Chapter V: ‘will Fortune Never Come with Both Hands Full?’

Baffled where he had expected to succeed, Alexis Secretan is at a loss what to do next. No doubt of Jenny’s truthfulness presents itself to his mind, youthful candour beamed in that open countenance of hers. How could he imagine the craft of the serpent in a child who seemed simple as the sucking dove?

What is he to do? Go to Jersey and hunt for Mrs. Yokohama Gray on the chance of finding Sibyl still with that lady, despite Jenny’s assertion of her sister’s fickleness? This seems the most obvious course for him to take, and he loses no time in taking it. The journey from Redcastle in Yorkshire to the Channel Islands is a long one, and it is only on the third day after his interview with Jane Faunthorpe that Alexis finds himself at St. Helier.

Vain are his inquiries for Mrs. Yokohama Gray, or for any Mrs. Gray with a name approaching Yokohama in sound. He finds a Mrs. Gray pure and simple, but she is a laundress, and certainly not in a position to afford the luxury of a governess for her children. Alexis pursues his inquiry in every quarter likely to afford information. He sees postmasters, lodging-house keepers, librarians, and tries to obtain tidings of any lady with a pretty governess residing in the Island. Sibyl might be remembered for her pretty face, he thinks, where her name was unknown or forgotten.

All his efforts are vain. He starts upon various false scents, wastes a great deal of time and trouble, and leaves the island at last, thoroughly dispirited.

What more is there for him to do? Nothing assuredly, unless he can extort the secret of his wife’s whereabouts from that inflexible young woman, Jane Dimond. It seems such a hard thing to have Sibyl’s letter in his pocket, to know that she is within a day’s post, and yet not be able to find her. At Southampton, while he is loitering about waiting for the train that is to take him back to London, he remembers that he has or ought to have a kinswoman living in the neighbourhood of Winchester. A maiden lady, his father’s first cousin, has lived all her life on a small estate near that cathedral city. He remembers spending a month at Cheswold Grange with his father and mother during one of those rare visits which they made to their native country. He was a child at this time, and it had struck him since that his father must have had some stronger motive than family affection in coming over to England to visit a quiet maiden lady, living in an out-of-the-way village.

His father had possibly some idea of securing Miss Secretan’s fortune for himself or his boy. Philip Secretan was assuredly the last of men to degrade himself by courting a wealthy relative, but he may have thought it his duty to his boy to keep on friendly terms with the owner of the only estate remaining to the family.

As years went on Mr. Secretan had grown more indolent in his habits, and less inclined to cross the channel, but one of his farewell injunctions to Alexis when the young man last visited him had reference to Matilda Secretan.

‘Go and spend a few days with your cousin Matilda now and then, Alex,’ said the father. ‘She was very fond of you when you were a little boy, and I know she’ll be pleased to see you now you’ve grown into a fine young man. It’s a quiet, out-of-the-way place for you to visit, but you will be made much of by the old lady, and I dare say you can get a little shooting there in October. Lord Starborough’s preserves are close by, and your cousin was always on good terms with her neighbours.’

Alexis promised most dutifully, and was always intending to perform; but the visit to Miss Secretan was a business so easy to accomplish that it was deferred indefinitely. Alexis thought it would be a pity to go earlier than October, on account of Lord Starborough’s pheasants, and three Octobers came and went without his finding leisure for the visit. Then came the sale of his commission, and he felt he should hardly like to face his cousin Matilda under such awkward circumstances. He would have to explain things, and he hated explanations. Next came his entanglement in Cupid’s fatal net, and he had not a spare thought for Miss Secretan. Then followed his marriage and rapid descent in the social scale. He had sore need of a friend in those days; but as he had neglected his cousin Matilda in his brief day of prosperity, he could not approach her in his destitution. He might stoop to ask a favour of aunt Gorsuch, at whose house he had been a familiar guest, but he could not beg of Miss Secretan, to whom he was a stranger. He had a faint recollection of her as an old lady with silvery hair in corkscrew curls, a high nose, delicate peach-bloom cheeks, a slim straight figure, and a dress of rich black silk, like a clergyman’s presentation gown. That she had been very kind to him, and that his life had been made particularly pleasant to him at Cheswold Grange, he could remember distinctly. He remembered telling Sibyl about his rich maiden cousin, as they sat by the fire in Dixon Street one November evening, building castles in a brief interval of hopefulness. He had described that childish visit to Cheswold, and his girl-wife had been fascinated by his picture of the pretty English country house and gardens, the meadows, and the trout-stream in which he had made his juvenile attempts at fly-fishing.

‘Why shouldn’t your cousin leave you her estate, Alex?’ Sibyl had said eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t that be a happy thing?’

‘A very happy thing, love, but not a likely turn of the wheel by any means,’ he had answered. ‘I have never seen my cousin since I was ten years old. Whatever chances I had in that direction have been forfeited by my neglect.’

‘Upon my word, Alexis, you seem to have delighted in throwing away fortune,’ Sibyl had answered, with a touch of anger. And after that she had given way to low spirits for the rest of the evening, and had talked of Cheswold Grange as a property that must have come to her husband if he had not wilfully flung away his prospect of inheritance.

To-day Alexis, sorely perplexed which way to turn in the maze of life, is inclined to dwell upon the memory of his boyish pleasures at Cheswold. He is so near the quiet old place, within twenty miles at most. Why should he not go and see Matilda Secretan? He can approach her without degradation now that he is a prosperous, money-earning man. He has no thought of that possible inheritance. It is not in his nature to calculate upon a thing of that kind; but, being so utterly alone in the world just now, he feels that it would do him good to grasp the hand of a relative--to receive kindness and sympathy from one who had known his father and mother.

The train that was to have carried him to London conveys him to Winchester. At the station he is told that Cheswold is three miles from the city, so he determines to walk the distance. It is between four and five in the afternoon when he turns out of the High Street into the quiet country road which is to take him to Cheswold. Light showers have refreshed the verdure, the low water meadows are looking their greenest, and the grassy hills yonder shut out the world beyond this fertile valley, and give a look of security and repose to the landscape, so simply rustic, so thoroughly English in its character. An hour later, and Alexis stands at the entrance to the village churchyard, a turnstile at a corner of the wall. He remembers this very path across the churchyard as a short cut to the Grange; and after nearly twenty years’ absence the scene comes back to his memory as vividly as if he had left the place but yesterday. Yes, there stands the old yew tree, whose widely stretching boughs rustle and creak against the window by the pulpit in boisterous weather. No busy work of restoration is going on here. The greenish glass of the old diamond-paned casements has not been exchanged for the brilliant colouring of the modern glass-painter. The rough-cast walls are unchanged.

There is the wooden dial that used to mark the flight of time when he was a boy. There stands the old family tomb, neglected, forgotten, under its ivy shroud.

He lingers by the gate for some few minutes in a contemplative mood, looking dreamily at the well-remembered picture. Then he turns the stile and goes in.

He crosses the churchyard, looking idly at the tombstones on either side the path, and within a few paces of the lych-gate he is brought to a standstill by a tablet that tells him his visit to his cousin has been deferred too long.

A massive granite slab, surmounted by a cross in white marble, bears this inscription:--

IN MEMORY OF
MATILDA,
ONLY DAUGHTER AND HEIRESS OF MARK HORATIO SECRETAN,
Who died at Cheswold Grange, August 14th, 186--,
AGED EIGHTY-TWO YEARS

Matilda Secretan has been dead exactly a year, and the friendly grasp of a kindred hand which Alexis has hoped for is not for him.

‘Poor old lady,’ he sighs. ‘Well, she has lived her life, and a good long one. An easy, harmless, passionless existence, full of creature comforts and village dignity. She was a great person in Cheswold. Perhaps it is wiser to play at greatness in a rural village than to struggle to be really great amidst the press of men--pleasant to be born and die on one’s own estate, to lie in one’s shroud in the same room in which one was rocked in one’s cradle--to look out with our dying eyes upon the green fields in which we learned to walk, our own fields, not gained by toil or greed, or overreaching our fellow-men, but coming to us naturally as the blossoms come to the apple trees in our orchard. Yes, it must be a peaceful, pleasant life, affording no opportunity for sin. Satan must have a bad time among small landed proprietors. Poor cousin Matilda! I wonder who has come in for her property?’

The Grange lies within ten minutes’ walk, just on the outer edge of the village. Alexis crosses the green, with its duck-pond, its groups of ancient elms before the good old village inn, with the ‘Rising Sun,’ looking very much like a careful representation of a mustard plaster, swinging from the signpost. A low white house this village inn, with a sloping thatch and a wonderful display of intensely red geraniums in intensely red flower-pots, a perfect blaze of scarlet floriculture.

Beyond the green and the ‘Rising Sun’ the road is shaded by fine old timber, and has a secluded look, as if one had strayed unawares into a gentleman’s park. The hedgerows are so neatly cut, the grass margin of the road looks as if it had been mowed and rolled. There is a pleasant odour of pine woods. A little further on there comes an opening in the wooded screen, and across a running brook Alexis sees the wide park-like meadow which lies in front of Cheswold Grange. A sunk fence divides the grass land from the old-fashioned Grange garden; and to the left of the long low old house, with its many gables, its dovecotes and bell-turret, lies the orchard, whose treasures are guarded by a thick holly hedge of two centuries’ growth.

How well Alexis remembers the house! a hospitable dwelling in the days of his boyhood, but somewhat gloomy of aspect now. Everything has a neglected air. He can see that even at a distance.

‘I suppose Miss Secretan’s heir despises the old place,’ he thinks, ‘and suffers the Grange to go to ruin, while he squanders the revenue of the land in London. I wonder who the fellow is? Some Low Church parson, perhaps, or smooth-tongued doctor, who got to the blind side of cousin Matilda at the last.’

He is at the lodge gate by this time. Even the lodge has a decayed air, a broken pane conspicuous in the parlour window, paint blistered, a bit of rotten gutter hanging from an angle of the roof.

‘It looks like an Irish squireen’s place in the bad old times fifty years ago,’ thinks Alexis.

The lodgekeeper’s wife is spreading out the weekly wash on the sunward side of a quickset hedge, and to this busy housewife Alexis addresses himself.

‘You’ve a pretty place here,’ he begins, with the casual air of an uninterested stranger. ‘Pity it shouldn’t be kept up a little better.’

‘Ah, it is a pity,’ answers the woman, shaking her head over the family linen. ‘Things was very different in Miss Secretan’s time.’ She says this with the conviction that every one upon earth--the wandering stranger included--must know all about Miss Secretan. They may not have had the honour of that lady’s acquaintance, but she must be known to them by reputation as one of the magnates of the land, just as Disraeli and Gladstone are known.

‘She was a good mistress?’ hazards Alexis.

‘Ah,’ sighs the woman, seeming to wring her hands as she wrings out a garment before unfurling it on the hedge, ‘few like her. I won’t say but what she was near. A lady that wouldn’t allow the waste of a candle end, and wore a dress from year’s end to year’s end--but a silk as might stand alone. And them as is nearest towards theirselves is oftentimes kindest to others. Miss Secretan was a kind friend to many. She could do more kindness with sixpence than some people can do with half a crown. And she left a very pretty property. A pity it should go into Chancery.’

‘Is it in Chancery?’ asks Alexis, warmly interested.

‘Well, I can’t say as it is azackley, but it’s something that way, I believe. You see, Miss Secretan, she makes her will a good twenty year ago, and she leaves all her property to a favourite nephew, or cousin, I’m not certain which, in trust for him if she should die before he came of age, but he was to have it handed over to him clear of everythink if he was past twenty-one. And she never altered that will. She had thoughts of altering it, I’ve heard Mrs. Bodlow, the housekeeper, say, because of her nephew not paying her the attention she expected; but once having taken a good bit of trouble to make her will, she didn’t care about beginning all over again. “I’ll wait,” says she--as I had it from Mrs. Bodlow,--“and I dare say,” she says, “as one of these odd days,” says she, “he’ll remember me,” she says, “and come and see me,” says she; “and if not,” says she, “I’m hale and hearty still,” she says, “and there’s time enough to alter my will,” says she, which Mrs. Bodlow repeated to me word batum while she was lying a corpse in that room with the three windows as you may see from here.’

Alexis has turned from red to pale and pale to red again during the progress of this prolix relation. The lodgekeeper’s wife only pauses for breath ere she pursues her argument.

‘So the will was let stand,’ she resumes, ‘and Miss Secretan didn’t so much as trouble herself to find out whether the young man was living or dead; and lo and behold! when the will was made known, the heir was nowheres to be found. I believe the lawyers and such like did all as was proper, and he was advertised to his advantage in the newspapers continual, but he never answered none of the advertisements, which he couldn’t have failed to do if he was alive and could write--unless he’d gone out to Horsetralyer and turned butcher like that simple-’arted young gentleman as you read of in the newspapers. Howsomedever, there’s the property, belonging to no one, as you may say, and things going to ruin. There’s one gardener kept to grub about a bit, where there used to be two men and a by at work constant, and there’s a pore ’elpless old woman in the ’ouse, with ’ardly strength to open a shutter and let in a breath of hair, so you may guess as the moths are having their free will of the damass curtings and such like.’

‘You didn’t hear the name of the heir,’ says Alexis, interrogatively.

‘Not his chrisen name. His other name was the same as hern. “I’ll have a Secretan to come after me if I can,” she says, and Mrs. Bodlow told me as she believed it was mostly on account of the name as Miss Secretan left that young man the property.’

Alexis tries his hardest to still the troubled beating of his heart, tries to persuade himself that it is too soon to feel the flush and pride of sudden unexpected fortune. Matilda Secretan may have had other cousins, or nephews, he tells himself. He is not particularly well posted in the family history, having heard his father prose about his kindred with youth’s heedless ear. He tells himself it is too soon to be glad, yet he feels as if he were lord of the soil. He stands within the gate, and he plants his foot firmly on the ground.

‘I wonder if I am standing on my own land?’ he thinks. ‘I feel as if there were a glow in the soil that communicates itself to my blood. It is the land that has belonged to my race for three hundred years.’

The fact that for the space of a year no one has come forward to claim the property encourages the supposition that he himself is the missing heir.

‘Would it be possible for me to see the house? he inquires, seized with a feverish desire to examine the mansion which may or may not be his.

‘I dare say if you was to offer the old lady a trifle, she wouldn’t mind letting you see it, sir. She’s a little hard of hearing.’

‘Suppose I offer you five shillings to begin with,’ suggests Alexis, dropping two half-crowns into the matron’s hand. ‘You might take me up to the house and make things square with the old lady.’

The lodgekeeper’s face beams all over with delight. ‘I’m sure I’m much beholden to you, sir. I’ll dry my hands directly minute, and step up to the great house with you.’

The Grange has been ‘the great house’ at Cheswold for generations.

‘Oh, Sibyl,’ thinks Alexis as he walks along the grassy path under the elms, ‘if you had only waited for brighter days, how happy we might have been! You abandon me in order to seek fortune, and you don’t seem to have won it yet. Fortune falls into my lap unsought.’

The fact of his wife’s desertion seems harder to him in the face of this sudden turn of fortune’s wheel than it has seemed before. That prosperity should come to him thus, and find him a lonely man!

If this estate of Cheswold has been actually left him, shall he lure his wife back to him by a golden bait? Shall he win from his altered fortunes the boon that has been refused to a husband’s entreaty? No, a thousand times no. ‘If she comes back to me ever she shall return to the pauper she abandoned,’ he tells himself. ‘She shall come back for love of me her husband, not to be mistress of Cheswold Grange.’

Yet how proud he would be, having won her back to her duty, to point to this peaceful old English home, and say, ‘I am no longer an adventurer and a beggar. All this is ours, and our children’s after us!’ He has quite made up his mind by this time that he is the missing heir, and that these elms which screen him from the low western sun are his very own.

Cheswold Grange upon this August evening has a mouldy smell, and wears the gloomy and somewhat ghostly aspect of a house whose shutters are for the most part closed against air and sunshine. But it is a good old house notwithstanding. The rooms are large, the staircase is wide and substantial, with fine carved oak balusters, an open gallery above with numerous doors, suggestive of ample accommodation for a family. The quaint old furniture remains just as Miss Secretan left it. Chairs and sofas are carefully shrouded in holland, and the dust lies thick upon the old rosewood tables, the Canton porcelain, and the crystal chandeliers, whose half-burned wax candles shed their light upon the vanished mistress of the Grange.

‘Nothing has been touched,’ says Mrs. Cramp, of the lodge, as she follows Alexis and the old woman in charge from room to room. ‘Everythink is the same as in Miss Secretan’s time, except that when she was living you couldn’t have found a grain of dust in the place if you’d offered a five-pound note for it.’

After having looked at the house Alexis explores stables and gardens. It is dark by the time his inspection is finished, and he makes up his mind to spend the night at the ‘Rising Sun’ in Cheswold village. He feels attached to the place already.

‘Is there much land belonging to the Grange?’ he inquires of Mrs. Cramp, the old woman in charge being little more than a dummy, and Mrs. Cramp serving as interpreter.

‘I can’t say how many acres, sir, though I dare say my husband might know if he was at home. There’s Baker’s farm, and there’s the Hollow farm and the Hill farm--that must be a good bit altogether. Miss Secretan was lady of the manor.’

This is pleasant to hear. Alexis gratifies the deaf caretaker with his bounty, and goes back to the gate with Mrs. Cramp, who enlarges upon the beauties of the place, and asks him if he has any idea of taking the property if it should be to let.

‘Chancery might just as well let the great house, you see, sir, if it was only for the sake of having it took care of. It would be all the better for the heir if he should come to claim his own. It went to my heart to see things so dusty. And I hope, sir, if you should have any thoughts of the place you’ll keep on me and my good man at the lodge. We served Miss Secretan faithful above eleven years.’

‘I won’t displace you, Mrs. Cramp, you may rely on it, if I should ever come to be master of Cheswold Grange. Good night. Oh, by the way,’ he adds, just as he is turning to go, ‘do you happen to know the name of Miss Secretan’s lawyer?’

‘Mr. Scrodgers, of Winchester, sir. Scrodgers and Son it is now.’

‘Thanks. Good night again.’

‘He must be thinking of taking the place,’ muses Mrs. Cramp, ‘or he wouldn’t want to see Mr. Scrodgers.’

Alexis finds the ‘Rising Sun’ a comfortable old hostelry of a primitive style. Dinner resolves itself into tea and eggs and bacon, but the eggs and bacon are admirable, the home-made loaf delicious, and the cream-jug which accompanies the teapot suggests a land flowing with milk and honey. The parlour in which the traveller enjoys this homely meal is clean and bright, and adjoins the bar so closely that Alexis can carry on a conversation with the landlord as he takes his refreshment. From this gentleman he hears that Cheswold Grange is one of the nicest little estates in the county, worth fifteen hundred a year at the lowest computation, and that Miss Secretan was a careful old lady, and must have saved money.

‘How could she spend much, you see, sir? living in her quiet way, never leaving home from year’s end to year’s end, growing her own meat, and making her own butter, and having everything in a ring fence, as you may say. Ah, there’ll be a pretty tidy bit of rhino for that young man to come into if they ever find him.’

That young man--or the young man who supposes himself to be the heir--feels a thrill of satisfaction at the idea, and is somewhat impatient for to-morrow morning and an interview with Messrs. Scrodgers and Son.

‘Do you know much about Mr. Scrodgers of Winchester, the old lady’s solicitor?’ asks Alexis.

‘Not much, sir, I’m happy to say. I keeps aloof from that cattle. Not as I’ve ever heard any harm of Scrodgers and Son, but they’re all tarred with the same brush, to my mind. If you’ve got a bit of freehold property, they wants you to mortgage it just to give them something to do. If you’ve got a bit of property to leave, they wants you to throw it into hodge-podge, just to give them the ’andling of it, and if they can get you into Chancery body and bones, they do it, for the good of trade. No lawyers for me, sir, but I believe as lawyers go, Scrodgers and Son are very decent fellows.’

Alexis sleeps peacefully that night, better than he has slept since he landed in the port of London and is closeted with Mr. Scrodgers the elder early next morning, in the quiet front parlour of a substantial old house in a side street in Winchester. The office has a respectable and well-to-do look, and Mr. Scrodgers is white-bearded and venerable enough for an abbot. The grave cathedral overshadows his dwelling, and increases the respectability of his surroundings.

Alexis has sent in his card:--

ALEXIS SECRETAN,
Agent for Messrs. Keel & Skrew,
SIDNEY.

The lawyer receives him politely, with a manner that is half friendly, half suspicious.

‘May I ask what Mr. Secretan I have the pleasure of addressing?’ he inquires, looking at the card.

‘I don’t quite know how you would wish me to describe myself. I am the son of Philip Secretan, who died at Nice in 1858, and who was first cousin of Miss Secretan of Cheswold Grange. I come to you, Mr. Scrodgers, to inquire about my cousin’s will. I have been in Australia for the last two years, acting as agent for a house in the City, and I only became aware of my cousin Matilda’s death yesterday evening.’

‘This is very serious,’ says Mr. Scrodgers, looking at Alexis as if he should like to convict him as an impostor. ‘And pray how did you come to hear of Miss Secretan’s demise yesterday evening, not having heard of it prior to that time? May I ask how the intelligence reached you finally?’

Mr. Scrodgers rubs his hands complacently after this address, and fixes Alexis with his large gray eyes, which are of the protuberant order.

‘The knowledge came to me in the simplest possible manner. I went over to Cheswold intending to pay my cousin a visit, and found her name on a tombstone in the churchyard.’

‘Are you quite sure, sir, that the fact of Miss Secretan’s death did not become known to you in Australia, and did not influence your return to this country?’ inquires the lawyer, severely.

‘If you think me an impostor, Mr. Scrodgers, I will thank you to say so plainly, and I will take means to establish my identity. This beating about the bush is as insulting to my understanding as it is to my honour.’

‘This is a very serious business, Mr. Secretan, a good deal more serious than you may suppose. We are entrusted with a great responsibility, sir. If we err it must be on the side of caution.’

‘You mean that my cousin Matilda left the whole of her property to Alexis Secretan, and you doubt whether I am the man, although I put his name upon my card.’

‘It would be for you to establish your identity, Mr. Secretan.’

‘Nothing more easy. My father’s solicitors, Messrs. Gull and Sharpe, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, have been familiar with every stage of my existence up to the time when I sold my commission, about five years ago. They hold all family documents--certificates of baptism, and so on. My father was a careless man as to business matters, but he had infinite faith in his lawyers, and he committed all papers of any significance into their charge.’

‘Messrs Gull and Sharpe are a most respectable firm,’ answers Mr. Scrodgers, with a reverential expression of countenance, as if so old-established a firm ought to be spoken of with awe.

‘I refer you to them for my identification,’ says Alexis, ‘and I shall be obliged if you will let them have a copy of my cousin’s will. I shall go to them directly I get back to London, and take all necessary steps under their advice.’

‘I have not offended you, I hope, Mr. Secretan, by my business-like manner of discussing this question. I had the honour to enjoy Miss Secretan’s confidence for many years, and I am naturally----’

‘Very naturally--quite proper. Good morning, Mr. Scrodgers. Please lose no time about the copy of my cousin’s will.’

‘The original document is in Doctors’ Commons.’

‘Ah, then, Gull and Sharpe will be able to get me a copy. Good morning.’

Alexis leaves the dull old office elated. He knows all that he wanted to know--knows that he is lord of Cheswold Grange; that he need never go back to Australia; that his agency for Keel and Skrew is at an end; that he is an Englishman of landed estate--a gentleman by fortune as he is a gentleman by birth.

He is eager to get back to London, if it were only to communicate his good fortune to the friend of his adversity, Richard Plowden.

‘Dear old Dick! how glad he will be! He shall have an acre of ferns at Cheswold, and his mother need never let lodgings any more unless she likes.’

There is one thought that touches him most deeply,--the thought of the child whose face he has never seen.