As our glances met, we both saw that the issue was joined which should settle for life the mastery. He began in a light and jocund manner, as if I were quite a small thing.
"Well done, Miss Clara, you _are_ a.s.serting yourself. Why, you have dismissed our visitors with very scant ceremony."
"To be sure I have; and will again, if they dare to come back."
"And don"t you think that you might have consulted your mother or me?"
"Most likely I should have done so, in an ordinary case."
"Then your guardian was meant for small matters! But what was the wonder to-day?"
"No wonder at all. Mrs. Daldy insulted my father, and I sent her out of his house."
"What made her insult my brother?"
"My refusal to marry her puppet and puppy."
"Clement Daldy! Did she propose such a thing? She must think very highly of you!"
"Then I think very lowly."
"And you declined, did you, Clara?"
"No. I refused."
"Very good. No one shall force you; there is plenty of time to consider the subject."
"One moment is too much."
"Clara, I have long noticed in you a rude, disrespectful, and I will say (in spite of your birth) a low and vulgar manner towards me, your uncle and guardian. Once for all, I will not permit it, child."
"_Child_ you call me, do you? Me, who am just seventeen, and have lived seven such years as I have, and no one else!"
He answered quite calmly, and looking coldly at me:
"I never argue with women. Much less with girls. Mrs. Daldy comes back to-morrow. You will beg her pardon, as becomes a young lady who has forgotten herself. The other question may wait."
"I thought, sir, that you had travelled far, and in many countries."
The abrupt inquiry startled him, and his thoughts seemed to follow the memory.
"What if I have?" he asked, at length, and with a painful effort.
"Have you always found women do just what you chose?"
He seemed not to listen to me; as if he were out of hearing: then laughed because I was looking at him.
"Clara," he said, "you are an odd girl, and a Vaughan all over. I would rather be your friend than your enemy. If you cannot like me, at least forget your dislike of me, and remember that I am your uncle, and have tried to make you love me."
"And what if I do not?"
"Then I must keep you awhile from the management of this property. My dear brother would have wished it, until you recover your senses; and not an acre of it is legally yours."
This he said so slowly, and distinctly, and entirely without menace, that, knowing his manner, I saw it was the truth, at least in his opinion. Strange as it may seem, I began at once to revolve, not the results of dispossession and poverty on myself, or even on my mother, but the influence which the knowledge of this new fact must have on my old suspicions, surmises, and belief.
"Will the property pa.s.s to you?" I asked.
"Yes, if I choose: or at any rate the bulk of it."
"What part will be yours? Do you mean to say the house?--"
"Never mind now. I would rather leave things as they are, if you will only be more sensible."
"I will not disguise my opinions for a hundred Vaughan Parks, or a thousand Vaughan Palaces; no, nor even to be near my father"s bones."
"Very well," he said, "just as you like. But for your mother"s sake, I give you till Christmas to consider."
"If you bring back Mrs. Daldy, I shall leave the door as she enters it."
"I have no wish to hurry you," he replied, "and therefore she shall not return at present. Now take these papers with you. You may lay them before any lawyer you please. They are only copies, but may be compared with the originals, which I have. They will quickly prove how totally you are at my discretion."
"The money and the land may be so, but not I. Before I go, answer me one question. Did you know of these things, whatever they may be, before my father"s death?"
He looked at me clearly and calmly, with no withdrawal, or conscious depth in his eyes, and answered:
"No. As a gentleman, I did not."
I felt myself more at a loss than ever, and for the moment could not think.
CHAPTER X.
Thus was I, and, what mattered much more, my mother, reduced quite suddenly from a position of rank and luxury, and a prospective income of 15,000 a-year (so much had the land increased in value) to a revenue of nothing, and no home. Even to me it was a heavy blow, but what could my poor mother do?
We were a.s.sured by counsel that a legal struggle could end in expense alone, and advised by the family lawyers to throw ourselves on the good feeling and appeal to the honour of Mr. Edgar Vaughan. Mr. Vaughan he must henceforth be called. I cannot well understand, still less can I explain, small and threadbare technicalities (motes, which too often are the beam of Justice), but the circ.u.mstances which robbed me of my father"s home were somewhat as follows:--
By the will of my father"s grandfather, Hubert Vaughan, who died in the year 1782, the whole of the family property was devised to his son, Vaughan Powis Vaughan, for life, and after his decease, to his sons successively _in tail male_, failing these to his right heirs in general. This will was said to have been prepared in haste: it was, in fact, drawn by a country attorney, when the testator was rapidly sinking. It was very brief, and by no means accurately worded; neither did it contain those powers to meet family exigencies, which I am told a proper pract.i.tioner would have inserted.
There was no reason to suppose that the testator had contemplated anything more than a strict settlement of the usual kind, _i.e._ a common estate entail, expectant upon a life-interest; and under which I should have succeeded my father, as his heiress, in the ordinary course.
But it is the chief fault of smatterers in the law (and country attorneys at that time were no better) that they will attempt to be too definite. The country lawyer in this case, grossly ignorant of his profession, and caught by the jangle of the words _tail male_, had inserted them at hazard, possibly not without some idea that they would insure a stricter succession than a common entail would do.
When my father became of age, measures were taken for barring the entail created by the will of Hubert Vaughan; and at the time it was believed that these were quite effectual, and therefore that my father was now ent.i.tled in fee-simple, and could dispose of the property.
Upon his marriage with my mother, she, with worthy pride, refused most firmly to accept a jointure charged on his estates, alleging that as she brought no fortune into the family, she would not inc.u.mber the family property, which had but recently been relieved of inc.u.mbrances. More than this--she had even insisted upon expressly abandoning, by her marriage settlement, all claim to dower. This unusual course she had adopted, because of some discontent expressed by relatives of my father at his marriage with a portionless bride, whereby her self-respect had been deeply wounded. So nothing was settled upon her, except her own little estate in Devonshire, which was secured to her separate use.
My father had never permitted this excess of generosity on her part, but that he was by nature careless upon such subjects, and hoped to provide amply for her interests by his will: moreover he was hot to remove all obstacles to their marriage. But it was now discovered that he had no power to charge the real estate for her benefit, in the manner his will imported; that he had never been more than a tenant in tail, and that entail such that I could not inherit. Neither, of course, could I take under his will, as he possessed no power of disposition. One quarter of all that has been written upon the subject I never could understand; and even as to the simplest points, sometimes I seem to apprehend them clearly, and then I feel that I do not. My account of the matter is compressed from what I remember of the legal opinions.