Volume III CHAPTER I.

There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge—not the less a "scene" in that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.

This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler attendant, who would make herself generally useful.

"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of unhappiness. He eats nothing."

Not by any means from conviction or submission to the imperious advice of Lady Seely, but under the yoke of stern necessity, Castalia had consented to try a young woman of the neighbourhood, "highly recommended." And this abigail, in her tight yellow gown, was the cause of Mrs. Algernon's reticence during dinner. The poor lady might, however, have spared herself this restraint, if its object were to keep her servants in the dark as to domestic disagreements; for no sooner had Lydia (that was the abigail's name) reached the kitchen, than she and Polly, the cook, began a discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Errington's private affairs, which displayed a surprising knowledge of very minute details, and an almost equally surprising power of piecing evidence together.

When Lydia was gone, Algernon lit a cigar and drew up his chair to the fireside, where he sat silent, staring at his elegantly-slippered feet on the fender. Castalia rose, fidgeted about the room, walked to the door, stopped, turned back, and, standing directly opposite to Algernon, said querulously, "Do you mean to remain here?"

"For the present, yes; out of consideration for you. You dislike me to smoke in the drawing-room, do you not?"

"Why should you smoke at all?"

Algernon raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, crossed one leg over the other, and made no answer. His wife went away, and sitting down alone on a corner of the sofa in her little drawing-room, cried bitterly for a long time.

She was made to raise her tear-stained face by feeling a hand passed gently over her hair. She looked up, and found her husband standing beside her. "What's the matter, little woman?" he asked, in a half-coaxing, half-bantering tone, like one speaking to a naughty child, too young to be seriously reproved or argued with.

Now, although Castalia was haughty by education and insolent by temper, she had very little real pride and no dignity in her character. To be noticed and caressed by Algernon was to her a sufficient compensation for almost any indignity. There was but one passion of her nature which had any chance of resisting his personal influence, and that passion had never yet been fully aroused, although frequently irritated. Her jealousy was like a young tiger that had never yet tasted blood.

"What's the matter, little woman?" repeated Algernon, seating himself beside her, and putting his arm round her waist. She shrugged her shoulders fretfully, but at the same time nestled herself nearer to his side. She loved him, and it put her at an immense disadvantage with him.

"Don't you mean to vouchsafe me an answer, Mrs. Algernon Ancram Errington?"

"Oh, I daresay you're very sorry that I am Mrs. Errington. I have no doubt you repent."

"Really! And is that what you were crying for?"

No reply.

"It looks rather as if you repented, madam!"

"Oh, you know I don't; unless you like other people better than you like me!"

"'Other people' don't cry in my company."

"No; because they don't care for you. And because they're——they're nasty, artful minxes!"

"Hear, hear! A charming definition! Castalia, you are really impayable sometimes. How my lord would enjoy that speech of yours!"

"No, he wouldn't. Uncle Val would never enjoy what vexed me. My lady might; nasty, disagreeable old thing!"

"There, I can agree with you. A vulgar kind of woman—though she is my blood-relation—thoroughly coarse in the grain. But now that we have relieved our feelings, and spoken our minds on that score, suppose we converse rationally?"

"I don't want to converse rationally."

"Why not?"

"Because that means that you are going to scold me."

"Well—that might be highly rational, certainly; only I never do it."

"Well, but you'll manage to make out that I'm in the wrong and you're in the right, somehow or other."

"Cassy, I want you to write a letter."

"A letter? Whom do you want me to write to?"

Her tears were completely dried, and she looked up at him with a faint smile on her countenance, which, however, looked rueful enough, with red nose and swollen eyes.

"You must write to my lord, and get him to help us with a little money."

Her face fell.

"Ask Uncle Val for money again, Ancram? It is such a short time since he sent me some!"

"And to-morrow, at this hour, it will be 'such a short time' since you had your dinner! Nevertheless, I suppose you will want another dinner."

"I—I don't think Uncle Val can afford it, Ancram."

"Leave that to him. Afford it? Pshaw!"

Algernon made the little sharp ejaculation in a tone expressive of the most impatient contempt.

"But do we really—is it absolutely necessary for us to beg of my uncle again?"

"Not at all. Do just as you please," answered her husband, rising and walking away from the sofa to a distant chair.

Castalia's eyes followed him piteously.

"But what can I say?" she asked. "What excuse can I make? I hate to worry Uncle Val. It isn't as if he had more money than he knew what to do with. And if Lady Seely knew about his helping us, she would lead him such a life!"

"Do as you please. It would be a thousand pities to worry your uncle. Let all the worry fall on me."

He took up a book and threw himself back in his chair as if he had dismissed the subject.

"I don't know what to do!" exclaimed Castalia, with fretful helplessness. At length, after sitting silent for some time twisting her handkerchief backwards and forwards in her fingers, she got up and crossed the room to her husband's chair.

"Ancram!" she said softly.

"Eh? I beg your pardon!" looking up with an appearance of great abstraction, as if the perusal of his book had absorbed all his attention.

"I wish to do what will please you. I only care to please you in the world. But—can't you explain to me a little better why I must write to Uncle Val?"

Explain! Of course he would! He desired nothing better. He had brought her to a point at which encouragement was needed, not coldness. And with the singular flexibility that belonged to him, he was able immediately to plunge into an animated statement of his present situation, which sufficed to persuade his hearer that no course of conduct could be so desirable, so prudent—nay, so praiseworthy, as the course he had suggested.

To be sure the details were vague, but the general impression was vivid enough. If Algernon's pictures were a little inaccurate in drawing, they were at least always admirably coloured. And the general impression was this: that there never had been a person of such brilliant abilities and charming qualities as Algernon Ancram Errington so unjustly consigned to obscurity and poverty. And no contributions to his comfort, luxury, or well-being were too much to expect and claim from the world in general, and his wife's relations in particular. Common honesty—common decency almost—would compel Lord Seely to make all the amends in his power for having placed Algernon in the Whitford Post-office. And there was an insinuation very skilfully and delicately mixed with all the seemingly unstudied and spontaneous outpourings of Algy's conjugal confidence—an insinuation which affected the flavour of the whole, as an accomplished cook will contrive to mingle garlic in a rago?t, never coarsely obtrusive, and yet distinctly perceptible—to the effect that the hand of Miss Castalia Kilfinane had been somewhat officiously thrust upon her charming husband; and that the family owed him no little gratitude for having been kind enough to accept it.

Poor Castalia had an uneasy feeling, at the end of his fluent discourse, that Algernon had been a victim to her great relations, and, in some dim way, to herself. But the garlic was so admirably blended with the whole mass, that it was impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in her power.

"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling—a little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."

Castalia looked almost happy. But she said, "As to her affliction, it seems to me that she has been growing much stronger lately."

"Yes; I am glad to think so too. But let the best happen that can be hoped—let the disease, that has kept her helpless on her couch all these years, be overcome—still she must always be so lame as to make her an object of pity."

"Poor thing! I daresay it does warp her mind a good deal. What did she say to you?"

Algernon recapitulated a part of Minnie's warnings, but gave them such a turn as to make it appear that the greatest wrath and impatience of the Whitford tradesmen were directed against his wife. "They have a narrow kind of provincial prejudice against you, Cassy, on account of your being a 'London fine lady.' Me they know; and, in their great condescension, are pleased to approve of."

"Oh, everybody likes you better than me, of course," answered Castalia, simply. "But I don't care for that, if you will only like me better than anybody."

The genuine devotion with which this was said would have touched most men. It might have touched Algernon, had he not been too much engrossed in mentally composing the rough draft of Castalia's letter to her uncle, and putting his not inconsiderable powers of plausible persuasion to the task of making it appear that his wife's personal extravagance was the chief cause of their need for ready money.

"Don't tell him that I even know of your writing. My lord will be more willing to come down handsomely if he thinks it's for you only, Cassy," said Algernon, as he drew up his wife's writing-table for her, placed a chair, opened her inkstand, and performed several little acts of attention with a really charming grace and gallantry.

So Castalia, writing almost literally what her husband dictated—(although he kept saying at every sentence, "My dear child, you ought to know best how to address your uncle;" "Well, I really don't know, but I think you might put it thus;" and so forth)—completed an appeal to Lord Seely to anticipate by nearly a quarter the allowance he continued to make her for her dress out of his private purse, and, if possible, to increase its amount.

One such appeal had already been made and responded to by a gift of money. It had been made immediately after the arrival of the newly-married couple in Whitford, on the ground of the unforeseen expenses attendant on installing themselves in their new habitation. In answering it Lord Seely had written kindly, but with evident disapproval of the step that had been taken. "I cannot, Castalia," he said, "bid you keep anything secret from your husband, and yet I can scarcely help saying that I wish he did not know of the cheque I inclose. I fear he is disposed to be reckless in money matters; and nothing encourages such a disposition more than the idea that aid can be had from friends for the asking. Ancram will recollect a serious conversation I had with him the evening before your marriage, and I can only now reiterate what I then assured him of—that it will be impossible for me to repeat the assistance I gave him on that occasion."

"What assistance was that, Ancram?" asked Castalia, who knew not a word of the matter.

"Oh, I believe my lord made me the munificent present of two pair of breeches, and an old coat and waistcoat, or so."

"Made you a present of an old coat and breeches! What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation."

The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no need of troubling Castalia with these details.

When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant."

"'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia—but you really have no conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more."

She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there anything we could do without?"

Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone, but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town—the Rhine wine. Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very good."

"Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it, either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months, more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full—positively, Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!"

It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do—that it would be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment. All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty. "I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!"

"Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia, in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."

"To be sure! But, my dear girl, your method would never answer! I do want money, very badly. And I do hope and expect—as I think I have some right to do—that my lord will assist us without delay, and without making one of his intolerable prosy preachments on the occasion. And we must have a few pounds to go on with, and stop the mouths of these rapacious rascals. But no retrenchment, Castalia! No 'Blue Bell' sherry! Good Heavens, it makes one bilious to think of it! I really cannot sacrifice my digestion to advance the commercial prosperity of Whitford. And when one considers it, why should we destroy our peace of mind by worrying ourselves? Lord Seely has got us into this scrape, and Lord Seely must get us out of it. Voilà tout!"

After that the rest of the evening was spent very harmoniously. Algernon could not repress two or three prodigious yawns, but he politely concealed them. And when Castalia went to her pianoforte, he woke up at the conclusion of an intricate fantasia quite in time to thank her for the performance, and to praise its brilliancy. In a word, so agreeable an evening, Castalia told herself, she had not passed for many weeks, although it had certainly begun in an unpromising way. So softened was she, indeed, by this gleam of happiness, that several times she was on the point of making a confession to her husband, and entreating his forgiveness. But she could not bear to risk bringing a cloud over the light of his countenance, which was the only sunshine in her life. "Ancram would be so angry!" was a thought that checked back words which were on her lips a dozen times. "And since the matter is all over, and he need never know anything about it, I may as well hold my tongue."

It needed, however, no confession on Castalia's part to convince Algernon that she had opened his secretaire, and taken Minnie Bodkin's letter thence, instead of having found it lying open on his table, as she had said. For on the next morning, when he entered his private room at the office, his first action was to try the little secretaire, which was unlocked. He then remembered that, after having secured that repository of his private papers, he had re-opened it, to throw Minnie's note into a drawer of it; and, having been called away at that moment, must have forgotten to re-lock it.

"Damnably provoking!" muttered Algernon to himself as he stood looking at the little cabinet with gloomy, anxious brows. Then, having first bolted the door of his room, he made a thorough search throughout the secretaire. "Nothing disturbed! She probably flew off to Dr. Bodkin's house directly after reading Minnie's note; and that lay in the little empty drawer right in front. It would be the first she opened."

Then he sat down in a mighty comfortable armchair, which was placed in front of an official-looking desk, and meditated so deeply that he forgot to unbolt the door, and was roused by Mr. Gibbs tapping at it, and desiring to speak with him on business.