Cherryfield Hall. An episode in the career of an adventuress

Prologue

------ I I. MRS. PILTON'S BOARDING-HOUSE - - 1 7 II. CYNTHIA - - - - - 32 III. MISS JORKAWAY'S FIRST ADVENTURE - - 55 IV. THE COUNTY FAMILY - - - - 69 V. DREAMS, AND THE STUFF THEY'RE MADE OF - 91 VI. A MAN OF INTELLECT - - - - 108 VII. THE FAIR AMELIA ----- 126 VIII. A BUSY AFTERNOON - - - -143 IX. SUNDAY, AND HOW THEY SPENT IT - - 161 X. MISS JORKAWAY'S SECOND ADVENTURE - - l8l XI. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS - - - - 204 XII. "THAT MAN HAS GOT A SECRET" - - 221 XIII. HUGH WAXES CONFIDENTIAL - - - 239 XIV. MISS JORKAWAY'S GREAT DISCOVERY - - 254 XV. THE INSIDIOUS VERYAN - - - - 272 XVI. THE ENAMELLED STUD - 298 XVII. WHAT HAPPENED OUT OF DOORS - - - 308 XVIII. A RUDE AWAKENING - - - - 327 XIX. MISS JORKAWAY OPENS FIRE - - - 342 XX. FACE TO FACE .... - 358 XXI. CONFRONTED WITH THE PAST - - "375 XXII. ARRESTED - - - - - "393 XXIII. SIR THOMAS'S CONFESSION - - - 4°6 XXIV. THE CURTAIN FALLS - - - -

PROLOGUE.

. The time was high noon ; and the windows of the gray, dilapidated old church, perched on a grassy knoll nearly a mile from the slumbrous, red-roofed village, blinked and twinkled in the glare of the full sun. Around it, the green undulating landscape lay basking in a flood of golden heat ; the air quivered over the surface of the ground in visible vibrations, rare to contemplate ; no sound was heard save the hum of summer insects, and the occasional rustle of foliage responding to the fitful breeze. The parson had already doffed his surplice and gone home to lunch ; the old sexton turned the key with a grating noise in the worm-eaten wooden door, and went shambling off without so much as a glance behind ; while on the top of the path leading down to the old lych-gate stood a youth of eighteen side by side with a girl of four-and-twenty : he slim and fair, with a somewhat dazed expression on his beardless face, she coarsely handsome, black-browed, high-coloured, with more than a suspicion of dark down upon her upper lip, showily and badly dressed.

For a moment or two neither spoke ; both, indeed, seemed somewhat embarrassed at the novelty of their situation, and each waited for the other to break the spell. It was the woman who eventually came to the rescue. " Well," she said abruptly, " that's over. * For better for worse ' — we're man and wife now, Poppy, and no mistake. Man and wife at last !" She turned her black, handsome eyes upon him as she said this with an emphasis and meaning that had no very sedative effect on her companion. He coloured a little ; then shifted his feet, and began to walk slowly and hesitatingly down the path. " Yes, Belinda," he answered with an effort. "There's no mistake about it — man and wife. I've married you, as I always said I would." "Not before you had to, though!" flashed back the girl, apparently irritated by his last words.

" If you hadn't " " Come, stow that," interrupted the youth, flush ing angrily. " I couldn't have done more than I have done, and you've nothing to reproach me with now. It's no use harking back upon what's past. But remember our compact. The slightest breath of all this would be enough to ruin us both — both, I tell you. It'll be difficult enough as it is, for me as well as for you. If it were known in town — you

PROLOGUE.

3 understand what I mean — I should be turned out of doors to-morrow, and cut off with less than the proverbial shilling. So for your own sake as well as mine, just keep as quiet as you can." " I know all that," said the girl in a less restive tone. " You needn't be afraid I shall peach. My, what a broilin' day ! Here, just lay 'old of this bag, will you, while I put up my umbrella. That'll do. Only mind — you mustn't leave me in the lurch when the time comes, you know. I shall want money then — more 'n I can spare myself, for I've little enough, goodness knows. Lor, Poppy, what's the use o' lookin' glum ? And you know I'm real fond of you — you know you do." " Yes, yes, — I know you are," said the boy weakly. "And I'll make you a good wife too, see if I don't," she continued, coming nearer to him.

" People says all sorts o' bad things about girls like us, but what do I care for that ? Barmaids 've got feelin's same as other folks, I s'pose, and, anyhow, I was never in anything lower than a luncheon-rooms — never ! Lor, Poppy, to think of the first time I ever see you ! Do you remember it ? A pourin' wet day it was, you know, and all the fellers came a-crowdin' and crushin' in with their hats and coats just streamin', and there was you " " Drop the bar, for heaven's sake !" interrupted the bridegroom, an expression of disgust passing over his delicate white forehead. " I hate to think of it. You won't have to stand behind a bar for ever, though, that's one comfort. It's dreadful to think of a girl who's my wife serving out sand wiches and glasses of beer to a crowd of City cads, ogling and chaffing you all the time.

The idea's horrible. But you won't forget me, Belinda — you won't forget you are a married woman, will you, now ?" " Of course I shan't," replied Belinda shortly. "Little chance o' my forgettin' that in a hurry! Don't you fret yourself. They mean no harm — it's only their way o' bein' civil. Besides, you oughtn't to object to 'em — you're a City clerk yourself." "Yes, confound it!" assented the other with something like a groan. They walked on for the next few hundred yards in silence. The heat seemed to get more and more oppressive, and the bride perspired frankly. The youth addressed as Poppy was differently constituted ; while she grew red, he paled : the sweltering air had no other effect on him than to increase the delicacy of his complexion and accentuate the fine edging of his lineaments.

Belinda's face was now considerably congestionne, in the French sense ; her skin was hot and puffed, and she certainly did not look her best. There is no doubt the circumstances were trying. "Oh, it'll be all right," she exclaimed en couragingly, as she fanned herself with a rather crumpled handkerchief. " You'll get something

PROLOGUE.

5 better before long, I dare say. I'll tell you what, though — I shan't be able to stand this heat much longer. Whew ! whew ! Let's make haste and get into that lane there — it's all shade, and looks as cool as cool. Ah, that's better. Why, I declare there's almost a breeze here. Oh, my goodness, I only wish we could just stay here till the sun's down ! How much further is there to get to that blessed inn ?" " It won't take us more than seven minutes," replied the bridegroom, pausing to let her take breath. " We can rest here a little, if you like. You're looking cooler already." And in fact her colour had toned down considerably. " Well, it is pleasant in this shade," she acknow ledged, passing her handkerchief over her features with some vigour. " I feel ever so much cooler now ; my face don't burn as it did before.

But come, we can't stay here all day. I'm gettin' hungry. You've got to stand me a wedding breakfast, you know. I feel as if I could almost eat a horse." " You shall have the very best breakfast I can give you !" cried the youth, making a gallant effort to throw off the depression that weighed upon him. But he felt at the same time that the gaiety of his manner was too weak, too artificial, to subsist alone. It must be bolstered up, even if the support were of the coarsest order. He moved close to his wife. " Come — I haven't kissed you since the wedding." He threw his arm round her neck, and kissed her lips and cheeks a dozen times violently. She yielded herself entirely to his onslaught, returning his kisses with ardour. Then, settling her hat, which had become somewhat disordered in the process, she said : " How much longer did you say your holidays lasted, Poppy ?"

"I've got to be back on Monday," he replied, as they strolled on again. "And to-day's Thursday. My leave's up to morrow," she remarked thoughtfully. " Then you'll have to be off to-day !" he exclaimed, starting. " The first train to-morrow morning might be soon enough," said the bride tentatively. " Perhaps you'd sooner I didn't stay here overnight ? Because if so " Her colour rose — so did his. " It isn't that," he hesitated. " Only, of course, the fewer people know about — about our being married, the safer. I'm afraid this place is too full of gossips, that's all. Otherwise " " You leave it to me," interrupted Belinda. " We'll see what's best to be done when we've had something to eat. I'm famishing, I tell you, and this heat's enough to make a salamander thirsty. Whew ! O lor, I feel as though I sh'd drop. There's the inn at last. Now just you run on, there's a dear feller, and see as everything's ready.

PROLOGUE.

7 I'll be after you in no time, but I can't hurry, and there's nothing I hate more than waitin' for my victuals when I'm once set down." Poppy, nothing loath, started off at a light swinging trot, leaving his wife to follow at her leisure. Some time before — what an age it seemed to him now ! — he had fallen into the most helpless, hopeless, maudlin condition of calf-love with the woman who was now his. Of course she was handsome in her particular way : she had a superb figure, she knew how to make the best use of her eyes, she was more than usually clever at crimping, twisting, frizzling, and building up her hair, and she always had a flattering word for everybody. His vanity was delightfully tickled when she affected a special interest in him, and he soon began to see in her a pure, sweet, beautiful woman fitted by nature to associate with princesses, but condemned by circumstances to draw beer for City clerks.

From that moment he was doomed. She, sharp enough to see it, played him skilfully. She met him after City hours, and let him take her to the theatre once or twice. He, falling deeper and deeper into the morass, was like wax in her hands — and remorseless hands they were. At last she told him they were both hopelessly compromised, and that her whole future depended on his honour. He at once promised to marry her, and, as we have seen, he did so. But the half-carnal, half-romantic passion with which she had inspired him had by that time begun to subside. When the spiritual and mental graces with which his imagination had endowed her melted into soft air upon closer acquaintance, the magnetic attraction of her voluptuous person was nevertheless strong enough to chain him to her still ; but soon even this began to pall, and it needed nothing but the revelation of her claim upon him to find that he cared for her no more.

Love was lost in loathing — loathing which he dared not acknow ledge. His timidity, his inexperience, and his fine sense of honour, alike forbade him to desert the big barmaid who had trusted him so unreservedly. He groaned over the sacrifice exacted from him, but made it like a man. But what, it may well be asked, can have been his up-bringing, that he should have gone so far astray and landed himself in such a desperate mess ? Well, let us take a glance backward, and see what sort of a home had had the making of him. If respectability, virtue, and religious profession are all that is required for turning the raw material of childhood into the fine and durable fabric of virtuous and respectable maturity, then Poppy had no excuse. All such insidious vanities as poetry, music, cribbage, novels and the drama were not so much excluded as ignored, as though they had no existence, under Poppy's paternal roof.

They did not belong to the world of Poppy's papa, for Poppy's papa did not belong to the world at all, excepting so far as was necessary to earn money and make a fortune. In Leadenhall Street, from ten till five or six, papa was

PROLOGUE.

9 a sharp business man who dealt in Peruvian bark ; but at Streatham (where he rented a modest villa) he was a seer, a prophet, an oracle — in other words, one of the most prominent lights of the Anglo- Israelite Association, and conspicuous for his devotion to a mysterious fetich known among initiates as " The Identity." To confess The Identity was to have one requisite, at any rate, for future welfare ; to deny it was to be blinded by the god of this world, and consequently in a parlous state ; to be indifferent to it was to incur — well, very serious responsibility, an account of which would have to be rendered some day. It therefore never occurred to papa that Poppy, being able to ask and hear all about The Identity every evening of his life, had anything else to wish for ; while as for his sister Prissy, a prim young puss two or three years older than the boy, she was quite content, as she was wont to inform Poppy with an air of conscious superiority, to do whatever mamma " thought proper."

This phrase so exasperated Poppy that he once actually threw a sofa-cushion at her head ; for which outrageous conduct he was promptly sent upstairs with a stiff page of " Identity Evidence " to get by heart before tea. For, unfortunately for himself, Poppy was a boy of artistic and inquiring mind, eager to take an interest in most things — ■ which included a considerable number of things that papa and mamma had either never heard of or didn't care about ; and it was therefore a little damping to his childish ardour when, hazarding some remark or innocent question about something he had learned at school or heard mentioned outside, he was met with blank, vacant, unresponsive looks, and a chilling " I don't know what you mean, child," or " That's nothing to do with you, my dear," or still more deadly " That'll do, my dear — papa doesn't approve of little boys asking so many questions."

The world went round, and it is to be supposed that Poppy's papa and mamma went with it ; but as to taking any part in the world's progress — as to feeling any interest, to say nothing of participating, in the advance of science, of art, of literature, of everything that gives colour to human life and makes it rich and full — they had no more notion of it than of the fact that young people need pleasure and amuse ment, and that if they chose to starve their own souls they had no right to starve their children's. " Mamma," says Poppy one evening at tea, " there's going to be a Shakespearian recital at the Assembly Rooms next week, with orchestral music, and I do so long to go. May I, mamma ? I should enjoy it so very, very much !" "A Shakespearian recital!" echoes mamma, quite taken aback. " Oh, I don't know what to say, I'm sure.

What do you want to go and hear Shakespeare for ? Why can't you spend a nice quiet evening with your books at home ?" " I'm tired of nice quiet evenings," says Poppy, with incipient rebellion in his voice. " Why mayn't

PROLOGUE.

11 we ever have a little pleasure ? Oh, do let me go, mamma. It's to be ' Macbeth,' you know, with the witches and the ghosts, and appropriate music written expressly for it. I'd give anything to go and hear it !" "Oh, this is shocking, Poppy!" says mamma, shaking her head. "Look at Prissy now — she doesn't want to go, you see, so why should you ?" "What has that to do with me?" asks Poppy. " If she doesn't want to, she needn't ; but that's no reason why I shouldn't. Besides, I dare say she would like to very much — wouldn't you, Prissy ?" " If mamma thought proper to let me," replies Miss Prim, with an air. The provocation is doubtless great, but Poppy contents himself with grimacing at her on the sly. " I'm sure you'll let me go just this once, mamma," he continues pleadingly. " It can't do any harm, and I should be so very, very grateful !"

" Well, we must ask papa," says mamma by way of compromise. " What do you think, my dear ? Here's Poppy wanting to go to a Shakespearian recital at the Assembly Rooms next week. I don't know what to say about it, I'm sure." " Please let me go, papa," puts in Poppy on his own account. "Nonsense, nonsense!" mutters papa, without raising his eyes from the paper he is reading. " You don't want to go to a Shakespearian recital." " But I do want to go, papa," retorts Poppy. "Why should I ask to be allowed to if I didn't want?" " Don't tease papa," says Prissy. " Don't you see he's reading ?" "Mind your own business!" bursts out Poppy in a rage. " Mamma, is he to speak to me like that ?" pro tests Prissy, whimpering. " Silence !" roars papa. " My dear, just listen to this : ' The proofs of the identity of the English people with the Lost Ten Tribes are multiplying every year.

A distinct connection has lately been traced between the Lion and Unicorn in the Royal Arms and two of the mysterious creatures described in the first chapter of Ezekiel.' You remember the passage, no doubt. ' Even unbelievers bear their testimony to The Identity. Only the other day we noticed that Lord Blatherskyte, her Majesty's Secre tary of State for the Colonies, said that so enormous had been the increase and extension of the Anglo- Saxon race during the last hundred years, there was no doubt it would cover two-thirds of the entire globe by the year 2000. Here is a clear fulfilment of ancient prophecy, familiar to all our readers. How our Identity spreads !' " Papa lays down the paper, and looks importantly across at mamma, who seems very much impressed indeed. " The remarkable thing is," says papa, in order that no point whatever should be lost, " that here's

PROLOGUE.

13 an unbeliever, a heathen man, actually pointing out, in us, a fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham in Genesis xv., verse 5. It's very remarkable — very." " Do you understand what papa is saying ?" asks mamma, whispering to Poppy. Poppy shakes his head impatiently. " I don't care anything about it," he says defiantly. " It's nothing to me whether we're the same as those old Israelites or not. What does it matter either way ?" " My good child, you've a very great deal to learn," says papa with crushing emphasis. " When you're a little older you'll probably think more about such things, and know something of their importance." " I'd sooner go to the Shakespearian recital and hear the music than be any number of old Israelites," mutters Poppy, sticking to his guns. " Why won't you let me, papa ?"

" Because I won't have it," replies papa angrily. " I don't approve of Shakespeare ; he was a low writer. There are things in Shakespeare that aren't fit for anybody to read. Besides, you're a great deal too young. Your mother and I never want to go anywhere ; why should you want to ? You must be content to be guided by us, and do what we think is best for you." " But, papa- "Silence!" thunders papa. "Now let me hear no more about it. Mamma and I know what's right, and I'm not going to permit any dissipation ; I don't like it, and I'm not going to have it. Come, finish your tea, and then go and fetch me my Concordance. It's on the table in the other room." A pause, during which Poppy sniffles rebelliously. " Would Poppy like a piece of toast for a treat ?" asks mamma, by way of soothing the boy's disappointment.

" No, I wouldn't, thank you," snaps Poppy very sharply. " Oh, Poppy !" exclaims his sister, considerably shocked. " Well, you are a " " Why won't Poppy have some nice toast ?" asks mamma wonderingly. " I don't like having things offered me ' for a treat,' " says Poppy in great anger. " What is there in a bit of toast ? A bit of toast isn't a treat. You talk to me as if I were nothing but a baby, and— and " And here poor Poppy broke down. That last insult was too much — it cut him to the very quick. Of course it was kindly meant ; but what man or woman with the slightest imagination — by which I mean the faculty of entering into another's feelings —would have offered it ? Here it was that Poppy's parents failed. They had absolutely no imagination. Not caring for amusement themselves, they were entirely incapable of realizing the naturalness and the intensity of Poppy's craving for it. Because a Shakespearian recitation had no attractions for them, they refused to let Poppy hear one ; and I do not

PROLOGUE.

15 know by what other name to call such conduct than by that of gross and unfeeling selfishness. They did not for a moment suspect themselves of being actuated by any other motive than a desire for their children's good, but in point of fact they sacrificed them to their own narrow tastes and ideals, and in everything that concerned their youthful pleasures were as blind, as unsympathetic, as unyielding, as though they had been naturally cruel. What harm could it have done the boy to grant him the modest indulgence he pleaded for ? It would at any rate have made him innocently happy for at least a fortnight, and, if cheerfully and kindly conceded, would have inspired fresh feelings in him of gratitude and affection towards themselves. But they never saw it. They did not understand why their child's tastes should be different from their own, and they treated him stupidly and selfishly in consequence.

And it was this same Poppy who sat in the hot room of the village inn on the afternoon of that summer's day, gazing in silence at his wife. She had eaten heartily of boiled beef, cold chicken, currant-and-raspberry pie, and a strong cheese washed down with copious libations of bottled stout, and was now lying with flushed face fast asleep upon the sofa. Poppy had eaten scarcely anything, appearing to find more solace in his pipe than in devouring solid food. How far was his father responsible for the position he now occupied ? Supposing his home had been made a happy instead of a miserable one to him, he would probably never have left it for those dingy lodgings near the Euston Road ; supposing his parents had provided him with cheerful, wholesome, natural amusements, he would probably never have sought refuge in distractions of a baser sort ; supposing they had surrounded him with the society of bright, intelligent, and attractive persons of his own age and rank in life, he would probably have seen no beauty in a barmaid.

But they had done none of these things, because they saw no necessity for it ; and it is partly, at any rate, in consequence of their unsympathetic blindness that we find poor Poppy to-day in a village ale-house, with a bouncing City barmaid as his bride.

Chapter I. Mrs

PILTON'S BOARDING-HOUSE. Miss Jorkaway was an adventuress. It must not be understood, however, from this expression that there was anything morally objec tionable about Miss Jorkaway. We are all adventurers and adventuresses in a certain sense. An adventuress is not necessarily a person who trades ruthlessly upon the innocence and credulity of her fellow-creatures, who obtains situations by means of false references, or who roams through the world seeking whom she may devour, like a bird of prey in petticoats. Not at all. Miss Jorkaway, though an adventuress in two senses of the word, was by no means an abandoned person. She was an adventuress, firstly, in that she had to look out for herself, and rely upon her wits as a source of com pensation for the exceedingly narrow portion of this world's goods with which fortune had endowed her ; and she was an adventuress, secondly, in the sense that her natural disposition led her to regard the world as a stage on which a succession of exciting dramas were constantly being performed for her entertainment, and was thus always on the look-out for incidents of a mysterious, extraordinary, and in a word adventurous, nature to occur.

It was on these grounds, and on no others, that Miss Jorkaway might properly be considered an adventuress. Even the least metaphysically disposed will admit that though the world, objectively considered, is but one, there are, from a subjective point of view, almost as many worlds as there are people. Every man and every woman sees and inhabits a world of his or her own ; and the difference between these infinitely numerous systems can scarcely be over stated. The Pope, for example, sees and inhabits a very different world from that which exists in the philosophic consciousness of Mr. Herbert Spencer ; the author of " The Pickwick Papers " would scarcely seem to have occupied the same planet as the creator of Professor Teufelsdrockh ; the world of Hannah More bore not the very slightest resemblance to the world of M. Zola.

Now the world as seen by Miss Jorkaway was an extremely interesting place. Its inhabitants were divided into two classes — the con spiring, and the conspired against ; everywhere and at all seasons plots were hatching, undercurrents flowing, mischief at work, and secrets to be un earthed ; and Miss Jorkaway derived her chief happiness in life from watching all these imaginary manœuvres in full play, and bending her own ingenuity to the construction of counter-artifices. Nothing ever escaped the creative eye of Miss Jorkaway. Did little Miss Barbara Lewthwaite at the boarding-house (Miss Jorkaway lived in boarding-houses) help herself to marmalade one morning instead of her favourite gooseberry jam, down would go the fact in Miss Jorkaway's mental note-book. Why, it was only the other day that the young minx declared she hated marmalade ; this must be looked into at once.

What ! the young gentleman on the opposite side of the table taking marmalade too ? Evidently a preconcerted signal — it could be nothing else. And then Miss Jorkaway, having constructed the theory of a signal-code between these two utterly unconscious persons, would watch them, and peer after them, and put a recondite interpretation of her own upon every word and gesture that escaped them. If one was seen writing a letter, the plot thickened ; if either slipped out into the garden, it meant an appointment, a stratagem, an ambuscade. Or did she unexpectedly come across the cook ? The cook was sure to be a hard-faced woman with an enig matical expression and shifty eyes ; a woman with a dark mystery concealed somewhere about her person — no doubt whatever about that ; a woman who probably had the boarding-house landlady at her mercy ; a woman who either knew something that she would never tell, or had discovered something she certainly would tell unless she were bribed not to.

Miss Jork away fairly revelled in mysterious cooks. Equivocal ladies'-maids and meddlesome family practitioners had also a strong fascination for her; clergymen, generally speaking, were useful merely as make weights and stopgaps — were little better, indeed, than supernumeraries ; lawyers, of course, were in dispensable, particularly if they were Scotch and happened to have long upper lips ; while house keepers, always highly valuable for plot -weaving purposes, were simply priceless if endowed with some physical or mental infirmity. Nothing, too, could be better adapted to the bent of Miss Jork away's mind than the manner of Miss Jorkaway's life. As we have said, she lived in boarding-houses ; some people, indeed, were ill-natured enough to say that she must have been born in a boarding-house, so perfectly adjusted was she to her environment.

She went from boarding-house to boarding-house in England, and from pension to pension on the Con tinent, with the familiarity and matter-of-courseness of an habitude ; she knew them all, she was perfectly at home in them all, she unconsciously assumed a quasi proprietary air in them all, she was invariably on intimate and affectionate terms with the mistresses of them all, and she somehow discovered and re membered the names, and circumstances, and family histories of all the boarders in them all. It would not be accurate to say that she was a woman greatly beloved. In fact, among the boarders in one or two of her favourite haunts she was invariably spoken of as "the Baggage"; and it is to be feared that Miss Jorkaway was rather a baggage, from the standpoint of those who became the victims of her inventive genius.