Mrs. Henry Wood

“ Chattaway in tones of terror. "You must not say that."
"I know I must not, Aunt Edith; I know it is wrong; wrong to think it, and foolish to say it. It was my temper. I am very sorry."
She nestled close to Mrs. Chattaway, caressing and penitent. Mrs. Chattaway stooped and kissed her, a strangely marked expression of tribulation, shrinking and hopeless, upon her countenance.
"Oh, Maude! I am so ill!"
Maude felt awed; and somewhat puzzled. "Ill, Aunt Edith?"
"There is an illness of the mind worse than that of the body, Maude. I feel as though I should sink under my weight of care. ”

“ Miss Diana descended to her own room. Waiting there for her was Mrs. Chattaway. In spite of a shawl thrown over her shoulders, she seemed to be shivering. She slipped the bolt of the door—what was she afraid of?—and turned to Miss Trevlyn, her hands clasped.
"Diana, this is killing me!" she wailed. "Why should Rupert be treated as he is? I know I am but a poor creature, that I have been one all my life—a very coward; but sometimes I think that I must speak out and protest against the injustice, though I should die in the effort." ”

“ The narrow bed and one chair occupied almost all the space, leaving very little for George and Ann Canham as they stood. George, coming in from the fresh air, felt half-stifled with the closeness of the room: and this must be dangerous for the invalid. It is a mercy that these inconveniences are soothed to those who have to endure them—as most inconveniences and trials are in life. To an outsider they appear unbearable; but to the sufferers they are tempered. George Ryle felt as if a day in that atmosphere would half kill him; but Rupert, lying there always, was sensible of no discomfort. ”

“ In moments of intense fear, the mind receives the barest hint vividly and comprehensively, and Mrs. Chattaway's heart bounded within her at that whispered suggestion. If Jim Sanders did not appear Rupert must be held innocent. Was there no possibility of keeping Jim back? By persuasion—by stratagem—by force, even, if necessary? The blood mounted to her pale cheek at the thought, red as the lurid flame which lighted up the air. At that moment she saw George Ryle hastening across the yard near to her and glided towards him. ”

“ Chattaway. "It's not my hardness that has been in fault, but his pride. He has been as saucy and independent as if he did not owe me a shilling; always making himself out my equal."
"He is your equal," said George, speaking gently in his sadness.
"My equal! Working Tom Ryle the equal of the Chattaways! A man who rents two or three hundred acres and does half the work himself, the equal of the landlord who owns them and ever so many more to them!—equal to the Squire of Trevlyn Hold! ”

“ Chattaway. "Go and get rid of the man."
"But he shall not get rid of him," interrupted Miss Diana. "I shall see the man. It is the strangest message I ever heard in my life. What are you thinking of, Squire?"
"Stop where you are!" returned Mr. Chattaway, arresting Miss Diana's progress. "Do you hear, James? Go and get rid of this man. Turn him out, at any cost."
Did Mr. Chattaway fear the visitor had come to take possession of the house in Rupert's name? Miss Diana could only look at him in astonishment. His face wore the hue of death; he was evidently almost beside himself with terror. ”

“ Chattaway was upon them.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Chattaway," said George. "Is Cris at home?"
George continued his way as he spoke, brushing past Mr. Chattaway. You know what a very coward is self-consciousness. The presence of Chattaway at that ill-omened moment set them all inwardly quaking. George, the surgeon, old Canham sitting inside, and Ann peeping from the window, felt one and all as if Chattaway must divine some part of the great secret locked within their breasts.
"Cris? I don't think Cris is at home," called out Chattaway. "He went out after dinner." ”

“ Squire Trevlyn paused. "Rupert Trevlyn is my heir," he slowly said, "and I will have him found. James Chattaway, I insist on your producing Rupert."
"Nobody can insist upon the impossible."
"Then listen. You don't know much of me, but you knew my father; and you may remember that when he willed a thing, he did it: that same spirit is mine. Now I register a vow that if you do not produce Rupert Trevlyn, or tell me where I may find him, dead or alive, I will publicly charge you with the murder." ”

“ Miss Diana smiled in answer to his joke, as she thought it. "The house on the Upland Farm is quite a mansion," she returned, keeping up the jest. "Will no lesser one suffice her?"
"No. She is a gentlewoman born and bred, and must live as one."
"George, you speak as if you were in earnest. Are you really thinking of being married?"
"If I can get the Upland Farm. But——"
George was startled from the conclusion of his sentence. Over Miss Diana's shoulder, gazing at him with a strangely wild expression, was the face of Octave Chattaway, her lips parted, her face crimson. ”

“ I cannot spare you from the Hold for all the George Ryles in the world. You must be its mistress."
"My aunt Diana will be that," murmured Maude.
"That she never shall be whilst I am master," was the emphatic rejoinder. "If Diana could look quietly on and see her father deceived, help to deceive him; see Chattaway usurp the Hold to the exclusion of Joe's son, and join in the wickedness, she has forfeited all claim to it: she shall neither reign nor reside in it. No, my little Maude, you must live with me, as mistress of Trevlyn Hold." ”

“ The thoughts he was indulging were not altogether profitable; and certain questions which arose in his mind had been better left out of it.
"What right have they so to dispose of me?" he soliloquised, alluding, it must be confessed, to the trio, Chattaway, Mrs. Ryle, and Apperley. "They know that if my father had lived, they would not have dared to urge my being put to it. I wonder what it will end in? I wonder whether I shall have to be at it always? It is not right to put a poor fellow to what he hates most of all in life, and will hate for ever and for ever." ”

“ There appeared to be no place on earth for Rupert Trevlyn. Most people have some little nook they can fit themselves into and call their own; but he had none. He was only on sufferance at the Hold, and was made to feel more of an interloper in it day by day.
What could be the source of this ill-feeling towards Rupert? Did some latent dread exist in the heart of Mr. Chattaway, and from thence reach that of Cris, whispering that he, Rupert, the true heir of Trevlyn Hold, might at some future day, through some unforeseen and apparently impossible chance, come into his rights? ”

“ Chattaway was silent. She could not tell him the truth; could not say she believed it was the constant dwelling upon the wrong and injustice, which had first suggested the notion that the wrong would inevitably recoil on its workers. They had broken alike the laws of God and man; and those who do so cannot be sure of immunity from punishment in this world. That they had so long enjoyed unmolested the inheritance gained by fraud, gave no certainty that they would enjoy it to the end. She felt it, if her husband and Diana Trevlyn did not. ”

“ Chattaway, turning full upon George.
"Why?" echoed George. "I like it, for one thing. And a knowledge of the classics is necessary to a gentleman."
"Necessary to what?" cried Mr. Chattaway.
"To a gentleman," repeated George.
"Oh," said Mr. Chattaway. "Do you think of being one?"
"Yes, I do," repeated George, in tones as decisive as any ever used by his step-mother.
This bold assertion nearly took away the breath of Farmer Apperley. Had George Ryle announced his intention of becoming a convict, Mr. Apperley's consternation had been scarcely less. ”

“ Ask them, Rupert."
"Heart-burnings? Yes, I can understand," murmured Squire Trevlyn.
"Ask him—Chattaway—about the two thousand pounds debt to Mr. Ryle," she continued, never flinching from her stern gaze, never raising her voice above its calm tones of low, concentrated indignation. "You have just said that you and Tom Ryle were friends, Rupert. Yes, you were friends; and had you reigned after my father, he, my husband, would not have been hunted to his death."
"Maude! What are you saying?"
"The truth. Wherever that man Chattaway could lay his oppressive hand, he has laid it. ”

“ When the baby orphan was brought home to her from its foreign birthplace, with its rosy cheeks and its golden curls—when it put out its little arms to her, and gazed at her with its large blue eyes, her heart went out to it there and then, and she caught it to her with a love more passionate than any ever given to her own children. The irredeemable wrong inflicted on the unconscious child, fixed itself on her conscience in that hour, never to be lifted from it.
If ever a woman lived a dual life, that woman was Mrs. Chattaway. ”

“ Cris was against Rupert; Octave was bitterly against him; Maude went about the house with a white face and beating heart, health and spirits giving way under the tension. Suspense is, of all evils, the worst to bear: and they who loved Rupert, Maude and her Aunt Edith, were hourly victims to it. The bow was always strung. On the one hand was the latent doubt that he had come to some violent end that night, in spite of Mr. Chattaway's denial; on the other hand, the lively dread that he was concealing himself, and might be discovered by the police every new day the sun rose. ”

“ In the old days, when her husband had chosen to deceive Squire Trevlyn as to the existence of Rupert, she had not dared to avow the truth, and say to her father, "There is an heir born." She dared not fly in the face of her husband, and say it; and, it may be, that she was too willingly silent for her husband's sake. It would seem strange, but that we know what fantastic tricks our passions play us, that pretty, gentle Edith Trevlyn should have loved that essentially disagreeable man, James Chattaway. ”

“ Chattaway's faculties were strained on the mouth of that yawning pit, and what it might yield up. As body after body was brought to the surface—seven of them were up now—he cast his anxious looks upon it, expecting to recognise the fair face of Rupert Trevlyn. Expecting and yet dreading—don't think him worse than he was; with the frightened, half-shrinking dread ordinarily experienced by women, or by men of nervous and timid temperament. So utterly did this suspense absorb him as to make him almost oblivious to the painful features of the scene, the wails of woe and bursts of lamentation. ”