The Lady of the Shroud

BOOK I: THE WILL OF ROGER MELTON-2

“Sir!” he roared out. I suppose, if I was a writer, which, thank God, I am not—I have no need to follow a menial occupation—I would call it “thundered.” “Thundered” is a longer word than “roared,” and would, of course, help to gain the penny which a writer gets for a line. Father got pale too, and stood quite still. Rupert looked at him steadily for quite half a minute—it seemed longer at the time—and suddenly smiled and said, as he sat down again:

“Sorry. But, of course, you don’t understand such things.” Then he went on talking before father had time to say a word.

“Let us get back to business. As you do not seem to follow me, let me explain that it is because I do not forget that I wish to do this. I remember my dear mother’s wish to make Aunt Janet happy, and would like to do as she did.”

“Aunt Janet?” said father, very properly sneering at his ignorance. “She is not your aunt. Why, even her sister, who was married to your uncle, was only your aunt by courtesy.” I could not help feeling that Rupert meant to be rude to my father, though his words were quite polite. If I had been as much bigger than him as he was than me, I should have flown at him; but he was a very big boy for his age. I am myself rather thin. Mother says thinness is an “appanage of birth.”

“My Aunt Janet, sir, is an aunt by love. Courtesy is a small word to use in connection with such devotion as she has given to us. But I needn’t trouble you with such things, sir. I take it that my relations on the side of my own house do not affect you. I am a Sent Leger!” Father looked quite taken aback. He sat quite still before he spoke.

“Well, Mr. St. Leger, I shall think over the matter for a while, and shall presently let you know my decision. In the meantime, would you like something to eat? I take it that as you must have started very early, you have not had any breakfast?” Rupert smiled quite genially:

“That is true, sir. I haven’t broken bread since dinner last night, and I am ravenously hungry.” Father rang the bell, and told the footman who answered it to send the housekeeper. When she came, father said to her:

“Mrs. Martindale, take this boy to your room and give him some breakfast.” Rupert stood very still for some seconds. His face had got red again after his paleness. Then he bowed to my father, and followed Mrs. Martindale, who had moved to the door.

Nearly an hour afterwards my father sent a servant to tell him to come to the study. My mother was there, too, and I had gone back with her. The man came back and said:

“Mrs. Martindale, sir, wishes to know, with her respectful service, if she may have a word with you.” Before father could reply mother told him to bring her. The housekeeper could not have been far off—that kind are generally near a keyhole—for she came at once. When she came in, she stood at the door curtseying and looking pale. Father said:

“Well?”

“I thought, sir and ma’am, that I had better come and tell you about Master Sent Leger. I would have come at once, but I feared to disturb you.”

“Well?” Father had a stern way with servants. When I’m head of the family I’ll tread them under my feet. That’s the way to get real devotion from servants!

“If you please, sir, I took the young gentleman into my room and ordered a nice breakfast for him, for I could see he was half famished—a growing boy like him, and so tall! Presently it came along. It was a good breakfast, too! The very smell of it made even me hungry. There were eggs and frizzled ham, and grilled kidneys, and coffee, and buttered toast, and bloater-paste—”

“That will do as to the menu,” said mother. “Go on!”

“When it was all ready, and the maid had gone, I put a chair to the table and said, ‘Now, sir, your breakfast is ready!’ He stood up and said, ‘Thank you, madam; you are very kind!’ and he bowed to me quite nicely, just as if I was a lady, ma’am!”

“Go on,” said mother.

“Then, sir, he held out his hand and said, ‘Good-bye, and thank you,’ and he took up his cap.

“‘But aren’t you going to have any breakfast, sir?’ I says.

“‘No, thank you, madam,’ he said; ‘I couldn’t eat here . . . in this house, I mean!’ Well, ma’am, he looked so lonely that I felt my heart melting, and I ventured to ask him if there was any mortal thing I could do for him. ‘Do tell me, dear,’ I ventured to say. ‘I am an old woman, and you, sir, are only a boy, though it’s a fine man you will be—like your dear, splendid father, which I remember so well, and gentle like your poor dear mother.’

“‘You’re a dear!’ he says; and with that I took up his hand and kissed it, for I remember his poor dear mother so well, that was dead only a year. Well, with that he turned his head away, and when I took him by the shoulders and turned him round—he is only a young boy, ma’am, for all he is so big—I saw that the tears were rolling down his cheeks. With that I laid his head on my breast—I’ve had children of my own, ma’am, as you know, though they’re all gone. He came willing enough, and sobbed for a little bit. Then he straightened himself up, and I stood respectfully beside him.

“‘Tell Mr. Melton,’ he said, ‘that I shall not trouble him about the trustee business.’

“‘But won’t you tell him yourself, sir, when you see him?’ I says.

“‘I shall not see him again,’ he says; ‘I am going back now!’

“Well, ma’am, I knew he’d had no breakfast, though he was hungry, and that he would walk as he come, so I ventured to say: ‘If you won’t take it a liberty, sir, may I do anything to make your going easier? Have you sufficient money, sir? If not, may I give, or lend, you some? I shall be very proud if you will allow me to.’

“‘Yes,’ he says quite hearty. ‘If you will, you might lend me a shilling, as I have no money. I shall not forget it.’ He said, as he took the coin: ‘I shall return the amount, though I never can the kindness. I shall keep the coin.’ He took the shilling, sir—he wouldn’t take any more—and then he said good-bye. At the door he turned and walked back to me, and put his arms round me like a real boy does, and gave me a hug, and says he:

“‘Thank you a thousand times, Mrs. Martindale, for your goodness to me, for your sympathy, and for the way you have spoken of my father and mother. You have seen me cry, Mrs. Martindale,’ he said; ‘I don’t often cry: the last time was when I came back to the lonely house after my poor dear was laid to rest. But you nor any other shall ever see a tear of mine again.’ And with that he straightened out his big back and held up his fine proud head, and walked out. I saw him from the window striding down the avenue. My! but he is a proud boy, sir—an honour to your family, sir, say I respectfully. And there, the proud child has gone away hungry, and he won’t, I know, ever use that shilling to buy food!”

Father was not going to have that, you know, so he said to her:

“He does not belong to my family, I would have you to know. True, he is allied to us through the female side; but we do not count him or his in my family.” He turned away and began to read a book. It was a decided snub to her.

But mother had a word to say before Mrs. Martindale was done with. Mother has a pride of her own, and doesn’t brook insolence from inferiors; and the housekeeper’s conduct seemed to be rather presuming. Mother, of course, isn’t quite our class, though her folk are quite worthy and enormously rich. She is one of the Dalmallingtons, the salt people, one of whom got a peerage when the Conservatives went out. She said to the housekeeper:

“I think, Mrs. Martindale, that I shall not require your services after this day month! And as I don’t keep servants in my employment when I dismiss them, here is your month’s wages due on the 25th of this month, and another month in lieu of notice. Sign this receipt.” She was writing a receipt as she spoke. The other signed it without a word, and handed it to her. She seemed quite flabbergasted. Mother got up and sailed—that is the way that mother moves when she is in a wax—out of the room.

Lest I should forget it, let me say here that the dismissed housekeeper was engaged the very next day by the Countess of Salop. I may say in explanation that the Earl of Salop, K.G., who is Lord-Lieutenant of the County, is jealous of father’s position and his growing influence. Father is going to contest the next election on the Conservative side, and is sure to be made a Baronet before long.

Letter from Major-General Sir Colin Alexander MacKelpie, V.C., K.C.B., of Croom, Ross, N.B., to Rupert Sent Leger, Esq., 14, Newland Park, Dulwich, London, S.E.

July 4, 1892.

My Dear Godson,

I am truly sorry I am unable to agree with your request that I should acquiesce in your desire to transfer to Miss Janet MacKelpie the property bequeathed to you by your mother, of which property I am a trustee. Let me say at once that, had it been possible to me to do so, I should have held it a privilege to further such a wish—not because the beneficiare whom you would create is a near kinswoman of my own. That, in truth, is my real difficulty. I have undertaken a trust made by an honourable lady on behalf of her only son—son of a man of stainless honour, and a dear friend of my own, and whose son has a rich heritage of honour from both parents, and who will, I am sure, like to look back on his whole life as worthy of his parents, and of those whom his parents trusted. You will see, I am sure, that whatsoever I might grant regarding anyone else, my hands are tied in this matter.

And now let me say, my dear boy, that your letter has given me the most intense pleasure. It is an unspeakable delight to me to find in the son of your father—a man whom I loved, and a boy whom I love—the same generosity of spirit which endeared your father to all his comrades, old as well as young. Come what may, I shall always be proud of you; and if the sword of an old soldier—it is all I have—can ever serve you in any way, it and its master’s life are, and shall be, whilst life remains to him, yours.

It grieves me to think that Janet cannot, through my act, be given that ease and tranquillity of spirit which come from competence. But, my dear Rupert, you will be of full age in seven years more. Then, if you are in the same mind—and I am sure you will not change—you, being your own master, can do freely as you will. In the meantime, to secure, so far as I can, my dear Janet against any malign stroke of fortune, I have given orders to my factor to remit semi-annually to Janet one full half of such income as may be derived in any form from my estate of Croom. It is, I am sorry to say, heavily mortgaged; but of such as is—or may be, free from such charge as the mortgage entails—something at least will, I trust, remain to her. And, my dear boy, I can frankly say that it is to me a real pleasure that you and I can be linked in one more bond in this association of purpose. I have always held you in my heart as though you were my own son. Let me tell you now that you have acted as I should have liked a son of my own, had I been blessed with one, to have acted. God bless you, my dear.