Fenton's quest : a novel

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Chapter II. Miss Carley’s Admirers

THERE were times in which Marian Holbrook’s life would have been utterly lonely but for the companionship of Ellen Carley. This warm-hearted, outspoken country girl had taken a fancy to Mr. Holbrook’s beautiful wife from the hour of her arrival at the Grange, one cheerless March evening, and had attached herself to Marian from that moment with unalterable affection and fidelity. The girl’s own life at the Grange had been lonely enough, except during the brief summer months, when the roomy old house was now and then enlivened a little by the advent of a lodger, —some stray angler in search of a secluded troutstream, or an invalid who wanted quiet and fresh air. But in none of these strangers had Ellen ever taken much interest. They had come and goné, and made very little impression upon her mind, though she had helped to make their sojourn pleasant, in her own brisk cheery way.

She was twenty-one years of age, very brightlooking, if not absolutely pretty, with dark expressive eyes, a rosy brunette complexion, and very white teeth. The nose belonged to the inferior order of pug or snub; the forehead was low and broad, with dark-brown hair rippling over it—hair which seemed always wanting to escape from its neat arrangement into a multitude of mutinous curls. She was altogether a young person whom the admirers of the soubrette style of beauty might have found very charming; and, secluded as her life at the Grange had been, she had already more than one admirer.

She used to relate her love-affairs to Marian Holbrook in the quiet summer evenings, as the two sat under an old cedar in the meadow nearest the house —a meadow which had been a lawn in the days when the Grange was in the occupation of great folks ; and was divided from a broad terrace-walk at the back of the house by a dry grass-growh moat, with steep sloping banks, upon which there was a wealth of primroses and violets in the early spring. Ellen Carley told Mrs. Holbrook of her admirers, and received sage advice from that experienced young matron, who by and by confessed to her humble companion the error of her own girlhood, and how she had jilted the most devoted and generous lover that ever a woman could boast of. ;

For some months—for the bright honeymoon period of her wedded life—Marian had been completely happy in that out-of-the-world region. It is not to be supposed that she had done so great a wrong to Gilbert Fenton except under the influence of a great love, or the dominion of a nature powerful enough to subjugate her own. Both these influences had been at work. ‘Too late she had discovered that she had never really loved Gilbert Fenton; that the calm grateful liking which she had told herself must needs be the sole version of the grand passion whereof her nature was capable, had been only the tamest, most ordinary kind of friendship after all, and that in the depths of her soul there was a capacity for an utterly different attachment—a love which was founded on neither respect nor gratitude, but which sprang into life in a moment, fatal and all-absorbing from its birth.

Heaven knows she had struggled bravely against this luckless passion, had resisted long and steadily the assiduous pursuit, the passionate half-despairing pleading, of her lover, who would not be driven away, and who invented all kinds of expedients for seeing her, however difficult the business might be, or however resolutely she might endeavour to avoid him. It was only after her uncle’s death, when her mind was weakened by excessive grief, that her strong determination to remain faithful to her absent betrothed had at last given way before the force of those tender passionate prayers, and she had consented to the hasty secret marriage which her lover proposed. Her consent once eiven, not a moment had been lost. The business had been hurried on with the utmost eagerness by the impetuous lover, who would give her as little opportunity as possible of changing her mind, and who had obtained complete mastery of her will from the moment in which she promised to be his wife.

She loved him with all the unselfish devotion of which her nature was capable; and no thought of the years to come, or of what her future life might be with this man of whose character and circumstances she knew s0 very little, ever troubled her. Having sacrificed her fidelity to Gilbert Fenton, she held all other sacrifices light as air— neyer considered them at all, in fact. When did a generous romantic girl of nineteen ever stop to calculate the chances of the future, or fear to encounter poverty and trouble with the man she loved? To Marian this man was henceforth all the world. It was not that he was handsomer, or better, or in any obvious way superior to Gilbert Fenton. It was only that he was just the one man able to win her heart. That mysterious attraction which reason can never reduce to rule, which knows no law of precedent or experience, reigned here in full force. It is just possible that the desperate circumstances of the attachment, the passionate pursuit of the lover, not to be checked by any obstacle, may have had an influence upon the girl’s mind. There was a romance in such love as this that had not existed in Mr. Fenton’s straightforward wooing ; and Marian was too young to be quite proof against the subtle charm ofa secret, romantic, despairing passion.

For some time she was very happy; and the remote farmhouse, with its old-fashioned gardens

VOL. II. D and fair stretch of meadow-land beyond them, where all shade and beauty had not yet been sacrificed to the interests of agriculture, seemed to her in those halcyon days a kind of earthly paradise. She endured her husband’s occasional absence from this rural home with perfect patience. These absences were rare and brief at first, but afterwards grew longer and more frequent. Nor did she ever sigh for any brighter or gayer life than this which they led together at the Grange. In him were the beginning and end of her hopes and dreams; and so long as he was pleased and contented, she was completely happy. It was only when a change came in him—very slight at first, but still obvious to the wife’s tender watchful eyes —that her own happiness was clouded. That change told her that whatever he might be to her, she was no longer all the world to him. He loved her still, no doubt; but the bright holiday-time of his love was over, and his wife’s presence had no longer the power to charm away every dreary thought. He was a man in whose disposition there was a lurking vein of melancholy—a kind of chronic discontent very common to men of whom it has been said that they might do great things in the world, and who have succeeded in doing nothing.

It is not to be supposed that Mr. Holbrook intended to keep his wife shut away from the world in a lonely farmhouse all her life. The place suited him very well for the present; the apartments at the Grange, and the services of Mr. Carley and his dependents, had been put at his disposal by the owner of the estate, together with all farm and garden produce. Existence here therefore cost him very little ; his chief expenses were in gifts to the bailiff and his underlings, which he bestowed with a liberal hand. His plans for the future were as yet altogether vague and unsettled. He had thoughts of emigration, of beginning life afresh in a new country—anything to escape from the perplexities that surrounded him here ; and he had his reasons for keeping his wife secluded. Nor did his conscience disturb him much—he was a man who had his conscience in very good training—as to the unfairness of this proceeding. Marian was happy, he told himself; and when the time came for some change in the manner of her existence, he doubted if the change would be for the better.

So the days and weeks and months had passed away, bringing little variety with them, and none of what the world calls pleasure. Marian read and worked and rambled in the country lanes and meadows with Ellen Carley, and visited the poor people now and then, as she had been in the habit of doing at Lidford. She had not very much to give them, but gave all she could; and she had a gentle sympathetic manner, which made her welcome amongst them, most of all where there were children, for whom she had always a special attraction. The little ones clung to her and trusted her, looking up at her lovely face with spontaneous affection.

William Carley, the bailiff, was a big broadshouldered man, with a heavy forbidding countenance, and ataciturn habit by no means calculated to secure him a large circle of friends. His daughter and only child was afraid of him; his wife had been afraid of him in her time, and had faded slowly out of a life that had been very joyless, unawares, hiding her illness from him to the last, as if it had been a sort of offence against him to be ill. It was only when she was dying that the bailiff knew he was going to lose her; and

MISS CARLEY’S ADMIRERS. By/ must be confessed that he took the loss very calmly.

Whatever natural grief he may have felt was carefully locked in his own breast. His underlings, the farm-labourers, found him a little more ‘grumpy than usual, and his daughter scarcely dared open her lips to him for a month after the funeral. But from that time forward Miss Carley, who was rather a spirited damsel, took a very different tone with her father. She was not to be crushed and subdued into a mere submissive shadow, as her mother had been. She had a way of speaking her mind on all occasions which was by no means agreeable to the bailiff. If he drank too much overnight, she took care to tell him of it early next morning. If he went about slovenly and unshaven, her sharp tongue took notice of the fact. Yet with all this, she waited upon him, and provided for his comfort in a most dutiful manner. She saved his money by her dexterous management of the household, and was in all practical matters a very treasure among daughters. William Carley liked comfort, and liked money still better, and he was quite aware that his daughter was valuable to him, though he was careful not to commit himself by any expression of that opinion.

He knew her value go well that he was jealously averse to the idea of her marrying and leavying him alone at the Grange. When young Frank Randall, the lawyer’s son, took to calling at the old house very often upon summer evenings, and by various signs and tokens showed himself smitten with Ellen Carley, the bailiff treated the young man so rudely that he was fain to cease from coming altogether, and to content himself with an occasional chance meeting in the lane, when Ellen had business at Crosber, and walked there alone after tea. He would not have been a particularly good match for any one, being only an articled clerk to his father, whose business in the little market-town of Malsham was by no means extensive; and William Carley spoke of him scornfully as a pauper. He was a tall good-looking young fellow, however, with a candid pleasant face and an agreeable manner; so Ellen was not a little angry with her father for his rudeness, still more angry with him for his encouragement of her other admirer, a man called Stephen Whitelaw, who lived about a mile from the Grange, and farmed his own land, an estate of some extent for that part of the country.

‘If you must marry,’ said the bailiff, ‘and it’s what girls like you seem to be always thinking about, you can’t do better than take up with Steph Whitelaw. He’s a warm man, Nell, and a wife of his will never want a meal of victuals or a good gown to her back. You'd better not waste your smiles and your civil words on a beggar like young Randall, who won’t have a home to take you to for these ten years to come—not then, perhaps—for there’s not much to be made by law in Malsham nowadays. And when his father dies —supposing he’s accommodating enough to die in a reasonable time, which it’s ten to one he won’t be — the young man will have his mother and sisters to keep upon the business very likely, and there’d be a nice look-out for you. Now, if you marry my old friend Steph, he can make you a lady.’

This was a very long speech for Mr. Carley. It was grumbled out in short spasmodic sentences between the slow whiffs of his pipe, as he sat by the fire in a little parlour off the hall, with his indefatigable daughter at work at a table near him.

‘Stephen Whitelaw had need be a gentleman himself before he could make me a lady,’ Nelly answered, laughing. ‘I don’t think fine clothes can make gentlefolks ; no, nor farming one’s own land, either, though that sounds well enough. I am not in any hurry to leave you, father, and I’m not one of those girls who are always thinking of getting married; but come what may, depend upon it, I shall never marry Mr. Whitelaw.’

‘Why not, pray ?’ the bailiff asked savagely.

Nelly shook out the shirt she had been repairing for her father, and then began to fold it, shaking her head resolutely at the same time.

Because I detest him,’ she said; ‘a mean, close, discontented creature, who can see no pleasure in life except money-making. I hate the very sight of his pale pinched face, father, and the sound of his hard shrill voice. IfI had to choose between the workhouse and marrying Stephen Whitelaw, I’'d choose the workhouse; yes, and scrub, and wash, and drudge, and toil there all my days, rather than be mistress of Wyncomb Farm.’

‘Well, upon my word,’ exclaimed the father, taking the pipe from his mouth, and staring aghast at his daughter in a stupor of indignant surprise, ‘you’re a pretty article; you’re a nice piece of goods for a man to bring up and waste his substance upon —a piece of goods that will turn round upon one and refuse a man who farms his own land. Mind, he hasn’t asked you yet, my lady ; and never may, for aught I know.’

‘T hope he never will, father,’ Nelly answered quietly, unsubdued by this outburst of the bailiff’s.

‘If he does, and you don’t snap at such a chance, you need never look for a sixpence from me; and you'd best make yourself scarce pretty soon intothe bargain. I'll have no such trumpery about my house.’

‘Very well, father; I daresay I can get my living somewhere else, without working much harder than I do here.’

This open opposition on the girl’s part made William Carley only the more obstinately bent upon that marriage, which seemed to him such a brilliant alliance, which opened up to him the prospect of a comfortable home for his old age, where he might repose after his labours, and live upon the fat of the land without toil or care. He had a considerable contempt for the owner of

Wyncomb Farm, whom he thought a poor creature both as a man and a farmer; and he fancied that if his daughter married Stephen Whitelaw, he might become the actual master of that profitable estate. He could twist such a fellow as Stephen round his fingers, he told himself, when invested with the authority of a father-in-law.

Mr. Whitelaw was a pale-faced little man of about five-and-forty years of age; a man who had remained a bachelor to the surprise of his neighbours, who fancied, perhaps, that the owner of a good house and a comfortable income was in a manner bound by his obligation to society to take to himself a partner with whom to share these advantages. He had remained unmarried, giving no damsel ground for complaint by any delusive attentions, and was supposed to have saved a good deal of money, and to be about the richest man in those parts, with the exception of the landed gentry.

He was by no means an attractive person in this the prime of his manhood. He had a narrow mean-looking face, with sharp features, and a pale sickly complexion, which looked as if he had spent his life in some close London office rather than in the free sweet air of his native fields. His hair was of a reddish tint, very sleek and straight, and always combed with extreme precision upon each side of his narrow forehead; and he had scanty whiskers of the same unpopular hue, which he was in the habit of smoothing with a meditative air upon his sallow cheeks with the knobby fingers of his bony hand. He was of a rather nervous temperament, inclined to silence, like his big burly friend, William Carley, and had a deprecating, doubtful way of expressing his opinion at all times. In spite of this humility of manner, however, he cherished a secret pride in his superior wealth, and was apt to remind his associates, upon occasion, that he could buy-up any one of them without feeling the investment.

After having attained the discreet age of fortyfive without being a victim to the tender passion, Mr. Whitelaw might reasonably have supposed himself exempt from the weakness so common to mankind. But such self-gratulation, had he indulged in it, would have been premature ; for after having been a visitor at the Grange, and booncompanion of the bailiff’s for some ten years, it slowly dawned upon him that Ellen Carley was a very pretty girl, and that he would have her for his wife, and no other. Her brisk off-hand manner had a kind of charm for his slow apathetic nature ; her rosy brunette face, with its bright black eyes and flashing teeth, seemed to him the perfection of beauty. But he was not an impetuous lover. He took his time about the business, coming two or three times a week to smoke his pipe with William Carley, and paying Nelly some awkward blundering compliment now and then in his deliberate hesitating way. He had supreme confidence in his own position and his money, and was troubled by no doubt as to the ultimate success of his suit. It was true that Nelly treated him in by no means an encouraging manner—was, indeed, positively uncivil to him at times; but this he supposed to be mere feminine coquetry; and it enhanced the attractions of the girl he designed to make his wife. As to her refusing him when the time came for his proposal, he could not for a moment imagine such a thing possible. It was not in the nature of any woman to refuse to be mistress of Wyncomb, and to drive her own whitechapel cart —a comfortable hooded vehicle of the wagonette species, which was popular in those parts.

So Stephen Whitelaw took his time, contented to behold the object of his affection two or three evenings a week, and to gaze admiringly upon her beauty as he smoked his pipe in the snug little oakwainscoted parlour at the Grange, while his passion grew day by day, until it did really become a very absorbing feeling, second only to his love of money and Wyncomb Farm. These dull sluggish natures are capable of deeper passions than the world gives them credit for; and are as slow to abandon an idea as they are to entertain it.

It was Ellen Carley’s delight to tell Marian of her troubles, and to protest to this kind confidante again and again that no persuasion or threats of her father’s should ever induce her to marry Stephen Whitelaw—which resolution Mrs. Holbrook fully approved. There was a little gate opening from a broad green lane into one of the fields at the back of the Grange; and here sometimes of a summer evening they used to find Frank Randall, who had ridden his father’s white pony all the way from Malsham for the sake of smoking his evening cigar on that particular spot. They used to find him seated there, smoking lazily, while the pony cropped the grass in the lane close at hand. He was always eager to do any little service for Mrs. Holbrook ; to bring her books or anything else she wanted from Malsham—anything that might make an excuse for his coming again by appointment, and with the certainty of seeing Ellen Carley. It was only natural that Marian should be inclined to protect this simple love-affair, which offered her favourite a way of escape from the odious marriage that her father pressed upon her. The girl might have to endure poverty as Frank Randall’s wife ; but that seemed a small thing in the eyes of Marian, compared with the horror of marrying that pale-faced mean-looking little man, whom she had seen once or twice sitting by the fire in the oak-parlour, with his small light-gray eyes fixed in a dull stare upon the bailiff’s daughter.

CELA ER Die JACOB NOWELL’S WILL.

Ar his usual hour, upon the evening after his arrival in London, Gilbert Fenton called at the silversmith’s shop in Queen-Anne’s-court. He found Jacob Nowell weaker than when he had seen him last, and with a strange old look, as if extreme age had come upon him suddenly. He had been compelled to call in a medical man, very much against his will; and this gentleman had told him that his condition was a critical one, and that it would be well for him to arrange his affairs quickly, and to hold himself prepared for the worst.

He seemed to be slightly agitated when Gilbert told him that his granddaughter had been found.

‘Will she come to me, do you think?’ he asked.

‘T have no doubt that she will do so, directly she hears how ill you have been. She was very much pleased at the idea of seeing you, and only waited for her husband’s permission to come. But I don’t suppose she will wait for that when she knows of your illness. I shall write to her immediately.’

‘Do,’ Jacob Nowell said eagerly; ‘I want to see her before I die. You did not meet the husband, then, I suppose ?’

‘No; Mr. Holbrook was not there.’

He told Jacob Nowell all that it was possible for him to tell about his interview with Marian ; and the old man seemed warmly interested in the subject. Death was very near him; and the sayings of the long dreary years during which his joyless life had been devoted to money-making must soon pass into other hands. He wanted to know something of the person who was to profit by his death; he wanted to be sure that when he was gone some creature of his own flesh and blood would remember him kindly; not for the sake of his money alone, but for something more than that.

‘I shall make my will to-morrow,’ he said, before Gilbert left him. ‘I don’t mind owning to you that I have something considerable to bequeath ; for I think I can trust you. And if I should die before my grandchild comes to me, you will see that she has her rights, won’t you ? You will take care that she is not cheated by her husband, or by any one else ?’

‘IT shall hold it a sacred charge to protect her interests, so far as it 1s possible for me to do so.’

‘That’s well. I shall make you one of the executors to my will, if you’ve no objection.’

‘No. The executorship will bring me into collision with Mr. Holbrook, no doubt; but I have resolved upon my line of conduct with regard to him ; and I am prepared for whatever may happen. My chief desire now is to be a real friend to your granddaughter; for I believe she has need of friends.’

The will was drawn up next day by an attorney of by no means spotless reputation, who had often done business for Mr. Nowell in the past, and who may have known a good deal about the origin of some of the silver which found its way to the old silversmith’s stores. He was a gentleman frequently employed in the defence of those

VOL. II. E injured innocents who appear at the bar of the Old Bailey; and was not at all particular as to the merits of the cases he conducted. This gentleman embodied Mr. Nowell’s desires with reference to the disposal of his worldly goods in a very simple and straightforward manner. All that Jacob Nowell had to leave was left to his granddaughter, Marian Holbrook, for her own separate use and maintenance, independent of any husband whatsoever.

This was clear enough. It was only when there came the question, which a lawyer puts with such deadly calmness, as to what was to be done with the money in the event of Marian Holbrook’s dying intestate, that any perplexity arose.

‘ Of course, if she has children, you’d like the money to go to them,’ said Mr. Medler the attorney; ‘ that’s clear enough, and had better be set out in your will. But suppose she should have no children, you’d scarcely like all you leave to go to her husband, who is quite a stranger to you, and who may be a scoundrel for aught you know.’

‘No; I certainly shouldn’t much care about enriching this Holbrook.’

‘Of course not; to say nothing of the danger there would be in giving him so strong an interest in his wife’s death. Not but what I daresay he’ll contrive to squander the greater part of the money during her lifetime. Is it all in hard cash ?’

‘No; there is some house-property at Islington, which pays a high interest: and there are other freeholds.’

‘Then we might tie those up, giving Mrs. Holbrook only the income. It is essential to provide against possible villany or extravagance on the part of the husband. Women are so weak and helpless in these matters. And in the event of your granddaughter dying without children, wouldn’t you rather let the estate go to your son ?’

‘To him!’ exclaimed Jacob Nowell. ‘I have sworn that I would not leave him sixpence.’

‘That’s a kind of oath which no man ever considers himself bound to keep,’ said the lawyer in his most insinuating tone. ‘Remember, it’s only a remote contingency. The chances are that your granddaughter will have a family to inherit this property, and that she will survive her father.

And then, if we give her power to make a will, of course it’s pretty certain that she'll leave everything to this husband of hers. But I don’t think we ought to do that, Mr. Nowell. I think it would be a far wiser arrangement to give this young lady only a life interest in the real estate. That makes the husband a loser by her death, instead of a possible gainer to a large amount. And I consider that your son’s name has a right to come in here.’

‘T cannot acknowledge that he has any such right. His extravagance almost ruined me when he was a young man; and his ingratitude would have broken my heart, if I had been weak enough to suffer myself to be crushed by it.’

‘Time works changes amongst the worst of us, Mr. Nowell. I daresay your son has improved his habits in all these years, and is heartily sorry for the errors of his youth.’

‘Have you seen him, Medler?’ the old man asked quickly.

“Seen your son lately? No; indeed, my dear sir, I had no notion that he was in England.’

The fact is, that Percival Nowell had called upon Mr. Medler more than once since his arrival in London; and had discussed with that gentleman the chances of his father’s having made, or not made, a will, and the possibility of the old man’s being so far reconciled to him as to make a will in his favour. Percival Nowell had gone farther than this, and had promised the attorney a handsome percentage upon anything that his father might be induced to leave him by Mr. Medler’s influence.

The discussion lasted for a long time; Mr. Medler pushing on stage by stage, in the favour of his secret client, anxious to see whether Jacob Nowell might not be persuaded to allow his son’s name to take the place of his granddaughter, whom he had never seen, and who was really no more than a stranger to him, the attorney took care to remind him. But on this point the old man was immovable. He would leave his money to Marian, and to no one else. He had no desire that his son should ever profit by the labours and deprivations of all those joyless years in which his fortune had been scraped together. It was only as the choice of the lesser evil that he would consent to Percival’s inheriting the property from his daughter, rather than that it should fall into the hands of Mr. Holbrook. The lawyer had hard work before he could bring his client to this point; but he did at last succeed in doing so, and Percival Nowell’s name was written in the will.