CHAPTER XXVIII.

ON THE WAY FROM BLACKHEATH.

Strolling hither and thither, just as his steps led him, for in truth he had no purpose just then, so intense was his mental distress, Mr. Grubb found himself somehow in Jermyn Street. He was passing the Cavendish Hotel, his eyes nowhere, when a hand was laid upon his arm. A little lady in a close bonnet and black veil, standing at the hotel entrance, had arrested him.

"Were you going to pass me, Francis Grubb?"

"Miss Upton!" he exclaimed, coming with an effort, out of his wilderness, and clasping her offered hand. "I did not see you; I was buried in thought."

"In deep thought, as it seemed to me," rejoined Miss Upton, regarding his face with a meaning look. "Come upstairs to my sitting-room."

"Are you staying here?" he asked.

"Only until tomorrow afternoon. I came from home this morning. Sit down and take lunch with me," she added, removing her bonnet. "It is ready, you perceive. I told them to have it on the table by one o'clock. They are punctual, and so am I."

"You have been out?"

"Only to Chenevix House. I came up on business of my own, but I wanted to see the Acorns, so I drove there at once, after reporting myself here to the hotel people, to whom I wrote yesterday to secure my rooms. No meat! Why, what do you live upon?"

Something like a faint smile parted his lips. "Thank you--no, not today. I have no appetite."

"_Try_," she kindly whispered, leaning forward and laying her hand for a moment upon his. "Other men have had to bear as much before you."

So, then, she knew it! A vivid red dyed his brow. How painful it was, this allusion to it, even from her.

"You have heard it?" he breathed.

"I heard of the trouble about the cheque last week from the Rector, during a flying visit he had to pay Netherleigh. The man was in terrible distress, hardly knowing whether his son was guilty or not guilty. A little further news dropped out later, and yesterday Charles was brought home by his father and stepmother; his name cleared, but some one else's mentioned."

She paused a moment. Mr. Grubb said nothing.

"When I reached Lady Acorn's this morning, she was alone--and in a state, not of temper, but of real, genuine distress," continued Miss Upton. "I told her I had come to hear the whole truth about this miserable business, and she told me all, from beginning to end. She is full of wrath and bitterness: and who can wonder?"

"Against me?"

"Against you! No. Against Adela. She did not spare her daughter in the recital. She said that Mr. Grubb--you--were at that moment with Lord Acorn, negotiating, she believed, the articles of a separation. Was it so?"

"Yes. They are arranged."

"Alas! I have long foreseen that it might come to it. Before there was any notion of this last terrible offence of hers, I thought the day of retribution must surely come, unless she mended her ways. But we will say no more, now. Adela is my god-daughter, and I will do what I can for her, though I would rather have seen her in her grave."

He lifted his eyes to the earnest face.

"I would, indeed. Far rather would I have seen her in her grave than what she is--a heartless woman. You have been to her a husband in a thousand, and this is how she has requited you. And now, tell me--if you don't mind telling tales out of school--how Acorn is going on: for I expect you know. Fighting shy of his debts, as usual?"

In spite of the mental pain that pressed so heavily upon him, Mr. Grubb could not forbear a smile, her tone was so quaint. "Just now his lordship is flourishing," replied he, his voice assuming a lightness he did not feel. "He had a slice of luck at the Derby: won, it is said, between ten and twelve thousand pounds."

Miss Upton lifted her hands. "What a sum of money to win, or to lose! He might have lost it, I suppose, as easily as gained it: and then where would he have been? How can men do these things lightly? How much does he owe you?"

The question was put abruptly. A faint colour tinged Mr. Grubb's face. He hesitated.

"You do not care to say," quickly spoke Miss Upton. "Quite right of you, no doubt. I conclude you feel pretty secure, having taken his bonds on Court Netherleigh--whenever it shall fall in."

"I have not taken any bonds on Court Netherleigh. Believe that, Miss Upton."

"Do you mean to say that he has not offered you bonds on it, as security for your loans?"

"He has offered them over and over again. But I have never taken them. In the first place, it would have been no true security. Court Netherleigh is not his, and there exists, of course, a possibility that it may never be his: for he--is older than its present possessor," concluded Mr. Grubb, his eyes meeting Miss Upton's. "No; for what I have lent Lord Acorn, I possess no security beyond his acknowledgment."

"Ah," shortly commented Miss Upton. "I told you once, you know, that you were safe in letting him borrow money on the Netherleigh estate. But I did not mean to imply that I sanctioned your doing so; certainly not to help him to any extent."

"I have not helped him to any great extent. At least, not to more than I can afford to lose with equanimity. I have never advanced to him a sum, large or small, but in the full consciousness that it would probably never be returned."

Miss Upton nodded her approval, and passed to another topic. "Will you tell me how your mother is?" she asked. "I hear she is so ill as to be in danger, and that you have been afraid to leave her."

"She was in danger three or four days ago, and I was sent for in haste. But the danger has passed, and she is tolerably well again--excepting for weakness. My mother has had several of these attacks now, and it seems to me, that each one is more severe than the last. They are connected with the heart."

"Ay, we must all have some affliction or other as we draw near to the close of life; some reminder, more or less ominous in itself, that God will soon be calling us to that better world where there is neither sickness nor death," she remarked, dreamily. "She is going--and I am going--and yet----"

"Not you, surely, dear Miss Upton!" he interrupted, struck with the words.

She looked at him for a moment, saw his concern, and smiled.

"Are we not all going?" she asked--"some sooner, some later. And yet, I was about to say, what a short time ago it seems since I and Catherine Grant were girls together: dear friends and companions! How much I should like to see her!"

"Would you really like to do so? Would you care to go to Blackheath?"

"I should. But I don't know how to get there. When one comes to be close upon sixty years of age, and not strong, these short railway journeys try one mightily. I know they try me."

"Dear Miss Upton, you can go to Blackheath without the slightest exertion or trouble. My carriage will take you to my mother's door, and bring you back to this. Shall it do so?"

"Without trouble, you say? Then I will go this afternoon. No time like the present. I had meant to do two or three errands for myself, and told the fly to be here at three o'clock, but Annis shall do them for me."

"The carriage shall be here instead. Will you have it open or shut?"

"Open in going. Closed in returning, if it be at all late. Catherine and I will have a great deal to say to each other; once we meet, we shall not be in haste to part. That is, if she does not cherish too much resentment to speak to me at all. Of course, you will accompany me?"

"Of course I will," he answered: and hastened away to give the necessary orders. Not to his house; he did not go near that; and did not intend to do so, until fully assured that Lady Adela had left it; he went direct to the stables.

At three o'clock the carriage stood before the door of the hotel. Its master stood waiting for it, and Miss Upton came out, followed by her maid Annis, who was departing to do the errands. Mr. Grubb handed Miss Upton into the carriage, and they drove to Blackheath.

"Catherine!"

"Margery!"

The names simultaneously broke from their lips when the early friends met; they who had lived estranged for the better part of their lives. Mrs. Lynn was in what she called her invalid sitting-room, one that opened from her bed-chamber, and which she occupied when she was too ill to go downstairs. She was lying on a sofa near the open window--from which window there was to be seen so fair a landscape--but she rose when Miss Upton entered.

They sat on the sofa side by side, hand clasping hand. Grievances were forgotten, estrangement was at an end. Miss Upton had taken off her bonnet and mantle, and looked as much at home as though she had lived there for years. They fell to talking of the old days. Francis remained below with his sister.

"I did not expect to see you again, Margery, on this side the grave," spoke Mrs. Lynn. "Not so very long ago, I should have declined a visit from you had you proffered it. It is only when sickness has subdued the spirit that we lay aside old animosities."

"And therefore towards the end of life sickness comes to us. I said so this afternoon to your son. We quarrel and fight and take vengeance on one another in our hotheaded days: but when the blood chills with years and the world is fading from us, we see what our crooked ways have been worth."

"You were all very bitter with me for marrying Christopher Grubb, Margery; and you took care to let me know it. Uncle Francis--as we used to call Sir Francis Netherleigh, though without the slightest right to do so--was the most bitter of all."

"Just as Elizabeth Acorn's girls call me 'aunt' in these later years," remarked Miss Upton. "Yes, Uncle Francis was very angry. He thought you had thrown yourself away."

"Elizabeth Acorn has never condescended to take the slightest notice of me. Although my son has married her daughter, she has never given him the smallest intimation that she remembers we were friends in early life."

"Betsy always had her crotchets; they don't diminish with age," returned Miss Upton. "She may be called a disappointed woman; and disappointment seldom renders any one more genial."

Mrs. Lynn did not understand. "Disappointed in what way?"

"In her husband. Not in himself, but in his circumstances. When Betsy married him, it was to enter, as she supposed, upon a career of unlimited wealth and splendour. Instead of that, she found him to be the most reckless of men as regards money, spending all before him, and her life has been one of almost incessant embarrassment. You little know what shifts she has been sometimes put to. It has soured her, Catherine. What a noble man your son is," added the speaker, after a brief pause. "One in a thousand."

"And what a miserable mistake he made in wedding Adela Chenevix!" returned Mrs. Lynn, with emotion. "She makes him the most wretched wife. He does not open his lips to me, he never will do it; but I can see what a blighted life his is--and I hear others speak of it. I cannot help thinking that he is in some especial trouble with her at the present moment, or why does he remain down here, now that I am better?"

"So they have not thought well to tell his mother," reflected Margery Upton. Neither would she tell her.

"You are happy in your children, Catherine. Of your son the world may be proud--and is. As to your daughter, she is one of the sweetest girls I know."

"Yes, I am truly happy in my children," assented Mrs. Lynn. "It is a wonderful consolation. But happiness does not attend them. Francis we have spoken of. And poor Mary lost her betrothed husband, Robert Dalrymple, by a dreadful fate, as you know. She will never marry."

"Ah, that was a cruel business. Poor Robert! If he had only brought his troubles to me, I would have saved him."

"The singular thing is, that he did not take them to Francis," quickly spoke Mrs. Lynn. "Francis had the power to help him, equally with yourself, and he had the will. The very last day of Robert's life; at least, I think it was the last, he was with Francis in Grosvenor Square, and I believe Francis then offered to help him--or as good as offered to do so."

Margery Upton sighed. It was an unprofitable subject; a gloomy reminiscence. "Let us leave it, Catherine," she said. "Did you give your son the name of Francis in remembrance of Francis Netherleigh?"

"Indeed I did not. Sir Francis Netherleigh had wounded me too greatly for me to wish to retain any remembrance of him. Francis was named after his uncle and his father."

"Were you surprised at Netherleigh's being left to me?" resumed Miss Upton, breaking a pause of silence.

"Not at all. I thought it the most natural thing for Sir Francis to do. I had married, and was discarded; Betsy Cleveland had also married; her husband was a nobleman; mine was rich; and we neither of us needed Netherleigh. It was not likely he would leave it to either of us. You, on the contrary, continued to live with him as his niece--his child--and you had no fortune. It was a just bequest, Margery, in my judgment. It never occurred to me to think of it in any other light."

"Betsy Acorn has never forgiven me for having inherited it--or forgiven Uncle Francis for leaving it to me. I have wondered at odd moments whether you felt about it as she did."

"I?" returned Mrs. Lynn, in surprise. "Never. Sir Francis did right in leaving it to you. And, now, tell me a little about yourself, Margery. Are you in good health? You do not look strong."

We will leave them to themselves. It was a pleasant, and yet partly a sad meeting; and perhaps each opened her heart to the other in more confidential intercourse than had ever been exchanged between them before.

"Won't you come down and stay with me, and see the old place again, Catherine?" spoke entreatingly the mistress of Court Netherleigh, in parting.

"Never again, Margery. I would willingly come to you; I should like to see the dear old spot; but I shall never be able to go another day's journey from this, my home. Not very long now, and I shall be carried from it."

Twilight was advancing, when the carriage came round to take Miss Upton back to London. Lovely sunset colours lingered in the west; a few light clouds floated across the sky; the crescent moon shone with a pale silvery light.

Lost, no doubt, in thoughts of the past interview, Margery Upton sat in silence, leaning back in her corner of the carriage. Mr. Grubb did not break it. So far as could be seen, he was wholly occupied with the beauties of the sky. At least a mile of the way was thus passed. Presently she glanced at him, and noted his outward, dreamy gaze. How this trouble of his had troubled her, she did not care to tell. He had her warmest sympathy.

"Do not let this crush you," she suddenly cried, leaning towards him. "Do not let the world see that it has subdued you; don't give her that triumph. God can never mean that the life of a good and noble Christian man, as you are, should be blighted. Yes, I know," she continued, interrupting some words he spoke, "troubles come to all, and it is on the best of us, as I believe, that they fall most heavily; on God's chosen few."

He laid his other hand upon hers, and kept it there.

"It is, you know, through tribulation that we enter into the Kingdom," she continued, softly; "and tribulation takes various shapes and forms, as may be best suited to our true welfare. The cruelest pain that the world knows may be fraught with guidance to the gate of Eternity: which, otherwise, we might have missed."

He could but give a silent assent.

"Accept this trial, Francis. Bear it like a man, and you will in time live it down. Make no change in your manner of living; do not give up your home or establishment: no, nor your visitors: continue all that as before. It is my best advice to you."

"It is the best advice you could give," he answered, with emotion. "Thank you for all your sympathy, dear Miss Upton. Thank you ever."

She drew back to her corner, and he looked out at the night again. Thus nearly another mile was passed.

"Did you find my mother much changed?" he said by-and-bye. "Should you have known her again?"

"Known her again!"--returned Miss Upton, with a brief smile. "I knew whom I was going to see, and therefore I could trace the features I was once familiar with. We were girls when we parted, young and blooming; now we are old women verging on the grave. Catherine retains her remarkable eyes, undimmed, unclouded. They are beautiful as ever; beautiful as yours."

Francis Grubb had heard so much of his eyes all his life, remarkable eyes, in truth, as Miss Upton called them, and very beautiful, that the allusion fell unheeded, if not unheard, on his ear. Something else in the words laid more hold upon him.

"Not verging on the grave yet, I trust: _you_. My dear mother will not, I fear, be spared long to us; but she has an incurable disease. Such is not your case, dear Miss Upton; and you should not talk so. You are young yet, as compared with many people. As, in fact, is my mother."

Margery Upton touched his arm, that he should look at her. "How do you know that I have not an incurable disease? Why should not such a thing come to me, as well as to your mother?"

Something in the tone, the earnest look, struck on him with fear. "It cannot be!" he slowly whispered.

"It is. I am dying, Francis. Dying slowly but surely. The probability is that I shall go before your mother goes."

He remembered how worn and weary he had thought her looking for some time past; how especially so on this same morning when she stopped him at the door of the Cavendish. He recalled a sentence, a word, that had fallen from her now and then, seeming to imply that she saw the close of life drawing near. Yet still, with all this presenting itself to him in a sudden mental effort, he could only reiterate: "It cannot be; it cannot be!"

"It is," she repeated. "I have suspected it for some time. I know it now."

A lump seemed to rise in his throat. How truly he esteemed and valued this good lady he never quite realized until this morning. She resumed.

"I know my friends, the few who consider they have a right to concern themselves about me, wonder that I should have come up to town so much more frequently during the past few months than I was wont to come. What I come for is to see my physician, Dr. Stair. I live too far off to expect him to come to me; and the journey does me no harm. I have an appointment with him tomorrow at eleven: after that, I return home."

"Is it the heart?" he asked, drawing a deep breath.

"No: but it is a disorder none the less fatal than some of those diseases that attack the heart. It is about two years ago--perhaps not quite so much," she broke off, "since I began to fear I was not well. I let it go on for a little time; Frost, our local doctor, did not seem to make much out of it; and then I came up to Dr. Stair. He is a straightforward man, and he plainly said he did not like my symptoms, but he thought he could subdue them and set me right. I grew better for a time; the malady seemed to have been checked, though it did not entirely leave me. Latterly it has returned with increased force; and--I know my fate."

The disclosure brought to him the keenest pain. "If I could only avert it!" he cried out, in his sorrow; "if I could only ward it off you!"

"No one on earth can do that. For myself, I am quite resigned; resting, and content to rest, in God's good hands."

"And, how long----"

"How long will it be before the end comes, you would ask," she said, for he did not conclude the sentence. "That I do not know. I mean to put the question to Dr. Stair tomorrow, and I am sure he will answer it to the best of his belief. It may be pretty near."

"Do you suffer pain?"

"Always; more or less. That will grow worse, I suppose, before it is over."

"Alas! alas!" he mentally breathed. "Should not your friends be made acquainted with this, Miss Upton?"

"My chief friends are acquainted with it. I have no very close friends. The Rector of Netherleigh is the closest, and he has known of it for some time. That is, he knows I am suffering from a disorder that I shall probably never get the better of. Your mother knows it, for I told her this evening; and now you know it. My faithful maid Annis knows a little--Frost and Dr. Stair most of all. No one else knows of it in the wide world: and I do not wish that any one should know."

"Is it right? Right to them?"

"Why, what other friends have I? Lady Acorn, you may say. She has never been as a _friend_ to me. Your mother and I, had opportunity permitted, might have been the truest and dearest friends, but I and Betsy Acorn, never. She and I do not assimilate. Time enough to proclaim my condition to the world when I become so ill that it cannot be concealed."

She fell into a reverie; and they scarcely exchanged another word for the rest of the way.

"You will not speak of this to the Acorns," she said to him, as the carriage stopped at the hotel.

"Certainly not, as you do not wish it. Or to any one else."

"It would only give a fillip to Lord Acorn's extravagance. With the prospect of coming into Court Netherleigh close at hand, he would increase his debts thick and threefold."

Francis Grubb nodded assent; he knew how true it was: he shook her hand with a lingering pressure, and watched her up the stairs. Then, dismissing his carriage, he walked through the lighted streets to Charing-Cross Station on his way back to Blackheath.

It may be that he shunned his home lest his wife should still be in it. He need not have feared. Within an hour of his departure from it at midday, while she was still in the depth of the bewilderment which the blow had brought her, Lord Acorn arrived. His errand was to take her away with him; and to take her peremptorily. He did not say to her, "Will you put on your bonnet and come with me, Adela:" he said, curtly, "Come."

"I cannot leave my home in this dreadful way, papa," she gasped, voice and hands alike trembling. "I cannot leave it for ever."

"You will," he coldly answered. "You must. You have no alternative. I am come to remove you from it."

"No, no," she pleaded. "Oh, papa, have mercy! Papa, papa!"

"You should have made that prayer to your husband, Adela--while the time to do it yet remained to you."

She clasped her hands in bitter repentance. "He will forgive me yet; I know he will. He may let me----"

"Never," interrupted Lord Acorn. "You may put that notion out of your mind for good, Adela. Francis Grubb will never forgive you, or receive you back while life shall last."

She moaned faintly.

"And you have only yourself to thank for it. Put your things on, as I bid you," he sternly added. "This is waste of time. And send your maid to me for instructions."

And thus Adela was removed from her husband's house overwhelmed with shame and remorse.