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Chapter Three
Found Drowned
Mrs Kingsworth remained near the library fire by herself. Her tears soon ceased, and she sat still and silent, in the grasp of a conviction from which she could not free herself. Every word that George had said might be true, and yet she knew, she felt that all his wishes had worked in his own favour, that a “covetous desire” had been granted perhaps even in spite of weak and inadequate words and actions telling the other way. An intense feeling of shame seized on her. What in all the world, she thought, was worth the loss of self-respect? She heard, without heeding, loud and angry voices, and the sudden shutting of the front door; but she never moved till Canon Kingsworth came into the room.
“Well,” he said, “James has told me the whole story. It was very foolish, he had no right to marry in the relations in which he stood towards his father; but the whole thing has been much misrepresented. I take blame to myself for my hasty account of it.”
“It ought to be set right,” said Mrs Kingsworth, steadily.
“Set right? do you mean reverse the will? Ah, my dear, that is impossible: but I think that though my brother might in any case have made the same will in the main, had he known the facts, he would not have left James penniless.”
“He would not have made any new will at all, but for that false report,” said Mrs Kingsworth. Her tone was so marked and so miserable that Canon Kingsworth turned away from the subject at once.
“I shall take an opportunity of talking to George,” he said, “to-morrow, when our minds are quieter. I am very anxious to avoid further discussion to-night. James is very angry, and I am afraid unforgetable words passed as he went out.”
“Has he gone out?”
“Yes; I think George did so too, afterwards.”
Mrs Kingsworth sat on by the fire, she felt no impulse to move, to talk the matter over, or to try to gain any new lights upon it. She was absolutely silent; while the Canon took up a book from the table, and read, or feigned to read it, till the butler looked in and said, “Will the gentlemen be in to dinner, ma’am?”
“To dinner? Is it dinner-time? Are they still out? Oh yes, we will wait for them.”
They waited, till the Canon grew impatient, and went to look out of the window.
“Why, there is a dense fog,” he said, “what can induce either of them to stay out in it?”
Mrs Kingsworth roused herself with a start. “It is close upon eight o’clock,” she said, “what can keep them?”
“The fog is thick enough to make them lose their way. I’ll have the dinner bell rung outside the door.”
They hardly knew how impatience gradually melted into uneasiness, and uneasiness into alarm; but before the next two hours were over, every man-servant in the place was shouting and searching, ringing the great bell in every direction, losing themselves and each other in the blinding mist, and with one conviction growing stronger every moment in their minds.
“The cliffs!” That whisper was in every one’s mind long before it found its way to their lips; but the first sound of it terrified Mrs Kingsworth almost out of her senses. She had been very slow to take alarm; but her fears once excited, all hope was gone from her. As for the Canon, he instituted every possible search and said nothing; but his mind was filled with terrible possibilities, which he would not put into words.
The night passed in perplexity and alarm, and even the dawn brought no relief; for the heavy sea-fog still hung thick over the cliffs and the shore; till, suddenly, as it seemed almost in a moment, it rolled back and left the white cliffs and the glittering waves bright in the morning sun.
The tide was low, and on the beach beneath the cliffs were found the bodies of James and George Kingsworth, clasped in each other’s arms as if each had tried to rescue the other, or – But there was nothing to justify any other interpretation.
From the moment when James’ passionate words to his brother as he hurried out of the house had been dimly overheard in the hall, till the bodies were found on the beach, nothing was known of him. George had gone out a few minutes later, with a cigar, quietly and by himself.
They had gone out into the mist and darkness, and mist and darkness hung impenetrably over their memories.
Among all the painful duties that devolved upon Canon Kingsworth that of disclosing what had passed to James’ wife weighed on him by far the most heavily.
It was due to her that the family should now recognise her claims. She had, according to James’ story, been living at Dinan, and there the Canon went to fetch her, leaving the other poor young widow in a strange state of silent stunned grief. As soon as might be he returned, bringing Mrs James Kingsworth and her baby with him. She was a pretty young woman, and her reception of him before she knew the sad news he had come to tell had impressed him favourably; but now she was in a state of anger and half-realised grief, speaking of James as if he had been in all respects perfection in her eyes, and only now and then rousing herself from her distress, to remember that her child was disinherited. Canon Kingsworth was very glad to see her safely in her room and under charge of the housekeeper, and as he turned into the library to consider the situation, his other niece stood before him, with a letter in her hand.
“Uncle, I have found it. Here is James’ letter. I found it in the writing-case George always used. Now there is but one thing to be done. My baby shall not profit by this injustice. Let James’ child take it all. It is not Katharine’s.”
“Hush, you do not know what you are saying. Let me look at the letter.”
He glanced it over, and said gravely, “Yes, it concurs in all respects with what James told me. Mary, it is impossible now to judge. The past must be laid to rest. The will is valid, and secures this property to your child. Nothing that you can do can alter it. Some provision it is no doubt necessary should be made for James’ daughter out of the estate, and I need not ask you to show kindness to one as bitterly afflicted as yourself.”
“It is a burden that I cannot bear,” she said, passionately. “How can Katharine prosper under it! At least there must be full confession.”
“Stop, Mary, what is it that you want to confess? Remember you know nothing.”
“I know that Mr Kingsworth did not get that letter. I know that my child has her cousin’s right. If he – if George had no time to do justice, I must do it for him.”
“Recognise and receive her kindly, that is the first thing to do.”
That was a strange interview between the two young widows, widowed so suddenly and so recently, that neither bore any token in her dress of her condition – both suffering under the same loss; both with the same comfort left to them.
Mary approached with reverence for her sister-in-law’s grief, with a sense, keen in her soul, of standing in her place – but the other was shy and hard; till the mention of her husband’s name broke down her reserve, and she sobbed out her misery at his loss, in such evident ignorance of his character and himself, that any attempt to explain the state of the case, any apology offered, only seemed an additional injury. Mary made her statement, notwithstanding all the tears with which it was met.
“This letter was not given to our father-in-law. He never knew the truth about your marriage. I can but ask you to forgive,” she said, with a bitter proud humility. “I am afraid that your husband’s errors were not put in the best light before his father.”
“My husband’s errors! How dare any one say he had errors! If he had, I will never hear a whisper of them now! now that I have lost him,” sobbed Ellen Kingsworth, while Mary stood silenced by a view of wifely duty so unlike her own.
Ellen turned away from her with manifest suspicion and dislike, and Mary having relieved her conscience was too much absorbed in her own shame and dread – in the terrible fear of she knew not what, to show sufficient tenderness to overcome the repulsion.
In a day or two, however, Mrs James Kingsworth’s mother, Mrs Bury, arrived on the scene: a gentle ladylike woman, who had worked hard at school-keeping for her living, and who avowed that her daughter’s secret marriage had been made without her knowledge, and afterwards concealed greatly against her will.
She expressed much less surprise than Ellen had done at the disinheritance of her son-in-law, of whom she evidently had formed no good opinion, refused at first with some quiet pride the offers of assistance for Emberance’s education, saying that she and her daughter were far from being unable to support her; but perceiving how earnestly and sincerely the Kingsworths wished to make this arrangement, she replied that it was an acknowledgment of her daughter’s position, and as such she accepted the allowance offered – a small one – for the affairs of Kingsworth had been much hampered by James’ debts. Katharine Kingsworth must owe to her long minority, or to her mother’s wealth, the means of supporting her inheritance.
These matters settled, and the sad double funeral over, Mrs James Kingsworth and her mother and child went away from Kingsworth, doubtless with much sense of injury and disappointment; while Mary was left, feeling as if a burden had been laid upon her, that would crush the brightness out of her life for ever – the brightness, not the energy nor the resolution. She looked forward through the years, and set one aim before her – to undo the injustice which she believed her husband to have done, and to free her child from her unlawful possessions.
How she succeeded, the sequel will tell.
Chapter Four
Applehurst
Down in a valley from which the softly outlined, richly wooded hills sloped away on every side, shut out by copse and orchard from church and village, lay an old red-brick house. High walls closed in its gardens, and within and without them the fruit trees bloomed and bore as the seasons came round. The ruddy moss-grown walls and the house itself shone white and radiant with spring blossoms, or supported the richly coloured freight of autumn fruit, while the copse woods and the orchards surged away over the hills, and never a roof or spire broke their solitude. The very road that led to the iron gate, so rarely opened, was noiseless and grass-grown; the soft moss gathered on the garden-paths, spite of their trim keeping; in the high summer, even the birds were silent. Year by year the same flowers either grew up or were planted in the quaintly cut beds; year by year the fruit dropped on the ground, and was picked up lest it should be an eyesore, not because any one wanted it for profit or for pleasure. Never elsewhere did the trees bend beneath such a weight of fruitage, surely no other roses and clematis flowered so profusely, no other turf was so soft and green, as if no strange foot ever trod it, no rough hand ever came near to pluck the brilliant blossoms. The scream of a railway whistle, even the roll of a carriage hardly ever disturbed the silence; the stock-doves cooed, and the starlings cried unstartled by any passing footsteps. The gardeners, moving deliberately to and fro, seemed too leisurable to disturb the feeling of quiet.
Suddenly, between the hanging creepers, a side door opened, and a girl darted hastily out, ran across the soft turf, and began to pace up and down the broad walks beneath the sunny fruit-laden walls, with rapid impatient steps.
She spoilt the picture. This was no dreamy maiden, idle and peaceful, to complete the charm of the garden scene; but a creature impatient and incongruous, evidently suffering under an access of temper or of trouble, probably of both, for she snatched off a twig as she passed and pulled it in pieces, and her bright hazel eyes were full of angry tears.
She was small and rather short, with the sort of birdlike air, always given by a delicately hooked nose, and round dark eyes set rather close together. Her hair of a reddish chestnut was crisp and rough, her skin brilliantly fair and rosy, and her teeth white, and just perceptible beneath the short upper lip. A pretty healthy face, but fierce, restless, and haughty.
“Oh, how I hate it! I wish – I wish – There it is, I don’t know what to wish for – except an earthquake that would knock the place to bits. I will not bear it a day longer – ”
“Miss Kitty, here are some nice ripe peaches, should you like to eat a few,” said the old gardener, approaching her, “or a Jargonelle pear?”
“I’m tired of pears and peaches!” said the girl ungraciously; “what is the good of so much fruit?”
“There’s some lavender ready to cut, Miss Katharine, then, – young ladies like to be doing something.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do then, Dickson,” said Katharine, “just leave that ladder against the wall, and I’ll climb up and look over, – perhaps I could see the church spire, or a waggon, – or a new cow. That would be something.”
“La! missy, – young ladies shouldn’t climb ladders!”
“You never were a young lady, Dickson,” said Katharine, laughing, while her foot still twitched impatiently.
“La! no, Miss Katharine, that I never was, – I’ve been man and boy this seventy year.”
“Then you don’t know how much nicer it is to be anything else!” said Katharine. “But the peaches are nice, thank you,” she added, taking one, “though this place is to life, what peaches are to roast mutton – cloying.”
She laughed again as she spoke, subsiding into the ordinary discontent of a well accustomed grievance. For it was no new thing for Katharine Kingsworth to wish herself anywhere but at Applehurst. Had she known how good a right she had to another home and to other interests, she might have been still less willing to endure her seclusion. But though she did not know her own family history, the sad fact that had prompted her mother, while still a young woman, to bury herself and her child at Applehurst was well-known to several people.
When that stern resolution had come to the new made widow, as she looked round on Kingsworth, and thought of the terrible doubt in which her husband’s fate was involved, thought of the way in which the country round must regard her daughter’s inheritance, a great horror of the place weighed on her. The Canon and Mr Macclesfield, the family man of business, might manage the estate as they liked, – she would never live there, never go there, and Katharine should not grow up where every one looked askance at her.
It was a vehement, one-sided resolution, and Canon Kingsworth did not approve of it; but as, of course, Katharine’s minority had never been contemplated, the will named no personal guardians for her, and he could not, if he would, have taken her from her mother’s charge. Applehurst belonged to Mrs Kingsworth herself, and thither she betook herself with her year-old baby, and there, with one short interval, she had remained ever since. Katharine was now a woman, and even her mother began to feel that something more was due to her.
Mrs Kingsworth was a woman of very strong principles and perhaps not very tender feelings. She was clever, high-spirited, and very handsome, when as Mary Lacy she had married George Kingsworth, and had he been worthy of her, might have softened into an excellent woman. But when she discovered his falsity, neither her love nor his terrible death threw any softening veil over her disappointment. She shuddered at her own disgrace yet more than at his, and every association connected with him was hateful to her. She was really perfectly unworldly, and she did not care at all for the wealth and position that had tempted him.
She took Katharine away, determined to rear her up in high, stern principles, and never to allow her to become accustomed to the life of an heiress. Let her be happy and know that she could be happy without Kingsworth, and on the day she was twenty-one let her give it back to her cousin Emberance.
This was the clue to Mrs Kingsworth’s conduct, this was the hope, nay, the resolve of her life, and therefore she brought up Katharine to be independent of luxuries and of society, therefore she secluded her from all intercourse with those of her own rank, fearing lest any marriage engagement might tie her hands, or any preference warp her judgment, before the day when she could legally free herself from the weight of her wealth.
Mrs Kingsworth, like many another parent, did not calculate on the unknown factors in the problem, – the will and the character of her own child.
Katharine grew up a merry, healthy child, sufficiently intelligent, but without the love of books, which her mother had hoped to see, with all natural instincts strong in her, and with an ardent desire to have other little girls to play with.
“Mamma, tell me how you used to go and drink tea with your cousins,” – “Mamma, do ask a little girl to come and stay here,” – “Mamma, I should like to go to Mrs Leicester’s school,” were among her earliest aspirations.
Her mother was clever and well-informed enough to educate her well, but solitary study was uninteresting to so sociable a being, and the girl was devoid of the daydreaming faculty, which while it would have given form to her desires, might have whiled away many a dreary hour. As it was, the poor child jarred her mother with every taste and turn that she developed.
High-mindedness was to be cultivated by a careful and sparing selection of poetry and romance; but this provoking Katharine at twelve years old borrowed the kitchen-maids Sunday-school prizes, and preferred them to the “Lady of the Lake.”
She thought her mother’s heroes tiresome, and with that curious instinctive resistance of strong-willed childhood to any set purpose of influence, could not be induced to care for the glorious tales of self-sacrifice and noble poverty which still made her mother’s blood thrill and her eyes brighten.
She was very carefully instructed in religious matters, and duly every Sunday attended service at Applehurst, a tiny country church with a very old-fashioned childless vicar, and one very quiet Sunday service. When Katharine was sixteen, the one event of her life took place, and her mother took her for three days to Fanchester, the cathedral city, where Canon Kingsworth lived, to be confirmed.
The vicar had nominally prepared her, her mother had endeavoured earnestly to influence her. Surely the first sight of the glorious cathedral, the solemn service, would awaken in the girl that tone of mind in which she now seemed so deficient.
But to Katharine the railway journey, the town, the people were a dream, or rather, a reality of delight.
“We will take Katharine over the cathedral to-day, that it may not be quite strange to her to-morrow,” said the Canon’s wife on the first morning.
“Oh please – please – but I shall see that to-morrow. Oh, Aunt Kingsworth, let me go and buy something in a shop. Let me see the streets first!”
And though she was obedient and decorous, it was evident that she could not think or feel in such a world of enchanting novelty. She could only look and enjoy.
After the Confirmation was over, her uncle delayed a few minutes and presently came in, bringing with him across the narrow close one of the white-veiled girls, who had just been confirmed.
“Mary,” he said briefly, “this is Emberance Kingsworth. Katharine, this is your cousin.”
“Oh, have I got a cousin?” cried Katharine vehemently, as she rushed at Emberance and reached up to kiss her. For Emberance was a tall, slim creature, with large soft eyes and a blushing face.
She looked with a certain shrinking at the new relations, though she returned the kiss.
“Miss Kingsworth is pleased to find a new cousin,” said a lady who was present.
“Miss Katharine,” said her mother, turning round on the speaker, “my niece is Miss Kingsworth if you please.”
The interview was not allowed to last long, and Emberance was sent back to join her schoolfellows, but Katharine never forgot it, – nor indeed her visit to Fanchester.
She knew what she wanted now, and chafed when she did not get it. And month by month and year by year she and her mother grew further apart, and only Katharine’s childish, undeveloped nature kept her feelings within bounds.
