Thicker than Water

Front matter

LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET BY JAMES PAYN AUTHOR OF 'BY PROXY* 'HIGH SPIRITS* ETC. NEW EDITION LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1884 A 11 rights reserved TO GEORGE SMITH THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND JAMES PAYN CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. MRS. EECKETT ...... I II. A FRIEND OF THE HOUSE . . . . . 7 III. DEFIANCE ....... 16 IV. LEAP-YEAR . . . . . 26 V. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE . . . . -33 VI. TWO TO ONE . . . . . ■ ■ 37 VII. A FOOL'S PARADISE . . . . -44 VIII. MR. RENNIE'S INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . 50 IX. UNCLE AND NEPHEW . . . . 58 X. 'I SUPPOSE IT MUST BE " YES " ' . . . . 69 XI. THE SUBSTITUTE ... . . 78 XII. TWO WOMEN . . . . . . . 87 XIII. MRS. SOTHERAN . . . . . -96 XIV. BLACK TUESDAY . . . . . . 108 XV. FRIENDS IN NEED . . . . . . Il6 XVI.

THE PHILANTHROPIST. . . . 1 25 XVII. AN INTERRUPTED BARGAIN .... 131 XVIII. A DUMB ALLY. . . . . . . 139 XIX. THE SEMPITERNAL CLUB ..... I44 XX. ' TIDMAN'S ' . . . . . . . 151 XXI. A SYMPATHISER . . . . . . CONTEXTS. VIII CHAPTER PACE XXII. A DEVOTEE OF LITERATURE . . • • '73 XXIII. AN AUTOGRAPH COLLECTOR . . • • '82 XXIV. ONE FROM THE SHOULDER. . . • 19° XXV. THE WAGES OF TOIL . . ■ • '99 XXVI. A NEW POSITION . . . ■ ■ • 20(> XXVII. WHY DID SHE CRY? ..... 2X2 XXVIII. THE JOURNEY DOWN . . . . • 22t XXIX. COMING' HOME . . . ... . 229 XXX. OLD FRIENDS . . . • ■ • 23& XXXI. THE HAPPY FAMILY ..... 244 XXXII. THRUST AND PARRY . . . • ■ 253 XXXIII. IN MEMORIAM ...... 259 XXXIV. SUITORS . . . . .... 267 XXXV. THE ROMAN VILLA ..... 274 XXXVI. DISCORDANT ELEMENTS . . . . ■ 283 XXXVII. DR. BILDE ...... 292 XXXVIII.

AN EAVESDROPPER . . . . . • 3OO XXXIX. AN EXCITEMENT IN THE HAPPY FAMILY . . 307 XL. MR. RENNIE'S LITTLE MISTAKE . . . . 313 XLI. ' ENGAGED '...... 323 XLII. ROSE-COLOURED . . . . . 33 1 XLIII. CONSPIRATORS ...... 337 XLIV. PULLING THE TRIGGER . . . . . 343 XLV. THE INDICTMENT ..... 34S XLVI. SCARSDALE'S TESTIMONY . . . . . 355 XLVII. SUSPICION . . . . . . 360 XLVIII. 'IT CAN BUT COST ME A CLIENT' . . . 367 XLIX. A DISCOVERY ...... 373 L. AN EXPLOSION . . . . . . 378 LI. LAWYER AND CLIENT ..... 383 LII. SEVERED . . . . . . 389 LIII. THE DISPUTED WILL ..... 395 LIV. THE VERDICT . . . . . .

Chapter I. Mrs

BECKETT. It is two o'clock in the July afternoon, and on what the majority of Londoners, in spite of Geronimo's opinion to the contrary, consider the pleasantest day in the week, because it is a half-holiday. Geronimo's objection to Saturday was founded, the poet tells us, on the prolonged wear of his shirt ; but to the city toiler that is a small objection ; indeed the greatest of all Londoners, and one who worked the hardest (though not, it is true, unless he was obliged), has left it on record, through his biographer, that he did not like clean linen. Hyde Park is crowded with pleasure-seekers, but the Row is empty. The Upper Ten Thousand have gone home to lunch, the Over Two Millions have just dined. Beside the mile-long garden that extends from the Marble Arch to Apsley House, the ' swart mechanic ' lounges, pipe in mouth, admiringly ; he gazes at the glowing parterres of wondrous shape and hue, and wonders how ' them colour beds ' are made, and (especially) who pays for them.

He thinks how his Missis and the kids would enjoy the spectacle, and is half-inclined to fetch them ; but upon reflection, and finding his mouth a little dry, considers the morrow better adapted for their recreation, and, crossing to the other side of the road, drops into the public house in the mews. As he does so, he bestows, perhaps, a B glance at the stately pile at its corner, and expresses an opinion, mingled with tobacco juice, that ' the cove as lives there must must have a sight of money ' — in which he is quite correct. Of all the mansions in Park Lane, albeit there are some, although not many, larger, Beckett House gives the strongest impression to the passer-by not only of wealth, but, what is a very different thing (and much better), the possession of an abundance of ready money.

Just as on illumination nights we see the lines of some public edifice picked out with fire, so all the summer long the balconies of Beckett House show, tier on tier, their glowing lines of flowers. Under the large portico there is a miniature jungle of tropical foliage, and when at night the opened door gives a glimpse of the interior to the passing Peri, it seems to her an Eden indeed. Not even in winter does this shrine of Flora lack its gifts, for in the centre and on either wing are great conservatories, to which ' the time of roses ' is but a poetic figment, and May (for once) is happy in December's arms. Mrs. Beckett, the owner of this palace, has a passion for flowers, which her wealth enables her to indulge to the full. Nor is this the only proof of her good taste. She had once a handle to her name, but laid it aside by an act of voluntary abnegation.

Emperors and others have done the like before her, but a woman — never. Her first husband was Sir Robert Orr, a city knight, who left her an immense jointure and 'her ladyship.' He had never been remarkable for personal beauty, and unless in the sense of years — he was three times her age — could hardly have been called accomplished. It was a marriage of convenience ; but the old man had been kind to her in life and death, and she respected his memory. AVhen she married her second husband, John Beckett, the railway engineer, she dropped her ' ladyship ' ; Sir Robert had been intensely proud of the title, and she felt that it belonged to him. The law, of course, would have decided as much, but she might have retained it by courtesy. She was not a woman to parade her sentiments, and, having some sense of humour, was wont to account for this act of self-sacrifice upon moral grounds ; she did not think it respectable, she said, to figure with her MRS. BECKETT. 3 husband in the 'Morning Post' as Mr. Beckett and Lady Orr , she left that suspicious anomaly for the wives of bishops.

John Beckett had been a rich man, though he could not have measured purses with Sir Robert, and he had ten times his wits. He had not wasted them much on building bridges or hollowing tunnels out of the ' too solid earth '; he left such enduring monuments to scientific theorists, and applied the great powers of his mind — he called them, without the faintest consciousness of self-satire, its ' grasp ' — to contracts ; mostly in connection with coal. He took the same practical view of matrimony, which poor Lady Orr had never guessed, and for her part had wedded her second husband for love. It was unintelligible to her that a man of so much wealth should pant for more ; but he did so to his last breath. If he could have carried all his money (and hers) away with him — ' to melt,' or ' to begin the next world with ' — he would have done it and left her penniless.

As it was, he died suddenly — killed by a fall from his horse below her very windows — and intestate. Even when his scarce breathing body was lying in an upstair chamber, and she tending it with all wifely solicitude, she could not stifle a sense of coming enfranchisement after twenty-five years of slavery, or the consciousness that her Sir Robert had been the better man of the two. A woman of experience at least, if not of wisdom, was the present mistress of Beckett House ; with strong passions, but with a not ungenerous heart ; outspoken from the knowledge of her ' great possessions,' perhaps, as much as from natural frank ness , a warm friend and not a very bitter enemy ; and at the bottom of it all with a certain simplicity of character, of which her love for flowers was an example. She had loved them as Kitty Conway, the country doctor's daughter, when violets instead of camellias had been ' her only wear,' sweet-peas and wall-flowers the choicest ornaments of her little garden, and Park Lane to her unsophisticated mind like other lanes. ' Fat, fair, and forty,' she was wont to call herself at the date this story opens, and it was the truth ; but not the whole truth.

Fat she was and fair she was, but she was within a few years of fifty. Of course she was admirably preserved ; as the kings of old took infinite pains B that their bodies after death should not decay, so women do their best for themselves in that way while still in the flesh ; and Mrs. Beckett was as youthful as art and care could make her. In shadow and with the light behind her, persons of the other sex might have set her down as even less mature than she described herself to be. There would have been at least ten years' difference between their ' quotations ' — as poor Sir Robert would have called them — and that of her tiring maid. Five years she had had of gilded ease and freedom, since drunken, greedy, hard John Beckett had occupied his marble hall in Kensal Green — Sir Robert had a similar edifice of his own in Highgate cemetery toi she had too much good taste to mix their dust — and on the whole she had enjoyed them.

Far too well favoured by fortune, however, not to have her de tractors, she was whispered by some to be by no means averse to a third experiment in matrimony. ' There swam no goose so gray,' &c, they were wont to quote, and 'There was luck in odd numbers.' Gossips will say anything, and men delight in jokes against the fair sex. There is one about matrimony which was applied to the present case. A student of human nature once inquired of his grandmother (ætat 80) at what age females ceased to experience the tender passion. ' My dear boy,' she answered, rather tartly, ' you must ask somebody much older than I am.' There was even a rumour, not old enough to be a legend, that Mrs. Beckett had once sounded her con fidential man of business, Mr. Rennie, upon this subject. ' As you consult me as a friend,' he said — by which he meant gratuitously — ' my opinion, my dear madam, is not worth much ; but as to the remarriage of widows — in cases where they have thirty thousand pounds a year at their own disposal — I think it risky.' Mrs. Beckett sighed, for she remembered that even when she was but twenty she had been married for her money.

Still every man was not like John Beckett ; and how nice Sir Robert must have been when he was young. On the day on which our story opens, the widow was sit ting in her drawing-room with a novel in her hand, on which, however, she was not bestowing that close regard, I do not say MRS. BECKETT. 5 which such an agreeable description of literature has a right to expect, but even the commonest attention , her glance wandered with ill-concealed impatience over the top of her book to the gorgeous timepiece on the mantelpiece, the hands of which were travelling over gold and china towards two o'clock. Suddenly her fair face flushed crimson ; her eyes had met with another pair bound on the selfsame errand ; Miss Marvon, her young friend and ' companion,' was also watching the clock. ' Do you want your lunch, Mary ? ' inquired the lady of the house, with a very good imitation of a yawn. ' Not at all, thank you, Mrs. Beckett,' was the quiet reply, delivered in the gentlest and sweetest of tones.

It was not her dependent position that gave honey to her speech ; it was natural to Mary Marvon to be sweet and gentle to everybody, but especially to those who were kind to her ; and Mrs. Beckett had been very kind. The jewels on the girl's shapely wrist, the lace about her dainty neck, the very dress which fitted her slight but graceful figure with such completeness, were all Mrs. Beckett's gifts. Nay, in her dark-brown hair blushed a scarlet flower, which Mrs. Beckett, in her characteristic admiration for it, had placed there with her own hands that morning, as being the fittest setting for such a floral jewel. If anything were wanting to show how smooth and even was the social ground on which the two women stood, notwithstanding the conventional relation between them, it was found in the next words that Mrs. Beckett spoke.

As a rule ladies do not think it worth while to excuse themselves to their hired companions for this or that, whereas our widow paid hers the compliment of telling a ' tarradiddle,' or white lie, in order to explain her recent interest in the timepiece. ' I was thinking,' she said, ' what a want of originality and sense of appropriateness there must be in clockmakers, since they all represent the progress of Time by hands, as if he was an acrobat. If legs were too unpoetical or indelicate, they might at least use wings.' ' It is only with the exceptionally fortunate, however,' returned Mary, smiling, ' that Time moves on wings.' ' I doubt whether people are always the happier for that,' observed Mrs. Beckett. ' Perhaps not,' assented Mary. ' I should think those lives are the most enviable which are passed smoothly and equably, but not at eagle speed.' ' That was not quite what I had in my mind,' returned the widow, rising and looking thoughtfully through the open win dow. ' I was thinking that when Time seems to drag, because of our expectations, it is often better for us that it should drag on, and that they should remain without fulfilment.

The secret of happiness in this world ' — those three last words were mere garnish, and suited with her voice and manner no better than a flower made of a carrot or a turnip with some delicate entre'e — ' is not to expect, but to make the best of what we have- ■ Was not that the front-door bell ? ' The last observation was by no means uttered in the same philosophic tone as the rest, and a faint red suffused the widow's cheeks. The colour too came into Mary Marvon's face, which was, however, averted from her patroness, as she answered, ' I think so.' Then they remained silent. If they were listening for a step upon the stair they must have been very sanguine, or else in possession of the gifts of Fine Ear in the fairy tale ; for three-pile carpets are not good conductors of sound. If they could have seen what was going on below stairs they would have seen this : a young man of four-and-twenty or so, bright eyedand fresh-complexioned, but with that subdued air which betokens dry humour rather than that of the sparkling kind, had been admitted by the hall porter, and introduced by the good offices of two tall footmen to the butler, Harris.

This personage preceded him up the staircase with much solemnity, but on the landing paused, perceiving that the visitor was not following him. • All right, my man,' said a cheerful voice from below, ' I will be with you at the finish, but I really cannot go your pace.' Then he came up three steps at a bound, just in time to be announced at the drawing-room door as 'Mr. Sotheran.' MRS. BECKETT. 7 ' Oh, it's you, is it, Charley ? ' observed the widow in a tone of undisguised disappointment. 'Well, yes, in default of a better it's poor me. Were you expecting an hereditary prince, or what ? ' ' Lunch ! ' said Mrs. Beckett, sharply. Whether this was a reply to his question or an order to Harris seemed doubtful ; but the butler took it in the latter sense. ' It is served,' he said, ' me lady.' The title he used seemed out of place , but the fact was, though Mrs. Beckett had voluntarily descended in the social scale, her servants had objected to that arrangement.

The old ones had been permitted after her second marriage to address her by the old phrase, which they pretended they could not forget, while the new ones adopted it readily enough as giving importance to their office. Mrs. Beckett had made certain efforts to put a stop to it, and with this very man — ' Remember I am not " my lady," Harris.' ' Very good, me lady — I mean ma'am — but having always been with persons of title, if you will please to remember, it is difficult, in your ladyship's presence too ' (Harris was astute and would have made an excellent ambassador, except perhaps to the United States), 'not to say "me lady." ' And I think Mrs. Beckett rather liked a practice which reminded the world how much she had given up, and from the noblest motives.

Chapter II

A FRIEND OF THE HOUSE. It was hard upon ' Charley ' that his hostess had made it manifest she would have preferred to welcome somebody else ; but what he felt much more was, that Miss Marvon also received him with a similar lack of enthusiasm. 'You are early to-day,' she said, not indeed without a pleasant smile, but that belonged to her, and could no more be dispensed with than the Austrian lip or the Caucasian nose by their hereditary wearers : ' I am afraid you are defrauding the revenue.' 'And the tax-payers,' added Mrs. Beckett, 'which is me.' ' And this it is to be in a Government office ! ' exclaimed the young fellow, clasping his hands despairingly ; ' to rise — but only by ten pounds a year — with the lark, to work like a horse at a mill-wheel, and if one shares a half-holiday with the poorest, and gets away from one's house of toil upon a Saturday ' ' Come, take Mary's arm, sir,' interrupted the widow, ' and lead her downstairs No, my dear ' (for Mary had modestly drawn back) — ' I will not inflict myself upon him, and he hasn't the strength for it.

The duties of the young gentlemen in the Probate Office are too overwhelming.' ' No one can say we have not the Will,' he began implor ingly. ' Be quiet, sir ; you learn nothing but jokes there : Mary, I insist.' Charley drew the young lady's arm within his own, and with a murmur, ' How cruel she is to me ! ' led the way to the dining-room. From the above it may be gathered that, though she had behaved to him so scornfully, Mr. Charles Sotheran was by no means looked on with disfavour by the lady of the house ; and indeed she treated none of his sex with such familiarity. His mother was a clergyman's widow who had been her school friend, and to whom she was still the ' Kitty ' of thirtyyears ago. She had promised her, when the boy came up to town, that Beckett House should be a home to him, and he came in and out of it, as he himself expressed it, like a cat for whom a hole has been cut in the door.

It was pleasant to see the expression of the widow's eyes as she followed the pair down stairs ; a woman would have translated it at once. ' I intend these two young people to be one, and a very pretty pair they'll make. ' Flesh and blood, however, are not so easy to match as Dresden china, and though Mrs. Beckett couldn't see it, or rather would not, there was an obstacle to her good intentions. Though one of the young people was willing enough to meet her views, the other was not. A Scotch lady, whose daughter was recently married, was asked by an old friend whether she might congratulate her upon the event. 'Yes, yes,' she answered, ' upon the whole it is very satisfactory ; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then there's always a something.' Mrs. Beckett took a similar view ; she was aware that Mary Marvon had no love for Charley, but that circumstance did not deter her from pursuing her plan.

When one has thirty thousand a year the will is strong. There was ' always a something,' she said to herself, and, though her protegee might feel no great affection for the young man at present, it would surely come in time. She knew from her own case that a marriage could be happy without much previous attachment on the lady's part; and, alas ! could be unhappy with it. Mary Marvon did not hate her possible gudeman j on the contrary, she liked him very much, except when he showed symptoms of liking her too well, when she always put a stop to his advances. This state of affairs puzzled her patroness not a little. She would have suspected any other girl in Mary's position of ' looking a little higher ' than at a clerk in the Probate Office, especially as she might have looked with success, for Miss Marvon's beauty and accomplishments, and perhaps the consciousness that she was the friend and protegee of a millionaire without a relative, had already brought more than one eligible suitor to her feet ; but Mrs. Beckett knew Mary too well to impute any such motive to her.

The girl was of a proud and independent spirit, very susceptible to kindness, but of a nature that would have resented patronage from an archangel. The wealth that surrounded her, notwithstanding that until the last few months she had been altogether unaccustomed to it, affected her no more than summer sunshine. She admitted to herself that it was pleasant and enjoyable enough, but if it came on to rain or even to snow, there were ways of passing one's existence within doors ; she had resources of her own and was independent of the weather. These, however, were not material resources ; she had no patrimony, indeed she had never known either father or mother. The one had died six months before she saw the light, and the other when she was but an infant. Mrs. So theran, who had been her mother's friend, had put her out to nurse, educated, and in a manner adopted her.

But though she had shown her every kindness, and taken the utmost care in the selection of her home as regarded her well-being and comfort, that home had been a school. Though Mrs. Sotheran had often come to see her, she had never taken the orphan to her own house. The reason she had given for this was the state of her health, which indeed was delicate enough, the number of her family, and the calls upon her time made by an invalid husband ; but the circumstance, taken in connection with the undoubted affection Mrs. Sotheran entertained for her, had been to Mary always unaccountable, and, of late years, and since she had begun to think for herself, even mysterious. Mr. Sotheran had now long been dead, the chil dren (of whom Charley was the youngest) had followed their father to the grave, and there was plenty of room in the cottage at Letcombe Dottrell for Mary Marvon.

Yet she had never been invited thither. Mary's school, although not a fashionable one, had been a high-class establishment. She had been well treated, well brought up, and had wanted for nothing. Mrs. Sotheran's explanation of the matter was that only a moderate sum had been placed in her hands as provision for the orphan, and that it had been Mrs. Marvon's dying wish that it should be ex pended so as to shield her daughter's youth from the pangs and pains of poverty (from which she had herself suffered bitterly), and to fit her as best might be for the battle of life. There was not enough for Mary to live upon, but there was enough to keep her in comfort till she could provide for her own maintenance. A few hundred pounds, as Mary vaguely under stood, was all that was left to her when, at eighteen years of age, she had exchanged the modest comfort of Minerva Seminary, Harrow-gate, for the splendours of Beckett House.

To Mrs. Sotheran she owed — as she owed everything else — her present position, and for this she was more grateful to her than for all the rest. Not because it had opened for her the door of luxury, but for its introduction to one who had proved herself a gentle, considerate, and loving friend. Only on one subject had Mrs. Beckett and her young companion disagreed since the latter had come to share her home ; namely, as regarded the young gentleman who was now escorting Mary down to luncheon. That Mr. Charles Sotheran was good looking, good-tempered, agreeable, and very much a gentleman, Mary admitted ; she had not a word to say against him except as a lover. When Mrs. Beckett had gone on to hint that, though Charley's salary was small, and increased by no means ' by leaps and bounds,' a few strokes of her pen would soon alter all that, and that it would give her great pleasure to make them, Mary had demurely observed that Mrs. Beckett could not bestow her bounty upon a worthier object than Mr. Charles Sotheran ; but that, so far as she (Mary) was concerned, he might have ten thousand a year, but would still be unaccept able to her as a husband. ' Then you must be either a born fool, Mary,' cried the widow, for the first time losing her temper with her young favourite, ' or you must have had your brain turned by romances.' ' As we were never allowed to read romances at Minerva House, my dear Mrs. Beckett,' returned Mary, cheerfully, but with a spot of red on each cheek, ' I suppose I must accept the former of your two alternatives.' And she added a little curtsey by way of acknowledg ment.

The curtsey, I think, went even further with Mrs. Beckett than her words ; as a reproof, it affected her not one whit, for very rich people are rarely thin-skinned ; but it showed the other's coolness and determination. Though the widow by no means gave up her object, from that moment she ceased to press it ; she knew that, notwithstanding all the resources of science, there are some fruits which can never be brought on by forcing, and was compelled to believe that this was one of them. Henceforth she trusted to the sunshine and the showers : circumstance and opportunity. As the three took their seats at the well-spread board, Charley nodded in his off-hand wav to a vacant chair : ' What Banquo is sitting there ? ' he inquired. 'The Dornays promised to be here,' said Mrs. Beckett curtly. ' Oh, indeed, Banquo and Fleance !

Then I've got one of their chairs. ' ' Of course you have, sir ; you were not expected, though we are very glad to see you, and they were.' ' It is better to come to a feast when you are not asked,' observed Charley, with a philosophic air, ' than to be asked and not come.' 'And much better manners,' assented Mrs. Beckett, warmly. 'For my part I don't understand such conduct. Guests who come late to lunch are almost as bad as those who come late to dinner, and they are unpardonable. For my part I cannot understand why Society tolerates it.' ' Still it is a sign of good position,' remarked Charley, with a twinkle in his blue eyes. ' It is only important people who venture to do it. They are titled and say to themselves, " Our host is an inferior person, so will not resent our rude ness," or they are rich, and he owes them money and dares not.' ' How can you be so foolish, Charley ? ' said Mary, reprov ingly. ' But, my dear Mary, it must be so,' continued the young man, gravely, ' or why does the host wait for them to the inconvenience of his other guests, and though he knows the dinner is spoiling ?