A Noble Woman

Front matter

VOL. BY JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON, AUTHOR OF "A BOOK ABOUT LAWYERS," "A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS," " LIVE IT DOWN,"' &C. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUOH STREET. 1868. The right of Translation is reserved. LONDON : SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS 3TBEET, COYENT GARDEN. CONTENTS OP THE THIRD VOLUME. CHAP. PAGE I. THE CLASP OF A WOMAN'S HAND .... 1 II. KILLED IN ACTION 12 III. MR. FELIX VINCENT WHITES TO LADY ARCHER 23 IV. HAVEN-UNDERCLIFFE 32 V. CLEM archer's WIDOW 36 VI. LADY ARCHER IS CONFIDENT OF SUCCESS . 51 VII. MORE WEDDING BELLS 58 VIIL GERALDINE AND HER NEW MAMMA ... 69 IX. BERTIE GODSALL 79 X. IN WHICH A PARTICULAR PEAR IS LEFT TO RIPEN 94 XI. A CULPRIT SENTENCED 107 XII. WHEREIN LEMUEL WALKS HIS HOSPITAL .118 XIII. A QUESTION OF HONOUR 130 XIV.

CONFIDENCE WITHIN CONFIDENCE . .141 XV. MUTUAL COMFORTERS 160 XVI. A NEW M.P. FOR CARLTON CROSS . . . .173 Contents. VI CHAP. PAGE XVII. ESTATE IN POSSESSION 190 XVIII. ALTERNATIVES 197 xix. geraldine's submission 210 XX. PUBLIC OPINION 217 XXI. ANOTHER FORTUNE IN MR. FELIX VINCENT'S PATH 226 XXII. BERTIE GODSALL MAKES HER GAME . . . 236 XXIII. THE GREAT CRASH 255 XXIV. HERCULES KINGSFORD'S LAST DAYS . . . 271 j XXV. GERALDINE IN LONDON 285 XXVI. IN WHICH HERRICK HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS DISADVANTAGE 296 XXVII. CATHERINE WARD 313 XXVIII. A FAT FEE 322 XXIX. SOMETHING ABOUT A GLASS HIVE . . . 327 XXX. IN WHICH GERALDINE COMES IN FOR ANOTHER FORTUNE

Chapter I

The Clasp of a Woman's Hand. S soon as Mr. Kingsford tad abruptly left the room, James Stapleton, pre paring to take his departure, approached Bessie with outstretched hand and an intention to bid her farewell with a few words of en couragement. " I must make haste home," he said, " for my long journey to Walton-Stonefield and Orford- Ness has kept me away from Carlton Cross for nearly forty-eight hours. I shan't get many winks of sleep to-night, and to-morrow afternoon, unless I find myself literally bound to keep within call of a patient nearer home, I shall start for Orford-Ness. So in all probability you wont have been twelve hours in Miss Maitland's house before I see you." VOL. III. B " Don't be in a hurry, James — sit here by my side for two minutes," she said, taking hold of his proffered hand and drawing him to her sofa.

" I want to speak to you for two minutes." When James — still wearing the hugely-caped blue coat which during the winter months was his constant protection against the bleak winds, and pelting rains, and icy storms that he en countered on his professional rounds, and which it was the surgeon's humour to call his " castle of broadcloth" — had complied with this invitation, Bessie continued — " You were very good to drive straight from Walton- Stonefield to Orford- Ness ; you were very good to come here on your way home. But you always are good — not only to me, and my husband, and my children, but to all people, rich and poor alike, who are in trouble. James, you are a royal man : and I pray God that my children may love and honour you with just such love and honour as they feel for their own father."

" There, there, don't thank me, or you'll break down — and that would never do." " I shan't trouble you with any more thanks, or any tears," returned Bessie, hastily brushing a watery brightness from her eyes and forcing a smile into her face. " That's right, you are a brave creature : and I wish Geraldine could have seen and heard you just now. The girl would have had a lesson that she would remember and get good from." " I don't want to ask if you have kept back anything of the truth. Your words never deceive me." " You know everything." " I have never had scarlatina, and so I must expect to catch it now." " You are about to encounter a great risk of catching it : but I, who have attended medically hundreds of cases, and nursed some of them, never had an attack of the fever." " That does not astonish me.

You are a doctor, seasoned to breathe infected air with impunity. Moreover, Providence has a special care of doctors — as His instruments for allevia ting the sufferings of His creatures. Don't you think so V " Providence holds us all in His hand." " Still we ought not to tempt Providence. For myself, I have no fear except a grave recognition of the danger which it is my duty to encounter. Most likely I shall fall ill; in which case you must do your best to cure me; and if the worst should happen — why, as you say, Providence b holds us in His hand. But you must help me to persuade Hercules not to put himself need lessly into the danger. He has never had a fever of any kind ; so, if the scarlatina seized him, it would most likely assume its most malignant features in his untempered constitution.

If he had been seasoned to endure the fever-poison by any illness of the fever kind, I should be less nervous for him. Am I talking reasonably?" " You are touching upon obscure subjects, about which very little is known." " I wont insist on travelling alone to Orford- Ness, but I must insist that Mr. Kingsford does not thrust himself needlessly into the way of danger — which it is no duty of his, as it is mine, to face. He is very nervous about infectious illnesses of all kinds ; but still he is so brave and high-spirited that, if his duty required him to do so, he would take up his quarters in a small-pox hospital or a cholera-stricken ship." " He will encounter no danger by being your fellow-traveller to Orford-Ness." " But when he is there, he ought not to enter the sick-room. Do, James, impress upon him that he ought not even so much as to see Herrick.

If you don't speak to him, he is so bold and chivalrous he will insist on exposing himself to every danger. Now, it would be wrong of him to see the dear child — would it not ? If I were to die, it would be a small matter — if he were to fall, think of the consequences. Dear uncle Kilderbee used to say, ' When a woman dies an empty chair has to be put against the wall, but when a man dies a whole house must be cleared.' For the sake of his children, and all the many people who depend upon him for their bread, he may not be allowed to run any risk." "He may see the boy for a minute," returned the surgeon, evincing no disrespect for Bessie's estimate of her husband's disposition, nor any inclination to rate his life less highly than she did. . " The room in which Herrick lies is admirably venti lated, its windows are slightly open day and night ; and its floor is being continually sprinkled with disinfecting fluid.

So Mr. Kingsford may with perfect safety remain in the room for a minute ; but he had better not kiss the little fellow or stand over him — indeed, you had better make him promise not to come beyond the foot of the bed." " If you are quite sure that he would in that way run no danger " " / am quite sure," the surgeon interposed. " And now I must be off. There, God bless you — and look you, my dear Mrs. Kingsford : — like a good soldier, obey the orders of your superior officer !" "What does my captain require?" asked Bessie, smiling faintly in acceptance of her military title, and giving her superior officer a military salute. " That you make a good dinner before you start on your long night journey," answered James Stapleton, as he buttoned up his coat and made ready again for the cold wind.

As soon as the surgeon was gone, and Mrs. Kingsford, thinking herself alone, had dropped back upon her sofa, Geraldine came from her place of concealment and knelt at her mother's feet, taking that position so quietly that her movements would not have reminded Bessie of her presence if the girl had not touched her mother's dress in kneeling. " Why, child, you here ?" ejaculated Bessie, suddenly remembering that the child was sitting in the bay-window when her husband and James Stapleton entered. " Yes, mamma, I was sitting behind the curtain when the talk began, and I have heard all." " Thank God ! Then I am spared the pain of telling you about it," answered the mother, ca ressing her child's pale terror-stricken face, and smoothing her lustrous dark hair. " Don't tremble so, darling ; you must help me to be brave."

" Oh, mother !" said the girl, in a low voice, turning her red lips and tearless eyes upwards to her mother ; " even in my pain I am so grateful to have heard you say that you would dare all the danger and go to Orford-Ness to nurse Herrick ! I can't love you more than I have always done ; but now I do so admire your greatness. You are braver than even the bravest of those Spartan mothers, who made us so angry when Herrick first went to school. You are a Christian mother !" " Dear Ger," Bessie entreated tremulously, " don't talk so extravagantly. I am a Christian woman, and would I had been as devout and earnest and fruitful a Christian as I ought to have been. I am a poor, short-sighted, erring woman and should have small hope of Heaven if I did not know that God is infinitely and un speakably merciful.

But I am a woman ; — and a woman who isn't ready to lay down her life for children and husband, is as craven and poor a thing amongst women as the man is amongst men who dares not die for his country." " Dear mamma, don't talk about dying." " I wont, Ger ; but I'll think about it meekly and resignedly. Be sure, whatever may happen, that I am in God's hand. And, darling, whatever may happen, bear in mind throughout life that no sacrifice which you can ever be called on to make for your father or brother can exceed what you ought to be willing to do for them. I might say this of any girl who is a daughter and sister; but there are circumstances — circumstances of which you know and need to know nothing at present — that make it especially true of you, and your duty to your brother. Mind this, Ger !

One day you will see all the meaning of my words." " I will remember them, dear," Geraldine an swered slowly, as she received the words and printed them upon her heart in ineffaceable characters : and then, after silently admiring for a full minute her mother's gentle face, which recent mental disturbance had greatly beau tified, the girl, giving utterance to her vivid recognition of its peculiar loveliness, exclaimed — " Oh, mother, how lovely you are ! When you shall have become an angel, you will be, to look upon, just what you are now !" "When that time comes, Ger," Bessie an swered, with a pathetic mockery of seriousness — feeling gravely as her tone indicated, but still blushing with pleasure at her girl's rapturous compliment — " I hope my children will be with me, and see me far other than I am."

Then Bessie hastened away to make prepara tions for the journey to Orford-Ness ; and at her heels followed Geraldine, bent on not losing sight of her mother until carriage-wheels should divide them. There was a hasty dinner, at which Mrs. Kingsford did her best to obey her superior officer's parting command, but signally failed in carrying out his order : and scarcely had the hasty dinner come to an end, when the massive butler announced that Bessie's carriage was at the door. A silent witness of the commotion that preluded the departure, Geraldine, having received a last embrace from her mother, waited in a corner of the hall, whilst her father gave noisy directions to the coachman about the road and management of his horses, about the places at which they would stop ou the way to Orford, and about the disposal of Mrs. Kingsford's luggage.

Pale, tear less, terribly excited, the girl noticed the fervour of the kiss which her mother gave Miss Cantrill, when each of the women-servants who thronged about her had received a few words of special valediction and counsel from their affectionate mistress. Another moment the carriage-door banged, and the wheels turned : when just as the actual moment of parting seemed to have come and gone, and there was a stir of voices on the drive whilst the coachman with difficulty restrained his fretting horses until he should hear his master's order to " go on," Miss Cantrill, who had crossed the threshold into the night air, ran back into the lighted hall exclaiming, " Ger, quick, Ger, — she wants to see you again." In obedience to which intimation Ger hastened to the carriage, where, standing under the blaze of its lamps that dazzled her to blindness, and distracted by the movements of the restive horses that tossed the chariot to and fro, causing it to rock like a swinging cradle, she received her mother's silent farewell, — a strong spasmodic, long-continued clasp of the hand : a pressure that left on Ger's white skin marks that were visible to her eyes long after she had returned to the light of the house.

Scarcely had Bessie's hand relinquished its hold of her girl, when the order " go on" was at length given, and the horses springing down the drive carried their load into the pitchy darkness. Even at this day Geraldine says that when in dark and quiet moments she recals her mother's departure for Orford-Ness her hand seems to be enclosed by the soft, firm clasp of the smooth, fine, strong fingers whose last pressure is the sweetest, distinctest, most mysterious, and most sacred of her recollections.

Chapter II

Killed in Action. LTHOUGH Bessie's fervour and courage had so far stirred the manliness of his nature and conquered for a moment his inordinate fear of infection, that he had vo lunteered to accompany her to the scene of peril, Hercules Kingsford was secretly discomforted by his sense of the personal hazard in which he was about to place himself: and during the dark and tedious hours of their progress from Coote to Orford-Ness, he was devising means by which he might play the part of an anxious and unselfish parent in the sick room of Miss Maitland's house, and preserve himself from the highest degree, of risk. While he affected to ridicule Bessie's en treaties that he would observe James Stapleton's directions, and resolutely refrain from kissing Herrick, he eventually consented out of regard for her feelings to adopt the precautions which she, enforcing her counsel by a scarcely warrantable use of James's name, recommended him to adopt.

Whilst his horses worked their way towards the sea with steady speed, and Bessie, indulging an inclination for silence, pretended to be sleep ing in her corner of the carriage, the banker reflected with genuine pride on the firmness and spirit of his wife's recent conduct, and experienced something of amusement as he recalled the way in which she had justified her decision by declaring her ambition to act in a manner worthy of a soldier's mother. Never before had Mr. Kings ford realized how terribly in earnest she had been in whatever she had done to promote that pretty game of soldiers which — notwithstanding the noise and ardour aud apparent seriousness of his public and private speech about his heir's future martial career — had been to him, in his secret heart, far more an affair of frolic than of sincere purpose.

Not that he was altogether innocent of a design to make his boy a soldier. It had seemed to him more than probable that the jest would end in earnest, — that the military spirit fostered in the boy by his childish dresses and pastimes, and Geraldine's stories of heroism, would result in his adoption of the army as a profession. In that case the father deemed that he would be well satisfied with his son's decision, provided no surer prospect of worldly advancement presented itself to the young man's choice, through the pursuit of a peaceful vocation. But even in his most imaginative and bellicose mo ments, when his tongue fired Geraldine's blood with glowing pictures of the glory which awaited her brother in far distant fields, he had privately regarded the military play of his heir and his heir's playmates, as a piece of serio-comic diversion which at the right time he wovdd be free to put an end to, as having all along been pure comedy without any element of seriousness.

Hence his surprise at the way in which Bessie at a moment of religious agita tion had spoken of her boy's military career. " It's in the nature of women," philosophized Mr. Kingsford concerning his wife's simplicity aud enthusiasm, " to be thus unreservedly and ungovernably earnest in matters that are mere sport to us men." On reaching Orford-Ness Mr. and Mrs. Kings ford learnt from Mr. Lawrence that Herrick was unquestionably in the first stage of a severe illness ; and such was Bessie's distraction between two sources of anxiety that she was almost com forted for the gloominess of the surgeon's state ment by the force which it gave her arguments why dear Hercules should not exceed the minute, passed betwixt open door and window, to which James Stapleton had limited the father's interview with his prostrate child.

Out of respect to Bessie's wishes — solely out of respect to those wishes — there was a suspicious peremptoriness in Mr. Kingsford's repeated as sertions to Miss Maitland that regard for his wife's peace of mind was the sole motive of his conduct — the husband and father, curbing a natural desire to linger by the sick bed, tore himself away from the centre of painful interest, and started on the backward journey to Carlton Cross without waiting for James Stapleton's arrival at the Ness. On his return to Carlton Cross and Coote, great was the excitement which Mr. Kingsford found prevailing in those parishes in consequence of rumours respecting his domestic affliction ; and to anyone in possession of all the facts of the case very amusing woidd have been the tone and tenor of Mr. Kingsford's replies to the inquiries of his anxious friends.

Without hinting that Bessie had shown herself wanting in nerve and fortitude on the first arrival of the distressing news, or expressly claiming credit for his own demeanour, Mr. Kingsford caused it to be understood that it was he who exclaimed, " My dear, we wont lose a moment in going to Orford-Ness;" that it was he who insisted on instant departure by night-journey to the sick boy ; that it was he who observed, " My dear, what is life, or any conceivable risk to life, in compari son with our love and duty to our offspring !" Instead of recollecting that whilst at Orford-Ness he had barely popped his head into the sick room, Mr. Kingsford, on his return to his native borough, must have believed himself to have embraced his son with paternal tenderness, and to have re mained for six hours hanging over his pestilential couch.

Anyhow on his authority a very affecting story was circulated about the devotedness of his attentions to the little patient, and the obstinacy with which he had remained at the post of peril until Mrs. Kingsford had implored him to return to Coote. On receiving which story from the original narrator Mr. Latimer Brown observed, with impressive earnestness, " Bedad, Kingsford, I think you were wrong ; upon my honour, I do. Considering you are not a doctor and could not do the poor little chap any good, and considering you have never had the fever, and considering the importance of your life to all classes of society, I think you ought to have exercised greater caution ; 'pon my honour, I do. It was wrong of you to be so rash and reckless. But your error was on the right side, — the side of pluck and natural affection."

Whereto Mr. Kingsford, blushing more from pleasure than shame, observed complacently, " Well, that's the direction in which a Kingsford might be expected to run." Whilst gossip took this turn at Carlton Cross, thanks to his nurse and doctors and the favour accorded by the Director of all powers to their assiduous labours, Uttle Herrick went through the usual stages of a severe attack of scarlatina without any exceptional suffering or injury until it was announced by James Stapleton, on his return from one of his excursions to Orford- Ness, that the heir of Coote was so far conva lescent that in the course of ten days he would make the journey, together with Mrs. Kingsford, to a neighbouring coasttown for change of air. On the receipt of which satisfactory intelligence, the borough dismissed its concern about scarlatina and Orford-Ness, and continued in a state of comparative indifference concerning Miss Mait land's school for three days ; on the expiration of which time a doleful change in the course of affairs revived their flagging interest in the topic.

From Felix Vincent the borough learned — that alarming intelligence had been received at Coote VOL. III. / c Hall respecting Mrs. Kingsford, who, after ex hibiting a suspicious loss of power just as her son began to recover his strength, had unques tionably fallen ill of the scarlatina ; that in con sequence of a message from Mr. Lawrence, the Orford-Ness doctor, James Stapleton had started on the stroke of the previous midnight for the Ness; that Mr. Kiugsford remained at Coote, holding himself in readiness to start on the instant he should receive a summons to his wife's sick bed. Many wives and mothers, besides Emma Staple ton and the other matrons of Bessie's social circle, counted the hours in and near Carlton Cross until the time when Mr. Stapleton was expected to return from the coast.

But they waited and told the hours to no purpose. When the time for his return came, he failed to arrive with it. Soon it was rumoured that Mrs. Kingsford was in a desperate state, and that Mr. Kingsford was already on the road to what would most likely prove her death-bed. Then an en thusiasm of admiration — an enthusiasm no less pathetic than genuine and reasonable — arose in the houses of the borough and its neighbourhood for the gentle lady, always well liked by her neighbours of all degrees, who had hastened to her sick boy on first hearing of his illness ; and having imbibed poison from his breath, was in imminent danger of losing her part in the life to which she had recovered him out of the very jaws of death. Hitherto the inhabitants of Carlton Cross had gossiped about Mr. Kingsford's paternal affection, promptitude, courage ; but now that the beauty of Bessie's dutiful conduct shone forth where nought else could b*e seen in the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death, its brightness and loveliness were fully revealed to them.

Whilst her true character was being thus recognised by her old friends, she lay in the un consciousness of extreme prostration, dead alike to praise and blame. « In her first interview with James Stapleton after the distinct manifestation of the nature and severity of her illness, she had spoken to him words that were a fit recompense for the fidelity and loftiness of his attachment. " It has come, James, as I knew it would ; and I shall die as I felt from the first that I should die." " You may not say or think so, dear friend," James urged, with the voice of old love in his timely expostulation. " You must think for me c and your husband, and by being cheerful give me every chance of curing you, and preserving you for him." To which she responded mildly and with touching deliberateness, " I am quite cheerful.

Don't think that the foreknowledge of what will soon happen depresses me. I have no anxiety for my children, for I leave them with their father and you and Emma ; and God will always be with them. I am quite happy to end my life ; and yet it has been a very happy Use." " It has been," said James, " a life that has made others happy." "And, James," she continued after a pause, not noticing his last words, but continuing in her own course of thoughts, " its happiness has come in a large measure from you. It is no wrong in me, now that I am so near the grave, to say that your tenderness for me and generous love have been unspeakably precious to me. To my husband I have been loyal in every act, word, thought; I have loved him as I vowed to love him and could not help loving him. But after him — a long way after him — you have been very dear to me.

In after years, James, if anything should happen to him, so as to deprive my children of his care, you will be their father." Her illness was of no long duration. Before Mr. Kingsford reached her side the Angel of Death was bending closely over her, and her powers were so far gone that she could neither respond to nor understand his words. But even in the dulness and anguish of last ex haustion her faint delirious speech demonstrated that she had a pleasant sense of the fitness and honourableness of her death. " I am rewarded and called a brave soldier," she murmured once, " and yet I have shed no blood." Her last words were, " I die in battle ; let Ger and Herrick have my medals." A few days later, and the earthly crust from which her immortal soul had flown was conveyed slowly across the country into the heart of the Border, and when the funeral carriage that bore it on this long homeward journey paused under cover of a pitchy night at the steps of the chief entrance to Coote Hall, a pale, dark-eyed, sorrow-laden girl was standing on the same spot where, so short a span of time before, she had received the last pressure given to her by her mother's hand.

Let those who are wise concerning the mysteries and puzzles of existence say why this gentle English lady was created to feel love and inspire it, to cause happiness and taste it, and then — to pass away at a time when her faculties for usefulness were as complete and active as ever — when her goodness and perfect amiability were more needful for the happiness and well-being of her husband, children, friends, than they had ever been — when her virtues, no less modest than sublime, were at length fully seen and rightly understood by her ordinary companions, who, in no unkindness, but in the pure selfishness and ignorance of egotism, had overlooked the noblest of them, even as we all, in the insolence and stupidity of fireside antago nism or fireside indifference, are wont to overlook the heroic qualities of our daily companions.

Chapter III

Mr. Felix Vincent writes to Lady Archer. RS. KINGSFORD was buried by the side of her husband's great-uncle in Coote Church, with appropriate solemnities directed by our old friend Mr. Meekintnpp, and in the presence of a numerous assembly of mourners, amongst whom were seen her husband's brothers, who during the few preceding years had been infrequent visitors at Coote Hall. It is worthy of remark that amongst the chil dren of the late Ambrose Kingsford, solicitor of Carlton Cross, an unequal division of family wealth had produced the jealousies, heart-burn ings and dissensions which are usually seen to result from inequitable wills in middle class families, whose members have not been trained by ancestral custom and the usage of their social equals to look with favour on a system which is often productive of discord and resentments in those patrician families — for whose preservation in their ancient dignities it is a serviceable device, and by whose junior branches it is consequently regarded with no universal sentiment of strong disapprobation.

At first Bessie's brothers and sister-in-law had striven to persuade themselves that the social distinction of having a rich brother, who lived in a county hall and enjoyed status amongst county families, was a definite, though perhaps inadequate compensation for the comparative poverty entailed upon them by that brother's exaltation. But this endeavour failed of success and altogether ceased in the course of years, when many cares together with many children fell to the said im pecunious brothers and sisters, who soon began to accuse the prosperous Hercules of coldness, and a wish to hold himself aloof from poor rela tions who did him no credit in the eyes of so ciety, and whom he had been educated to deem his inferiors. That Hercules Kingsford's con duct gave ground for these charges, this history does not venture to state; that amongst other secret meannesses he found place within his breast for a miserable sense of shame at the comparative insignificance of his father's children, no witness can positively affirm.