On one of the grounds he saw the little German girl--Euphrosyne, as he had already dubbed her--having a lesson from a bullying elder brother.
The youth, amazed at his own condescension, scolded his sister perpetually, and at last gave her up in despair, vowing that she would never be any good, and he was not going to waste his time in teaching such a ninny. Euphrosyne sat down beside the court, with tears in her pretty eyes, her white feet crossed, her dark head drooping; and two girl companions, aged about sixteen or seventeen, like herself, came up to comfort her.
"I could soon shew you how to improve your service, Mademoiselle," said Winnington, smiling, as he pa.s.sed her. Euphrosyne looked up startled, but at sight of the handsome middle-aged Englishman, whom she unkindly judged to be not much younger than her father, she timidly replied:--
"It is hateful, Monsieur, to be so stupid as I am!"
"Let me shew you," repeated Winnington, kindly. At this moment, a vigilant English governess--speaking with a strong Irish-American accent--came up, and after a glance at the Englishman, smilingly acquiesced. The two comforters of Euphrosyne, graceful little maids, with cherry-coloured jerseys over their white frocks, and golden brown hair tied with the large black bows of the _Backfisch_, were eager to share the lesson, and soon Winnington found himself the centre of a whole bevy of boys and girls who had run up to watch Euphrosyne"s performance.
The English governess, a good girl, in spite of her accent, and the unconscious fraud she was thereby perpetrating on her employers, thought she had seldom witnessed a more agreeable scene.
"He treats them like princesses, and yet he makes them learn," she thought, a comment which very fairly expressed the mixture of something courtly with something masterful in the Englishman"s manner. He was patience itself; but he was also frankness itself, whether for praise or blame; and the eagerness to please him grew fast and visibly in all these young creatures.
But as soon as he had brought back Euphrosyne"s smiles, and roused a new and fierce ambition to excel in all their young b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he dropped the lesson, with a few gay slangy words, and went his way, leaving a stir behind him of which he was quite unconscious. And there was no Englishman looking on who might have told the charmed and conquered maidens that they had just been coached by one of the most famous of English athletes, born with a natural genius for every kind of game, from cricket downwards.
On his way to the eastern side of the pa.s.s on which stood the group of hotels, Winnington got his post from the _concierge_, including his nightly _Times_, and carried it with him to a seat with which he was already familiar.
But he left the _Times_ unopened, for the spectacle before him was one to ravish the senses from everything but itself. He looked across the deep valley of the Adige, nearly four thousand feet below him, to the giant range of the Dolomite Alps on the eastern side. The shadow of the forest-clad mountain on which he stood spread downwards over the plain, and crept up the mountains on the farther edge. Above a gulf of deepest blue, inlaid with the green of vineyards and forest lakes, he beheld an aerial world of rose-colour--the giant Dolomites, Latemar, Rosengarten, Schlern--majestic rulers of an upper air, so pure and luminous, that every tiny shadow cast by every wisp of wandering cloud on the bare red peaks, was plainly visible across the thirty miles of s.p.a.ce.
Rosengarten, with its snowless, tempest-beaten crags, held the centre, flushing to its name; and to the right and left, peak ranged beyond peak, like courtiers crowding to their king; chief among them a vast pyramid, blood-red in the sunset, from which the whole side, it seemed, had been torn away, leaving a gash so fresh it might have been ripped by a storm of yesterday, yet older perhaps than Calvary....
The great show faded through every tone of delicate beauty to a starry twilight,--pa.s.sion into calm. Winnington watched till it was done, still with the Keatsian tag in his mind, and that deep inner memory of loss, to which the vanished splendour of the mountains seemed to make a mystic answering. He was a romantic--some would have said a sentimental person, with a poet always in his pocket, and a hunger for all that might shield him from the worst uglinesses of life, and the worst despairs of thought; an optimist, and, in his own sense, Christian. He had come abroad to wander alone for a time, because as one of the busiest, most important and most popular men in a wide country-side, he had had a year of unceasing and strenuous work, with no time to himself; and it had suddenly been borne in upon him, in choosing between the Alps and Scotland, that a man must sometimes be alone, for his soul"s health. And he had never relished the luxury of occasional solitude so sharply as on this pine-scented evening in Tyrol.
It was not till he was sitting again under the electric light of the hotel verandah that he opened his _Times_. The first paragraph which his eye lit upon was an obituary notice of Sir Robert Blanchflower "whose death, after a long illness and much suffering, occurred last week in Paris." The notice ended with the words--"the deceased baronet leaves a large property both in land and personalty. His only child, a daughter, Miss Delia Blanchflower, survives him."
Winnington laid down the paper. So the Valkyrie was now alone in the world, and mistress no doubt of all her father"s wealth. "I must have seen her--I am sure there was a child about"; he said to himself again; and his thoughts went groping into a mostly forgotten past, and as he endeavoured to reconstruct it, the incident which had brought him for a few weeks into close relations with Robert Blanchflower, then Major Blanchflower of the--Dragoons, came at last vividly back to him.
An easy-going husband--a beautiful wife, not vicious, but bored to death--the inevitable third, in the person of a young and amorous cavalry officer--and a whole Indian station, waiting, half maliciously, half sadly, for the _ba.n.a.l_ catastrophe:--it was thus he remembered the situation. Winnington had arrived on the scene as a barrister of some five years" standing, invalided after an acute attack of pneumonia, and the guest for the winter of his uncle, then Commissioner of the district. He discovered in the cavalry officer a fellow who had been his particular protege at Eton, and had owed his pa.s.sionately coveted choice for the Eleven largely to Winnington"s good word. The whole dismal little drama unveiled itself, and Winnington was hotly moved by the waste and pity of it. He was entertained by the Blanchflowers and took a liking to them both. The old friendship between Winnington and the cavalryman was soon noticed by Major Blanchflower, and one night he walked home with Winnington, who had been dining at his house, to the Commissioner"s quarters. Then, for the first time, Winnington realised what it may be to wrestle with a man in torment. The next day, the young cavalryman, at Winnington"s invitation, took his old friend for a ride, and before dawn on the following day, the youth was off on leave, and neither Major nor Mrs. Blanchflower, Winnington believed, had ever seen him again. What he did with the youth, and how he did it, he cannot exactly remember, but at least he doesn"t forget the grip of Blanchflower"s hand, and the look of deliverance in his strained, hollow face. Nor had Mrs. Blanchflower borne her rescuer any grudge. He had parted from her on the best of terms, and the recollection of her astonishing beauty grows strong in him as he thinks of her.
So now it is her daughter who is stirring the world! With her father"s money and her mother"s eyes,--not to speak of the additional trifles--eloquence, enthusiasm, &c.--thrown in by the Swedish woman, she ought to find it easy.
The dressing-gong of the hotel disturbed a rather sleepy reverie, and sent the Englishman back to his _Times_. And a few hours later he went to a dreamless bed, little guessing at the letter which was even then waiting for him, far below, in the Botzen post-office.
Chapter II
Winnington took his morning coffee on a verandah of the hotel, from which the great forests of Monte Vanna were widely visible. Upwards from the deep valley below the pa.s.s, to the topmost crags of the mountain, their royal mantle ran unbroken. This morning they were lightly drowned in a fine weather haze, and the mere sight of them suggested cool glades and verdurous glooms, stretches of pink willow herb lighting up the clearings--and in the secret heart of them such chambers "deaf to noise and blind to light" as the forest lover knows.
Winnington promised himself a leisurely climb to the top of Monte Vanna. The morning foretold considerable heat, but under the pines one might mock at Helios.
Ah!--Euphrosyne!
She came, a vision of morning, tripping along in her white shoes and white dress; followed by her English governess, the lady, as Winnington guessed, from West Belfast, tempered by Brooklyn. The son apparently was still in bed, nor did anyone trouble to hurry him out of it. The father, a Viennese judge _en retraite_, as Winnington had been already informed by the all-knowing porter of the hotel, was a shrewd thin-lipped old fellow, with the quiet egotism of the successful lawyer. He came up to Winnington as soon as he perceived him, and thanked him in good English for his kindness to Euphrosyne of the day before. Winnington responded suitably and was soon seated at their table, chatting with them while they took their coffee. Euphrosyne shewed a marked pleasure in his society, and upon Winnington, steeped in a holiday reaction from much strenuous living, her charm worked as part of the charm of the day, and the magic of the mountain world. He noticed, however, with a revival of alarm, that she had a vigorous German appet.i.te of her own, and as he watched the rolls disappear he trembled for the slender figure and the fawn-like gait.
After breakfast, while the governess and the girl disappeared, the father hung over the verandah smoking, beside the Englishman, to whom he was clearly attracted. He spoke quite frankly of his daughter, and her bringing up. "She is motherless; her mother died when she was ten years old; and since, I must educate her myself. It gives me many anxieties, but she is a sweet creature, _dank sei gott_! I will not let her approach, even, any of these modern ideas about women. My wife hated them; I do also. I shall marry her to an honest man, and she will make a good wife and a good house-mother."
"Mind you choose him well!" said Winnington, with a shrug. His eyes at that moment were critically bent on a group of Berliners, men of the commercial and stock-broking cla.s.s, who, with their wives, had arrived a couple of nights before. The men were strolling and smoking below.
They were all fat, red-faced and overbearing. When they went for walks, the man stalked in front along the forest paths, and the woman followed behind, carrying her own jacket. Winnington wondered what it might be like to be the wife of any of them. These _Herren_ at any rate might not be the worse for a little hustling from the "woman movement." He could not, however, say honestly that the wives shewed any consciousness of ill-fortune. They were almost all plump, plumper even than their husbands, expensively dressed and prosperous looking; and the amount of Viennese beer they consumed at the forest restaurants to which their husbands conducted them, seemed to the Englishman portentous.
"Yes, my daughter is old-fashioned," resumed the ex-judge, complacently, after a pause. "And I am grateful to Miss Johnson, who has trained her very well. If she were like some of the girls one sees now! Last year there was a young lady here--_Ach, Gott!_" He raised his shoulders, with a contemptuous mouth.
"Miss Blanchflower?" asked Winnington, turning towards the speaker with sudden interest.
"That I believe was her name. She was mad, of course. _Ach_, they have told you?--of that _Vortrag_ she gave?--and the rest? After ten minutes, I made a sign to my daughter, and we walked out. I would not have had her corrupted with these ideas for the whole world. And such beauty, you understand! That makes it more dangerous. _Ja, ja, Liebchen--ich komme gleich!_"
For there had been a soft call from Euphrosyne, standing on the steps of the hotel, and her fond father hurried away to join her.
At the same moment, the porter emerged, bearing a bundle of letters and newspapers which had just arrived. Eager for his _Times_ Winnington went to meet him, and the man put into his hands what looked like a large post. He carried it off into the shelter of the pines, for the sun was already blazing on the hotel. Two or three letters on county business he ran through first. His own pet project, as County Councillor,--a county school for crippled children, was at last getting on. Foundation stone to be laid in October--good! "But how the deuce can I get hold of some more women to help work it! Scandalous, how few of the right sort there are about! And as for the Asylums Committee, if we really can"t legally co-opt women to it, as our clerk says"--he looked again at a letter in his hand--"the law is an a.s.s!--a double-dyed a.s.s. I swear I won"t visit those poor things on the women"s side again. It"s women"s work--let them do it. The questions I have to ask are enough to make an old gamp blush. Hallo, what"s this?"
He turned over a large blue envelope, and looked at a name stamped across the back. It was the name of a well-known firm of London solicitors. But he had no dealings with them, and could not imagine why they should have written to him.
He opened the letter carelessly, and began to read it,--presently with eager attention, and at last with amazement.
It ran as follows:
"From Messrs. MORTON, MANNERS & LATHOM, Solicitors, Adelphi, London, W. C."
"Dear Sir,--We write on behalf of Lord Frederick Calverly, your co-executor, under Sir Robert Blanchflower"s will, to inform you that in Sir Robert"s last will and testament--of which we enclose a copy--executed at Meran six weeks before his decease, you are named as one of his two executors, as sole trustee of his property, and sole guardian of Sir Robert"s daughter and only child, Miss Delia Blanchflower, until she attains the age of twenty-five. We believe that this will be a complete surprise to you, for although Sir Robert, according to a statement he made during his last illness to his sister, Miss Elizabeth Blanchflower, intended to communicate with you before signing the will, his weakness increased so rapidly, after it was finally drawn up, that he was never able to do so. Indeed the morning after his secretary had written out a clear copy of what he himself had put together, he had a most alarming attack from which he rallied with difficulty. That afternoon he signed the will, and was just able to write you the letter which we also enclose, marked by himself, as you will see. He was never properly conscious afterwards, and he died in Paris last Thursday, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Mont Parna.s.se on the Sat.u.r.day following. The will which was in our custody was opened in London yesterday, by Lord Frederick Calverly, in Miss Blanchflower"s presence. We understand from her that she has already written to you on the subject. Lord Frederick would also have done so, but that he has just gone to Harrogate, in a very poor state of health.
He begs us to say that he is of course quite aware that your engagements may not allow you to accept the functions offered you under the will, and that he will be in considerable anxiety until he knows your decision. He hopes that you will at least accept the executorship; and indeed ventures to appeal very strongly on that account to your old friendship for Sir Robert; as he himself sees no prospect of being able to carry out unaided the somewhat heavy responsibilities attaching to the office.
"You will see that a sum of 4000 is left to yourself under the will."
We remain, dear Sir,
Your obedient servants,
MORTON, MANNERS & LATHOM.
"(Solicitors.)"
"MARK WINNINGTON, Esq., J. P.
Bridge End, Maumsey, Hants."
A bulky doc.u.ment on blue paper, and also a letter had dropped to the ground. Winnington stooped for the letter, and turned it over in stupification. It was addressed in a faltering hand, and marked, "To be forwarded after my death." He hastily broke the seal.
"MY DEAR MARK WINNIXGTON,--I know well what I am laying upon you. I have no right to do it. But I remember certain days in the past, and I believe if you are still the same man you were then, you will do what I ask. My daughter ought to be a fine woman. At present she seems to me entirely and completely out of her mind. She has been captured by the extreme suffrage movement, and by one of the most mischievous women in it; and I have no influence with her whatever. I live in terror of what she may do; of what they may lead her to do. To attempt to reason with her is useless; and for a long time my health has been such that I have avoided conflict with her as much as possible. But things have now come to such a pa.s.s that something must be done, and I have tried in these last weeks, ill as I am, to face the future. I want if I can to save Delia from wasting herself, and the money and estates I should naturally leave her, upon this mad campaign. I want, even against her will, to give her someone to advise and help her. I feel bitterly that I have done neither. The tropics ruined me physically, and I seem to have gone to pieces altogether the last few years. But I love my child, and I can"t leave her without a real friend or support in the world. I have no near relations, except my sister Elizabeth, and she and Delia are always at feud. Freddie Calverly my cousin, is a good fellow in his way, though too fussy about his health. He has a fair knowledge of business, and he would have been hurt if I had not made him executor.
So I have appointed him, and have of course left him a little money.
But he could no more tackle Delia than fly. In the knock-about life we have led since I left the Colonial Service, I seem to have shed all my old friends. I can think of no one who could or would help me in this strait but you--and you know why. G.o.d bless you for what you once did for me. There was never any other cloud between my poor wife and me.
She turned to me after that trouble, and we were happy till the end.
"I have heard too something of you from Maumsey people, since I inherited Maumsey, though I have never been able to go there. I know what your neighbours think of you. And now Delia is going to be your neighbour. So, drawing a bow at a venture, as a dying man must, I have made you Delia"s guardian and trustee, with absolute power over her property and income till she is twenty-five. When she attains that age--she is now nearly twenty-two--if she marries a man approved by you, or if you are satisfied that her connection with militant suffragism has ceased, the property is to be handed over to her in full possession, and the trust will come to an end. If on the contrary, she continues in her present opinion and course of action, I have left directions that the trust is to be maintained for Delia"s life-time, under certain conditions as to her maintenance, which you will find in the will. If you yourself are not willing to administer the trust, either now or later, the property will devolve to the Public Trustee, for whom full instructions are left. And at Delia"s death it will be divided among her heirs, if she has any, and various public objects.
"I cannot go further into details. My strength is almost out. But this one thing may I beg?--if you become my child"s guardian, get the right person to live with her. I regard that as all-important. She must have a chaperon, and she will try to set up one of the violent women who have divided her from me. Especially am I in dread of a lady, an English lady, a Miss Marvell, whom I engaged two years ago to stay with us for the winter and read history with Delia. She is very able and a very dangerous woman, prepared I believe, to go to any length on behalf of her "cause." At any rate she filled Delia"s head with the wildest suffragist notions, and since then my poor child thinks of nothing else. Even since I have been so ill--this last few weeks--I know she has been in communication with this woman. She sympathises with all the horrible things they do, and I am certain she gives all the money she can to their funds. Delia is a splendid creature, but she is vain and excitable and they court her. I feel that they might tempt her into any madness.
"Goodbye. I made the doctor give me strychnine and morphia enough to carry me through this effort. I expect it will be the last. Help me, and my girl--if you can--for old sake"s sake. Goodbye."
Your grateful old friend,