Elster's Folly Part 7

Mirrable departed with the commands, more inclined to laugh at the selfish old woman than to be angry. She remembered the countess-dowager arriving on an unexpected visit some three or four years before, and finding the old Lord Hartledon away and his wife ill in bed. She remained three days, completely upsetting the house; so completely upsetting the invalid Lady Hartledon, that the latter was glad to lend her a sum of money to get rid of her.

Truth to say, Lady Kirton had never been a welcome guest at Hartledon; had been shunned, in fact, and kept away by all sorts of _ruses_. The only other visit she had paid the family, in Mirrable's remembrance, was to the town-house, when the children were young. Poor little Val had been taught by his nurse to look upon her as a "bogey;" went about in terror of her; and her ladyship detecting the feeling, administered sly pinches whenever they met. Perhaps neither of them had completely overcome the antagonism from that time to this.

A scrambling sort of life had been Lady Kirton's. The wife of a very poor and improvident Irish peer, who had died early, leaving her badly provided for, her days had been one long scramble to make both ends meet and avoid creditors. Now in Ireland, now on the Continent, now coming out for a few brief weeks of fashionable life, and now on the wing to some place of safety, had she dodged about, and become utterly unscrupulous.

There was a whole troop of children, who had been allowed to go to the good or the bad very much in their own way, with little help or hindrance from their mother. All the daughters were married now, excepting Maude, mostly to German barons and French counts. One had espoused a marquis--native country not clearly indicated; one an Italian duke: but the marquis lived somewhere over in Algeria in a small lodging, and the Duke condescended to sing an occasional song on the Italian stage.

It was all one to Lady Kirton. They had taken their own way, and she washed her hands of them as easily as though they had never belonged to her. Had they been able to supply her with an occasional bank-note, or welcome her on a protracted visit, they had been her well-beloved and most estimable daughters.

Of the younger sons, all were dispersed; the dowager neither knew nor cared where. Now and again a piteous begging-letter would come from one or the other, which she railed at and scolded over, and bade Maude answer. Her eldest son, Lord Kirton, had married some four or five years ago, and since then the countess-dowager's lines had been harder than ever. Before that event she could go to the place in Ireland whenever she liked (circ.u.mstances permitting), and stay as long as she liked; but that was over now. For the young Lady Kirton, who on her own score spent all the money her husband could sc.r.a.pe together, and more, had taken an inveterate dislike to her mother-in-law, and would not tolerate her.

Never, since she was thus thrown upon her own resources, had the countess-dowager's lucky star been in the ascendant as it had been this season, for she contrived to fasten herself upon the young Lord Hartledon, and secure a firm footing in his town-house. She called him her nephew--"My nephew Hartledon;" but that was a little improvement upon the actual relationship, for she and the late Lady Hartledon had been cousins only. She invited herself for a week's sojourn in May, and had never gone away again; and it was now August. She had come down with him, _sans ceremonie_, to Hartledon; had told him (as a great favour) that she would look after his house and guests during her stay, as his mother would have done. Easy, careless, good-natured Hartledon acquiesced, and took it all as a matter of course. To him she was ever all sweetness and suavity.

None knew better on which side her bread was b.u.t.tered than the countess-dowager. She liked it b.u.t.tered on both sides, and generally contrived to get it.

She had come down to Hartledon House with one fixed determination--that she did not quit it until the Lady Maude was its mistress. For a long while Maude had been her sole hope. Her other daughters had married according to their fancy--and what had come of it?--but Maude was different. Maude had great beauty; and Maude, truth to say, was almost as selfishly alive to her own interest as her mother. _She_ should marry well, and so be in a position to shelter the poor, homeless, wandering dowager. Had she chosen from the whole batch of peers, not one could have been found more eligible than he whom fortune seemed to have turned up for her purpose--Lord Hartledon; and before the countess-dowager had been one week his guest in London she began her scheming.

Lady Maude was nothing loth. Young, beautiful, vain, selfish, she yet possessed a woman's susceptible heart; though surrounded with luxury, dress, pomp, show, which are said to deaden the feelings, and in some measure do deaden them, Lady Maude insensibly managed to fall in love, as deeply as ever did an obscure damsel of romance. She had first met him two years before, when he was Viscount Elster; had liked him then. Their relationship sanctioned their being now much together, and the Lady Maude lost her heart to him.

Would it bring forth fruit, this scheming of the countess-dowager's, and Maude's own love? In her wildest hopes the old woman never dreamed of what that fruit would be; or, unscrupulous as she was by habit, unfeeling by nature, she might have carried away Maude from Hartledon within the hour of their arrival.

Of the three parties more immediately concerned, the only innocent one--innocent of any intentions--was Lord Hartledon. He liked Maude very well as a cousin, but otherwise he did not care for her. They might succeed--at least, had circ.u.mstances gone on well, they might have succeeded--in winning him at last; but it would not have been from love.

His present feeling towards Maude was one of indifference; and of marriage at all he had not begun to think.

Val Elster, on the contrary, regarded Maude with warm admiration. Her beauty had charms for him, and he had been oftener at her side but for the watchful countess-dowager. It would have been horrible had Maude fallen in love with the wrong brother, and the old lady grew to hate him for the fear, as well as on her own score. The feeling of dislike, begun in Val's childhood, had ripened in the last month or two to almost open warfare. He was always in the way. Many a time when Lord Hartledon might have enjoyed a _tete-a-tete_ with Maude, Val Elster was there to spoil it.

But the culminating point had arrived one day, when Val, half laughingly, half seriously, told the dowager, who had been provoking him almost beyond endurance, that she might spare her angling in regard to Maude, for Hartledon would never bite. But that he took his pleasant face beyond her reach, it might have suffered, for her fingers were held out alarmingly.

From that time she took another little scheme into her hands--that of getting Percival Elster out of his brother's favour and his brother's house. Val, on his part, seriously advised his brother _not_ to allow the Kirtons to come to Hartledon; and this reached the ears of the dowager.

You may be sure it did not tend to soothe her. Lord Hartledon only laughed at Val, saying they might come if they liked; what did it matter?

But, strange to say, Val Elster was as a very reed in the hands of the old woman. Let her once get hold of him, and she could turn him any way she pleased. He felt afraid of her, and bent to her will. The feeling may have had its rise partly in the fear instilled into his boyhood, partly in the yielding nature of his disposition. However that might be, it was a fact; and Val could no more have openly opposed the resolute, sharp-tongued old woman to her face than he could have changed his nature. He rarely called her anything but "ma'am," as their nurse had taught him and his brothers and sisters to do in those long-past years.

Before eight o'clock the guests had all a.s.sembled in the drawing-room, except the countess-dowager and Maude. Lord Hartledon was going about amongst them, talking to one and another of the beauties of this, his late father's place; scarcely yet thought of as his own. He was a tall slender man; in figure very much resembling Percival, but not in face: the one was dark, the other fair. There was also the same indolent sort of movement, a certain languid air discernible in both; proclaiming the undoubted fact, that both were idle in disposition and given to ennui.

There the resemblance ended. Lord Hartledon had nothing of the irresolution of Percival Elster, but was sufficiently decisive in character, prompt in action.

A n.o.ble room, this they were in, as many of the rooms were in the fine old mansion. Lord Hartledon opened the inner door, and took them into another, to show them the portrait of his brother George--a fine young man also, with a fair, pleasing countenance.

"He is like Elster; not like you, Hartledon," cried a young man, whose name was Carteret.

"_Was_, you mean, Carteret," corrected Lord Hartledon, in tones of sad regret. "There was a great family resemblance between us all, I believe."

"He died from an accident, did he not?" said Mr. O'Moore, an Irishman, who liked to be called "The O'Moore."

"Yes."

Percival Elster turned to his brother, and spoke in low tones. "Edward, was any particular person suspected of having fired the shot?"

"None. A set of loose, lawless characters were out that night, and--"

"What are you all looking at here?"

The interruption came from Lady Kirton, who was sailing into the room with Maude. A striking contrast the one presented to the other. Maude in pink silk and a pink wreath, her haughty face raised in pride, her dark eyes flashing, radiantly beautiful. The old dowager, broad as she was high, her face rouged, her short snub nose always carried in the air, her light eyes unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike tails. It was certain she did not spend much money upon her own attire; and how she procured the costly dresses for Maude the latter appeared in was ever a mystery. You can hardly fancy the bedecked old figure that she made. The O'Moore nearly laughed out, as he civilly turned to answer her question.

"We were looking at this portrait, Lady Kirton."

"And saying how much he was like Val," put in young Carteret, between whom and the dowager warfare also existed. "Val, which was the elder?"

"George was."

"Then his death made you heir-presumptive," cried the thoughtless young man, speaking impulsively.

"Heir-presumptive to what?" asked the dowager snapping at the words.

"To Hartledon."

"_He_ heir to Hartledon! Don't trouble yourself, young man, to imagine that Val Elster's ever likely to come into Hartledon. Do you want to shoot his lordship, as _he_ was shot?"

The uncalled-for retort, the strangely intemperate tones, the quick pa.s.sionate fling of the hand towards the portrait astonished young Carteret not a little. Others were surprised also; and not one present but stared at the speaker. But she said no more. The pea-green turban and flaxen curls were nodding ominously; and that was all.

The animus to Val Elster was very marked. Lord Hartledon glanced at his brother with a smile, and led the way back to the other drawing-room. At that moment the butler announced dinner; the party filed across the hall to the fine old dining-room, and began finding their seats.

"I shall sit there, Val. You can take a chair at the side."

Val did look surprised at this. He was about to take the foot of his brother's table, as usual; and there was the pea-green turban standing over him, waiting to usurp it. It would have been quite beyond Val Elster, in his sensitiveness, to tell her she should not have it; but he did feel annoyed. He was sweet-tempered, however. Moreover, he was a gentleman, and only waited to make one remark.

"I fear you will not like this place, ma'am. Won't it look odd to see a lady at the bottom of the table?"

"I have promised my dear nephew to act as mistress, and to see after his guests; and I don't choose to sit at the side under those circ.u.mstances."

But she had looked at Lord Hartledon, and hesitated before she spoke.

Perhaps she thought his lordship would resign the head of the table to her, and take the foot himself. If so, she was mistaken.

"You will be more comfortable at the side, Lady Kirton," cried Lord Hartledon, when he discovered what the bustle was about.

"Not at all, Hartledon; not at all."

"But I like my brother to face me, ma'am. It is his accustomed place."

Remonstrance was useless. The dowager nodded her pea-green turban, and firmly seated herself. Val Elster dexterously found a seat next Lady Maude; and a gay gleam of triumph shot out of his deep-blue eyes as he glanced at the dowager. It was not the seat she would have wished him to take; but to interfere again might have imperilled her own place. Maude laughed. She did not care for Val--rather despised him in her heart; but he was the most attractive man present, and she liked admiration.

Another link in the chain! For how many, many days and years, dating from that evening, did that awful old woman take a seat, at intervals, at Lord Hartledon's table, and a.s.sume it as a right!

CHAPTER V.

JEALOUSY.