"It was my late lord"s house. At his son"s marriage it was settled upon Mrs. Wigram; and little enough besides, G.o.d knows!" he exclaimed querulously. "It was Mr. Alfred"s wish that some land should be settled upon his wife, but there was none out of the entail, and my lord, who did not like the match, though he lived to be fond enough of the mistress afterwards, said, "Settle the house in town!" in a bitter kind of joke like. So the house was settled, and five hundred pounds a year. Mr. Alfred died abroad, as you may know, sir, and my lord was not long in following him."
He was closing the shutters of one window after another as he spoke.
The room had sunk into deep gloom. I could imagine now that the pictures were really where he fancied them. "And Lord Wetherby, the late peer?" I asked after a pause, "did he leave his daughter-in-law nothing?"
"My lord died suddenly, leaving no will," he replied sadly. "That is how it is. And the present peer, who was only a second cousin--well, I say nothing about him." A reticence which was calculated to consign his lordship to the lowest deep.
"He did not help?" I asked.
"Devil a bit, begging your pardon, sir. But there, it is not my place to talk of these things. I doubt I have wearied you with talk about the family. It is not my way," he added, as if wondering at himself, "only something in what you said seemed to touch a chord like."
By this time we were outside the room, standing at the inner end of the hall, while he fumbled with the lock of the door. Short pa.s.sages ending in swing doors ran out right and left from this point, and through one of these a tidy, middle-aged woman wearing an ap.r.o.n suddenly emerged. At sight of me she looked much astonished. "I have been showing the gentleman the pictures," said my guide, who was still occupied with the door.
A flash of pain altered and hardened the woman"s face. "I have been very much interested, madam," I said softly.
Her gaze left me to dwell upon the old man with infinite affection.
"John had no right to bring you in, sir," she said primly. "I have never known him do such a thing before, and--Lord a mercy! there is the mistress"s knock. Go, John, and let her in; and this gentleman,"
with an inquisitive look at me, "will not mind stepping a bit aside, while her ladyship goes upstairs."
"Certainly not," I answered. I hastened to retire into one of the side pa.s.sages, into the darkest corner of it, and there stood leaning against the cool panels, my hat in my hand.
In the short pause which ensued before John opened the door she whispered to me, "You have not told him, sir?"
"About the pictures?"
"Yes, sir. He is blind, you see."
"Blind?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir, this year and more; and when the pictures were taken away--by the present earl--that he had known all his life, and been so proud to show to people just the same as if they had been his own, why it seemed a shame to tell him. I have never had the heart to do it, and he thinks they are there to this day."
Blind! I had never thought of that; and while I was grasping the idea, and fitting it to the facts, a light footstep sounded in the hall and a woman"s voice on the stairs; such a voice and such a footstep, that, it seemed to me, a man, if nothing else were left, might find home in them. "Your mistress," I said presently, when the sounds had died away upon the floor above, "has a sweet voice; but has not something annoyed her?"
"Well, I never should have thought that you would have noticed that!"
exclaimed the housekeeper; who was, I daresay, many other things besides housekeeper. "You have a sharp ear, sir; that I will say. Yes, there is a something has gone wrong; but to think that an American gentleman should notice it!"
"I am not American," I said, perhaps testily.
"Oh, indeed, sir. I beg your pardon, I am sure. It was just your way of speaking made me think it," she replied. And then there came a second louder rap at the door, as John, who had gone upstairs with his mistress, came down in a leisurely fashion.
"That is Lord Wetherby, drat him!" he said, on his wife calling to him in a low voice; he was ignorant, I think, of my presence. "He is to be shown into the library, and the mistress will see him in five minutes; and you are to go to her room. Oh, rap away!" he added, turning towards the door, and shaking his fist at it. "There is many a better man than you has waited longer at that door."
"Hush, John. Do you not see the gentleman?" his wife interposed, with the simplicity of habit. "He will show you out," she added rapidly to me, "as soon as his lordship has gone in, if you do not mind waiting another minute."
"Not at all," I said, drawing back into the corner as they went on their errands. But though I said, "Not at all," mine was an odd position. The way in which I had come into the house, and my present situation in a kind of hiding, would have made most men only anxious to extricate themselves. But I, while I listened to John parleying with some one at the door, conceived a strange desire, or a desire which would have been strange in another man, to see this thing to the end--conceived it and acted upon it.
The library? That was the room on the right of the hall, opposite to Mrs. Wigrams"s sitting-room. Probably, nay I was certain, it had another door opening on the pa.s.sage in which I stood. It would cost me but a step to confirm my opinion. When John ushered in the visitor by one door I had already, by way of the other, ensconced myself behind a screen, which I seemed to know would mask it. I was going to listen.
Perhaps I had my reasons. Perhaps--but there, what matter? As a fact, I listened.
The room was s.p.a.cious but sombre, wainscoted and vaulted with oak. Its only visible occupant was a thin, dark man of middle size, with a narrow face, and a stubborn feather of black hair rising above his forehead; a man of Welsh type. He was standing with his back to the light, a roll of papers in one hand. The fingers of the other, drumming upon the table, betrayed that he was both out of temper and ill at ease. While I was still scanning him stealthily--I had never seen him before--the door opened, and Mrs. Wigram came in. I sank back behind the screen. I think some words pa.s.sed, some greeting of the most formal; but, though the room was still, I failed to hear it, and when I recovered myself he was speaking.
"I am here at your wish, Mrs. Wigram, and your service, too," he said, with an effort at gallantry which sat ill upon him. "Although I think it would have been better if we had left the matter to our solicitors."
"Indeed."
"Yes. I thought you were aware of my opinion."
"I was; and I perfectly understand, Lord Wetherby," she replied, with a coldness which did not hide her dislike for him, "your preference for that course. You naturally shrink from telling me your terms face to face."
"Now, Mrs. Wigram! Now, Mrs. Wigram! Is not this a tone to be deprecated?" he answered, lifting his hands. "I come to you as a man of business upon business."
"Business!" she retorted. "Does that mean wringing advantage from my weakness?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I do deprecate this tone," he repeated. "I come in plain English to make you an offer; one which you can accept or refuse as you please. I offer you five hundred a-year for this house. It is immensely too large for your needs, and too expensive for your income, and yet you have in strictness no power to let it. Very well, I, who can release you from that restriction, offer you five hundred a-year for the house. What can be more fair?"
"Fair? In plain English, Lord Wetherby, you are the only possible purchaser, and you fix the price. Is that fair? The house would let easily for fifteen hundred."
"Possibly," he retorted, "if it were in the open market. But it is not."
"No," she answered rapidly. "And you, having the forty thousand a year which, had my husband lived, would have been his and mine; you who, a poor man, have stepped into this inheritance--you offer me five hundred for the family house! For shame, my lord! for shame!"
"We are not acting a play," he answered doggedly, but I could see that her words stung him. "The law is the law. I ask for nothing but my rights, and one of those I am willing to waive in your favour. You have my offer."
"And if I refuse it? If I let the house? You will not dare to enforce the restriction."
"Try me," he rejoined, drumming with his fingers upon the table. "Try me, and you will see."
"If my husband had lived----"
"But he did not live," he broke in, losing patience, "and that makes all the difference. Now, for Heaven"s sake, Mrs. Wigram, do not make a scene! Do you accept my offer?"
For a moment she seemed about to break down, but, her pride coming to the rescue, she recovered herself with wonderful quickness.
"I have no choice," she said with dignity.
"I am glad you accept," he answered, so much relieved that he gave way to an absurd burst of generosity. "Come!" he cried, "we will say guineas instead of pounds, and have done with it!"
She looked at him in wonder. "No, Lord Wetherby," she said, "I accepted your terms. I prefer to keep to them. You said that you would bring the necessary papers with you. If you have done so I will sign them now, and my servants can witness them."
"I have the draft, and the lawyer"s clerk is doubtless in the house,"
he answered. "I left directions for him to be here at eleven."
"I do not think that he is in the house," the lady answered. "I should know if he were here."
"Not here!" he answered angrily. "Why not, I wonder! But I have the skeleton lease; it is very short, and to save delay I will fill in the particulars, names, and so forth myself, if you will permit me to do so. It will not take twenty minutes."
"As you please. You will find a pen and ink on the table. If you will ring the bell when you are ready, I will come and bring the servants."
"Thank you. You are very good," he said smoothly, adding, when she had left the room, "and the devil take your impudence, madam! As for your cursed pride--well, it has saved me twenty-five pounds a-year, and so you are welcome to it. I was a fool to make the offer." With that, now grumbling at the absence of the lawyer"s clerk, and now congratulating himself on the saving of a lawyer"s fee, my lord sat down to his task.