Читать книгу The White Gipsy - J. Monk Foster - Страница 11

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It was long after midnight when Sir Sydney Barringham Carsland arrived at Carsland Hall. He had found the house in darkness, and all the servants abed.

But he had no compunction in arousing the domestics from their snug quarters. He was master now; hence his summons to awake by means of bell and knocker was loud, continuous, and peremptory.

The butler, who opened the door for him, was surprised, or appeared to be, but his astonishment did not prevent him from being more deferential—even obsequious, than ever he had been before in the old days.

"Good morning, Sir Sydney," he managed to say. "We were all expecting you. I had your old rooms got ready, for I thought you would like 'em best."

"Quite right, Bennett. I prefer my old rooms—at present. If there is a fire in them I will go at once."

"There is, Sir Sydney."

"Then bring me something to eat and drink there, will you?"

"I will at once, Sir Sydney," Bennett replied, remarking to himself that his new master was taking things very quietly.

When the old butler made his way to Sydney's room, with a tray on which were bread, a cold fowl, and a bottle of champagne, he discovered that the new baronet was taking things as comfortably as cooly. He had cast off his unfashionable and somewhat shabby coat and vest and had donned a flashy dressing gown he had worn during his last sojourn at the hall, had drawn an easy chair in front of the glowing fire and was gazing thoughtfully at the leaping flames.

Bennett drew a small table near to his master's elbow, placed the supper upon it and then stood by.

"Is there anything else I can get for you, Sir Sydney?"

"I should like a smoke after this."

The butler went away, and the new master of Carsland Hall cast his thoughts away from him and set to work resolutely upon the chicken and champagne.

"Frightful accident, Sir Sydney," Bennett ventured to remark as he laid a box of choice cigars on the table.

"Yes," was the laconic and quite matter-of-fact response. "Where are they?"

"In the morning-room downstairs, sir."

"Was there an inquest?"

"Yes; this afternoon. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death."

"Where did the accident take place? How did it occur?"

"Sir Nicholas and Frederic were out driving. In Thorrell Lane, just beside the low wall which fences off the highway from the old Delph, the horse was frightened by a lot of bullocks and ran away. The carriage wheel struck the corner of the wall, and your father and brother were pitched over the wall into the quarry. They were dead enough when picked up. It was an awful accident, Sir Sydney."

"It was, Bennett. Who has had charge of affairs since?"

"Mr. Elliston from Earlsford. Your father's solicitor, you remember."

"I remember him very well."

"Well, he has been here a good deal since the accident. He has asked all the servant's about you—me too—thinking, very likely, that some of us knew where you might be."

"But none of you could tell him, Bennett," Sydney remarked, with his quick eyes turned for a moment on his servant's face.

"Of course not, sir. But he told me to let him know the moment you came home."

"Send one of the men over to him first thing in the morning, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do, Bennett. Good night."

"Good night, Sir Sydney."

The old fellow shuffled away, and the baronet was left to himself. He turned his chair to the fire, lit a cigar, re-filled his glass with the sparkling wine, and began to dream afresh with his eyes on the live coals. For an hour he sat there smoking, drinking, thinking. Then he went to bed and slept as soundly as any honest man in the three kingdoms.

On the following morning the baronet and his late father's solicitor met.

"Good morning. Mr. Elliston," Sydney cried with great warmth, as he held out his hand. "You see I have turned up. I heard you desired to see me, and I am exceedingly pleased that you have come."

"I am very glad, Sir Sydney, that you have come," the tall, sandy-bearded lawyer replied as he shook the other's hand. "Had I only known where to find you, I should have communicated with you the very moment that terrible disaster happened. A fearful thing, wasn't it, that they should both be taken off like that?"

"So terrible that I cannot find words to express my feelings, Mr. Elliston."

"Well, well, the Lord gives and He taketh away. But it is a blessing you have turned up after all. I was afraid I should have to advertise for you. This business has put me about very much indeed. I had to take charge of everything, and I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. The inquest was held yesterday, and I had arranged that the funeral should take place to-morrow. But, of course, all I have done is subject to alteration, my dear Sir Sydney."

"I leave everything in your hands, Mr. Elliston, with the utmost confidence, remembering the unbounded respect Sir Nicholas had for you, and the trust he placed in you."

"Thank you, thank you, Sir Sydney."

"There is one little private matter, Mr. Elliston, I should like to speak to you about—if one may approach such a delicate thing without any show of disrespect to the dead."

"Certainly, speak. You would never, I know, think of forgetting yourself, Sir Sydney, and the respect that is due to your deceased relatives."

"Then," said the new baronet, sinking his voice, "how will the sudden death of my father and brother affect me? Perhaps it would have been better if I had refrained from putting such a question to you, just now, but you will understand that after the late quarrel between my relations and myself, which was the cause of my leaving home, I am naturally anxious."

"Just so, just so. It is perfectly natural, Sir Sydney. But I am happy to say that you have no reason to complain—no occasion at all to fear the future."

"Why?"

"Because you are practically your father's sole heir—no, not that exactly, but your brother's."

"What! How do you mean? Frederic hated the sight of me."

"Had your brother survived he would have inherited everything."

"Everything, Mr. Elliston?"

"Yes, every stick and stone—every mine and every penny, Sir Sydney. Your father made a new will—or I drew it out according to his instructions, about three months ago."

"And my name was not in that document?"

"Yes, it was; but all he willed to you were your mother's jewels."

"What?" the baronet cried with a white face.

"Your mother's jewels," was the lawyer's quiet reply.

Carsland shot an inquiring glance at his companion's impassive face, and saw that he knew nothing of the theft of the gems.

"It was very kind of him."

"So you will perceive that you inherit as the next of kin of Frederic. Had he been married and had children, you would have had strong grounds for complaint."

"So I should. Well, I suppose the Lord orders all things for the best, and we must bow to the inevitable."

Sir Sydney Barringham Carsland intoned those words in such a manner and with such a sneer on his handsome face as made them little short of blasphemous. So the shrewd solicitor thought; but he was too wise a man to give utterance to his thought, and he contented himself with remarking in his dry way.

"So we must, Sir Sydney! So we must."

"But to fancy that I should be Frederic's sole heir?" Carsland cried with a bitter laugh. "Why it is enough to make him turn in his grave or haunt me. If he had thought that I was going to inherit he would have made a will also in order to spite me, his only—his loving—brother."

"Don't speak like that, Sir Sydney," Mr. Elliston exclaimed, holding his hands up in pious remonstrance.

"He hated me like poison."

"I know. But he is gone now, and you can afford to be charitable."

"So I can. You are right. It is foolish now to remember the past. And now, Mr. Elliston, about the funeral."

"As I have already said, it was arranged to take place to-morrow, but if you think differently the date can be altered to meet your wishes."

"I do not wish the funeral to be delayed."

"It has been suggested that the burial ceremony should be of a public character. Your father was for many years a Town Councillor of Earlsford—was also Mayor of the borough for several years; and the present mayor, Mr. Waddington, suggested that the members of the corporation would be pleased to attend. What do you think, Sir Sydney?"

"I think the funeral should be a public one. My father, after all, was a man of great enterprise. Those chimneys and collieries over there prove that, and the least we can do for him now is to honour his memory. Yes; let the ceremony be as imposing as possible. I will leave all that in your hands; and I will give orders that the collieries remain idle to-morrow. They are to be interred I suppose at the Earlsford Cemetery?"

"Yes."

After some further conversation the baronet and the solicitor parted; each having his own business to look after.

On the following day, shortly after noon, the remains of the late Sir Nicholas Carsland and his elder son were laid away to their last rest. The town of Earlsford, and all the villages of Thorrell, Thorrell Moor, and Marsh Green were astir along the route from Carsland Hall to the burial ground; and Mayor, Aldermen, Town Councillors, and other corporate officials took part in the procession.

On the evening of the funeral there was much feasting and drinking in the villages surrounding the collieries belonging to Sir Sydney Carsland. He had opened his purse strings in a generous fashion, and the inauguration of his reign was only what a lot of people expected who were acquainted with his past life.

In many of the village taverns free ale and food were provided for the work-people and tenants, and when eleven p.m. arrived scores of colliers and their wives, pit youths, and pit-brow lasses reeled home as best they might along the dark, frost-hardened country lanes.

Of course the miners to a man were loud in their praises of the new master. He had filled them with good beer, and that is one of the surest ways of reaching a pit-man's heart.

But others shook their heads when they heard of Sir Sydney's lavish hospitality. He had been a spendthrift all his life, and was evidently one still. And they predicted that the new baronet meant to make ducks and drakes of the fortune it had taken Sir Nicholas all his long years of strenuous labour and successful scheming to accumulate.

But even the most stiff-knecked and sober-minded of people were quickly forced to change their opinions respecting the future of Sir Sydney Carsland.

After that first splendid burst of generosity Sydney settled himself down at the Hall and lived his life in a quiet, gentlemanly, and unostentatious way.

His first business was to clear away the numerous debts he had contracted in various quarters during his last sojourn in London; and it cost him a pretty large sum to do that.

Then he began to devote himself to business in a steady, practical way. He took an active interest in the working of the collieries; made almost all the men and women, lads and lasses who worked for him believe he was deeply anxious for their welfare, and interested in their work.

Many of the pit folk lived in the village of Marsh Lane, as has been intimated already, and a considerable number of them resided in cottages which the late Sir Nicholas had erected. Many of these houses were in a condition that left much to be desired, and he lost no time in having the habitations repaired and improved in many little ways.

His next move was to purchase all the old property in the village and about it he could lay his hands on, and the low, "shambling," unhealthy and uncomfortable dens were swept away, and in their places respectable dwelling-houses—each with its slip of a garden—appeared, which were let to his working people at reasonable rents.

Such work as the foregoing would have been matter for wonder and admiration had it been undertaken and executed by any man, but coming from Sir Sydney Carsland, whom a lot of folks had predicted would go to the dogs fast, it created quite a revulsion of feeling in respect to himself.

One day as Carsland was riding along the high road near his home he chanced upon his father's old friend, Squire Woodcock, who was riding in the opposite direction.

"Good morning, Squire," Sir Sydney sang out in his heartiest manner. "A beautiful morning, isn't it?"

He reined in his horse as he spoke, and the fine-looking, grey-bearded old fellow, who rode erect as a youngster, followed his example, saying pleasantly—

"Yes, it's a splendid morning, Carsland." Then he added, as he ran his eye over the son of his old neighbour, "How well you are looking. One doesn't get to see you so often. Busy, I daresay. By the way, my lad, you don't seem to be going as quickly to the devil as a lot of your friends seemed to think you would, eh?"

"Not quite," Sydney answered, with that bitter laugh of his, "and I daresay some of them are disappointed."

"Well, I am glad, anyway. I was always a bit fond of you, and am glad to see that you are doing your duty like a man. Why, man, the folks are singing your praises in all the villages between here and Earlsford. You could not do more if you were nursing this division of the county in readiness for the next general election."

"Perhaps I am nursing the constituency, Squire."

They both laughed, and then Woodcock asked gravely—

"How is it I never see you over at 'The Limes?'"

"I was hardly sure that I should be welcome," was Carsland's response.

"Welcome! Certainly! Will you dine with me to-morrow evening?"

"Don't mind if I do, thank you."

"Shall expect you, then. Good morning."

"Good morning."

Sir Sydney went to "The Limes," as he had promised, and there he met his late brother's fiancée, Miss Adelaide Woodcock. She looked even more charming than of yore, he thought, and a trifle less cold. Probably her recent affliction—the loss of her affianced husband—had softened her a little.

Her welcome was much less frigid than Sir Sydney had expected, and before he left the house to drive homeward he and she were on very amiable terms. "Why," he asked himself, "had she again changed in her manner towards him? Was it because he was no longer poor and disreputable? Or was it because she really cared for him?"

Anyhow there was a change, and no matter what the alteration might be due to, he was delighted with the difference. That meeting was so pleasant to himself that he afterwards availed himself of all the Squire's invitations, and as those were pretty numerous, Sir Sydney and Miss Woodcock saw a good deal of each other.

When the gossips saw the handsome baronet and the Squire's beautiful daughter riding together along the lanes so often, they could only draw one inference. The young people were in love, they said—had been in love all along—and now that Sir Sydney had come into his title and fortune there was going to be a wedding, and Miss Adelaide was to be Lady Carsland after all.

For once the village prophets were right in their prognostications. In the second spring after his father's death, Sir Sydney Barringham Carsland led Miss Woodcock to the altar.