The Halletts: a country town chronicle [A novel.] By L. Keith

Front matter

THE HALLETTS a Countrp Coton Chronicle. II V LESLIE KEITH AUTHOR OF "A HURRICANE IN PETTICOATS," "THE CHILCOTES," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, Jlublisijns in ©rSinarg to Wfflajestg ttjt ©item. 1891. {All rights reserved.} CONTENTS OF VOL. III. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Two Marys ... ... ... i II. SlGHTSEEING ... ... ... 1 9 III. In the Corridor ... ... ... 46 IV. A Spoke in Lavy's Wheel ... 68 V. On Hospitable Intent ... ... 87 VI. A Sad Interruption ... ... 103 VII. The Sword descends ... ... 130 VIII. "And now it is Night" ... 149 IX. A Mysterious Visitor ... ... 174 X. On the Edge of the Mystery ... 194 XI. Why Owen was Silent ... ... 212 XII. Back from the Gates of Death 230 XIII. A Meeting at Hallett Place ... 244 XIV. Lavy's Revenge ... ... ... THE HALLETTS

Chapter I The

TWrO MARYS " She must go." "But she is so timid, and she is happy with us ; she is almost a daughter to me now Hetty is away." " I tell you she must go." Mr. Hallett spoke in that tone of finality a husband uses when he means to subjugate. " She refused to go to town with Hester, and I yielded then ; she must go to Spens ; there's to be no refusal this time. If I give in to this nonsensical pretence of timidity, do you know what people will say ? " " Does it matter what they say ?" vol. in. " I thought that was an argument that would certainly move you," said Mr. Hallett with undisguised sarcasm. " Isn't a woman's life made up of wondering what her neigh bours are thinking about her ? " " You are a little unjust, Andrew." " And you are a little obtuse, my dear," responded the lawyer dryly.

" Can't you see that our townsfolk will at once con clude that we are keeping the heiress for our son ?" " Would it displease you if Andrew wished to marry her ? " Certainly Mrs. Hallett was a little obtuse, and this was one of the moments when her unsuspecting simplicity was a trifle incon venient. A woman of a more mundane type would have grasped the situation at once, and saved her husband from the necessity of explaining that it was not the marriage he objected to, but the construction the world was likely to put on his apparent fostering of it. It was this lack of tact on her part that gave an added acidity to his words. No one likes to be forced to unclothe his motives and present them with an affronting nakedness, stripped of that drapery of sophistry that makes them so fair to one's own seeming.

Andrew might win the heiress, if she were the heiress ; but while her future remained shrouded in uncertainty, she was to have every opportunity of deliberate choice — it was to be a fair field for all comers. Perhaps he knew that he ran little risk when he made this magnanimous resolve, perhaps he knew that his wife knew it too — he saved himself at least from the embarrass ment of an explanation by an excess of dogmatism that left his wishes on the question of Andrew's hopes open to conjecture. " I've passed my word to Lady Hemming way that she should go, and you must manage it, Mary. I should not have thought it a very difficult matter to persuade her. If she wants new clothes, you can see to that, I suppose. Get Hester to send her down some things from town. But gowns or no gowns, she must be ready to go to Spens on Tuesday."

"She will go when she knows it is your wish, but I'm afraid she won't enjoy it." "She will get on well enough. She has been here too long." " But she may come back ?" " She must come back," said Mr. Hallett, with a frown of impatience, "unless she will consent to live at Hallett's — which she ought to do — or go to town till March." " Or unless Sir James falls in love with her," said Mary, with an attempt at playful ness. Mr. Hallett got up and stood with his back to the fire. He looked at his wife with an impenetrable glance. "It would be a very suitable arrangement for Sir James," he said quietly, "and if he likes to take the risk, he stands a fair chance to win." Mary said no more. Perhaps she would not have said so much if in her heart of hearts she had not known that Sir James's chances were practically non-existent.

Another had stepped in before him and stormed the easily-conquered fortress. Dur ing those weeks of Hester's absence the two' women had been drawn very close together by a hundred shared interests. Circum stances had made Mary Kelynge the inheritor of Hester's little home duties; and put, as it were, upon her mettle, she developed quite a respectable talent for dusting and the minor arts of housekeeping. But it was in those long afternoons over needlework, that fill so large a part of a woman's programme in the country, that Mary chiefly shone. Not that she was a brilliant conversationalist, or ever contributed anything that had the most modest pretension towards originality. A clever talker would have scared Mary Hallett, who was one of the sweet old-fashioned women who find a perennial flow of interest in the commonplaces of life, and never meddle with its abstruser aspects.

The two of them, as they plied industrious needles, spoke endlessly of Hester, discussed her letters and the little triumphs that she allowed to peep out in them ; pleased them selves with conjectures about the gentlemen who seemed so frequently to share the tea in Princess Mansions ; and settled to their own satisfaction in what particular dress Hester received their devotion. From Hester it was very easy, for the mother at least, to slip away to Andrew ; and here Mary Kelynge showed herself surpris ingly docile in following the other's lead. How they talked of that young man, or rather how one of them talked and the other listened ! What anecdotes of his babyhood and his boyhood there were to relate, and what a hero he seemed in one pair of fond and foolish eyes ! No wonder that the mother, with that quickness of perception the dullest woman has for a hint of a love story, very soon perceived Mary's poor little secret.

" 1 never told you," cried Mary, faltering and frightened, her heart going pit-a-pat as she pictured her lover's displeasure at the disclosure — " I never told you ! " " My dear, you told me months ago," cried Mrs. Hallett, delighted at her own shrewd jiess. " Do you think I have no eyes ? " " Then you are not displeased ? " asked Mary timidly. " Displeased ! " cried Mrs. Hallett ; and then the women embraced as women will for any reason or for no reason in the world. Mary Kelynge, it will be seen, was no longer plain or stupid or uninteresting in this other Mary's eyes. She had already been taken to that kind bosom, and held her place there as a child. To love the son was a sure passport to the mother's heart ; to be Andrew's choice was to be without blemish ; and the girl he held worthy to be his wife was made welcome to that large store of tenderness without a hindering scruple.

The one drawback to Mrs. Hallett's satisfaction was the silence Mary imposed with a frightened appeal that was not to be resisted. Mary Hallett's transparent honesty of nature made any departure from strict candour difficult to her, and to be burdened with a secret, even of her own finding out, was oppressive. She would have liked to talk it over with her husband in that idle half-hour over the bedroom fire when a dressing-gown and slippers made confidences seem easier ; she would have liked — let no one despise her for it — to have set agoing those preparations that loom so large in a woman's thoughts about marriage. Already she had furtively visited her linen-closet, and spent a happy morning selecting a " plenish ing" from its abundant riches. She sighed as she locked the door again and left the blameless piles of snowy damask to the lavender-scented darkness.

If she could have obeyed her honest impulse she would have summoned her friends to one of those afternoon tea-drinkings which so cheerfully stimulate utterance, and have offered Mary up to the congratulations of Melchisford. It was hard to deny herself this little triumph, harder still to maintain a strict reserve in those letters which Hester received almost daily in Princess Mansions ; but Mary's face expressed such an abject terror at the first hint of disclosure that it was not to be thought of. " Andrew would be so displeased," she said. " Dear, dear Mrs. Hallett, don't let him find out that I have told you ! It frightens me when I think of his anger. He so dislikes the thought of people talking." " You didn't tell me, dear ; I found it out for myself," said Mrs. Hallett, with a reviving pleasure in her own shrewdness.

" And I dare say it is silly to want to talk about things that interest us ; men are superior to that weakness. You shall tell your story in your own way and at your own time, but you must not be sorry that I have guessed it, because it makes me glad." " No," said Mary, with an honest delight glowing in her homely countenance, "and it is so nice, because we can talk about it ; there's no harm in that ! " So to kiss Andrew a little more tenderly in her nightly and her morning greetings and to put a new sort of cheerfulness in her letters to Hester were all the mother could permit herself. For the rest, she had a very wholesome awe of that sleeping displeasure that is so easily wakened in the heart of a husband, or even of a lover, when he is of the masterful type. She was a subscriber to the doctrine of wifely subjugation that finds so few supporters in these days of liberty and equality, and clung to the innocent belief that men are " born superior."

But when it came to be a question of despatching Mary to Spens she could at least send her away without a pang of dread over the baronet's superior fascinations. Mary cried feebly when her sentence of exile was pronounced. Tears were the expression her emotion took on all occasions, but they seemed natural enough to Mary Hallett. " I shall miss my new dear daughter sadly," she said, and as she spoke she had a vision of those other unmended cares that would flock in to trouble her peace when Mary and this charming love topic were banished. " But for you, dear, it will be a little change." " I shall hate it, you know I shall," cried Mary, the tears dribbling anew. " I shall feel miserable, and I dare say," she added with humility, " I shall disgrace myself. Lady Hemmingway is so grand, she frightens me."

"She is not grand at home, from what I hear. She sees to everything, I am told — skims the milk and collects the eggs, and weighs the meat, just like anybody else," said Mrs. Hallett, who shared the popular demand that a baronet's widow should be a little different from other people. " She will take you about with her ; and Sir James — I don't think you need be afraid of him." There was even a faint flavour of contempt in this dismissal of the excellent baronet. "Oh, but I am; he is worse than his mother. When he talks it is like some one speaking out of a book, and you know I am not clever ; and it always makes my head feel queer to be talked to like that, and he and his mother will think me a fool ! " " Well, dear," said Mrs. Hallett, wishing to be consoling, " it doesn't much matter, does it, what they think, since there is one person who loves you without wishing you to be clever ?

I am not clever, either, Mary, but I have had a great deal of love in my life." " Ah, but you are pretty," said Mary with a pang ; " if I had been pretty or clever I could better have understood how Andrew stooped to me ; but to be only rich, and perhaps not even that !" " You are good. I am glad my son was wise enough to choose goodness/' said the simple creature ; " it is the only thing that counts in such a venture." " But I feel as if something were sure to happen if I go away." " Nothing will happen ; nothing at least that will hurt you," said Mrs. Hallett, with a passing mental reference to the wounds she herself might suffer ; " and a little separation is very wholesome, even for lovers. You can write to each other," she said, romantic ally picturing Andrew and Mary burning the midnight oil in those endless written confidences that lovers find needful to their happiness, and secretly resolving that Andrew should have a plentiful store of candles.

" And, Mary dear, letters are a bit of one's love story that should never be missed out : they are treasures for always. I have very few, because my husband and I lived opposite each other all our lives and we were scarcely ever separated ; but I have a little bundle tied up in my desk, and I read them sometimes when — when I feel sad or dull " — she faltered, blushing a delicate vivid pink — "but no one else shall ever read them. I should like them buried with me." But the prospect of a correspondence scarcely consoled Mary, who was no readier with her pen than with her tongue, and who had, if the truth must be told, no very close acquaintance with the laws either of grammar or spelling ; and it was almost a relief to her when Andrew said with prompt decision that there was to be no writing of letters.

Andrew junior was an embryo lawyer, and he knew the risks of written vows. " What would be the sense of writing," he said, " unless you want to take all Melchisford into our confidence ? I shall see you some times, I suppose ? " " Oh, I hope so," said Mary, the water works beginning again. " There, don't cry, my dear girl," said Andrew, who had a masculine aversion from tears. " You don't suppose I'm going to hand you over as a present to Sir James ? " " I hate Sir James ! I shall never speak to him." " Oh," said Andrew, with tolerance, " he'll talk to you, and that will please him quite as well. I can't come to Spens, you know." " Can't you ? " Her tone was wistful. " No," he said sharply. " Hemmingway and I are civil when we meet, but we don't hit it off. He has never forgiven me — a — um — well, never mind, a little joke I played off on him at Peter's ; and besides, he's such a confounded prig — I couldn't stand him for half an evening."

Mary naturally looked as if she thought he might come to Spens on her account, and Andrew was quick to interpret her thought. " Besides, you know, it would be just a formal ' how d'ye do ' between us, if I did come," he said; "we couldn't venture on anything more confidential with that old cat looking on. No, we must meet somewhere else — outside, or at Hallett's — that would be best and safest. I shall be riding often over there on business, and you must be sharp, Mary, and make some excuse for going there without any of the Hemmingway lot. You can invent some pretext, I suppose — about a gown, or a book, or a visit to Mrs. Carter, or something ? I'll wait for you every Wednesday as the end of the long gallery at three sharp." He had been about to appoint the library as their trysting place, but the remembrance of another interview there checked him.

" Oh, will you really do that ? Yes, I will come," said Mary, humbly grateful for this attention on her lover's part, and seeling that her romance was at last about to begin. " I'll try to be very clever." " Don't be too clever," said Andrew, with a THE TW70 MARYS. 17 kind os good-natured irony, " or your hostess may suspect you, and offer you her company." " I am more likely to be too stupid," said Mary humbly. Perhaps she had a lurking hope that he would contradict her, but he did not. " If — if I can't come you won't forget me ? " she said timidly. " It will seem so strange to be without you." " No fear of that. I ought rather to be afraid that you will put Hemmingway in my place." " Oh, Andrew ! " "Well, well, we must, trusteach other," he said. He felt that he could trust her at least ; and perhaps the certainty of her unalterable devotion robbed it of such charm as it might otherwise have had.

It was with an effort that he summoned a more loverlike mood, and her timid pleasure woke in him something that was perilously near contempt. " Poor soul, how awfully she is bound up in me!" was his first thought ; but his most VOL. III. 4° abiding feeling was a half injured sense of her plainness. His task would have been so much easier if she had been pretty. Her tears had no potential power over him, even though they flowed for him ; he only noticed that they had reddened and swelled her eyelids, and blotched a complexion that could ill afford it. And even his kindness was lofty, and touched with that superiority with which one shows goodwill to an inferior animal. He was sure of her now ; he was almost as good as married to her ; there was scarce a chance that his plans should mis carry. And with a man of his fibre it was inevitable that having made his purchase, he should immediately begin to cheapen it

Chapter II Sightseeing

Owen Prideaux little guessed how near to him lay the clue that would unravel the secret of his birth. Here were two men, each holding certain information, and each baffled for want of the knowledge the other possessed — each interested in the same matter, and neither dreaming that the other had a stake in the business, and could have supplied the missing link. Hester, too, who had taken so sentimental an interest in the lost heir, and had so ardently longed for his recovery, was daily in his company and never suspected it. Ought she to have divined, by some secret SIGHTSEEING. instinct, that Owen Prideaux was no other than Avisia Hallett's son ? If she failed in insight it was not for lack of opportunity ; but it must be remembered that to her, as to the rest of the world, he was Captain Prideaux's son.

He had a father already, the dearest and most delightful of fathers ; and knowing this, and being often in the Captain's company, and more drawn to him day by day, was it likely she should go out of her way to provide the younger man with a romantic and altogether improbable history ? There was nothing in the relations of the two men to make her dream that they shared no common blood ; on the contrary, there was everything to prove that the kinship was real — love and trust on both sides, and a comradeship that was a revelation to her. There was no such tie between Andrew and his father ; and she owned to herself, with a pang, that they had somehow missed the secret of this good fellowship. Besides, if the whole truth must be honestly SIGHTSEEING. 21 disclosed, Hester's interest in the missing man had a little waned.

Was it because some newer interest was taking its place ? Who can tell ? Certain it is that when Dot wrote a melancholy little note to say that Tom had been sent off on business for his firm — all the way to Sweden, too, in the midst of the wintry weather, to inquire after a missing grain cargo — and that consequently the important meeting already planned must be deferred till his return, Hester bore the news with surprising equani mity. She ran off to Bayswater at once, and was admitted and allowed to climb upstairs to the little bedroom, where Dot followed her, but the few moments the friends dared snatch betwixt the governess's duties were all spent by Hester in comforting Dot for her lover's absence. She seemed to have forgotten wholly that he had tidings for her which must wait, for Dot was still determined that Tom and Will — poor Will ! — must be the historians.

Hetty had forgotten all this, SIGHTSEEING. and was only consolatory and sympathetic, and anxious to brace and cheer her little friend. Even when Dot's rare holiday after noon came round, and she spent it in Princess Mansions, she had no difficulty in guarding her secret. If she half hoped that Hester would press her for particulars of Tom's great discovery, and give her an opportunity of hinting at his cleverness and his self denial, his disinterestedness and all his other shining virtues, she was disappointed. Hester was kind and charming, and more beautiful than ever ; but she was not curious. The " Frank " of whom the girls had chatted so often, weaving so many thrilling possibilities about his name, and providing him liberally with adventures, was never once mentioned by her. Dot wondered, and was a little hurt, per haps ; but when a young man walked into Mrs. Chester's drawing-room as if he were very much at home there, and with an air SIGHTSEEING. 23 that showed clearly that he liked better to be there than in any other place — when she saw the joy in his eyes and the timid answer ing joy dawning in another pair of eyes — Dot forgave her friend's indifference.

The young woman made her own inferences, and possibly they were justified. It must indeed be allowed that she was in a far more favour able position than the critical reader to judge the situation. Had she not herself ex perienced all the pangs, the chills and fever heats, of that disease from which Hester was supposed to be suffering ? That was per haps why Dot hugged her friend so warmly when she went to the bedroom to tie on her bonnet at night, and why she said — appar ently apropos of nothing — that she was quite convinced now that Tom's news could wait, and that it was only poor Will who would be disappointed by the delay. Hester blushed and looked very guilty. " Mrs. Chester must ask Will to dinner," she said, with downcast eyes. SIGHTSEEING. " Better not," said Dot gently, and Hester blushed again and did not press the point.

And so because Tom's firm required his services at this particular date, and because for one reason or another Hester's interest in Melchisford affairs had grown a trifle dulled, the mystery which was no mystery remained unsolved, and Owen Prideaux, by turns tra gically gloomy and unnaturally sanguine, and Andrew Hallett was more and more certain that fortune meant to befriend him and to throw her choicest portion into his lap. So the Fates spun the threads of these young lives and looped and interwove their lots, they all the while unconscious of the links that drew them together. The mild gaieties which Margaret had prepared for her guest now occupied most of the ladies' -time, and made the days pass very pleasantly. They took to the sights of the town the simple readiness to be pleased of country SIGHTSEEING. 25 folk, and were as conscientious in their quest of marvels as if they had been in Rome or Athens.

On most days they had an escort, for it is very well known that there are many places in London to which ladies cannot go alone — or where at least they are the better for male protection. Margaret's little victoria held three very comfortably, even though the third had rather long legs to tuck away. What cared he that the seat was narrow ? How obligingly he squeezed himself into the limited space, and what a fondness he suddenly had for driving — which he had always professed to hate — so long as two kind faces beamed opposite him ! One of them, he thought, bloomed like a beautiful pale flower rising out of its sheath of furs, the other had smiled upon him ever since he could remember — for Margaret had forgiven Owen that imaginary offence of his and had taken him back to favour when, about a week after the dinner at Chelsea, he SIGHTSEEING. had called at Princess Mansions.

He had gone reluctantly enough, still with that un conquered soreness that had so strangely beset him on the ni°sht when he first saw Hester ; but the ladies were at home, and received him with so much kindness that his moodiness insensibly melted away, and he found himself talking with the old ease and readiness. Margaret had many tender inquiries to make about the Captain. Was his foot really better ? and had he tried the remedies she had sent ? Owen confessed with a laugh that the patient had been rather refractory, and that he had only yielded before the authority ot the new physician. " Dr. Margaret must be obeyed," said the Captain. " When a lady commands, it is a privilege to submit." " Ah," said Margaret, with a simple de light, " I knew that lotion would cure him — it never fails.

Hester, you must take the SIGHTSEEING, 27 prescription home with you ; you will find it a treasure." Hester promised with a smile to arm her self with this invaluable remedy, and to under take the cure of all the wounds and bruises in Melchisford, "for if it has cured Captain Prideaux," she said very prettily to Owen, " it deserves a good word from everybody." " Yes," aid Owen, " and the very first visit he pays is to be one of thanks to his kind friends here." Hester had done nothing to hasten the Captain's recovery, and yet Owen looked and spoke as if all the gratitude belonged to her. She had not even gone to sing to him, as he was not slow to remind her. " I will eo, if he would like it," she said shyly. " I know he would like it ; he has been talking of your music." After a consultation with Margaret, she settled that they might go, possibly even on the following day.

SIGHTSEEING. " We are going to the Zoo, Owen," she said, looking at the young man with quite a severe air ; " of course you despise the Zoo, so we must not ask you to go with us. You will be at your literary club, no doubt, dis cussing high matters with other geniuses." But thus challenged, Prideaux cried out that he had longed for years to go to the Zoo. " I am pining to revive my early impres sions," he said ; " I haven't been there since I was in petticoats. You held my hand, Margaret, lest the lions should frighten me ; you were a beautiful young lady, and you modestly hid your blushes in the depths of a poke bonnet tied with yellow ribbons." " I never wore yellow in my life," cried Margaret, the woman in her roused to remonstrance ; " and poke bonnets, my dear boy, went out before you were born.

And as for being beautiful, that I never was." Her tones gathered severity. " That you always were and will be to me," SIGHTSEEING. 29 he said, with so much sincere kindness and such an absence of flippancy that she was appeased at once. " Well, if you would really like to go, we might make room for you, might we not, Hester? — that is, if you have nothing better to do." " I have nothing half so, g-ood to do. The Athenæum hasn't elected me yet," he said, with smiling irony, " and my ' literary club,' as you call it, is an old City tavern, where one or two Grub Street hacks like myself meet for an hour." "Owen, Owen, I'm afraid you are very wicked," said Margaret gravely, to, whom, as to most women, the mention of a tavern carried suggestions of extreme dissipation. " Not at all ; our potations, like our chronicles, are of the mildest.

We of the pen can't afford to revel in such luxuries as you provide, Margaret, and we talk no heresies. We only meet to air our grievances and unite in abusing the publishers. And SIGHTSEEING. they are such a sleek and prosperous lot, they can very well stand it." This affair of the Zoo was the first of the excursions in which Mr. Owen Prideaux's share soon became a matter of course. Hester had professed a wish to see the lions fed, and Owen tore himself quite easily from his literary labours to join the ladies at lunch, and drive with them to Regent's Park after wards. He came in the gayest spirits, and was undoubtedly quite honest when he pro fessed himself to derive the liveliest enjoy ment from the spectacle of the captive beasts, big London's pet playthings. Age is after all a matter of temperament, and a fresher heart may beat in the bosom of eighty than is sometimes to be found under the bodice or waistcoat of eighteen.