CHAPTER II.
A DECISIVE MOVE COMMANDED.
Sir Harold and Lady Wynde ate their wedding breakfast in Bloomsbury Square, at the house of Lady Wynde’s miserly aunt, Mrs. Hyde. A few of the baronet’s choice friends were present. The absence of Sir Harold’s daughter was not especially remarked save by the father, who longed with an anxious longing to see her face smiling upon him, and to hear her young voice whispering congratulations upon his second marriage. Neva had been especially near and dear to him. Her mother had died in her babyhood, and he had been both father and mother to his girl. He had early sent his son to school, but Neva he had kept with him until, a year before, his first wife’s relatives had urged him to send her to a “finishing school” at Paris, and he had reluctantly yielded. Not even his passionate love for his bride could overcome or lessen the fatherly love and tenderness of years.
Immediately after the breakfast the newly married pair proceeded to Canterbury by special train. The gray companion and Lady Wynde’s maid traveled in another compartment of the same coach. The Hawkhurst carriage was in waiting for the bridal pair at the station. Sir Harold assisted his wife into it, addressed a few kindly words to the old coachman on the box, and entered the vehicle. The gray companion and the maid entered a dog-cart, also in waiting. Hawkhurst was several miles distant, but the country between it and Canterbury was a charming one, and Lady Wynde found sufficient enjoyment in looking at the handsome seats, the trim hedges, and thrifty hop-gardens, and in wondering if Hawkhurst would realize her expectations. She found indeed more enjoyment in her own speculations than in the society of her husband.
About five o’clock of the afternoon, the bridal pair came in sight of the ancestral home of the Wynde’s. The top of the low barouche was lowered and Sir Harold pointed out her future home to his bride with pardonable pride, and she surveyed it with eager eyes.
It was, as we have said, a magnificent estate, divided into numerous farms of goodly size. The home grounds of Hawkhurst proper, including the fields, pastures, meadows, parks, woods, plantations and gardens, comprised about four hundred acres. The mansion stood upon a ridge of ground some half a mile wide, and was seen from several points at a distance of three or four miles. It was a grand old building of gray stone, with a long facade, and was three stories in height. Its turrets and chimneys were noted for their picturesqueness. Its carved stone porches, its quaint wide windows, its steep roof, from which pert dormer-windows, saucily projected, were remarkable for their beauty or oddity. Despite its age, and its air of grandeur and stateliness, there was a home-like look about the great mansion that Lady Wynde did not fail to perceive at the first glance.
The house was flanked on either side by glass pineries, grape houses, hothouses, greenhouses and similar buildings. Further to the left of the dwelling, beyond the sunny gardens, was the great park, intersected with walks and drives, having a lake somewhere in the umbrageous depths, and herds of fallow-deer browsing on its herbage. In the rear of the house, built in the form of a quadrangle, of gray stone, were the handsome stables and offices of various descriptions. The mansion with its dependencies covered a great deal of ground, and presented an imposing appearance.
The house was approached by a shaded drive a half mile or more in length, which traversed a smooth green lawn dotted here and there with trees. A pair of bronze gates, protected and attended by a picturesque gray stone lodge, gave ingress to the grounds.
These gates swung open at the approach of Sir Harold Wynde and his bride, and the gate-keeper and his family came out bowing and smiling, to welcome home the future lady of Hawkhurst. Lady Wynde returned their greetings with graceful condescension, and then, as the carriage entered the drive, she fixed her eager eyes upon the long gray facade of the mansion, and said:
“It is beautiful—magnificent! You never did justice to its grandeurs, Harold, in describing Hawkhurst. It is strange that a house so large, and of such architectural pretension, should have such a bright and sunny appearance. The sunlight must flood every room in that glorious front. I should like to live all my days at Hawkhurst!”
“Your dower house will be as pleasant a home as this although not so pretentious,” said Sir Harold, smiling gravely. “It is probable that you being twenty years my junior, will survive me, Octavia, and therefore I have settled upon you for your life use in your possible widowhood one of my prettiest places, and one which has served for many generations as the residence of the dowager widows of our family.”
The glow on Lady Wynde’s face faded a little, and her lips slightly compressed themselves, as they were wont to do when she was ill pleased.
“I have never asked you about your property, Harold,” she remarked, “but your wife need be restrained from doing so by no sense of delicacy. I suppose your property is entailed?”
“Hawkhurst is entailed, but it will fall to the female line in case of the dying out of heirs male,” replied the baronet, not marking his bride’s scarcely suppressed eagerness. “It has belonged to our family from time immemorial, and was a royal grant to one of our ancestors who saved his monarch’s life at risk of his own. Thus, at my death, Hawkhurst will go, with the title, to my son. If George should die, without issue, Hawkhurst—without the title, which is a separate affair—will go to my daughter.”
“A weighty inheritance for a girl,” remarked Lady Wynde. “And—and if she should die without issue?”
“The estate would go to distant cousins of mine.”
Lady Wynde started. This was evidently an unexpected reply, and she could not repress her looks of disappointment.
“I—I should think your wife would come before your cousins,” she murmured.
“How little you know about law, Octavia,” said the baronet, with a grave, gentle smile. “The property must go to those of our blood. If our union is blessed with children, the eldest of them would inherit Hawkhurst before my cousins. But although the law has proclaimed us one flesh, yet it does not allow you to become the heir of my entailed property. It is singular even that a daughter is permitted to inherit before male cousins, but there was a clause in the royal deed of gift of Hawkhurst to my ancestors that gave the property to females in the direct line, in default of male heirs, but there has never been a female proprietor of the estate. I hope there never may be. I should hate to have the old name die out of the old place. But here we are at the house. Welcome home, my beautiful wife!”
The carriage stopped in the porch, and Sir Harold alighted and assisted out his bride. He drew her arm through his and led her up the lofty flight of stone steps, and in at the arched and open door-way. The servants were assembled to welcome home their lady, and the baronet uttered the necessary words of introduction and conducted his bride to the drawing-room.
This was an immensely long apartment, with nine wide windows on its eastern side looking out upon gardens and park. Sculptured arches, supported by slender columns of alabaster, relieved the long vista, and curtains depending from them were capable of dividing the grand room into three handsome ones. The drawing-room was furnished in modern style, and was all gayety, brightness and beauty. The furniture, of daintiest satin-wood, was upholstered in pale blue silk. The carpet, of softest gray hue, was bordered with blue.
“It is very lovely,” commented the bride. “And that is a conservatory at the end? I shall be very happy here, Harold.”
“I hope so,” was the earnest response. “But let me take you up to your own rooms, Octavia. They have been newly furnished for your occupancy.”
He gave her his arm and conducted her out into the wide hall, with its tesselated floor, up the wide marble staircase, to a suit of rooms directly over the drawing-room.
This suit comprised sitting-room, bedroom, dressing-room and bath-room. Their upholstery was of a vivid crimson hue. A faultless taste had guided the selection of the various adornments, and Lady Wynde’s eyes kindled with appreciation as she marked the costliness and beauty of everything around her.
“Your trunks have arrived in the wagon, Octavia,” said her husband, well pleased with her commendations. “Mrs. Artress and your maid, who came on in the dog-cart, have also arrived. Dinner has been ordered at seven. I will leave you to dress. And, by the way, should you have need of me, my dressing-room adjoins your own.”
He went out. Lady Wynde rang for her maid and her gray companion, and dressed for dinner. When her toilet was made, the baronet’s bride dismissed her maid and came out into her warm-hued sitting room, where Mrs. Artress sat by a window looking out into the leafy shadows of the park.
“Well?” said the beauty interrogatively. “What do you think? Have I not been successful?”
“So far, yes,” said the grim, ashen-faced companion, raising her light, hay-colored eyes in a meaning expression. “But the end is not yet. The game, you know, is only fairly begun.”
“Yes, I know,” said the bride thoughtfully. “But it is well begun. But hush, Artress. Here comes my happy bridegroom!”
There was a mocking smile on her lips as she bade Sir Harold enter. The wedded pair had a few minutes’ conversation in the sitting-room, her ladyship’s companion sitting in the deep window seat mute as a shadow, and they then descended to the drawing-room. Mrs. Artress meekly followed. She remained near Lady Wynde, in attendance upon her until after dinner, and then went up to her own room, which was in convenient proximity to the apartments of Lady Wynde.
The bride and bridegroom were left to themselves.
The former played a little upon the grand piano, and then approached her husband, sitting down beside him upon the same sofa. His noble face beamed love upon her. But her countenance grew hard with speculative thoughts.
“Let me see,” said she, speaking with well-assumed lightness. “What were we talking about when we arrived, Harold? Oh, about your property! So, this dear old Hawkhurst will belong to George? And what will Neva have?”
“Her mother’s fortune, and several estates which are not entailed. Neva will be a very rich woman without Hawkhurst. You also, Octavia, will be handsomely provided for, without detriment to my children.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Lady Wynde. “But if the estates are not entailed which you intend to give to Neva, you must leave them to her by will. Have—have you made your will?”
“Yes; but since I have contracted a new marriage, I shall have to make a new will. I shall attend to that at my leisure.”
Lady Wynde became thoughtful, but did not press the subject. She excused her questionings on the plea of interest in her husband’s children, and Sir Harold gave no thought to them.
The days went by; the weeks and months followed. Neva Wynde had not been summoned home, her step-mother finding plenty of excuses for deferring the return of her step-daughter. Perhaps she feared that a pair of keen young eyes, unvailed by glamor, would see how morally hideous she was—how base and scheming, and unworthy of her husband.
Sir Harold’s infatuation with his wife deepened as the time wore on. His love for her became a species of worship. All that she did was good in his eyes.
Lady Wynde went into society, visited the first county families, and received them at Hawkhurst. She gave a ball, dancing and dinner parties, “tea-fights,” and fetes champetres, without number. She promoted festivities of every sort, and became one of the most popular ladies in the county. She was a leader of fashion too, and withal was so gracious, so circumspect, so full of delicate flattery to every one, that even venomous tongued gossip had naught but good to say of her. Her position at Hawkhurst was thus firmly established, and she might be called a happy woman.
As the months went on, an air of expectancy began to be apparent in her manner. The gray companion shared it, moving with a suppressed eagerness and nervousness, as if waiting for something. And that which she waited for came at last.
It was one February evening, more than a year after the bride’s coming home to Hawkhurst. Outside the night was wild. Within Lady Wynde’s dressing-room the fire glowed behind its silvered bars, and its rays danced in bright gleams upon the crimson furniture. The lamps burned with mellow radiance. In the centre of the room stood the lady of Hawkhurst. She had dismissed her maid, and was surveying her reflection in a full-length mirror with a complacent smile.
She was attired in a long robe of crimson silk, and wore her ruby ornaments. Her neck and arms were bare. Her liquid black eyes were full of light; her face was aglow.
In the midst of her self-admiration, her gray companion entered abruptly, bearing in her hand a letter. Lady Wynde turned toward her with a startled look.
“What have you there, Artress?” she demanded.
“A letter addressed to me,” was the reply. “I have read it. I have a question to ask you, Octavia, before I show the letter to you. Sir Harold Wynde adores you. He loads you with gifts. He lays his heart under your feet. You are his world, his life, his very soul. And now I want to ask you—do you love him?”
The ashen eyes shot a piercing glance into the handsome brunette face, but the black eyes met hers boldly and the full lips curled in a contemptuous smile.
“Love him?” repeated Lady Wynde. “You know I do not. Love him? You know that I love another even as Sir Harold loves me! Love him? Bah!”
The gray woman smiled a strange mirthless smile.
“It is well,” she said. “Now read the letter. The message has come at last!”
Lady Wynde seized the letter eagerly. It contained only these words, without date or signature:
“The time has come to get rid of him! Now!”