All, or nothing

Front matter

r.on non i sprpcer BLACKETT

ROBERT W.WQQDRUFF LIBRARY

BY

XVI. Enigmatical

. 182

IV

CONTENTS

CHAP.

xvii. katinka

xviii. John's pistol

xxi. julia's whisper

xxii. at the ohantry xxiii. " out of pain "

xxiv. the little key

xxv. the bluebeard bureau

xxvi. a granted prayer xxvii. "tom esdaile's boy " xxviii. laura .

xxix. a wing of the " firefly " .

xxx. " too late ! "

xxxi. what is it 1 xxxii. on the stone teiujack. xxxiii. a statement by julia (jabmigiiael xxxiv. all, or nothing . . . .

xxxv. a question of identity xxxvi. the window in the wall

PAGE

ALL, OR NOTHING.

CHAPTER I. "no promise."

JOT a minute after twelve o'clock, remember. A white gown never does suit you, and if, in addition to having to wear one, you're tired, you'll not look your best to-morrow."

" Very well, mamma ; I won't sit up after twelve, I promise you — indeed, I'm tired now."

" Good-night, my dear." Lady Rosa Chumleigh frigidly kissed the smooth forehead dutifully bent to receive her salute, and turned to leave the room. " I shall send Brydges to you in twenty minutes."

" Oh, no ; please don't, mamma," said the former speaker ; " I would so much rather be alone to-night. I — I have something to do."

" Indeed, what is it?" Lady Rosa stood tall and awful on the threshold of her daughter's room. " I so particularly desired that nothing should be left to the last. Your boxes are all ready, I know, and the lists are made out. I cannot think what you can have got to attend to ; not much of the trouble of this business has come upon you."

Lady Rosa spoke in a sharp, suspicious tone, and bent her brows in a frown which did not appear to be called for. Her daughter rejoined in a propitiatory manner :

B

" Xo, indeed, mamma ; the trouble has been all yours, I'm sure, as it always is. But I didn't mean about my boxes, I am not going to disturb anything ; it was only just a few little things Julia is to do for me after I am gone— keepsakes for the school-children and so on— and I haven't had time to write them down for her ; that's all."

There was no reasonable fault to be found with this explanation, and Lady^Rosa, without any repetition of the " Good-night " or the kiss, left the room. Her daughter held the door open until her mother had reached one at the opposite end of the corridor ; then she closed it, but stood by it listening. In less than a minute the sound of a bell pulled by a strong hand came distinctly to her ears, when she noiselessly turned the key in the lock, and allowed her face to relax into an expression of relief.

" She won't come back, now she has rung for Brydu'es," thought the girl, as she seated herself before the dressing-table, and gazed into the draped looking-glass, without seeing the image it reflected ; " I do wonder why it is one never can tell the exact truth to mamma. It's her temper, I suppose. It certainly isn't that she and I don't understand one another, for we do, perfectly. There has never been any mistake at all about ' this business,' as she calls it in her cool way. How like mamma that is, though ; she never pretends, at any rate. I should not think there are many mothers who would talk of a daughter's marriage as ' this business,' especially to the daughter herself. I respect her for it, though I could not imitate it, but Mr. Thornton is right ; it's that way of hers that has made and kept her what she is—' master an' mair,' as he says. After all, it will be such a relief to get away from her way, it's — it's almost worth it ; at least, I mean it would be, even if there was nothing else."

She had spoken the last words in which her thoughts were framing themselves aloud, and her own voice roused

Iter. She sat upright, looked in the glass, with intention this time, and began to loosen the coils of her hair.

" Mamma's right in one thing," so ran her diverted thoughts ; "I certainly shall not look my best to-morrow ; I dare say I shall look about my worst " — a little satisfied smile crept round her red lips and full curved chin, as a •dexterous imp, sent on a comforting mission by vanity, whispered that her worst would not be very alarming — "but I suppose no girl ever looks really well on her wedding-day."

The face and figure reflected in the glass were very charming at Laura Chumleigh's "best," and were calculated to recall Lady Rosa to the observer as little as could be wished. Laura was of small stature, slightly built without being thin, and endowed with the graceful carriage and beautiful hands and feet which are supposed to indicate "blue blood." There was some mistake about this in Laura's case, for her father's blood was not blue, and her mother's hands and feet were usefully ugly, as Lady Rosa did not hesitate to remark whenever the subject turned up in conversation. " Points, as vulgar people who frequent stables call them," she had been heard to say, "are all nonsense, like Irish eyes and Spanish ankles. There never was a mesalliance in the Ness family until I made one, and a commoner-looking lot of people are not to be seen anywhere, either in real life or picture galleries." Laura was content to have the " points," without caring at all about whether she was entitled to them on scientific principles* and she secretly rejoiced that she was totally unlike the noble family of Ness. Something vivid and gleeful about the girl added a delightful charm to her real and regular beauty ; a dancing brightness in her shy, dark eyes ; a suddenness in the smile that flashed all over her face, and touched her small teeth as light touches the facets of cut jewels ; a richness in the red that came up to the velvet .surface of her clear olive skin, of an almost southern tint ;

b 2 while her profuse and glossy hair was of the very duskiest, warmest brown that ever escaped the harshness of black. Youth, perfect health, and high spirits are important elements in the composition of beauty, and all these Laura Chumleigh possessed. She was within a week of twenty, but she did not look a day over seventeen ; she could ride, and skate, and dance, as if life were nothing but a succession of opportunities for those exercises, and she had been created to indulge in them ; her supple and elegant little figure was full of strength and nerve, and she had never had as much as a headache since she got rid of her governess, and the "lessons" whicli she had always detested. She was not quite ignorant, however, because she really had natural intelligence ; and as the schoolroom-time had inexorably to be gone through, she found that it might be gone through more tolerably by learning something than by doing nothing. Lady Rosa was not to be " got over," and Laura's governess was not to be " got at ; " novels, except such as would have bored her dreadfully, were unattainable, and Lady Rosa, who took a singularly unprejudiced view of her daughter's character,. had spoken to her as follows when she was hist sixteen :

" You have no fortune, my dear, and there's none coming to you from anywhere. If you want to enjoy life you will have to marry well, and I have observed that silliness and ignorance do not take. Pretty idiots who can't spell or talk have plenty of partners, but men don't marry them. You had better make use of the year and a half there is before you."

The girl did not thoroughly understand her mother, perhaps, but she knew that she did wish to enjoy life, and that she would like to marry well ; and so, when she was introduced into society at seventeen and a half, she could spell, sing well enough for drawing-room purposes, and talk about general subjects with sufficient intelligence to gain her a character for cleverness, as it was combined with a very pretty and taking air of interest and eagerness. Not nnpleasant cleverness, be it understood — not bookishness, or strong-mindedness, or anything horridly peculiar of that .kind — but just the sort of cleverness ■which, with everything else about her, might be best described as " charming ! "

Laura had been out three seasons, and now, at the end of the third, she was marrying well. Lady Rosa was satisfied, but not elated. Things had gone well, although, of course, they might have gone better. It would have saved a great deal of money and trouble if Laura had married in her second season ; but even Lady Rosa did not expect to have everything quite as she wished ; although she did feel, when she was thwarted, that there must be a screw loose somewhere in the system of the universe. The eve of her daughter's wedding-day had now arrived, and not a hitch had occurred in the preliminaries. To-morrow would see Laura disposed of, if not according to the loftiest aspirations of Lady Rosa Chumleigh, at least in the very best manner that had been within her option, and the expensive furnished house in Lowndes Street might be given up.

Such were the pleasing reflections with which Lady Rosa Chumleigh left her daughter on the last night of the girl's home-life, after the maternal admonition in the interests of a becoming bridal bloom on the morrow ; such were the circumstances under which Laura sat brushing her hair before the glass, with " something to do " between that time and twelve o'clock.

Laura had brushed her hair until her arm ached, and then rolled it up into a tight ball, and taken it down to roll it up again into a looser ; she had fidgeted with the bottles, boxes, and general inutilities upon her dressing-table ; she had opened a tempting little velvet-covered, satin-lined case, in which lay a necklet of pearls with a diamond clasp, and closed it again hurriedly ; she had fingered the smooth ivory binding of the pretty Prayer Book which had just been sent her as a wedding-present by the clergyman

6 ALL, OE XOTHING

who was to perform the marriage ceremony on the morrow^ and inspected the anticipatory monogram on its clasp. She was dawdling, putting off the something which she had to do; but her thoughts were busy with it, whether she' would or not, and at length she rose with a sigh, carried a chair across the room, and had just stepped up on it and stretched out her arm to reach some object which was put away out of sight on the dusty top of a gaunt, old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe, when she was disturbed by a gentle tap at the door. She stepped down from the chair, placed it against the wall, and unlocked the door in a moment.

" Papa ! " she said, but not loudly, although she was surprised. It would have required more than surprise to make any member of her household forget the vicinity of Lady Rosa, or run the risk of disturbing her. " Papa ! Come in, dear papa ! "

"I thought I should not disturb you," said Colonel Chumleigh, as he stepped into the room with noiselessness due to practice, "and I wanted to say good-night again."

Laura had cpuckly set a chair for her father, and she now perched herself lightly on his knee, and put her arms round his neck. The change in her face was very remarkable— it had softened and brightened.

"I'm so glad," she said, laying her richly-coloured cheek against his gray head ; "I longed to say good-night by ourselves, but I did not think you would have managed it. How did you manage it, papa ? "

"Well, darling, you see there was a good deal of confusion to-day, and things were put astray, and I had not seen the papers at all comfortably ; and so I said I

should stay down and read them for an hour, and "

"And you came up to me instead. Papa" — she unlocked her arms from round his neck, and began to smooth his hair gently with her little dark hand — "there's.

always an awful feeling about the last of everything, isn't there ? No matter how little one cares for a person, it would give one a pang to be quite sure one had seen the last of that person, and it's the same about places and things that one does in one's own life. I am not a bit fond of this house ; with other people's furniture and things in it, it isn't like home ; and yet I have a solemn sort of feeling about this being the very last time I shall ever be here as I am now, only your daughter, you know, and a girl, with people to look after me, and no one for me to look after. I dare say you cannot understand the feeling, papa, because you're a man."

" Yes, I can," said the Colonel ; " I understand it perfectly. What else do you suppose I have been thinking of all the evening, except that it is the last I shall ever in all my life have my Firefly with me, just as my own daughter, and nothing else ? "

Laura pressed her lips upon his head with a sob. " Hush ! you must not do that," said the Colonel, frightened. " You must not cry to-night, my darling."

" No," said Laura, with a faint quiver of a smile ; "red eyes would be less becoming still than a white gown." Then, without explaining the allusion, she went on : " No, we mustn't make each other miserable. Do you know, papa," she drew herself away from him now, so that she could look into his face, " I've been thinking the very best of ' this business,' as mamma calls it, is, that you can often come to me. We don't see much of each other — not comfortably, I mean — though we do live in the same house ; but you will often come to me at my own, won't you ? " "I hope so."

"You must promise, papa. Not only for me, you know. Mr. Thornton likes you so much too."

"He is a very good fellow, Laura. I hope you will appreciate him, and be a good wife to him. He is giving you a great deal, my dear ; I hope — I hope you will never

8 ALL, OB NOTLTIA'G

give him cause to regret his marriage." She had never seen her father so moved before.

" Indeed, I never will, papa. I wouldn't if it was only for fear of vexing you. He is a very good fellow ; and I am awfully lucky."

She had risen from his knee, and was standing beside him while she said this. Colonel Chumleigh was one of the least articulate of men, partly from a natural slowness of speech, partly from habitual discretion ; and though he knew what he would have liked to say to Laura on the present occasion — a golden opportunity, which by no earthly possibility could come again in their respective lives— he simply could not say it.

He was a tall, fine-looking man of fifty-five, very gray for his age. with a fair complexion, and kindly eyes, still blue and clear , and he linked just what he was — amiable and irresolute. A less portentous personage than Lady Kosa might have been "master an' mair " over Colonel Chumleigh, who had, and deserved, the name of a martinet in his regiment. After he had kissed his daughter many times, and left her, and was stepping noiselessly along the corridor to his dressing-room, lie said to himself:

"1 wish she had said 'happy' instead of 'lucky.' I wish it was more of a love-match ; and yet"— the Colonel .smiled at his own romantic, behind-the-times notions — "how often her mother has reminded me that ours was a love-match, and begged me to observe what lias come of it,"

After Laura had locked the door of her room for the second time that night, she picked up a newspaper, which had fallen out of her father's pocket. It was Thr Momiwj Postol that day. She laid it on her dressing-table without looking at it, and resumed the occupation that her father's coming had interrupted. She took down a small flat parcel from the top of the old wardrobe, blew the dust off it and pushing aside all the things on the dressing-table, including the case with the pearls, she untied the parcel, and arranged its contents before her.

These consisted of a small volume of selected poems, prettily bound in vellum with red edges, two or three ball programmes, a bill of the play of an amateur performance, printed on white satin, half-a-dozen letters directed to " Miss Chumleigh," but without postmarks, and an unframed photograph of a young man dressed in yachting clothes. Having laid these things out in two lines, as a fortune-teller " lays the cards," Laura put her elbows on the table — one ■of them was resting on the newspaper, its dusky dimples touched the list of deaths for the day — and leaning her forehead on her joined hands, looked at them intently.

"It would not be right to keep them," she said to herself; "I have made up my mind all along that they must go. I dare say Mr. Thornton wouldn't care a bit, if he knew about them, but he does not know, and I cannot tell him now, when I did not tell him at first. He would not understand ; men never do." This was a fixed belief of Lady Rosa's ; and Laura had adopted it, as an easy and convenient dogma, with confidence which she did not invariably extend to her mother's notions.

Presently she leaned back in her chair, took up the little vellum-bound volume of poetry, and turned over the red-edged leaves. The margins were broad, the type was quaint ; the daintiest initial letters adorned the sweetest possible utterances of passion, of hope, of constancy ; and a goodly number of reckless and deeply-scored pencil marks, a few scribbled comments, with a date or two, profaned the cream-tinted margins. Laura glanced at some of these comments, and the colour deepened on her cheeks ; she fluttered the leaves, and turned to the title-page. On the opposite leaf two big capital letters were written in a bold hand. They were L. C.

" I ought to burn it," so ran her thoughts, "but it's a pity ; all the verses I care about are there — besides, there's no fire, and I should be a long time about burning it in the candle, leaf by leaf. I think I need not destroy it, if I rub out all the writing carefully. Yes, that's what ^ 1 11 do— it will fit under the tray of that horrid big dressing-case — but this must go."

She cut out the leaf with the capital letters upon it, slipped the little volume into the pocket of her dressinggown, and went on with her task of inspection. After one quick glance at it she had placed the photograph face downwards, but she looked through the playbill, and the ball programmes, lingeringly and musingly. It was now the turn of the letters, and Laura drew first one, then another, from its envelope ; but she put them back unread. " Xo, no ; I must not, I resolved I would not. And why should I, even if it was not wrong ; for I know them all by heart."

She made a little pile of them on the top of the photograph, and laid her face upon the pile. Her heart beat quickly, her light and shallow nature was stirred by fear, like that she had often felt, when a child, at finding herself in the dark, and which had made her say " Our Father" as quickly as she could get the words out. She said them now, right on to the end, half aloud, and rapidly, like a charm ; and when the last word was uttered, she gathered up the little heap and the other things, threw them into the fender, and set a light to them. Kneeling on the hearthrug she watched them burning ; she had to hold the taper down to the half-charred papers, and relight them more than once.

As the last morsel of white edge turned to black crispness, and curled itself up, a harmless pinch of dust, the big clock on the stairs and the little one on Laura's table came to terms about the time, and simultaneously announced twelve o'clock. Laura got up off the hearthrug, opened the ponderous dressing-case Avhich Lady Rosa had inflicted on her — it was an ancient chattel of the noble house of

Ness — and thrust the little vellum-bound volume under the second tray ; took out of a drawer several small packets neatly made up, and addressed in her own writing, and having disposed them in evidence for Lady Rosa's inquisitorial inspection in the morning, contrived to keep her promise to her mother very nearly.

It was, however, long before she slept. The clocks had expressed their onemindedness about the hour three times after midnight, and still Laura Chumleigh lay wide awake, with her hands clasped behind her head and her dark eyes gazing out towards the late summer dawn, and more than once she said to herself, while the strange trouble again crept over her : "I never said I would wait ! It was no promise ! "

Chapter II. In " The Morning Post."

In the best regulated household there will be an upsetting of the ordinary course of things, on the occasion of a wedding in the family. The Chumleigh household was not remarkably well regulated — though, perhaps because — Lady Rosa was her own housekeeper. She prided herself on this fact, and gloried in the conviction that those wretches of tradespeople could not take her in, and there was no wastery in her kitchen. The household, including the Colonel and Laura, had had a good deal to suffer during the preliminaries for the wedding of the only daughter of the house, and there was a pretty general feeling that it would be a mercy when it was over. This sentiment was also shared by the Colonel and by Laura ; and, indeed, the latter had wished many times that the good old custom of a honeymoon with a third for company had been still in fashion, and that her father might have had a holiday on the occasion, in the society of herself and Mr. Thornton. To be sure she could not find a precedent in any memoirs or novels which treated of those bygone days, when people used sedan-chairs, and journeyed to "the Bath." It was always the bridesmaid who occupied the third seat in the post-chaise.

The wedding, which was to take place at a fashionable and ugly church near Lowndes Street, was fixed for eleven •o'clock ; and there did not seem to be any particular reason why the whole Chumleigh household should be astir several hours before the event. Xo reason, however, could practically be more particular than the will and pleasure of Lady Rosa Chumleigh. So the note of preparation was sounded betimes and Laura was aroused from her insufficient slumber by her mother in person.

Lady Rosa had as little nonsense about her as the mother of Mr. Edmund Sparkler herself. She never followed the movements, listened to the words, or watched the looks of her beautiful young daughter with that silent, almost stealthy delight which is one of the deep delights of motherhood, and is enhanced by the unconsciousness of its object. She had never stood by the fair sleeper in the quiet night, listening to her even breathing, gazing at her restful face, as if this were some special miracle of nature wrought for herself alone of all the women in the world. She occasionally made domiciliary visits to Laura's room indeed, but they had practical purposes — at night, to see whether Laura had really put her candles out, or was breaking the domestic law by reading in bed ; in the daytime, to inspect the state of tidiness of the apartment.

Lady Rosa opened the door of Laura's room with her usual uncompromising decision, and called out, as she pulled up a Venetian blind with a great bang :

" Laura, my dear ! Laura ! Time to get up. Lsidor comes at nine, you know."

Laura sat up with a start, and her mother looked at her sharply.

"H — m," she said, "your eyelids are quite red, and you look as if you had not had half enough sleep."

" I'm all right, mamma, thank you," said Laura, rubbing the tell-tale eyelids.

"You had better lie still till you've had some tea, if there's any to be had." Lady Rosa pulled the bell-rope at the head of Laura's bed so vehemently that it was a wonder it did not come down, and went on to suppose they would be an hour about bringing the tea, and that she should not be surprised if there were nobody up in the house except herself and Brydges. Laura was mildly protesting that she did not want any tea, and would be ready in plenty of time for the ministrations of the hair-dresser, when her mother's attention was diverted into another channel by the sight of The Morning Post, which lay on the dressing-table. Laura knew perfectly well that Lady Rosa did not allow newspapers to be removed from the "library" — a back parlour of the furnished house. It was very extraordinary that she never could be obeyed in anything.

" I believe mamma would scold me about nothing, if I were going to be hanged," thought poor Laura ; she was beginning to offer a vague excuse, which should not compromise the Colonel, when Lady Rosa, who had taken up the newspaper, cut the awkward explanation short by walking out of the room. Laura looked after her in some surprise, and presently heard the door at the end of the corridor opened and shut.

" Much ado about nothing," said the girl to herself, " and just as if this were any ordinary day in one's life ! "

Here Brydges entered the room, and the business of the hour was begun.

Laura would have been much more surprised if she could have seen the discomposure of Lady Rosa's countenance when she reached her own room, and felt herself free from observation. She sank into the first chair she came to, and allowed the hand which held the newspaper to hang by her side, while she covered her eyes for a moment with the other. After awhile she seemed to recover herself, and looked attentively at a certain part of the outer sheet of the newspaper.

" Xo doubt at all about it," she said to herself ; " there it is, plain enough ! What an unfortunate coincidence ; how dreadfully unlucky ; has she seen it ? I think not ; I hope not. She could not be so unconcerned ; she could hardly have self-command enough to put on such unconcern. And yet, how extraordinary it would be if she has not seen it, before her face, under her eyes, as it must have been ! What shall I do ? On the whole, which is most probable ? that she has seen it, but has pride and cunning enough to prevent my finding that out — her eyelids were red ; I'm almost sure she had been crying, and I'm quite sure she bad been lying awake— or that the printed lines lay under her eyes, and she did not see them."

Again Lady Rosa read those printed lines, and now she rose and paced the room, still holding the newspaper in her hand. Her face was plain and unamiable, with hard lines about it, narrow eyes, and a long upper lip, and the look of doubt and discomfiture it now wore was not beautifying.

" I can't do anything," so ran her thoughts. " Whether she knows or does not know, I cannot do anything. At least, I can only prevent her seeing it, if she does not know already. And if she does, it cannot be helped. Under any circumstances, what has happened is all for the best, and I have nothing to regret. Robert Thornton is worth a dozen of him."

Then Lady Rosa locked up The Morning p,,.<f of the previous day in a drawer of her writing-table, and having recovered her self-possession, she emerged upon the scene of activity. Laura was almost dressed before her mother again entered her room ; the final touches only were wanting to her bridal attire, and she was looking exceedingly lovely, in spite of the red eyelids and the white gown. Isidor had outdone himself ; he was an enthusiast in his art, and he seldom had such a "subject" as Laura's shapely head. Mrs. Mason had " idealised a wedding-gown, fit for an angel like Laura," according to Laura's cousin and bridesmaid, Julia Carmichael, who was enthusiastic, rather than accurate of speech, and one of Alphonse Karr's exquisite bouquets had arrived from Nice, in perfect preservation.