighted. He took it up to his room with him, but hesitated, not seeing how he could leave it by itself when he came down to dinner; and at last gratefully accepted Mr Summerhayes’s offer to put it in his own study, where all his own papers were, and which nobody dared go into. It seemed safe under the secure shelter of Mr Summerhayes, whose absolute monarchy was indisputable, and with whose personalities nobody in Fontanel ventured to interfere. There, accordingly, the tin box was deposited, and there, after dinner, somewhat reluctantly on the part of old Gateshead, who was fond of the society of ladies, and of Mrs Summerhayes’s in particular, the two gentlemen adjourned, to talk over that flaw, or possibility of a flaw, in the deeds which were the safeguard of the young Cliffords. They sat late discussing that and other affairs,—so late, that it seemed quite the middle of the night to Mary when her husband awoke her with a cheerful face, to say that Gateshead was of opinion—and he agreed with him, after the close examination they had given it—that the deed was quite unassailable, so that she might have a perfectly easy mind on the subject. “I thought I might run the risk of a cross look for breaking your sleep, Mary, when this was what I had to say. I am very glad myself, for it might have been awkward, as no power was reserved to you under our settlement of will-making, or that sort of thing,” said Mr Summerhayes. “However, it’s all right. I left that old fogy pottering over his tin box in my study. I hope he’ll not set himself on fire before he gets to bed. He’s getting old very fast, Mary. Young Courtenay will soon have everything his own way.” Poor Mary was so pleased, so delighted, so thankful, that it was a long time before she could get to sleep again. She lay half dreaming and dozing, with an exquisite compunction and renewal of love in her heart. Had she perhaps suspected this good husband, who came so joyfully to tell her that all was safe? She made it up to him by the fullest, most lavish restoration of confidence, as was natural to a generous woman; and in the happiest thankful state of mind, though with an odd half-dreaming fancy that old Gateshead had set fire to himself, and that she smelt his nightcap smouldering into slow destruction, fell finally, when it was almost dawn, into a sound sleep.
But Mary could not believe that she had been more than a few minutes asleep when she was awoke by the horrible clangour of the alarm-bell, and by the rushing and screaming of all the servants. Could it be old Gateshead’s nightcap that caused that terrible significant sniff of burning that pervaded the entire atmosphere? Before she could wake her husband, who lay in a profound sleep, Charley had rushed in at the door with the alarming cry of fire. “Fire!—get up, mother, make haste, but don’t flurry yourself; put something on; it’s in the west wing. There’s time to escape,” cried Charley. “I’ll get out the children, and come back for you,” he said, as he rushed off again. “Fire!” cried Mr Summerhayes, springing up. “Good heavens! It’s that old fool, old Gateshead How could I be so mad as to trust him by himself?” and almost before Mary knew he was awake, he too had rushed out of the room, drawing on his dressing-gown as he flew out at the door. “Oh Tom, see to the children; don’t leave me!” cried Mary in her fright, and she too wrapped herself hastily in the first garment she could find, and rushed to the door. She could see nothing but a thick volume of smoke pouring from the west wing through the entire house, into which her husband’s figure disappeared, while every soul in the place seemed emerging out of it in different varieties of fright and undress. “We’ve sent off for the fire-engines; and don’t be alarmed, mother, it’s entirely in the west wing,” cried Charley, who came towards her with Alf in one arm and little Mary in the other. Harry and Loo came crouching close to the big brother behind—all silent, all ready to cry, all staring with wide-open, suddenly-awakened eyes, and frightened out of their very lives. “Oh Charley, Mr Summerhayes will be killed! Where is he going? Is it to look for Mr Gateshead?” cried Mary, who, when she saw her children safe, fell into a panic about her husband. He had rushed into the very depths of that black volume of smoke, in spite of many warning voices. He came staggering back after a few minutes, half suffocated, to the staircase, where he sat down to recover himself. “Oh Tom, Mr Gateshead is safe,” cried Mary, who was shivering in her shawl with cold and terror, and who would not leave her husband, though the smoke came nearer and nearer. “D—Mr Gateshead,” cried the excited master of the house. “Charley, fly to the other side—to the window—my study—the tin box! I’ll take care of your mother,” he shouted, as Charley appeared coming back. When he had placed Mary in safety, Mr Summerhayes himself hurried to the same spot. It was he alone who mounted the ladder, though everybody else said it was madness. But it would have been as sane a proceeding to walk into a furnace as into that room, which was the very centre of the fire. He came down again deadly pale, and almost fainting, with a hurt on his head from a falling beam, and half suffocated with the fiery smoke. The tin box was beyond the possibility of redemption.
But the fire, curiously enough, scarcely penetrated beyond the west wing, which was an unimportant part of the house—a recent addition, where nobody slept, and which, indeed, contained little that was important except Mr Summerhayes’s study, which had been built after his own design, and contained all his pet and personal belongings. Mary and the children watched from the gardener’s cottage the working of the fire-engines; and in the excitement of seeing how the fire was got under, and how little damage, after all, was done to Fontanel, forgot the misery of the morning and their comfortless circumstances. Even Loo felt that her stepfather was to be regarded as a hero, when he came, pale, black, and begrimed—after it became apparent that the work of destruction was stopped—to the cottage to have his head bound up, and to see that his wife and her children were safe. And perhaps Loo was still better disposed towards him when she found that he did not take upon himself any heroic airs, but was in a most savage temper, cursing old Gateshead as nobody had ever before heard Mr Summerhayes curse any man. “I was rash not to see him safe to bed,” cried the master of the burning house; and Mary did all she could, in her generous way, to deprecate and excuse “the poor old man.” “Nobody is to blame; it must have been an accident—only an accident,” said Mary; and Mr Summerhayes, in his rage and vexation, had not even the grace to be civil to her, but still muttered curses upon old Gateshead.