Mrs. Crofton

“ Crofton? One can never find Alice out. She doesn’t go when she’s made a sacrifice for you and keep hinting and hinting to let you know, as some people do; but look here—isn’t it horrible to think I’m grown up and yet have to stay at home like a girl, and can’t do anything. Now that I’m able to do these slides, I’d give my ears if I could sell them. I’d go and stand in the market at Simonborough. But of course it’s no use speaking. Don’t you think, Mrs. Crofton, that there’s surely something in{43} the world that could be done by a cripple like me? ”

“ You think I speak like a fool,” continued the young man, the flush of his excitement brightening all his face, and the natural superlatives of youth, all the warmer and stronger for the physical infirmities which seemed to shut him out from their legitimate use, pouring to his lips, “and so I should have been, but for the divine chance that brought me here. Ah, Mrs. Crofton, you did not know what an Easter of the soul you were asking me to! ”

“ A man’s business is not to speak, but to work.”
“That is very true, certainly,” said I: “but tell me, will you—if it is not wrong to ask—what has made this great change in your ideas, all at once?”
“Ah, Mrs. Crofton, don’t you know?” cried Johnnie, blushing, a soft overpowering youthful blush, which would have done no discredit to Clara herself; and the poor, foolish boy looked at me with an appealing triumphant look, as if he at once entreated me to say, and defied me to deny that she was altogether an angel, and he the very happiest of boys or men. ”

“ I should think it would be rather nice to live at a grand place like Beechley Towers and have an income of six thousand a year," answered Mrs. Crofton quietly. "So, if this cousin of yours is really guilty, let us hope for our own sakes that he will be duly caught and hanged."
Crofton turned to the table, and having poured out nearly half a tumbler of brandy, he drank it off at a draught. Excitement had so far unnerved him that the glass rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"But what could possibly induce a man in Mr. Brooke's position to commit such a crime?" asked Stephanie presently. ”

“ I hope you have a sincere love of your vocation, Miss Crofton.'
I said I hoped I should grow to like my work as I became accustomed to it. I had never yet tried teaching, except with my young sister and brothers. My heart sank as I remembered our free-and-easy studies in the sunny parlour at home, or out in the garden under the pink and white hawthorns sometimes on balmy mornings in the early summer.
Miss Susan shook her head doubtfully.
'Unless you have a love of your vocation you will never succeed, Miss
Crofton,' she said solemnly. ”

“ My dear Janet,
I am longing to talk over the enclosed with you. I was lately in Essex, and when we meet I will tell you all that was said and suspected there at the time of Colonel Crofton's death.
Someone we wot of got off very lightly. You will realise from even this rather confused report that someone must have put the bottle of strychnine into the unhappy man's bedroom—also that he absolutely denied having touched it. No one connected with the household, save of course Mrs. Crofton, had ever seen the bottle until after his death. ”

“ But Clara's ears, of late ever on the alert, had heard a certain sound. With a low cry she sprang to the door; but before she could reach it, it was opened from without, and Gerald, accompanied by Picot, appeared on the threshold.
Crofton fell back as if he had seen a face from the tomb. "By what fiend's trick have I been fooled?" he cried.
"There stands the villain who betrayed you," exclaimed the young wife, pointing to Crofton with outstretched finger.
"He! My cousin! Impossible."
"It may not be too late yet," exclaimed Crofton as he sprang to one of the windows and tore aside the curtain. ”

“ Some are made actually ill, even quite old travelers. But they know that it is pure hysteria and they fight it off, and afterward they are able to laugh at their fears. My dear, you are quite mistaken about there being any danger threatening your father. He is in the best of hands, and he himself would be sadly disappointed——"
It was of no use. Mrs. Crofton took her niece to her stateroom, and, sending for Jeannette and Rosalie, even for Uncle Thomas, tried in vain to shake her. ”

“ People as wise as yourself, when their turn comes, are often the most foolish in these concerns.”
“Ah, you forget that I am past youth,” said{105} Maurice; “you, Mrs. Crofton, have made a private agreement, I suppose, with the old enemy, but I have no such privilege—I have done with that sort of thing long ago. However, about Owen, if I may remind you, is there anything to say?”
“Somebody asked me for the living of Estcourt when your father lay dying; I was younger then, as you say—I was deeply horrified,” said I. “We must wait.” ”

“ Neither dog nor devil ever again made their appearance in the room; but one afternoon, when Mr. Crofton had caught a cold, and was lying down on his bed, he was startled to notice the closet-door near the fire-place slowly and cautiously opening—and at last, the apparition of a human head, upon the upper shelf of the closet! Its large, round, black eyes were fixed on his, exactly like those of a rattlesnake intent on its prey. The head had a horrible indescribable grin, or ghastly smile. ”

“ It was vitally important that the first lines of my letter should secure the favorable opinion of the reader; by one unhappy word, one ill-selected expression, a whole case might be prejudiced. I imagined Crofton angrily throwing the epistle from him with an impatient “Stuff and nonsense! a practised hum-bugger!” or, worse again, calling out, “Listen to this, Mary. Is not Master Potts a cool hand? Is not this brazening it out with a vengeance?” Such a thought was agony to me; the very essence of my theory about life was to secure the esteem and regard of others. ”

“ But I don't think you need worry, if you'll only take a long view. They can't marry yet, and long before they could marry, she'll have got tired of him, and fond of someone else."
Betty gave him a quick look. Was he really unconscious of the reason why Mrs. Crofton had come to Beechfield?
Through her mind in a flash there crowded the many small, almost imperceptible, impressions made on her mind by the new tenant of The Trellis House. ”

“ Little rosy faces clustered close about Clara Sedgwick, about Alice and myself, and old Miss Polly, holding up rose-lips full of kisses. Mr. Crofton shook hands with Derwie, and turned him off with an affectionate grasp upon his shoulders, declaring, with a fondness beyond caresses, that he was too old to be kissed. ”

“ That is not becoming. No one ought to do such things, especially a young man of right feeling like yourself.”
“Oh, you think I have right feelings,” cried Johnnie, bitterly, “you think I am man enough to know what honor means? That is something, at least. I have been well brought up, haven’t I? Mrs. Crofton,” continued the unfortunate youth, “you were rather hard upon Maurice{93} just now—I heard you, and he deserves it. If I were like Maurice, I should be ashamed to be as useless as he is. I’m not so useless now, in spite of everything ”

“ Why should I go to contribute that alternative of shade which makes the landscape picturesque?—picturesque!” exclaimed poor Johnnie, breathing out the words upon a long breath of wrath and indignation; “is that all I am good for? Do you suppose God has made me in a man’s form, with a man’s heart, only to add a subtle{94} charm to another man’s happiness by the contrast of my misery? I believe in no such thing, Mrs. Crofton. Is that what Alice means?” ”

“ Crofton singled out instinctively her gentle, cultivated-looking host. She told herself with a queer sense of relief, that he was the sort of man who generally shows a distantly chivalrous regard for women. Next to her host, his eldest son, Jack Tosswill, came in for secret, close scrutiny, but Enid Crofton always found it easy and more than easy, to "make friends" with a young man. ”

“ George Crofton is smoking a cigar, and gazing fixedly into the fire, seeing pictures in the glowing embers which are anything but pleasant ones, if one may judge by the lowering expression of his face. He looks haggard and careworn, and is no longer so fastidious with regard to his personal appearance as he used to be. Dissipation has set its unmistakable seal upon him; he has the air of a man who is going slowly but surely downhill.
His wife is amusing herself somewhat listlessly at the piano. ”

“ Please unhook me, Father Davy; the play is over, and it's time to get the pot-roast simmering. And what do you say to inviting lovely Jeannette Crofton to visit us? Would it be too hard on you?"
"Not at all, my dear. I should be glad to see your Uncle Thomas's daughter. Invite her, by all means. You have far too little young companionship; it will do you good to have a girl of your own age in the house."
"I wonder how we shall get on," mused Georgiana. "Anyhow she'll see what a market this is for evening frocks cut on her lines!" ”

“ Yes, you would. Having everything on earth you want, and being thoroughly spoilt, like all men of the present day, you would naturally have low spirits."
"Ah, I dare say you don't believe me. But I assure you, Mrs. Crofton, that under all my outward misery I generally have an aching heart.... How lovely Lady Chetwode's looking!"
"Lady Chetwode," said Aunt William loyally, "is a most brilliant woman. Her sister is a beautiful girl, and her brother Savile is doing well at Eton. His last report——"
"Do you know, I'm terribly frightened of Savile," said Jasmyn. ”

“ Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of the place where she and her husband settled after the War. She was so actively unkind, and made him so wretched, that at last he committed suicide. At least that is what is believed by everyone who knew them in Essex."
"I suppose a woman told you all this?" he said in a dangerously calm voice.
"Yes, it was a woman, Jack."
"Of course it was! Every woman, young or old, is jealous of her because she's so pretty and—so—so feminine, and because she has nothing about her of the clever, hard woman who is the fashion nowadays! ”

“ I shall tell Jane, when we are with mamma at work."
"That is too bad!" exclaimed Hugh, flinging himself down on the leads so vehemently that his sister was afraid he would roll over into the yard. "What does Jane care about Crofton and the boys to what I do?"
"There is one boy there that Jane cares about more than you do, or I, or anybody, except papa and mamma. Jane loves Phil." ”

“ Mr. Crofton sprung from his bed, seized the red-hot poker, rushed to the closet and whipt open the door, but the head had vanished, whither did not appear; he thrust the poker against the back of the closet, between the shelves, where the head had appeared, but the brick wall was solid.
The clew was, however, at last found; it was plain and palpable all the annoyances had proceeded from that closet. ”

“ Even supposing that Crofton were in earnest and wished to marry Eliza, he felt sure that such an unequal marriage would not bring happiness to her in any way. And besides, he had set his heart on her wedding Hogan, whom he cordially liked, with whom he could trust her; and everything would be open and straightforward, she living on the spot, and among the people with whom she had been brought up. He tried to represent the thing clearly to Eliza, how Charles Crofton's family would be offended, and how he would needs break his engagement to Miss Courtney. ”

“ Every day these things weighed more on Hugh’s spirits; every day he felt more and more like a dunce; and when Philip came home for the Midsummer holidays, and told all manner of stories about all sorts of boys at school, without describing anything like Hugh’s troubles with Miss Harold, Hugh was seized with a longing to go to Crofton at once, as he was certainly too young to go at present into the way of a shipwreck or a battle. The worst of it was, there was no prospect of his going yet to Crofton. In Mr Tooke’s large school there was not one boy younger than ten ”

“ Even now, when Enid Crofton, free at last, remembered those dreary months in the shabby little manor-house which Colonel Crofton had taken after the Armistice, she told herself, with a quickened pulse, that flesh and blood cannot stand more than a certain amount of dulness and discomfort. ”

“ Perhaps it is just because there is no reason whatever that I feel so much disposed to do it—also because the appearance of that son is the only difference that has come to my own life since last my unknown friends heard of me, and because there is quite an exhilaration in thinking that here is a new audience to whom I am at liberty to introduce the second Derwent Crofton. This story is not in the least about my boy, and, in consequence, it is quite an unusual delight to be able to drag him in head and shoulders. Women are not logical, as everybody knows. ”

“ Thomas Crofton himself, the oldest person under the great rooftree.
"My dear, you must come again, you must come often," he urged, holding Georgiana's hand and patting it with a paternal air. He was a handsome man in the early sixties, with graying hair and tired eyes. "You have done a great deal for our Jean; she looks much stronger than when she went to your home. But neither she nor Rosalie can enter the race with you for splendid health. That comes from your141 country life, I suppose. I envy you, I envy you, my dear."
"Come and see us, Uncle Thomas—do. Father Davy would be so happy ”