Four Women in the Case. A novel

Chapter I The Wyverns

Lying snugly in one of the hollows between Mellor and Marple, the old black and white Manor House has weathered the storms, with stood dry rot and damp, and, best of all, has been neither improved nor enlarged for cen turies. It shall not be stated for how many centuries, for fear of some reader of an anti quarian turn of mind pointing out that at the date indicated black and white houses were not being built in Derbyshire and Cheshire. It is sufficient for the purposes of this story to say that the Manor House was roomy and commodious inside, and picturesque outside to a degree that made every artist who had ever looked upon it hunger to see it again. There was not a single modern improvement in it. A There was a buttery-hatch, but the hot and cold baths were supplied from huge cauldrons and kettles.

There were no modern flowers in its old, high red -bricked walled gardens. But all the same there was a wealth of bloom and colour in them from the beginning of February until the end of December. At least the ' blooms ' were there if not the ' colour,' the former hidden away under the snow for weeks at a time, perhaps, but still ready to raise their dainty white or yellow heads the moment the snow melted. In fact, there was rarely a day, all the year round, when Jenny Wyvern was not able to get at red-berried sprigs of laurel and holly, or to dig down where instinct and memory told her she would be sure to find them, and un-snow crocuses, aconite and snowdrops. She was the only daughter of Squire Wyvern ; for though her father had been dead a year when she makes her first bow, or rather nods her head at you first, the rough country people round called her mother by that title.

Genera tions of Wyverns, that could not be readily numbered, lay buried in Mellor Church and Churchyard, and the young lady of the Manor was looked upon as a little queen by her humbler neighbours, who regarded the widow as a regent merely, and Miss Jenny as their rightful sovereign. So they spoke of Mrs Wyvern as 'the Squire,' as a sort of excuse to themselves for rendering her such rough homage as they did. It may as well be admitted at starting that Jenny had been a gruesomely-indulged child. Well-born gentleman as the late Squire Wyvern was, he was not an educated one. He had been to a good school, and had spent twelve months and a great deal of money at college. But he had been economical in the matter of learning at both places, and his ignorance had never caused him a momentary pang.

Mrs Wyvern ' was a member of a great Welsh family, whose genealogical tree took root in almost prehistoric ages,' it has been averred by a chronicler who ought to know. But for all that, her mental acquirements never put her husband to shame. Accordingly, as they were both perfectly happy, held in high account by everyone who knew them, and rich enough to please themselves and their daughter in every honest, honourable, God-fearing way that seemed good to them, they let Jenny refuse any but the most elementary educational advantages, and permitted her to grow up almost as un cultured as they were themselves. But in the free, untutored life she led among the Derbyshire hills and moors, the girl learnt much that stood her in good stead in after years. Grim Kinder - Scout, from whose lonely heights she often looked down over an ex panse of country fair enough to fire the soul and enchant the eye of any landscape painter, taught her lessons, though they were not those of art.

She had neither an artist's soul nor eye. She never panted to reproduce on canvas or in words any of the grandeur or the beauty that surrounded her. But in climbing his heath clad sides she learnt to love health and strength and purity of atmosphere for their own sakes. She also learnt that these physical joys could not be appreciated to the full unless ' that ' which was within her which she never attempted to define, but of which, she was conscious through every fibre of her being, corresponded with those tangible ones which were palpable and could be named. Their life was one of extreme loneliness, for neighbours were few and far off, and Mrs Wyvern loved matters of the house beyond everything else, with the exception of Jenny ; while the latter was as happy as a wild bird who has never lived in a gilt cage and been taught parlour tricks.

Her father would have said of her with pride what the great King-maker is reputed to have said of his daughters when ques tioned as to their attainments, ' They know how to spin and be virtuous.' Squire Wyvern had never read The Last of the Barons, hut Warwick's words expressed his thoughts about Jenny exactly. She was a tall girl, well grown, with a fine, firm well-rounded bust and good wide hips. The much-gored dress of the day did not suit her, so she never wore it. There were pleats and darts where the fulness of her skirts were set into her waist-band that would have given a Court dressmaker fits. But then Jenny did not employ a Court dressmaker. She got her ' best ' dresses from a big drapery shop in Manchester, and when they were made 'fashionably,' she sent them back to be altered till they followed the lines of the figure God had given her.

Nor would she wear hour-glass corsets, or boots that pinched and distorted her toes ; or gloves on any occasion when she could possibly evade them. Her head was a handsome shaped one and well set on, but she wore her thick strong brown hair in any way that it was most convenient for her to arrange it at the moment, and that was invariably an unbecoming way. On the rare occasions when they went to dinner parties or dances, her mother did it for her in some thing that was meant to be a Grecian knot, but that fell short of this intention as a rule, and resembled a happy thought in hair stuck on in haste at the last moment. Her face was round, ruddy and void of any marked features. Her eyes were brown, loving fearless clear brown eyes that had no tricks of drooping, or languishing, or flashing or doing any thing that in some girls' heads such eyes might have done with effect.

Jenny's just looked out upon the world and all that was therein within her ken without much observation, it is true, but also without cynicism and without detect ing the motes that were in other people's eyes. To this rough little Princess of Arcadia there came one day a surprise. As usual in these days, it came by post. 'Jenny,' said her mother, as they sat down to their early dinner, a meal at which there was soup and fish and roast and boiled and all kinds of cunning compounds of eggs and cream and sugar, though the two women them selves ate sparingly, 'Jenny, I have had a letter from your Aunt Sutherland. She asks you to go up to them in London and stay two months to see "a little life and have a bit of the season," she says.' Jenny's wide mouth widened still more with delight. ' To London !

Oh ! mother, when shall I go ? ' ' It's a long time since your Aunt Sutherland has remembered us — and she your father's own sister, too,' Mrs Wyvern went on, pursuing her own line of thought, and disregarding her daughter's eager, hungry look. ' I suppose it's that hamper of poultry and butter we sent her last week has called us to her mind.' 'When shall I go, mother?' ' When I married your father, Vere Suther land was the prettiest woman I ever saw, and she knew it, and queened it over everyone. She looked down on our country ways, but though she did that she was fond of her brother, and he had love in his heart for her to the last. He left her two hundred a year, and glad enough she must have been to have it, poor Vere, and glad enough I was that she should have it.' ' Yes, yes ; but when am I to go, mother ? ' Oh ! will you wish to go, Jenny ? 'Wish to go?

Yes, I want to go. I've never seen anything but Manchester, and I want to see my cousins. When am I to go ? ' ' You must have a dress or two, and some new mantles and hats. And — oh ! numbers of things that will take a time getting together. Your aunt says this day week, but Hunt's people are slow in making — ' ' Let Aunt Sutherland get my clothes in London, mother. Write — no, I'll write myself and say I will go up this day week. Have they a very big house — are they very grand ? Do they go to Court, and wear those wonderful dresses with straggling tails that we see in The Queen ? I shall be glad when this day week comes.' Her mother looked at her with perfect pride and anxious love. 'They'll think you a rough diamond, my darling,' she said. ' What matter ! I am rough, and I'm not even a diamond,' the girl said unconcernedly. ' I want to see them, and I want to see London.' ' There are many snares there,' Mrs Wyvern said, shaking her head.

Her experience of the delusive delights and lights o' London was severely limited, but she had illimitable faith in the two-legged lions who lurked at every corner in that great metropolis. ' Snares ! ' said Jenny, with a subdued snort. ' I've walked among too many in the woods to put my foot into one of them.' ' Your Aunt Sutherland will be a mother to you — she has three daughters of her own — but I hope she won't teach you to forget your own mother and your own home, and the animals and birds that love you as if you were one of them,' Mrs Wyvern said emotionally. ' I don't think anyone will teach me much now; I am rather stupid, you know. Now we had better drive to the Marple station and get to Manchester as soon as we can.' ' You'll have to wear gloves always, Jenny, and I've got a receipt in an old Lady's Family Friend for whitening the hands.

My mother used to use it ; there's spermacity and hog's lard and oil of burgamot in it. You put it on at nights — ' ' Don't let us lose the train, mother. Whether my things are ready or not, and whether my hands are white or not, I shall go up to London this day week ! ' Many a vision of joys to come during the ensuing visit to Aunt Sutherland in London danced before those clear, fearless brown eyes that day, ay, and all the days and nights too that intervened between the receipt of the invitation and the start to enjoy the vague delights it foreshadowed. They were such vague delights to Jenny. She only knew the majority of them by name. The parks, and the Row, the opera, picture galleries, and Cinderella dances. But among them all there was no vision of a young man who might develop into a sweetheart.

The young men whom she knew more or less well as neighbours had shown no desire to establish any closer bond with her. They had laughed at her for being a hoyden and a tomboy, and avoided her in local ballrooms because she had large feet and no ear for music, consequently the large feet were apt to get in their way and other people's way in the giddy waltz. But she had neither been mortified by their mirth nor re sentful of it. Perhaps she was, as their sisters and cousins said, 'too stupid to understand it.' There was a good deal of this mirth excited when it got wind that she was going up to stay some months with her aunt, Mrs Sutherland, and be introduced to society. Young ladies of her own status grew hysterical at the humorous idea of Jenny's suddenly being confronted with smart London men, and older ladies ' wondered her mother was not ashamed to send such a vulgar country bumpkin to such up-to-date people as the Sutherlands were reputed to be.' But though Jenny might be rough and country bumpkinish, she was not vulgar.

She was never confused nor embarrassed nor ashamed of any thing that she did or said, for the simple reason that she had never said or done a mean, or false, or questionable or unwomanly thing. She might trip upon a too highly polished dancing floor, but this was the only trip she ever had been or ever would be guilty of. Perhaps her mother was the only person who was conscious of this golden quality of ingrained power of virtuous resistance which existed in Jenny. Yet even Mrs Wyvern can scarcely be said to be perfectly confident as well as conscious of it, for she said more than once during those days that elapsed before the girl left home for the first time, — ' London life is full of snares, I have heard your father say often, even for young men. How much more for young girls ! Jenny, dear, take care of yourself.' ' I will, mother, always ; but I'm not one that anyone would try to snare, you know.

I'm not pretty, and I'm very blunt. Don't worry yourself, mother, dear. I'm not going for good, you know. I shall be back time enough to help preserve the damsons and bullaces. We shall have so much to tell each other when we meet again.' They had indeed — of a kind they little recked of when Jenny spoke.

CHAPTER I

I VERE There had been some demur in the Sutherland household when the mistress of it first spoke of inviting her niece Jenny to stay two months with them. Her daughters had never seen their cousin excepting through the medium of photo graphy, and, to do them justice, they were entirely devoid of curiosity on the subject. They had no more desire to visit Derbyshire and explore the savagely romantic peak district, or see Chatsworth in all its glory, than they had to go to the North Pole. ' Brighton was good enough for them when they couldn't get taken to some cheap French watering-place,' therefore, as they candidly remarked, ' Why cultivate Aunt Wyvern ? ' They had not, among the three of them, the faintest wish to visit the cradle of their mother's race. As they observed with some truth, they had only know her as Mrs Suther land, never as Vere Wyvern.

Therefore, why '3 try to conciliate Aunt Wyvern by asking Jenny into their midst to shame and be shamed by them? But Mrs Sutherland, proud, affectionate, almost doting mother as she was, had a will of her own, and a way of executing the same when she thought it right to do so. She was a Wyvern before she was a Sutherland, and she had loved her great, big, bluff, hearty brother, slight as their intercourse had been since his marriage with the Welshwoman of long descent. But she was neither a callous nor an ungrate ful woman, and the hampers that came up once a month at least from the Manor House, lessened her household expenses in a way which her daughters did not understand, and which they would have deemed very immaterial had they done so. She had never been able to make any return for those mighty hams and sides of bacon, for the turkeys and plump chickens, the butter and cream and eggs, which filled and overflowed her narrow larder con tinually.

That is to say, she had not been able to make any return in kind. True, she had sent sweet notes of thanks and shoals of society and VERE 15 fashion journals. But little as she knew of her sister-in-law, and nothing as she knew of her niece, it was borne in upon her that neither of them took the trouble to look at the fashion plates, or read the scandalous paragraphs which dealt with the doings of those dwellers in smart-land, of whom they knew nothing, and for whom they cared less. Now it had come to her to feel that she was neglecting a duty in letting her brother's only child live on unknown to, and unknowing, her own daughters. 'Blood is thicker than water,' she told herself, as she reflected that Jenny would be a comparatively rich woman at her mother's death, while her own girls would (unless they married) be but scantily provided for when her day was done.

It would certainly be well, under these circumstances, to be kind to Jenny, and accustom the dear, untutored girl to regard herself as one of them ! Accord ingly, though her two elder daughters pouted at the idea of such gaieties as fell to their portion being divided among four instead of three of them, she sent her invitation, which, as has been told, was accepted with joyful alacrity. The house they lived in was small — much smaller than was comfortable — but it was in what they prized more than comfort, and that was ' a good locality.' It was squeezed up in a corner, between a street and a square, sufficiently near to the park for them to be justified in hav ing ' Little Effort Street, Hyde Park,' printed on their cards ; and this, as Gladys, the eldest girl, observed, ' gave them a tone at once when they called on strangers.' They could have had a house double the size, and infinitely better appointed, for the same rent, a quarter of a mile off in several directions.

But they preferred the unexceptionally well-sounding locality to plenty of room and good sanitary conditions, and so remained cramped, but content, in Little Effort Street. They were nice girls these two elder Suther lands, good - looking, good - tempered, good mannered and wonderfully ingenious in the manipulation of small economies, and the exercise of the art of making the best of themselves and their surroundings. They had been their mother's inseparable companions during the long years of her widowhood, and had VERE 17 learnt from her (poor thing !) the hard lesson of keeping up excellent appearances on next to nothing in the way of income. They were only human in wishing to get the best they could, according to their lights, out of everything and everybody, and in looking forward to marriage as the golden gate through which they should enter into an earthly paradise of competency and comfort.

Without being forward, or fast, or husband hunters, it must be admitted that they looked upon every eligible man who revolved within their orbit as a possible husband until he married someone else, when they were quite ready to make friends with his wife. So much for Gladys and Maud. Vere was a distinct species. She had been brought up by a vain, selfish grandmother, old Mrs Sutherland, a woman who all her life had been gnawed by an in satiable craving for every form of excitement that society could give her, and every form of flattery that her supposititious wealth could com mand. When her money was nearly gone she died, leaving countless debts, her lace and B jewellery to her dear grandchild, Vere Suther land, and — nothing else, with the exception of a shady reputation. So Vere went back with her jewels and laces to her mother's little house from the big man sion in the old west-end square, where she had lived with her meretricious old grandmother, sharing in all the latter's luxuries, and wit nessing many of her culpable follies and frivolities.

But though she had witnessed many of these — the gambling, the sickening love-making and flirtations between her grand mother and men young enough to be the latter's grandsons very often, the unscrupulous evasion of all monetary considerations that could be evaded, the hollowness and falseness and sham of it all — though Vere had witnessed all this, and understood it all, and laughed at and derided it in her cynical young way, and enjoyed it — she was not entirely vitiated. She believed herself to be capable of selling her own soul and body, or anybody else's, for that matter, for the means of gratifying the ' pride of life,' the lust of the eye, the passion for all the luxury and splendour which she had VERE 19 been taught to consider were the only things needful. But there was within her a power of which she was utterly unconscious, which would dominate her for good or evil to the exclusion of all other considerations should it ever be awakened.

The good looks of her sisters, their pretty hazel hair and eyes, and fine, well-set-up figures had always been a source of pardonable pride to their mother, who had seen very little of Vere during the grandmother's lifetime. But now the grandmother had been dead a year, Vere had emerged from her mourning, and Mrs Sutherland was startled to find herself the mother of a creature beautiful with the beauty of a price less Dresden china figure, or a rare white orchid. Vere was exquisitely formed, slight and small, a creature who seemed to fly when she was gay, and to be wafted about like a flake of snow or thistle-down in her softer moods. There was no suggestion of ill-health in the waxen hue of her skin. People who saw her no more attributed that exquisite colouring to want of health than they attributed disease to the flaw lessly white petals of the stephanotis or tuberose.

Her hair was of that pure pale yellow that has not a glint of gold in it. When she let it loose, it fell in large, soft undulations. It had never been waved or crimped or curled by artificial means in her life. She wore it turned back in a nimbus from her perfect, flower-like face — the flower-like, soft, sweet face of an innocent child. Her eyes were not softly sweet and child like. They were dark, lustrous, splendid ! the eyes of a woman who had looked with full understanding upon many things which it was not well a girl of twenty should have seen and understood. So much for her appearance. Her character must unfold and speak for itself, if she has any to speak about and unfold. For a year she had been living with her mother and sisters in the small house that seemed cramped even to those who had lived in and accommodated themselves to its angles so long.

They sometimes permitted themselves the luxury of a grumble at the awkwardness and want of space entailed upon them when they wanted to entertain an extra and desir- VERE 21 able acquaintance. But Vere never grumbled. She settled herself and her beautiful clothes and jewels and laces among them, with as much ease apparently as if she still had a suite of rooms at her disposal, and a maid to arrange her things. She had shelves and little cupboards and little curtains put up in the nook that was assigned her, and in and upon these she bestowed herself and her belongings with the grace of a fairy queen who can expand and contract material as it seems good to her. She was such a perfectly lovely little creature that her mother had been surprised once into asking her the prosaic question, ' How is it you're not married, Vere ? ' And Vere's answer had been conclusive. ' I haven't had an offer from a man rich enough to make me forget that I don't care for him.

You see, while grandma lived poor men thought I was her heiress and going to be rich; but I knew better all the time. I knew it would only last while she lived, so I said " No " to the poor men, and the rich one has not come yet. When he does — ' She paused, and laughed. 'Then you have never cared for anyone, Vere? If you had — ' Mrs Sutherland paused also, but did not laugh. She was elderly now, and very fat ; and most people — her children among others — thought that she must have out lived and out-fattened everything connected with the memory even of her heart's romance. But she had done nothing of the kind. The recol lection of her love's young dream was very sweet to her still, though she had quite lost her figure, and wore spectacles and her own beautiful silvery hair. The flower-like head that was so finely balanced on the waxen throat bent slightly forward, and the dark velvet eyes seemed to dance and sparkle with amusement. 'Why, no, mother; of course not.

I have never cared for anyone but grandma and she's dead now, and can't do me any good any more. Now I care for you and Gladys and Maud ; but I wish they were married, and then I should have their rooms (to make pretty with my things) and you all to myself, till my rich man comes.' She began fluttering about the room as she spoke, and her mother watched her with pride certainly, but also with fear. VERE 23 ' Pray God a real love may touch and soften her,' the mother thought; ' real love will make her something better than the charming, selfish, irresistible darling she is now. It's all her grandmother's fault. I was a fool to give my child into the charge of a worldly, scheming old woman, who hasn't even left her money to help her from want, while she has inflated her with false ideas of her own powers of attraction and importance.

But when real love comes — and it will come to her in time — my darling Vere will cast out self, and be all that I could wish her.' So prophetically the mother's heart spoke about the daughter whom she scarcely knew super ficially even, whom she did not comprehend at all, and who, at the same time, was desperately dear to the woman who was half proud, half afraid of her own child. ' And if your rich man never comes, Vere ? Don't think that I am anxious to get rid of you, my dear child ; but, like every true mother, I should be glad to see you safely married and comfortably settled before I die and leave you to the tender mercies of a not too merciful world. Don't throw away a moderately good substance for an illusory shadow. If a good man whom you can love, but is not rich, seeks you for his wife, don't throw him aside for a chimera.' Vere laughed. ' I've read advice like that by the yard,' she said ; ' it doesn't apply to me.

Gladys and Maud had better be careful not to waste the time which in their case is very precious, as grandma used to say. But I am quite different. There is more than one rich man who would ask me to-morrow if I would let them. But I am wait ing for something better, and I know what I am about.' ' Vere ! ' Mrs Sutherland began ; then she hesi tated, as Vere paused in her flight about the room, and fixed her eloquent mocking eyes on her mother's flushed, distressed face. ' Vere ! you shock me. Such worldliness, such heartless ness at your age — ' A ringing laugh checked the stream of maternal reproof. ' Worldly and heartless ! It would be a poor lookout for me if I were anything else. As it is, I shall go to the highest bidder without the slightest repugnance, and you'll see that I shall VERE 25 be bid high for, mother, if you only give me the chance and let me be seen.' ' So young and so calculating ! it's incredible !

Mrs Sutherland thought ; and again she tried to take comfort in the thought that when real love touched the vain young heart, Vere would soften and be gentle, and become as perfectly womanly inwardly as she was externally. It was a forlorn hope, but Mrs Sutherland nourished it.

Chapter III Poor Pretences

Jenny's journey was accomplished without danger and without incident. Her mother had assumed that there would of necessity be a considerable amount of both on such a momentous occasion as Jenny's first journey to London. She had given her daughter many instructions as to the way she was to comport herself should any presumptuous fellow-traveller have the audacity to address her. But no such calamity occurred. Her fellow travellers were a pair of invalids who got in at Buxton, and only opened their lips to com plain to one another of the little good the waters had done, and the extortionate prices charged by hotel and lodging-house keepers. They let Jenny severely alone until she opened a window, when they caused her to feel guilty of the grossest want of consideration by the way they coughed and developed rheumatism in their respective joints.