CHAPTER XXXI.

IN THE OLD CHÂTEAU.

A draughty old château in Switzerland. Not that it need have been draughty, for it lay at the foot of a mountain, sheltered from the east winds. But the doors did not fit, and the windows rattled, after the custom of most old châteaux: and so the winter air crept in. It stood in a secluded spot quite out of the beaten tracks of travellers; and it looked upon one of the most glorious prospects that even this favoured land of lovely scenery can boast.

That prospect in part, and in part the very moderate rent asked for the house, had induced Sir Sandy MacIvor to take it for the autumn months. The MacIvors, though descended from half the kings of Scotland, could not boast of anything very great in the shape of income. Sir Sandy's was but small, and he and his wife, Lady Harriet, formerly Harriet Chenevix, had some trouble to make both ends meet. The little baronet was fond of quoting the old saying that he had to cut his coat according to his cloth. Therefore, when Lady Adela went to them for a prolonged stay, the very ample allowance made for her to Sir Sandy was most welcome.

Upon the close of Adela's short visit to Court Netherleigh in the autumn, she returned to her mother. The visit had not been productive of any good result as regarded her cheerfulness of mind and manner; for her life seemed only to grow more dreary. Lady Acorn did not approve of this, and took care daily to let Adela know she did not, dealing out to her sundry reproaches. One day when Adela was unusually low-spirited, the countess made use of a threat--that she should be transported to that gloomy Swiss fastness the MacIvors had settled themselves in, and stop there until she mended her manners.

A chance word, spoken at hazard, sometimes bears fruit. Adela, a faint light rising in her eyes as she heard this, lifted her voice eagerly. "Mother, let me go; send me there as soon as you please," she said. "It will at least be better for me there than here, for I shall be out of the world."

"Out of the world!" snapped Lady Acorn. "You can't be much more out of it than you are down here in Oxfordshire."

"Yes, I can. The neighbours, those who are at their places, come in to see us, and papa sometimes brings people home from town. Let me go to Harriet."

It was speedily decided. Lady Acorn, severe though she was with Adela, had her welfare at heart, and she thought a thorough change might be beneficial to her. An old friend, who chanced to be going abroad, took charge of Lady Adela to Geneva: Sir Sandy MacIvor and his wife met her there, and took her back with them to the château.

That was in October. Adela found the château as isolated as she could well desire, and therefore she was pleased with it; and she told Sir Sandy and Harriet she was glad to have come.

They had never thought of staying in this château for the winter; they meant to go to Rome early in December. But as that month approached, Adela evinced a great dislike to move. She would not go to Rome to encounter the English there, she told them; she would stay where she was. It a little perplexed the MacIvors; Adela had now grown so weak and low-spirited that they did not like to cross her or to insist upon it that she must go; neither did they care to give her up as their inmate, for her money was of consequence to them.

"What if we make up our minds to stay here for the winter, Harriet?" at length said Sir Sandy, who was as easy-tempered, genial-hearted a little laird as could be met with in or out of Scotland: though he stood only five feet high in his shoes, and nothing could be seen of his face except his small retroussé nose standing out of the mass of bright yellow hair which adorned it.

"It will be so cold," grumbled Harriet. "Think of all these draughts."

"They won't hurt," said the laird, who was bred to such things, his paternal stronghold in the Highlands not being altogether air-tight. "I'll nail some list over the cracks, and we'll lay in a good stock of wood and keep up grand fires. I think we might be comfortable, Harriet. It must be as you decide, of course, dear; but Adela can't be left here alone, and if we say she must go with us to Rome, she may fret herself into a fever."

"She is doing that as it is," returned Harriet. "We might stay here, of course--and we should get the place for an old song during the cold months. Perhaps we had better do so. Yet I should like to have been in Rome for the Christmas festivities, and for the carnival later."

"We will go next Christmas instead," said Sir Sandy.

As they had no children, they were not tied to their Scottish home, and could lay their plans freely. It was decided to remain in the château for the winter, and Sir Sandy began hammering at the doors and windows.

So they settled down contentedly enough; and, cold though it was, in spite of the list and the hissing wood fires, which certainly gave out more sparks than heat, Sir Sandy and his wife made the best of it.

It was more than could be said of Lady Adela. She not only did not make the best of things, but did not try to do so. Not that she complained of the cold, or the heat, or appeared to feel either. All seemed as one to her.

Her room was large; its great old-fashioned sofa and its heavy fauteuils were covered with amber velvet. Uncomfortable-looking furniture stood about--mahogany tables and consoles with cold white marble tops. The walls of the room were papered with a running landscape, representing green plains, rivers, blue mountains, sombre pine-trees, castles, and picturesque peasants at work in a vineyard. In a recess, shut off with heavy curtains, stood the bed; it was, in fact, a bedroom and sitting-room combined, as is so frequently the case on the Continent.

In a dress of black silk and crape, worn for Margery Upton, who had died the day after Christmas-Day, Lady Adela sat in this room near the crackling wood fire. January was wearing away. She leaned back in the great yellow armchair in listless apathy, her wasted hands lying on her lap, a warm cashmere shawl drawn round her, and two scarlet spots on her once blooming-cheeks. The low fever, that, as predicted by Lady Harriet weeks and weeks ago, she was fretting herself into, had all too surely attacked her. And she had not seemed in the least to care whether or not she died of it.

"If I die, will my death be sudden?" she one day startled the Swiss doctor by asking him.

"You will not die, you will get well," replied Monsieur Le Brun. "If you will only be reasonable, be it understood, and second our efforts to make you so, by wishing for it yourself," he added.

"I do wish it," she murmured; though her tone was apathetical enough. "But I said to you, '_If_ I die,'--and I want the question answered, sir. Would there be time to send for any friends from England that I may wish to see?"

"Ample time, miladi."

"Harriet," she whispered to her sister that same night, "mind you send for Mr. Grubb when I get into that state that I cannot recover--if I do get into it. _Will you?_"

"What next!" retorted Harriet. "Who says you will not recover?"

"I could not die in peace without seeing my husband--without asking for his forgiveness," pleaded the poor invalid, bitter tears of regret for the past slowly coursing down her cheeks. "You will be sure to send in time, won't you, Harriet?"

"Yes, yes, I promise it," answered Harriet, humouring the fancy; and she set herself to kiss and soothe her sister.

Lady Harriet MacIvor, who resembled her mother more than any of the rest, both in person and quickness of temper, had been tart enough with Adela before the illness declared itself, freely avowing that she had no patience with people who fretted themselves ill; but when the fever had really come she became a tender and efficient nurse.

The sickness and danger had passed--though of danger there had not perhaps been very much--and Adela was up again. With the passing, Lady Harriet resumed again her tendency to set the world and its pilgrims right, especially Adela. January was now drawing to a close.

The fever had left her very weak. In fact, it had not yet wholly taken itself away. She would lie back in the large easy-chair, utterly inert, day after day, recalling dreams of the past. Thinking of the luxurious home she had lost, one that might have been all brightness; picturing what she would do to render it so, were the opportunity still hers.

For hours she would lose herself in recollections of the child she had lost; the little boy, George. A rush of fever would pass through her veins as she recalled her behaviour at its baptism: her scornful rejection of her husband's name, Francis; her unseemly interruption from her bed to the clergyman that the name should be George. How she yearned after the little child now! Had he lived--why surely her husband would not have put her away from him! A man may not, and does not, put away the mother of his child; it could never have been. Would he have kept the child--or she? No, no; with that precious, living tie between them, he could not have thrust his wife from him. Thus she would lie, tormenting herself with deceitful fantasies that could never be, and wake with a shudder to the miserable reality.

Sufficient of the fever lingered yet to tinge with hectic her white face, and to heat her trembling hands. But for one thought Adela would not have cared whether she died or lived--at least, she told herself so in her misery; and that thought was that, if she died, her husband might take another wife. A wife who would give him back what she herself had not given--love for love. Since Miss Upton, perhaps unwittingly, had breathed that suggestion, it had not left Adela night or day.

How bitterly she regretted the past none knew, or ever would know. During these weeks of illness, before the fever and since, she had had leisure to dwell upon her conduct; to repent of it; to pray to Heaven for pardon for it. The approach of possible death, the presence of hopeless misery, had brought Adela to that Refuge which she had never sought or found before, an ever-merciful God. Never again, even were it possible that she should once more mingle with the world, could she be the frivolous, heartless, unchristian woman she had been. Nothing in a small way had ever surprised Lady Harriet so much, as to find Adela take out her Bible and Prayer-book, and keep them near her.

She sat today, buried as usual in the past, the bitter anguish of remembrance rending her soul. We are told in Holy Writ that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The heart of woman is undoubtedly contradictory. When Adela was Mr. Grubb's wife, she had done her best to scorn and despise him, to persuade herself she hated him: now that he was lost to her for ever, she had grown to love him, passionately as ever man was loved by woman. The very fact that relations between them could never be renewed only fostered this love. For Lady Adela knew better than to deceive herself with vain hopes; she knew that to cherish them would be the veriest mockery; that when Francis Grubb threw her off, it was for ever.

Many a moment did she spend now, regretting that she had not died in the fever. It would at least have brought about a last interview; for Harriet would have kept her word and sent for him.

"Better for me to die than live," she murmured to herself, lifting her fevered hand. "I could have died happily, with his forgiveness on my lips. Whereas, to live is nothing but pain; weariness--and who knows how many years my life will last?"

Darvy came in; a tumbler in her hand containing an egg beaten up with wine and milk. Darvy did not choose to abandon her mistress in her sickness and misfortunes, but Darvy considered herself the most ill-used lady's-maid that fate ever produced. Buried alive in this dismal place in a foreign country, where the companions with whom she consorted, the other domestics, spoke a language that was barbarous and unintelligible, Darvy wondered when it would end.

"I don't want it," said Adela, turning away.

"But Lady Harriet says you must take it, my lady. You'll never get your strength up, if you refuse nourishment."

"I don't care to get my strength up. If you brought me some wine and water, Darvy, instead, I could take that. Or some tea--or lemonade. I am always thirsty."

"And what good is there in tea or lemonade?" returned Darvy, who ventured to contend now as she never had when her lady was in health, coaxing her also sometimes as if she were a child. "Lady Harriet said if you would not take this from me, my lady, she should have to come herself. And she does not want to come; she's busy."

To hear that Harriet was busy seemed something new. "What is she busy about?" languidly asked Adela.

"Talking," answered Darvy. "Some English traveller has turned out of his way to call on her and Sir Sandy, my lady, and he is giving them all the home news."

"Oh," was the indifferent comment of Lady Adela. Home news was nothing to her now. And, to put an end to Darvy's importunity, she drank the refreshment without further objection.

Margery Upton had died and was buried; and her will, when it became known, created a nine-days' wonder in London. Amidst those assembled to hear its reading, the mourners, who had just returned from the churchyard, none was more utterly astonished than Mr. Grubb. Never in his whole life had such an idea--that he would be the inheritor of Court Netherleigh--occurred to him. Miss Upton's statement of why it was left to him, as explained by her by word of mouth to Mr. Cleveland, was read out after the will; and Francis Grubb found a private letter, written by her to himself, put into his hand.

Lord Acorn was similarly astonished. Intensely so. But, in his débonnaire manner, he carried it off with easy indifference, and did not let his mortification appear. Perhaps he had not in his heart felt so sure of Court Netherleigh as he had allowed the world to think: Miss Upton's warnings might not have been quite lost upon him. Failing himself, he would rather Francis Grubb had it than any one; there might be no trouble about those overdue bonds; though Lord Acorn, always sanguine, had not allowed himself to dream of such a catastrophe as this.

Perhaps the most unwelcome minor item in the affair to Lord Acorn was having to carry the news home to his wife. It was evening when he arrived there. He and Mr. Grubb had travelled up together: for the easy-natured peer did not intend to show the cold shoulder to his son-in-law because he had supplanted him.

"Will you give me a bit of dinner, Frank?" asked the earl, as they got into a cab together at the terminus, only too willing to put off the mauvais quart d'heure with my lady as long as might be.

"I will give it to you, and welcome, if there is any to be had," smiled Mr. Grubb. "I left no orders for dinner today, not knowing when I should be back."

Alighting in Grosvenor Square, they found dinner prepared. Afterwards Lord Acorn went home. His wife, attired in one of Madame Damereau's best black silk gowns, garnished with a crape apron, was sitting in the small drawing-room, all impatience.

"Well, you _are_ late," cried she. "What can have kept you until now?"

"It is only ten o'clock," replied the earl, drawing a chair to the fire. "At work, Gracie!" he added, turning to his daughter, who sat at the table, busy with her tatting.

"Only ten o'clock!" snapped the countess. "I expected you at five or six. And now--how are things left? I suppose we have Court Netherleigh?"

"Well, no; we have not," quietly replied Lord Acorn.

"_Not!_"

"Not at all. Grubb is made the heir. He has Court Netherleigh--and is to take the name."

Lady Acorn's face, in its petrified astonishment, its righteous indignation, would have made a model for a painter. Not for a couple of minutes did she speak, voice and words alike failed her.

"The deceitful wretch!" broke from her at length. "To play the sneak with Margery in that way!"

"Don't waste your words, Betsy. Grubb knew nothing about it: is more surprised than you are. Court Netherleigh was willed to him when Margery first came into it; when he was a young lad. She only carried out the directions of Sir Francis Netherleigh."

Lady Acorn was beginning to breathe again. But she was not the less angry.

"I don't care. It is no better than a swindle. How _deceitful_ Margery must have been!"

"She kept counsel--if you mean that. As to being deceitful--no, I don't see it. She never did, or would, admit that the estate would come to us: discouraged the idea, in fact."

"All the same, it is a frightful blow. We were _reckoning_ on it. Was no one in her confidence?"

"No one whatever except the old lawyer, Pencot. Two or three weeks before she died she disclosed all to Cleveland in a confidential interview. As it is not ourselves, I am heartily glad it's Grubb."

"What has she done with all her accumulated money?" tartly went on her ladyship. "She must have saved a heap of it, living in the quiet way she did!"

"Yes, there is a pretty good lot of that," equably replied the earl. "It is left to one and another; legacies here, legacies there. I don't come in for one."

"No! What a shame!"

"You do, though," resumed Lord Acorn, stretching out his boots to catch the warmth of the fire. "You get ten thousand pounds."

The words were to the countess as a very sop in the pan. Her fiery face became a little calmer.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Quite sure," nodded the earl. "You don't get it, though, without conditions. Only the interest for life; the sum itself then goes to Grace, here. I congratulate you, Gracie, my dear."

Grace let fall her shuttle; her colour rose. "Oh, papa! And--what do my sisters have?" she added, ever, in her unselfishness, thinking of others.

"Mary, Harriet, and Frances have a thousand pounds each; Sarah and Adela only some trinkets as a remembrance. I suppose Margery thought they were well married, and did not require money."

"And, papa, who else comes in?" asked Grace, glancing across at her mother, who sat beating her foot on the carpet.

"Who else? Let me see. Thomas Cleveland has two thousand pounds. And Mrs. Dalrymple, the elder, has a thousand. And several of Margery's servants are provided for. And I think that's about all I remember."

"The furniture at Court Netherleigh?" interrupted Lady Acorn. "Who takes that?"

"Grubb; he takes everything belonging to the house and estate; everything that was Sir Francis Netherleigh's. He is left residuary legatee. Margery Upton has only willed away what was her own of right."

"As if he wanted it!" grumbled Lady Acorn.

"The less one needs things, the more one gets them, as it seems to me. The baronetcy is to be renewed in him, Betsy."

"The baronetcy! In _him!_"

"Sir Francis wished it. There won't be much delay in the matter, either. Margery Upton put things in train for it before she died."

Lady Acorn could only reply by a stare; and there ensued a pause.

"The idiot that little minx Adela has shown herself!" was her final comment. "Court Netherleigh, it seems, would have been hers."

The little minx Adela, wasting away with fever in her Swiss abode, knew nothing of all this, and cared less. The barest items of news concerning it came to the MacIvors; Grace wrote to Harriet to say that Court Netherleigh had been willed to Mr. Grubb, not to her father; but in that first letter she gave no details. That much was told to Adela. She aroused herself sufficiently to ask who had Court Netherleigh, and was told that Margery Upton had left it to Mr. Grubb.

"I knew he was a favourite of hers," was all the comment she made; and, but for the sudden flush, Lady Harriet might have thought the news was perfectly indifferent to her: and she made no further allusion to it, then or afterwards.

But of the particulars, I say, Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet remained in ignorance, for Grace did not write again. No one else wrote. And their extreme surprise at Mr. Grubb's inheritance had become a thing of the past, when one day a traveller, recently from England, found them out and their old château. It was Captain Frederick Cust, brother to the John Cust who stuttered. The Custs and the Acorns had always been very intimate; the young Cust lads, there were six of them, and the Ladies Chenevix had played and quarrelled together as boys and girls. Captain Cust knew all about the Court Netherleigh inheritance, and supplied the information lacking, until then, to Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet MacIvor. No wonder Darvy had said that Lady Harriet was too busy to go upstairs: she was as fond of talking as her mother.

And so, the abuse they had been mutually lavishing upon Mr. Grubb in private for these two or three past weeks they found to be unmerited. He was the lucky inheritor, it is true, but through no complicity of his own.

"You might have known that," said Captain Cast, upon Lady Harriet's candidly avowing this. "Grubb is the most honourable man living; he would not do an underhand deed to be made king of England tomorrow. I am surprised you could think it of him for a moment, Harriet."

"Be quiet, Fred," she retorted. "It was not an unnatural thought. The best of men will stretch a point when such a property as Court Netherleigh is in question."

"Grubb would not. And he could have bought such a place any day had he a mind to do it."

"And he is to take up the baronetcy! You are sure that is true?"

"Sure and certain. And I wish him joy with all my heart! There's not one of us in the social world but would welcome him into our order with drums and trumpets."

Lady Harriet laughed. "You are just the goose you used to be, Fred."

"No doubt," assented Captain Frederick. "Where's the use of being anything better in such a silly world as this? Your wife has always paid me compliments, MacIvor, since the time we were in pinafores."

"Just as she does me," nodded little Sir Sandy. "And how is Mr. Grubb?--I liked him, too, captain. Does he still keep up that big establishment in Grosvenor Square all for himself?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't he? He is rich enough to keep up ten of them. By the way, he is a member of Parliament now--do you know it? They've returned him for Wheatshire."

And thus the conversation continued. But we need not follow it.

After Captain Cust left at night, for he stayed the day with them, Lady Harriet sat in silent thought, apparently weighing some matter in her mind.

"Sandy," she said at length, looking across at him, "I don't think I shall tell Adela anything about this--I mean that her husband is to take the baronetcy. It will be better not."

"Why?" asked Sir Sandy.

"It will bring her past folly home to her so severely. It may bring all the fever back again."

"As you please, of course, dear. But she did not seem to care at all when told he had inherited Netherleigh."

"That's all you know about it, Sandy!" retorted Lady Harriet. "_I_ saw--all the light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. I tell you, sir, she is in love with her husband now, though she may never have been before, and it will try her too greatly, in her weak state. Her chief bone of contention in the old days was his name; that's removed now. And she has forfeited that lovely place, Court Netherleigh!"

"You know best, my dear. Perhaps it will be kinder not to tell her. But you will have to caution Darvy, and those about her: this is news that will not rest in a nutshell. Though," remarked Sir Sandy, after a pause, "with all deference to your superior judgment, Harriet, I do not think she can care much more for her husband now than she cared of old."

"Listen, Sandy," was the whispered answer. "Yesterday evening at dusk I went softly up to Adela's room, and peeped in to see whether she was dozing. She sat in the firelight, her head bent over that little old photograph she has of Mr. Grubb. Suddenly she gave a little cry, and began raining tears and kisses upon it."