A House of Cards. A novel

Front matter

A HOUSE OF CARDS. %. loW. EY Mrs. CASHEL HOE1". IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 1868. [The right of translation and reproduction is reserved?] LONDON : HOBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKSj TANCRAS ROAD, N.W. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. glook % Swimb-. FATE, BUILDER. CHAP. PAGE i. Insignificant People .... 3 11. In the City of the Three Spires . -31 hi. A Trust discharged 60 iv. Alice aids the Builder . . . -99 v. Trying back 131 vi. People of Importance . . . .170 vii. The Dreamer awakened . . . .208 viii. Meaning Mischief §0oh % j^amtr. FATE, BUILDER. VOL. II. B

Chapter I. Insignificant People

From the time at which Mr. Eliot Foster accepted the charge imposed upon him by Julia Peyton, his visits to Lane Cottage became more frequent. The strictness and conscientiousness of his cha racter had prevented his ever neglecting the widow and child whom Fate had thrown in his way, for whom he felt himself in some degree responsible ; but Mrs. Wood, though she inspired him with respect, and though he believed her to be a very good woman, was dull and common place — a person whom Mr. Eliot Foster would have been perfectly satisfied to benefit by deputy if a vicarious benefactor could have been found. But he took an interest in the disowned child for whom he had provided this safe, if humble, shel ter; and a vague notion — originating he hardly knew how, but no doubt in his splenetic feeling towards Julia — arose in his mind with reference to the boy's future.

What if he observed him closely, found him promising in disposition and in ability, and adopted him? It would be a strange combination of destiny, that which should charge him with the care of, and provision for, Julia's child — all unknown to her, undiscovered by her. He had many relatives, but their kinship was distant, and he cared for none of them ; and though he would be just to them in the disposition of his property, there really was no rea son, either in justice or otherwise, why he should not act upon such a wish, should it grow real and strong within him. This was another of the romantic ideas which occurred to Mr. Eliot Fos ter, and which would have astonished that gentle man's friends considerably. Assuredly there was a soft spot in the middle-aged solicitor's heart, but as there was no corresponding morsel in his head, he did not give the smallest indication of his entertaining any special sentiment towards the child, but paid the small stipend for his support with exemplary regularity.

The little house hold at Lane Cottage kept in quiet the even tenor of its way; and the hard-working, painstaking, careful, proud-spirited, grim-natured widow did her duty by both the children well, if not eagerly — thoroughly, if not affectionately. She was hardly more demonstrative to her own child — though she loved her with a painfully solicitous affection, and suffered many silent agonies of apprehension for her future — than to the little stranger, who gave her a good deal of practical trouble, but no theoretical disquiet. Mrs. Wood was grateful in her cold way to Mr. Eliot Foster, who had done her many and consistent kindnesses of a nature such as she would accept. They had never in cluded the gift, and but rarely the loan, of money. She had had much experience of poverty, but it had never beaten down her pride or conquered her self-respect, and she would not have been his debtor for any earthly consideration except her child's needs.

All that her dead husband's cousin knew of Mrs. Wood made him respect her to a degree in which he had rarely extended that feeling towards womankind; but the feeling stopped there. She was an unbending, uninteresting woman, purpose-like, business-like, who would never have admitted brightness into her own, or added it to any other, life, but who possessed valuable qualities, and not a Httle delicacy of mind. She displayed the latter not common endowment with respect to the boy who had been placed under her care. She was not, with all her business like coldness of demeanour, devoid of what is libellously described as " feminine" curiosity, but she kept it in check as regarded Henry Hurst. " It is Mr. Foster's business," she said to herself, " and not mine; and if he does not choose to tell me anything beyond what he has told me, I shall certainly not distress him by questions."

So the situation was quietly accepted by all parties concerned, and the arrangement worked well, though Mr. Eliot Foster never acted upon, and in no very long time discarded, his vaguely formed scheme of adopting the disowned child. He was no believer in inherited moral qualities. Holding education in all its meanings in much respect, lie held that it could construct and mo dify, and even contradict and counteract; and he did not watch the development of the child with any preconceived notions derived from his knowledge of the parents, who had both erred so fatally, though so differently. Two facts con cerning him impressed themselves upon Mr. Eliot Foster very soon — Henry Hurst had a bad tem per and a clear head ; a combination which might, in the fortuitous course of circumstances, prove useful to himself, but which could hardly fail to be detrimental to the peace of those brought into contact with _______ The bad temper was earlier and more readily apparent than the clear head, but the latter was not to be mistaken.

" He is a very clever child," said Mr. Eliot Foster to Mrs. Wood one day when he was visit ing Lane Cottage, and the two little companions had been dismissed to play wiiile he examined Mrs. Wood's accounts, a superfluous proceeding on which she always insisted. " Don't you think so? He looks so intelligent, and speaks so sharply." " Yes," said Mrs. Wood, composedly resting her firmly-folded hands upon the table before her ; "he is a clever child, but of a bad disposition. I never make up my mind quickly, and I have taken time to come to that conclusion ; he is an ill-tempered child, and cruel in his ways. I am glad he is not my Alice's brother." " Glad he is not your own son, you mean, I should think," said Mr. Eliot Foster. "A son can make a mother more unhappy than a brother can make a sister."

"Yes," again assented Mrs. Wood; "but it does not so much matter for me as for Alice. She is a sensitive child, and will be a very sensitive woman, easily made to suffer." " Do you mean," said Mr. Eliot Foster rather hastily, "that you do not like to have the boy here ; that he makes you uncomfortable and teases your child? Because if so, pray let me make some other arrangement. What you say about the boy annoys me; I hoped he would prove a good httle fellow ; but you must not suffer by him, you must not sacrifice yourself." " Pardon me," said Mrs. Wood, interrupting him; " I did not mean anything ofthe kind. I require the money you pay me for taking care of Henry Hurst, to enable me to live, and if you remove him I should be forced to seek another boarder in his place ; the child's disposition makes no difference in my circumstances or in my duty.

If you are satisfied with my care of him, I have no wish for his removal. I only tell you what I do because — remember, I am not prying into your present or future intentions about the boy — you had better know what he promises to be : hand some, clever, and vicious." Mr. Eliot Foster looked serious, and remained silent for a few minutes ; he was thinking of the feelings which the child's mother had expressed to him, of the repulsion with which he had filled her, and of the description she had once given him of her husband, this boy's father. No two women in the world could be less alike in outward form, in mind, and in mode of speech than were Julia and Mrs. Wood ; but it was a remarkable coincidence that they had both used the same words in speaking to Mr. Eliot Foster—" handsome, clever, and vicious."

To father and to son this phrase had been applied. The judgment passed upon the child might be rash, might be premature — time would tell ; the description of the father had been but too fully justified by facts. " I have no particular intentions about the boy," Mr. Eliot Foster said after a pause ; " and you must not keep him if you come to dislike doing so." Then they talked of other matters, and the subject dropped. Time went on with sure, imperceptible speed, and the children grew and prospered under the dull but carefid rule of the widow. Mr. Eliot Foster made no sign, and had no sign made to him. He had a vague kind of acquaintance with the affairs and the doings of the Havilands ; but his interest in them was very moderate, and easily satisfied with the meagre and infrequent details conveyed to him by his steadily faithful client, Frank Burdett.

Time produced its in variable effect on his mind. The keen impression which the charge he had undertaken, and the conduct of the woman he had loved against his conscience, his judgment, and his will — thus un consciously resembling Hugh Gaynor, of whose existence he was ignorant — and whom he had loved in vain, was fading away. The widow and the children had considerable interest for him ; but this feeling had little refer ence to the boy's story, and none to the romantic association which had once attached itself to him. Alice Wood pleased and attracted him. The little girl was beautiful beyond the ordinary beauty of pretty children, endowed with a fragile grace and a sweet pensive loveliness wliich might have made a less matter-of-fact mother than Mary Wood keenly unquiet — might have filled her with fore boding, and the agony of an inexjilicable fear.

The child, despite the plain homeliness of her cottage -dwelling, and the humble surroundings and routine of her everyday life, was a perfect littie lady ; not in the fantastic selfishness to wliich that term is sometimes applied, but in the natural grace, observance, and consideration of her bearing, as well as in the delicate and refined exterior, in wliich no resemblance to her mother was to be traced. The little girl's face— not rosy, and yet not pale with the pallor of ill-health, but with a transparent clearness of complexion — was mild and thoughtful, and her slight figure and gentle movements had aU the supple ease of childhood without its boisterousness. She was a child whom no one could have passed unnoticed, but whom no keen observer could have seen widiout perceiving that there was too much sensitiveness, too much fancy, too early a turn for reverie about her, to bode her good in the world, where life for one of her condition must, unless under strangely exceptional circumstances, wear a very work-a day and commonplace aspect.

Between Alice and her surroundings, incongruity existed which Mr. Eliot Foster did not fail to see, and it gave him pleasure to procure for her such small lux uries and indulgences as her mother's pride did not interfere to forbid her having. The little girl learned to love the grave kind gentleman next after her mother and the boy, who presented as remarkable a contrast to her in appearance as in disposition. The period of early childhood, all important as it is, presents but few salient features of interest in such a narrative as this; it suffices to note the fact that, as Alice Wood made progress in the regard of Mr. Eliot Foster, Henry Hurst retrograded. He was a handsome boy, dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-complexioned ; and though in time the lawyer ceased to trace in his features the resemblance to his father of which Julia Pey ton had spoken with such strong disgust, his countenance was none the more pleasing for the alteration.

A physiognomist would have found nothing reassuring in the shifting, shallow eyes, and the thin, compressed, finely-cut lips — an artist little charm in the undeniable good looks, which had a certain cachet of vulgarity. He had fair abilities, and profited satisfactorily by . the elementary instruction, at the hands of Mrs. Wood, which he and Alice shared. The first taste the boy gave any evidence of possessing was a taste for drawing, and the widow was quick and pleased to perceive its indications. Among several aArocations adopted by the deceased Mr. Wood, and severally and successively abandoned by him, in the course of his brief and remarkably-unlucky existence, that of a drawing-master had perhaps been, on the whole, the least complete failure, and his wife had taken some interest in his proceedings in that capacity.

She was therefore able to recognise the boy's taste, and it interested her. One day, — when she had been watching the two children, seated on the edge of the little grass-plat which bordered the narrow approach to the cottage-door, the boy busily drawing some thing meant to represent a tree which adorned the waste land on the opposite side of the road, and the girl sitting beside him, her small hands folded, her little figure perfectly still, her attitude expressive of the absorbed attention and content one sometimes sees in children's faces, — Mr. Eliot Foster arrived. After some general conversation, Mrs. Wood told the lawyer that Henry Hurst, who was not anything wonderful " at his lessons," would probably do well as an artist, and asked him what he wished the boy " to be." Mr. Eliot Foster replied that he had not thought of the matter ; that discussion of it would be premature while Henry Hurst was so mere a child ; but that if he continued to manifest taste and talent in that direction, there could be no objection to his pur suing an artist's career.

There would be a small sum of money forthcoming to start him in life, " enough to get him taught, and set him up in paint-pots and brushes," said the lawyer, whose comprehension of the requirements of an artist was not extensive. Then they both smiled at the idea of seriously discussing the prospects of the child from the suggestion of his crude perform ances on his slate. It was a long time before the matter was again mooted, but in the discussion of that day was traced the vague outiine of the disowned child's future career. The business which had brought Mr. Eliot Foster to Lane Cottage on this day, was also destined to have considerable influence on the future of the widow and her daughter. Among the lawyer's clients was a trustee of one of the numerous charitable institutions at Coventry.

This gentleman had called upon Mr. Eliot Foster, and mentioned that the post of matron to the institution was vacant. Upon inquiry into the emoluments and duties ofthe position, the lawyer had conceived the notion that it would exactly suit Mrs. Wood, and that she would exactly suit it. Here would be a tranquil and secure home for her, a respectable means of preserving the independence which she prized so highly, and certain educational advantages for her daughter. There was nothing in the duties of the position of a menial character ; the post had always been filled by reduced gentlewomen ; and the institution was one which ranked high among things of the sort. Mr. Eliot Foster explained the matter fully to Mrs. Wood, and told her that his client, being under obligations to him, personal as well as professional, would procure the post for her, should she, on consideration, let him know that she desired to accept the proposition.

Mrs. Wood received the lawyer's statement in her usual quiet way, and said she would think over it, and let Mr. Eliot Foster know. "But," she asked, " what should be done, in case I made up my mind to go, about Henry Hurst ?" " I have not thought about that," said Mr. Foster ; "I ascertained that Alice might live with you — in fact, I should not have entertained the idea otherwise — and, by a small deduction from your salary, be admitted to the educational advan tages of the institution ; but I did not think about the boy. However, you must not consider him, — I can place him elsewhere." " I should not like to part with him," said Mrs. Wood, which was quite a warm expression of feeling for her; "could you not send him to some school near where I shall be, if I take this place, and let me still have the charge of him to some extent ? — of course, without payment ; under any circumstances he would soon be beyond my power of instruction."

" That is a capital idea," said Mr. Eliot Foster; " I will make inquiries ; I shall see Mr. Ratliff to-morrow, and ascertain what can be done." The lawyer's visit came to a close soon after this, and Mrs. Wood was left to think over the VOL. II. c proposition made to her. Even ou the surface it was a sufficiently-important one, involving a total change in her life, the assumption of new duties, and the formation of new ties. She shrunk from the step, in some respects ; being a woman who liked solitude and objected to change and strange faces ; but the interests of her child prevailed with her. " I shall be able to make friends for Alice, and I cannot do that here," she thought ; " to make a home for her, to give her decent companionship, and to secure a humble but certain future for her when I shall be gone."

Mrs. Wood was not destined to know the full importance of the decision at which she arrived, to understand that she had lent a helping hand to the structure Fate was rearing, when she signified to Mr. Eliot Foster that she had made up her mind, and gratefully accepted his offer. Alice Wood and Henry Hurst entered with the pleasure which any novelty brings to children into the preparations for their departure from the cottage, wliich was the only home they could remember. They had but an imperfect notion of the approaching separation, and to the boy the idea did not convey anything terrible. The preliminaries were not numerous or complicated. Mr. Eliot Foster signified his approbation of Mrs. Wood's decision, and informed her that he had made inquiries, and found that there was a school of the moderate pretensions to which alone he should aspire for Henry Hurst, in the vicinity of Coventry.

" I can procure him a sound practical education, I am told, at Mr. Copson's at Beckthorpe, and he will be only a mile or so away from you." Mrs. Wood did not enlighten the boy as to the arrangements which had been made concerning him, — it would be time enough, she thought, when they reached Coventry, where Mr. Eliot Foster had asked his friend to secure a lodging for the httle party in the first in stance. It had occasionally occurred to Mr. Eliot Foster that there was just the possibility of risk in the proximity of the Burdetts' residence to Lane Cottage. Mrs. Haviland might, in process os time, and the success of her plan for amicable family relations, come to her sister-in-law's house, and might, in her drives or walks, see the child she had banished. " Suppose she did, and be trayed herself?"

Mr. Eliot Foster thought, and then smiled at himself for conceiving the possibility of Julia's betraying herself. He heard nothing of her directly, and but little indirectly, when Frank Burdett occasionally visited him, intent partly on business and partly on gossip, in which Mr. Burdett, who affected to despise such an occupation immensely when indulged in by women, was an adept. But Frank had never brought him the particular bit of news which he had sometimes fancied might produce a difficulty, and of late he had seen very little of him. The time which had elapsed since Frank Bur dett had formed a certain suspicion respecting the former state of Mr. Eliot Foster's affections, to which that wary solicitor was wholly unconscious of having furnished him with a clue, had not been uneventful in the Burdett household.

Society, the world, had experienced a heavy loss, for which, strange to say, society and the world did not appear to be wholly inconsolable. A Haviland had departed this life, and had, it is to be hoped, found the other good enough, and sufficiently appreciative. Frank Burdett was a widower — a state of things in which he at first found it very difficult to believe, and to which he afterwards found it unaccountable that he was so easily reconciled. He had uneasy misgivings about himself. Had he been a great brute, a horrid unfeeling fellow, unworthy of any woman, not to say of the incomparable Selina, all this time, without knowing it? Of course, he was very sorry, and all that ; and a widower is a lonely, miserable, poor devil always, even sup posing he is not the widower of a Haviland ; but still he did get on, — he did really, — " a deuced deal too well, and I ought to be ashamed of my self," the penitent Frank would admit to himself with remorse, wliich in its turn was only too transient, after he had emerged from his conventional seclusion, and found things in general undeniably pleasant.

He was very glad when sufficient time had gone over after his sad bereavement, to set his mind at rest with regard to the unequivocal cheerfulness of his demeanour, for he really could not be doleful. A perfect Macchiavel in the vanished days of his domestic bliss — it is suprising what a tendency to make one tricky and insincere the household society of very superior people has — Frank Burdett lost the faculty of feigning when Selina was " removed," as the Havilands, who objected to death, and slurred over all mention of it as much as possible, designated the occurrence. That Selina was mourned as much and as lon_r as a Haviland ought to be mourned by Havilands, none but ill-regulated minds could possibly doubt; but they had got it pretty comfortably over before the widower returned from the continental tour which had been unanimously prescribed as the best means, combined with time, to " restore him."

The combination had not only restored him, but rendered him a more " pleasant fellow" than he had ever been. Whether the security that nothing could restore Selina had anythin oto do with the happy result, was a question between Frank and his conscience ; and he simply did not ask it. Mrs. Burdett had died a few days after the birth of a daughter, and in consequence, some ignorant persons affirmed, of her practical adherence to certain ideas prevalent among the Havilands, and not indorsed by the Faculty of Medicine. " It's no use talking to her about herself; indeed it's no use," Frank Burdett had said when the doctor had appealed to him ; "if you knew what the Havilands are, you wouldn't try." " But I do know what the Havilands are," was the answer ; " and I really must try." The rash man did try, and failed.

Selina had her own way about her food, her drink, and her " sitting-up," and Selina died; a consistent ending to a consistent life. " It's a good thing she did not five another week," was the mental comment of the doctor ; "or the child would have gone too." But the child, a pretty baby, whose name was Madeleine, stayed, and found great favour in the sight of Stephen and Julia Haviland, who had not taken much notice of Selina's elder children. When it was decreed that Frank was to go away to foreign climes, and be " restored," the child and her nurse were taken to Meriton, and after his return, as time went on, it became an understood thing that the little Madeleine was to remain there. " Stephen and I wish it," Julia had said to Frank, who had never wavered from the allegiance into which she had at the first fascinated him; "and our mother wishes it.

She is very fond of the child, and it grows more and more difficult to amuse and interest her." " She does not mind the others much," said Frank. " No, she likes to have little Madeleine all to herself. And she is a nice child, Frank," — and here Julia smiled significantly, — " which is odd, considering how much less of a Haviland she is than the others." " Isn't it odd ?" replied Frank, with a sus picious artlessness ; " poor Selina said, when the baby was three days old, < She's not the least like a Haviland; quite a plain, commonplace child; in fact, a perfect Burdett.' " " Let us hope she may improve," said Julia, who longed to ask him how he dared to mention even a dead-and-gone Haviland as " poor ;" but was restrained by good taste. So, with very few more words, the matter was arranged, and Frank soon began to experience much satisfaction from the sort of vested interest which he thus acquired at Meriton.

Mesdames Marsh and Fanshaw made many objections to each other to this disposition of " dear Selina's precious legacy to them all," by which fancy name they designated little Made leine. It is needless to recapitulate these objec tions, but opportune to remark upon the advantage of belonging to a faultless family. Had they been any but Havilands — Burdetts, for instance — these ladies might have been suspected of regarding the " precious legacy" with envious eyes, as likely to avert from Marsh and Fanshaw channels an undue proportion ofthe childless Stephen's considerable and increasing wealth. Of all these events Mr. Eliot Foster had been made aware, in outline, by Mr. Burdett, and the only point in the narrative upon which he had bestowed much thought was that of Julia Havi lands affection for the child.

" I don't under stand her thoroughly," he thought ; "I suppose I never should understand her, or any woman, thoroughly. I should have imagined the very sight of any child would be intolerable to her. It is inexplicable ; but I suppose the ' liking' she talked about feeling for her rich husband has sub sided, and even her vain, strong, selfish nature feels the absolute need of some disinterested human interest in her life ; and she has debarred herself from the true and natural one. Yes," — and Mr. Eliot Foster nodded his head empha tically at the conclusion of the mental pause — " that's it, that explains it." Only one circumstance worthy of record took place before the removal of Mrs. Wood, Alice, and Henry Hurst from Lane Cottage, and this was the manner of it. The flitting was to take place in the early autumn, and the weather was extremely fine.

Tlie children, who had been granted on one occasion, — when their absence much facilitated the operations of Mrs. Wood, — the boon of a "whole holiday," had set off to enjoy it in Epping Forest. Early in the after noon their rambles brought them to certain wide, shady, cross-roads, branching off from a smooth, circular village-green, on one side of which stood an old-fashioned, prosperous, comfortable " coach ing" inn. At the inn-door was a handsome open carriage, at which the children gazed with great delight, attracted particularly by the impatient horses, who tossed their heads, and champed their bits, " like Pharaoh at the Red Sea," as Alice remarked, in reference to the book of Bible pic tures whence her chief ideas of art and, indeed, nature were derived. The carriage contained two ladies and a child, and as Henry Hurst and Alice Wood crept into the open space, through a hedge of holm oak, the attention of the elder lady was cauo-ht by the little girl's beautiful, pensive face, and the timid, elegant attitude in which she stood, with her straw hat, full of autumnal wild flowers, held loosely in her hand by its broad yellow strings.

As the lady looked steadily at Alice, taking little heed of the sturdy figure and bronzed dark face of the boy by her side, the child was gazing with wondering pleasure at a little girl who occupied the front seat of the carriage. She was a beautiful child, younger by three or four years than Alice, a nut-brown lassie, with carefully curled ringlets and rosy cheeks, with dark-brown sparkling eyes and animated countenance, and as she sat swaying herself back and forwards, feigning to lull to sleep a large wax doll which she held tightly clasped to the bosom of her richly embroidered white pelisse, she presented a true picture, which the other little girl instinctively felt, of happy, prosperous, petted childhood. Their eyes met in a moment, and the brown girl nodded to the fair one, and with a pretty, pardonable triumph, held up her doll.

Alice started a step forward, her face glowing, her lips j.arted ; but the boy, who had been glowering at the occupants of the carriage with an expression of mingled ad miration and envy, pulled her back behind the sheltering hedge, and said angrily, " Come away ! They're ladies ; they don't want us /" The next moment a footman came out of the inn, placed a parcel, for which he had been sent to inquire, in the carriage, and mounted the box ; and then the impatient horses carried the ladies and the child rapidly out of sight. During this brief scene, the younger of the two ladies had been wholly unobservant of what was passing. Leaning back in her carriage, with her accustomed grace, but more than her usual listiessness, her dark eyes gazing out upon the horizon, and her hands folded, Julia Haviland had been quite unconscious of the children's presence in her vicinity.