The Mistress of Tayne Court

Chapter I. Morning

The Mediterranean lay serene and calm under the sky of early morning. There was not a cloud or wreath of mist in the translucent atmosphere. The great peaks of the Berceau and rugged moun tains, which shut in Mentone from the north, stood out sharply defined against the clear sky. There was silence everywhere ; that hush before sunrise, which always seems like the quiet waiting for the advent of a king : the silence of expecta tion; the silence of a hope which is soon to be fulfilled — of faith that the promised good is sure, — of quietness and confidence that the " coming " will soon be the " come." The busy life of the Mentonese had not yet begun in the market-place and on the quay. The large hotels were wrapt in profound repose. There were no hasty steps along the corridors, no querulous sounds from electric bells, no weary replies by much-enduring waiters, to questions as to excursions, carriages, and yachts.

It was late in the season, for it was the first of May, the month of flowers, when the Mentonese hang out garlands from every window, and lay them at the feet of every wayside shrine. From the terraced gardens below the windows of the Belle Vue Hotel, in the East Bay, there came a mingling of sweet scents from orange blossoms and heliotrope, from scented geraniums and large Russian violets, indescribable and beautiful. The datura hung its long waxen flowers over the terrace ; the eucalyptus forgot to make its sharp rustle, for its branches were motionless. The garden might have been the garden of the enchanted palace, where the sleeping beauty lay in her deep slumber, for there was no sign of motion or activity anywhere. Just as the first golden shafts of sunlight were striking the bay, a quick step, as it sounded in the road below the Belle Vue Hotel, broke the silence.

A gentleman came hastily up the drive, and soon a bell sounded through the house. Morning. 3 Words were exchanged between the concierge and the new arrival. The waiter who had the care of the second floor was summoned, with " Monsieur desires to find Miss Lloyd's apartment. Louis, hasten then !" " Hasten !" exclaimed the gentleman ; " do you know here what haste means ? you are all as slow as if you were asleep." " Pardon, Monsieur, but it is common to be sleeping at scarcely more than four in the morning. Do you desire a room?" " I desire to see my daughter. 1 am just arrived from Marseilles. I came from Singapore in one of the Messagerie steamers. If you don't under stand my English, say so ; I can speak French." " Pardon, Monsieur, I understand parfaitement ; but " And Louis, a man given to some histrionic effects in his manner of speaking, placed his hand on his heart.

" Pardon, Monsieur ; Mees Lloyd is perhaps sleeping ; she has been plunged in grief. Madame was buried in the cemetery " " Stop !" exclaimed Mr. Lloyd ; " you do not mean to tell me — my wife — Mrs. Lloyd " " Departed this life. Ah, yes, Monsieur, on last Sunday. This is Friday ; the funeral was on Wednesday." j i — And who is with my daughter ?" " Monsieur the uncle arrived an hour before the funeral, and Mademoiselle has her bonne." " No one else ! Poor child, poor child !" " Mademoiselle is very composed, very quiet ; but I will get Monsieur his breakfast in his room, number 28, on the same floor as Mademoiselle, and then " The waiter had taken up Mr. Lloyd's travelling bag, and was preceding him up the first flight of stairs to the next floor, when, to the surprise of the alert Louis, a little figure clothed in black stood before him.

" Ah ! Mademoiselle, voici Monsieur votre pere." Her father ! Gwendoline's heart beat fast, and in another moment she stood face to face with Mr. Lloyd. It was a strange meeting between father and child. When Mr. Lloyd had last seen Gwen doline, she was scarcely seven years old. Her memory of him had been dim and hazy, and her mother did not often speak of him. The letters from the Straits Settlement arrived at stated intervals, but they were seldom long letters. Gwendoline had often watched her mother gently fold up a letter, and replace it in the Morning. 5 envelope with the yellow stamp, and sigh heavily. " Father is quite well," she would say, but seldom anything else ; nor would she make any reference to the contents of the letter. Mrs. Lloyd had never been strong, and by slow and sure degrees the insidious disease consumption, which saps the life and strength of so many, did its work in her.

She had tried many places in search ' of health — Cannes, San Remo, Alassio ; while in the summer she went ' to the higher grounds in the valleys of the Alpes Maritimes, and came down to the sea as the autumn drew near. Mentone had been the last resting-place, and the sad life, so long flickering fitfullv, now bright, now dim, had at last gone out very suddenly. Gwendoline thought her mother was asleep in her chair on that Sunday evening. She was asleep ; but it was the sleep which knows no waking. Cordelia, the bonne of whom Louis the waiter had spoken, telegraphed to Gwendoline's uncle, Dr. Elliott, her mother's brother. He had a large practice in a country town, and it had been some what inconvenient to him to answer the telegram in person ; but, moved with pity for his forlorn little niece, he had set off" at once, and arrived just in time for his sister's funeral.

It was known that Gwendoline's father was on his way to England, and he had, indeed, landed at Marseilles only a few days too late to see his wife again. Now he was standing face to face with his child, and a strange mixture of shyness and dis trust kept both for a moment motionless. " Father," Gwendoline said in a low voice. " Father, is it you at last ?" " My dear, this is a sad thing for you — very sad. Your poor mother — well " The two went together towards the door where Louis was awaiting them ; and then, as they entered, the waiter closed it, and father and daughter were left alone. There is always a sense of restraint and reserve when two people meet who ought to be very dear to each other, and yet feel that they are as strangers. Mr. Lloyd felt very uncomfortable ; he wished Gwendoline would cry, would speak, would do something.

But she stood quietly by the table ; and after the exchange of a kiss, which was not very warm on either side, they both seemed at a loss what to do or say next. Gwendoline was the first to speak. " Uncle Robert is here, father." " Ah, I am glad of that, for your sake." Morning. 7 " He was very kind to me, and so were Mr. and Mrs. Carey, and so was Miss Halliday." " That's right. I know no one now — none of your mother's friends ; we have been so long separated. She came out to Singapore, poor thing! some years ago, and had to return, as you know. I never could make it out ; a splendid climate — most people say there is no place to equal it ; but ■well, your poor mother hated it." " She was so ill while she was at Singapore ; you forget that, father." " No, no, I don't. Did she suffer much at last ?"

" Her cough hurt her much more lately. But last week she was pretty well ; she went out on the terrace — she did so love to sit there." " Dear, dear ! and then on Sunday she was gone." " Yes," Gwendoline said ; " and we were at church together in the morning. At last it was only like going to sleep. I was with her. There was no word of good-bye, no message. But she was ready— glad to go, except for my sake." Louis came in at this moment with a tray held aloft, after the graceful fashion of waiters in hotels like the Belle Vue, and was greatly surprised to find father and daughter talking quietly, with no emotion and no tears or cries. This calmness was extraordinary in Louis' eyes, and he was eloquent on the subject, as was also Elise, the head chambermaid. " To think of it ! When my mother lost our little sister, she wept and cried when I went home — she was like one distracted ; but these English, they think it is a sin to weep when their friends die.

They are like the stone figures in the cemetery. Ah, for myself, I do not understand it," and Elise flapped her brush along the balus trade of the stairs, yawned, and said she would fain have had another hour's sleep. " Except for my sake !" The words had a ring of deep pathos in them, but they passed un noticed. " Well, my dear, there is no need for my return to the East. Perhaps you know — or how should you know, for the news only reached me when I was leaving Singapore — that a place has been left me in Worcestershire — a place and a fortune, a very large fortune, by a distant connection of the family. So you see, my dear, you are an heiress. Dear, dear, if your poor mother could have lived to see it, she would have been pleased — for your sake. When I have consulted with Robert, then I will see you again ; and now, when I have had my breakfast, I think I shall take some rest.

I Morning. 9 hope you will go back to your room, my dear child ; you look very pale." Poor Gwendoline did indeed look pale and wan. She had gone through days of misery since Sunday. There had been a latent thought that when her father arrived she should have some one whose grief was as great as her own — one who could enter into her desolation and mourn with her. Her Uncle Robert had been very kind and sym pathetic ; but he went down to the table d'hote, and she heard him talking learnedly, as he paced up and down the terrace with a gentleman, about the last Egyptian discoveries. The sorrow for his sister's loss was a calm and gentle one, so to speak. He talked of her as " Poor Nesta," and said that she, Gwendoline, must remember what a happy change it was for her mother, and try to believe that it was all for the best that God had taken her.

" Such vacant chaff", well meant for grain," did not touch Gwendoline's heart. It seemed to her that this sorrow was but little to her Uncle Robert, while to her it was everything. " Perhaps father will understand, and we shall be sorry for each other," she had thought ; " and I will comfort him, and he will comfort me." Then her father came, and the illusion vanished. That dry lump in Gwendoline's throat, that desperately repressed emotion, giving her the appearance of calmness, which was mistaken for in difference, seemed to be more intolerable as she softly closed her father's door and left him to the rest he needed. When she returned to her own room, she found Cordelia there. She was a quiet, self-possessed woman, who had learned that silence is oftener wiser than speech. She had been a faithful servant to her mistress, and had entered her service as her maid when she married, now eighteen years ago.

Through all changes and chances Cordelia had been true and steadfast ; but she was not a demon strative person, and was not given to express what she felt. She had shed many secret tears over her mistress's sad life, and had nursed her with devotion ; but she was not one of those old servants upon whose neck a desolate child like Gwendoline might weep out her sorrow in the way natural to youth. And when Gwendoline said, " Cordelia, my father is come," she answered : " So Elise told me, Miss Gwen ; it must be a trial for him to come just too late." " My father looks much older than I expected," Gwendoline said. " How long is it since you saw him, Cordelia?" Morning. 11 " When I went out to Singapore with my dear mistress." " That time when I was left with Aunt Helen ? Then it must be a very long time ago."

" Ten years," was Cordelia's reply. " I did not remember father at all till he spoke to me; then all seemed to come back to me." " I hope you will lie down now till eight o'clock, my dear," Cordelia said. " Let me help you to take off your dress : it is so heavy ; but it was a wonder we got it ready at all ;" and she smoothed out the crape, which, greatly against the wishes of Madame Beriot, the dressmaker who attended to the toilettes of the English ladies at Mentone, she had insisted must cover the whole skirt of Gwen doline's dress. Gwendoline allowed Cordelia to do as she liked, and, replacing the heavy black dress with a loose dressing-gown, she lay down again on the little white bed. " I can't think what made you get up so early and dress," Cordelia said ; " you want sleep and rest, not fatigue ;" and stooping down to kiss Gwendoline's forehead, she quietly left the room.

But sleep was far from those large wistful eyes, which were gazing out upon the sea, now one sparkling sheet of sapphire brightness. A fresh breeze had sprung up as the sun rose higher in the heavens, and the little wavelets glittered and danced, and the small white feluccas with their butterfly sails curtseyed over their crests. The eucalyptus rustled, and the palms whispered, and the swallows chattered on the roof of the chapel just below the hotel, that the time for flight was coming. The orange-trees waved their branches, and strewed flowers enough for many a bridal crown upon the ground. A pair of wandering quails sunned themselves on the terrace, and the snowy datura blossoms dropped into the road beneath. There was life and activity where there had been silence and* repose, and the beautiful world was all awake again with joy and gladness.

But the young heart, which had been heavy at nightfall, was still heavier now ; and Gwendoline, raising herself into a sitting position, clasped her hands tightly together, exclaiming : "What shall I do? Oh, mother, mother, if only I might have died too !" Then, springing off the bed, as if rest were impossible, Gwendo line put on the black dress again, and the black hat with its crape veil hanging at the back, and, opening her door very softly, went down the corridor, and, escaping notice, ran quickly down the steep drive to the road below. THE OLD TOWN OF MENTONE. Morning. 15 The spotless datura blossoms lay thick at her feet. She picked up a number of them, and hastened away along the road, past the Convent School, to the narrow street which led her straight into the old town of Mentone.

Here all was astir ; the dark-eyed women were at their house hold work, carrying linen on their heads to a stream, chattering in their high-pitched patois as they went. Old crones were minding the babies left at home, or doing a little cleaning in their houses. The old houses are high, and supported by the rude arches midway, so common in Italian towns, and which were intended for the security of the buildings in case of earthquakes. Gwendoline turned to the right, up some steep steps which brought her to the Place before the Cathedral, and then climbed up between the houses by irregular and very narrow paths to the cemetery. That city of the dead is set upon a hill at Mentone, and very high above the level of the sea. A white figure in the pure marble, which remains unstained in the clear atmosphere of the sunny South, but bears so ill the changing climate of the North, is a striking object at the very edge of the steep wall on the seaward side of the cemetery.

This figure had often attracted Gwendoline. It possessed a sort of fascination for her. She had often thought of it at night, looking out to the sea, watching for dawn : she could fancy even now that there was a smile of rejoicing in the radiance of sea and sky in that marble face, and she was glad that the grave she sought was near it. It was a heavy bit of climbing till the level ground was gained ; and when Gwendoline reached the newly made grave, she was breathless and exhausted. The wreaths and flowers placed there on the day of the funeral were withered. The burning sun had touched them, and they were now brown and faded. Gwendoline put them aside, and covered the space with the white datura blossoms. Then she sat down by them in that dumb voiceless sorrow which is so infinitely more pathetic than tears : and those persistent questions with which all mourners are more or less familiar, repeated themselves again and again, and demanded an answer.

Where was her mother then? Could she see her? Could she know what was the cold, icy weight at her heart ? Oh ! for only one word to say that she did know and did love her still ! How the soul troubled like this poor child's casts about for a sheet-anchor, drifts helplessly in the depth of an unspoken grief, and beats itself like Morning. 17 an imprisoned bird against its cage, as there is no answer, nor any message from the unseen world ! Gwendoline was nearly seventeen. She had read her Bible daily with her mother, attended the services of the Church in the various places where they had lived ; but her religion was as yet outside her ; and she had never made it the spring of daily life, and the inner joy of her heart with which no stranger can intermeddle. Her mother had never wished to make many friends, and had repelled rather than invited attentions from her country-women whom she met in hotels and pensions.

Gwendoline's society was all she cared for. She educated her by the help of a mistress here and a master there, and a few music lessons and drawing lessons, as the case might be. And Gwendoline was satisfied ; she had none of the joyousness of youth about her, but she was happy in her own way, and had believed up to that last moment that her mother would live, and perhaps get strong at last. The other inmates of the Belle Vue had taken a very different view of the case. The hotel friends Gwendoline had mentioned to her father had looked on the mother and daughter with deep sympathy. For they saw the mother was failing rapidly, and that the daughter was quite unconscious of her danger. Mr. and Mrs. Carey were a kind, comfortable pair, who had no children and no near ties. They lived abroad for health, as they thought, though amusement and variety were perhaps more strictly their reason.

Both husband and wife had come to render assistance to Gwendoline on that Sunday night ; and Miss Halliday, a lady who had often talked to Mrs. Lloyd on the terrace, and even paid her a visit in her own rooms, was full of sympathy. It had been a little disappointing to her, as to Mr. and Mrs. Carey, that Gwendoline made so faint a response. Her mother had never talked about her private affairs, and Gwendoline knew but little, and what she knew she kept to herself. Her father's position at Singapore was, she knew, a good one. Money came regularly, and the remittance was often larger than her mother needed. She had never known anything about economy, or that desperate struggle to make two ends meet which saps away the very foundation of domestic happiness. Her father supplied what was necessary — more than was necessary — and his letters came with regularity, if not often.

Her mother was silent about her two residences at Singapore, and only remarked Morning. 19 sometimes that the climate took all her strength out of her, and that she was simply an encumbrance to her husband. But she would say this without any great emotion, and Gwendoline had thought very little about her father, till the time drew near for his return. That return had brought with it nothing to cheer her. As we have seen, Gwendoline had thought that now, perhaps, there would be union in sorrow which would draw her close to her father with a bond never to be broken. But it did not seem likely. In the small alert man, with his sharp, jerky manner and cold exterior, she saw no sign of the loving father she had longed for. The faint suspicion, which had been scarcely more than a suspicion, that her father did not really love her mother, grew into a certainty now.

Thus, with the sense of a loss unshared, and a depth of grief unfathomed, Gwendoline's young heart seemed frozen within her. As she sat by her mother's grave, the loneliness of sorrow oppressed her. Presently she saw two figures, a mother and a child, each bearing flowers to a newly-made grave. The two clasped each other in a loving embrace, and mingled their tears together. Then came an old man and his son. They were English people, and Gwendoline's 2 — attitude of dejection struck them. They passed on to a grave at some distance, but returned and paused by poor Gwendoline. " My dear child," said the old man, " are you mourning for one you love ?" Gwendoline started up, and was turning away, when a hand gently laid on her shoulder seemed to stop her. " My dear, do you know anything of the com fort which is given us, concerning them that sleep ?

Them that sleep in Him He will surely bring to us and we to them at last ; for He is the Life, and the Resurrection to that life." Gwendoline turned up her woe-struck face to the speaker, and said simply, " I have lost my mother." "As one whom his mother comforts, so may God comfort you," was the reply. " I shall not forget to ask that you may find Him." Then Gwendoline, with a low " Thank you," went down the steep path, and was soon in the wide Place again and threading her way back through the narrow street to the East Bay.

Chapter II. Discussions

In spite of the melancholy errand which had brought Dr. Elliott to Mentone, it was not in him to be insensible to the variety it made from his life at Saintsbury. He was not unfeeling or cold hearted: indeed, the very reverse was the case; but though he had felt sincere sorrow for his sister's loss, and deep pity for the cold, silent grief of her only child, he could not help appreciating the attractions of so delightful a place as Mentone. " Yes," he thought, " I will make it Monday before I leave Mentone ; it will give the poor child a little longer respite, and also there may be a chance of Anthony's arrival. He is on his way, we know, and there can't be much delay. I dare say he is little prepared for what he will find here. Poor Nesta actually gone ! Yes, if Laura's letter is not imperative, I think I shall decidedly stay till Monday."

These thoughts were suddenly broken off by the opening of the door opposite, and the entrance ofa small, wiry man, with a quick, short step, and a keen, eager glance round the little tables, on each of which preparations were made for breakfast. Dr. Elliott started, rose, and exclaimed, — " Anthony ! I did not know you had arrived." Mr. Lloyd advanced, taking as many short steps as if he were performing a dancing chassee, and said, — ■ " I am very glad to see you, Robert ; it was kind of you to come — very kind. We — we are both, alas! too late." " Yes," said Dr. Elliott — " yes ; from all the late accounts I did not think poor Nesta would fight through much longer. When did you arrive ?" " This morning, early." " I was not told you had come. Cordelia should have sent for me." " Oh, no, no ; a pity to disturb you.

I have seen the child, Gwendoline. She looks very ill — quite colourless, and, poor thing ! heart-broken. I do not know what is to be done. It is natural to see a girl of that age give a hearty cry, but " The waiter here arrived with another little coffee-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin, and another plate of the " crescent rolls." Other parties Discussions. 23 arrived for breakfast, and the room filled. Mr. Lloyd had eaten, as we know, one breakfast in his own room two or three hours before, and yet he did not seem indisposed for a second. Dr. Ellott nibbled some fragments of toast, and emptied the last drops from his coffee-pot ; he was rather at a loss what to say next. At last Mr. Lloyd pushed back his chair on the parquet floor, and said, — " Shall we take a turn on the terrace, Elliott?

There are several things I should like to talk over." " Yes," Dr. Elliott said, " and one cannot be out too much in this weather. But we must be ware of the sun's heat ; it is very powerful here." Mr. Lloyd laughed. " Ah !" he said, " I know a little about heat in the tropics ; Singapore sun is a trifle hotter than Mentone sun." " Of course ; I forgot where you had passed your life ;" and then the two men went out upon the terrace, at the bottom of the garden, where they were sheltered from the sun amongst the orange trees. "You know," Mr. Lloyd began, " how circum stances have separated me from my poor dear wife. She could not live in Singapore. I was obliged to live there or thereabouts, for my business took me about in Cochin China, and I spent one year in Saigon — a place, I grant, where the English cannot live.

But you will do me the justice to say, that my wife and her child have never wanted for any thing suitable to their position in life. I think you said you arrived too late to see Nesta ?" " Only in time to see her buried," said Dr. Elliott shortly. " I have consulted with the doctor here, and he tells me that the weak action of the heart probably caused fatal syncope, which resulted from the over-fatigue of attending a service in th& church on Sunday morning." " What madness !" exclaimed Mr. Lloyd. " Poor thing ! that was always her weak point." " Rather her strong one," said Dr. Elliott sharply. He had never had much intercourse with his brother-in-law ; and, to use a common expres sion, on the occasions when they had met, no love had been lost between them. " Well," Mr. Lloyd went on, plucking a cluster of orange blossoms and putting it in his button hole — " I had decided to come to England, and leave the personal supervision of my business to my tried and trusted partner.

Being no longer young — for I am over sixty, though people say I look twenty years younger — I wished to retire, and I had accumulated a nice little fortune. My Discussions. 25 hope was to buy a tidy little place, and settle there, with my wife and child — in some southern county of England — the Isle of Wight, or Devon shire. All this was, however, changed on the very day of my sailing. My last letters received at Singapore brought me startling news. There is no need for me to look about for a place. Old Mr. Tonstal has left me Tayne Court, and all that is in it — to me and my heirs, he having no one to inherit after him." Dr. Elliott was fairly stunned with the news. The local interest which is so strong in those who have been born and brought up in one town or city, where their fathers have also been born and brought up before them, made the intelligence his brother-in-law communicated of double importance.

" Why, Tayne Court is not five miles from Saintsbury. Old Tonstal leave you his place ! What did he know of you ?" " Ah ! that is the question ; he knew little enough, but what he did know must have im pressed him favourably," Mr. Lloyd said with a smile, which was confined to his lips, for his eyes never smiled. "So," he said, rallying, "we shall be near neighbours, and my poor girl will have relations to help her on a little. How many children do you possess, Robert ?" " We have a large family — nine ;" and the doctor sighed. He felt he must go on working at a time when a little rest would be welcome. " But, Anthony," he said, " is there no lawful heir to Tayne Court ?" " I imagine no heir exists; and as the estate is not entailed, it would make but little difference — no difference. If the property is left to me, it is mine."