"For anybody in the direct line to take the name of Tristram--so that, in spite of the failure of male heirs from time to time, the Tristrams of Blent should always be Tristrams, you know, and not Fitzhuberts, or Leighs, or Merrions----"
"Merrion?"
"My great-great--I forget how many greats--grandfather was a Merrion and----"
"Built this house?"
"Oh, no--a house where this stands. The old house was burnt down in "95."
"As recently as that?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"1795," he explained, "and this house was run up then."
Mina felt that there was here a touch of pride; with a more complete mastery of idiomatic English she might have called it "swagger." Nothing counted that was less than a century old, it seemed, and he spoke of a house of a hundred years" standing as she might of a wooden shanty.
Decidedly he was conscious of his position--over-conscious.
"I"m glad it was run up in time for us to take it," she said, thinking she would try the effect of a little chaff.
The effect was nothing; Harry Tristram took no notice of the remark.
"I see," he observed, "from your calling me Fitzhubert that you"ve been looking up our recent history."
"Oh, just what there is in the "Peerage."" Her look was mischievous now, but she restrained herself from any hint of special knowledge. "I"ll tell you as much of ours some day."
She broke into a laugh, and then, carried away by the beauty of the scene, the river and the stately peaceful old house by it, she stretched out her hands toward Blent Hall, exclaiming:
"But we haven"t anything like that in our history!"
He turned to look with her, and stood in silence for a minute or two.
Then he spoke softly.
"Yes, I love it," he said.
She glanced at him; his eyes were tender. Turning, he saw her glance. In a moment he seemed to veil his eyes and to try to excuse the sentimental tone of his remark by a matter-of-fact comment:
"But of course a man comes to like a place when he"s been accustomed to think of it as his home for all his life past and to come."
"What would you do if you lost it?" she asked.
"I"ve no intention of losing it," he answered, laughing, but looking again from her and toward his home. "We"ve had it six hundred years; we shan"t lose it now, I think."
"No, I suppose not." He was holding out his hand. "Good-by, Mr Tristram.
May I come and thank your mother?"
"Oh, but she"ll come here, if she"s well enough."
"I"ll save her the journey up the hill."
He bowed in courteous acceptance of her offer as he shook hands.
"You see the foot-bridge over the river there? There"s a gate at each end, but the gates are never locked, so you can reach us from the road that way if you"re walking. If you want to drive, you must go a quarter of a mile higher up, just below the Pool. Good-by, Madame Zabriska."
Mina watched him all the way down the hill. He had made an impression on her--an intellectual impression, not a sentimental one. There was nothing of the boy about him, unless it were in that little flourish over the antiquity of his house and its surroundings; even that might be the usual thing--she had not seen enough of his cla.s.s to judge. There was too that love of the place which he had shown. Lastly, there was the odd air of wariness and watching; such it seemed to her, and it consented to seem nothing else.
"I wonder," she thought, "if he knows anything about Mrs Fitzhubert--and I wonder if it would make any difference to him!" Memory carried her back in an instant to the moment when she, Mr Cholderton"s Imp, heard that beautiful woman cry, "Think of the difference it makes, the enormous difference!" She drew in her breath in a sudden gasp. An idea had flashed into her mind, showing her for the first time the chance of a situation which had never yet crossed her thoughts.
"Good gracious, is it possible that he couldn"t keep it, or that his mother couldn"t give it to him, all the same?"
III
ON GUARD
Harry Tristram was just on twenty-three; to others, and to himself too perhaps (if a man himself can attain any clear view), he seemed older.
Even the externals of his youth had differed from the common run. Sent to school like other boys, he had come home from Harrow one Easter for the usual short holiday. He had never returned; he had not gone to the University; he had been abroad a good deal, travelling and studying, but always in his mother"s company. It was known that she was in bad health; it was a.s.sumed that either she was very exacting or he very devoted, since to separate him from her appeared impossible. Yet those who observed them together saw no imperiousness on her part and no excess of sentiment on his. Friendliness based on a thorough sympathy of mind was his att.i.tude if his demeanor revealed it truly; while Lady Tristram was to her son as she was to all the world at this time, a creature of feelings now half cold and of moods that reflected palely the intense impulses of her youth. But a few years over forty, she grew faded and faint in mind, it seemed, as well as in body, and was no longer a merry comrade to the boy who never left her. Yet he did not wish to leave her.
To her, indeed, he was not a boy, and n.o.body about the place regarded him as other than a man. He had been actually and effectively master of the house for years, just as he was master of his own doings, of his friendships, recreations, and pursuits. And he had managed all well, except that he was not thought to be very happy or to get much enjoyment from his life. That was just an idea he gave of himself, and gave involuntarily--in spite of taking his fair share in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the neighborhood, and holding his own well in its sports and athletics.
But he was considered cold and very reserved. Had Mina Zabriska remembered this use of "reserve," perhaps she would have employed the word instead of "wariness." Or perhaps, if his acquaintances had looked more keenly, they would have come over to Mina"s side and found her term the more accurate. She spoke from a fresher and sharper impression of him.
His childhood at least had been happy, while Lady Tristram was still the bewilderingly delightful companion who had got into so much hot water and made so many people eager to get in after her. Joy lasted with her as long as health did, and her health began to fail only when her son approached fifteen. Another thing happened about then, which formed the prelude to the most vivid scene in the boy"s life. Lady Tristram was not habitually a religious woman; that temper of mind was too abstract for her; she moved among emotions and images, and had small dealings with meditation or spiritual conceptions. But happening to be in a mood that laid her open to the influence, she heard in London one day a sermon preached by a young man famous at the time, a great searcher of fashionable hearts. She drove straight from the church (it was a Friday morning) to Paddington and took the first train home. Harry was there--back from school for his holiday--and she found him in the smoking-room, weighing a fish which he had caught in the pool that the Blent forms above the weir. There and then she fell on her knees on the floor and poured forth to him the story of that Odyssey of hers which had shocked London society and is touched upon in Mr Cholderton"s Journal. He listened amazed, embarra.s.sed, puzzled up to a point; a boy"s normal awkwardness was raised to its highest pitch; he did not want to hear his mother call herself a wicked woman; and anyhow it was a long while ago, and he did not understand it all very well. The woman lifted her eyes and looked at him; she was caught by the luxury of confession, of humiliation, of offering her back to the whip. She told him he was not her heir--that he would not be Tristram of Blent. For a moment she laid her head on the floor at his feet. She heard no sound from him, and presently looked up at him again. His embarra.s.sment had gone; he was standing rigidly still, his eyes gazing out toward the river, his forehead wrinkled in a frown. He was thinking. She went on kneeling there, saying no more, staring at her son. It was characteristic of her that she did not risk diminishing the effectiveness of the scene, or the tragedy of her avowal, by explaining the perverse accident owing to which her fault had entailed such an aggravation of evil. Harry learnt that later.
Later--and in a most different sort of interview. From the first Harry had no thought of surrender; his mother had none either as soon as she had forgotten her preacher. The discussion was resumed after a week (Lady Tristram had spent the interval in bed) on a business footing. She found in him the same carelessness of the world and its obligations that there was in herself, but found it carried to the point of scorn and allied to a tenacity of purpose and a keenness of vision which she had never owned. Not a reproach escaped him--less, she thought, from generosity than because he chose to concentrate his mind on something useful. It was no use lamenting the past; it might be possible to undo it for all practical purposes. The affair was never again referred to between them except as a factor recommending or dictating some course of action; its private side--its revelation of her and its effect (or what might have been its effect) on his feelings toward her--was never spoken of. Lady Tristram thought that the effect was nothing, and the revelation not very surprising to her son. He accepted without argument her own view--that she had done nothing very strange but had fallen on very bad luck. But he told her at once that he was not going back to Harrow. She understood; she agreed to be watched, she abdicated her rule, she put everything in his hands and obeyed him.
Thus, at fifteen, Harry Tristram took up his burden and seemed to take up his manhood too. He never wavered; he always a.s.sumed that right and justice were on his side, that he was not merely justified in holding his place but bound in duty to keep it. Such practical steps as could be taken were taken. The confederates set no limit to their preparations against danger and their devices to avoid detection. If lies were necessary, they would lie; where falsification was wanted, they falsified. There was no suspicion; not a hint of it had reached their ears. Things were so quiet that Lady Tristram often forgot the whole affair; her son watched always, his eyes keen for a sight, his ear down to the earth for a sound, of danger. No security relaxed his vigilance, but his vigilance became so habitual, so entered into him, that his mother ceased to notice it and it became a second nature to himself.
That it might miss nothing, it was universal; the merest stranger came within its ken. He watched all mankind lest some one among men should be seeking to take his treasure from him. Mr Cholderton"s Imp had not used her eyes in vain; but Harry"s neighbors, content to call him reserved, had no idea that there was anything in particular that he had to hide.
There was one little point which, except for his persuasion of his own rect.i.tude, might have seemed to indicate an uneasy conscience, but was in fact only evidence of a natural dislike to having an unwelcome subject thrust under his notice. About a year after the disclosure Lady Tristram had a letter from Mr Gainsborough. This gentleman had married her cousin, and the cousin, a woman of severe principles, had put an end to all acquaintance in consequence of the "Odyssey." She was dead, and her husband proposed to renew friendly relations, saying that his daughter knew nothing of past differences and was anxious to see her kinsfolk. The letter was almost gushing, and Lady Tristram, left to herself, would have answered it in the same kind; for while she had pleased herself she bore no resentment against folk who had blamed her.
Moreover Gainsborough was poor, and somebody had told her that the girl was pleasant; she pitied poverty and liked being kind to pleasant people.
"Shall we invite them to stay for a week or two?" she had asked.
"Never," he said. "They shall never come here. I don"t want to know them, I won"t see them." His face was hard, angry, and even outraged at the notion.
His mother said no more. If the barony and Blent departed from Harry, on Lady Tristram"s death they would go to Cecily Gainsborough. If Harry had his way, that girl should not even see his darling Blent. If distrust of his mother entered at all into his decision, if he feared any indiscreet talk from her, he gave no hint of it. It was enough that the girl had some odious pretensions which he could and would defeat but could not ignore--pretensions for his mind, in her own she had none.
The sun had sunk behind the tower, and Lady Tristram sat in a low chair by the river, enjoying the cool of the evening. The Blent murmured as it ran; the fishes were feeding; the midges were out to feed, but they did not bite Lady Tristram; they never did; the fact had always been a comfort to her, and may perhaps be allowed here to a.s.sume a mildly allegorical meaning. If the cool of the evening may do the same, it will serve very well to express the stage of life and of feeling to which no more than the beginning of middle age had brought her. It was rather absurd, but she did not want to do or feel very much more; and it seemed as though her wishes were to be respected. A certain distance from things marked her now; only Harry was near to her, only Harry"s triumph was very important. She had outrun her vital income and mortgaged future years; if foreclosure threatened, she maintained her old power of taking no heed of disagreeable things, however imminent. She was still very handsome and wished to go on being that to the end; fortunately fragility had always been her style and always suited her.
Harry leant his elbow on a great stone vase which stood on a pedestal and held a miniature wilderness of flowers.
"I lunched at Fairholme," he was saying. "The paint"s all wet still, of course, and the doors stick a bit, but I liked the family. He"s genuine, she"s homely, and Janie"s a good girl. They were very civil."
"I suppose so."
"Not overwhelmed," he added, as though wishing to correct a wrong impression which yet might reasonably have arisen.
"I didn"t mean that. I"ve met Mr Iver, and he wasn"t at all overwhelmed. Mrs Iver was--out--when I called, and I was--out--when she called." Lady Tristram was visibly, although not ostentatiously, allowing for the prejudices of a moral middle-cla.s.s.