The Cloven Foot

I

The Heir Presumptive

The air was thick with falling snow, and the countryside looked a formless mass of chilly whiteness, as the southwestern mail train carried John Treverton on a lonely midnight journey. There were not many people in the train on that bleak night, and Mr. Treverton had a second-class compartment to himself.

He had tried to sleep, but had failed ignominiously in the endeavour, waking with a start, after five minutes’ doze, and remaining broad awake for an hour at a time pondering upon the perplexities of his life, and hating himself for the follies that had made it what it was. It had been a very hard life of late, for the world had gone ill with John Treverton. He had begun his career with a small fortune and a commission in a crack regiment, and, after wasting his patrimony and selling his commission, he was now a gentleman at large, living as best he might, no one but himself knew how.

He was going to a quiet village in Devonshire, a far away nook under the shadow of Dartmoor, in obedience to a telegram that told him a rich kinsman was dying, and summoned him to the death bed. The day had been when he hoped to inherit this kinsman’s property; not because the old man had ever cared for him, but because he, John, was the only relative Jasper Treverton had in the world; but that hope had vanished when the lonely old bachelor adopted an orphan girl to whom he was reported to have attached himself strongly. The ci-devant Captain had never seen this young person, and it is not to be supposed that he cherished very kindly feelings towards her. He had made up his mind that she was a deep and designing creature, who would, of course, play her cards in such a manner as to induce old Jasper Treverton to leave her everything.

“He never bore me or mine much goodwill,” John Treverton said to himself, “but he might have left his money to me for want of anyone else to leave it to, if it hadn’t been for this girl.”

During almost the whole of that dreary night journey he was meditating on this subject, half inclined to be angry with himself for having taken such useless trouble for the sake of a man who was not likely to leave him sixpence.

He was not an utterly bad fellow, this John Treverton, though his better and purer feelings had been a good deal blunted by rough contact with the world. He had a frank winning manner, and a handsome face, a face which had won him the love of more than one woman, with little profit to himself. He was a man of no strong principle, and with a self-indulgent nature, that had led him into wrongdoing very often during the last ten years of his life. He had an easy temper, a habit of looking at the pleasanter side of things, so long as there was any pleasantness in them, and a chronic avoidance of all serious thought—qualities which do not serve to make up a strong character. But the charm of his manner was none the less because of this latent weakness of character, and he was better liked than many better men.

The train stopped at a little rustic station, forty miles westward of Exeter, about an hour after midnight, a dreary building with an open platform, across which the wind blew and the snow drifted as John Treverton alighted, the one solitary passenger to be deposited at this out-of-the-way place. He knew that the house to which he had to go was some miles from the station, and he applied himself at once to the sleepy stationmaster to ascertain if there were any possibility of procuring a conveyance at that time of night.

“There’s a gig waiting for a gentleman from London,” the man answered, stifling a yawn, “I suppose you are the party, sir.”

“A gig from Treverton Manor?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks, yes, I am the person that is expected. Civil, at any rate,” John Treverton added to himself, as he walked off to the gig, wrapped to the eyes in his great coat, and with a railway rug across his shoulder.

He found a gig, with a rough looking individual of the gardener species waiting for him in the snow.

“Here I am, my man,” he cried cheerily, “have you been waiting long?”

“No, sir. Miss Malcolm said as how you’d come by this train.”

“Miss Malcolm sent you for me then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how is Mr. Treverton, tonight?”

“Mortal bad, sir. The doctors say as th’ old gentleman hasn’t many hours to live. And Miss Malcolm, she says to me, ‘Jacob, you’re to drive home as fast as th’ horse can go, for papa is very anxious to see Mr. John before he dies.’ She allus calls the old gentleman papa, you see, sir, he having adopted of her ten years ago, and brought her up as his own daughter like, ever since.”

They had jolted over the uneven stones of a narrow street, the high street of a small settlement which evidently called itself a town, for here, at a point where two narrow lanes branched off from the central thoroughfare, there stood a dilapidated old building of the town hall species, and a vaulted marketplace with iron railings, and closely-locked gates shutting in emptiness. John Treverton perceived dimly through the winter darkness an old stone church, and at least three Methodist chapels. Then, all in a moment, the town was gone, and the gig was rattling along a Devonshire lane, between high banks and still higher hedges, above which rose a world of hill and moor, that melted far off into the midnight sky.

“And your master is very fond of this young lady, Miss Malcolm?” John Treverton inquired presently, when the horse, after rattling along for a mile and a half at a tremendous pace, was slowly climbing a hill which seemed to lead nowhere in particular, for one could hardly imagine any definite end or aim in a lane that went undulating like a snake amidst a chaos of hills.

“Oncommon, sir. You see, she’s about the only thing he has ever cared for.”

“Is she as much liked by other people?”

“Well, yes, sir, in a general way Miss Malcolm is pretty well liked, but there is some as think her proud—think her a little set up as you may say, by Mr. Treverton’s making so much of her. She’s not one to make friends very easy; the young ladies in the village, Squire Carew’s daughters, and suchlike, haven’t taken to her as much as they might have done. I’ve heard my wife—as has been parlourmaid at the Manor for the last twenty years—say as much many a time. But Miss Malcolm is a pleasant spoken young lady, for all that, to those she likes, and my Susan has had no fault to find with her. You see all of us has our peculiarities, sir, and it ain’t to be supposed as Miss Malcolm would be without hers,” the man concluded in an argumentative tone.

“Humph,” muttered John Treverton, “a stuck-up young lady, I daresay—and a deep one into the bargain. Did you ever hear who she was—what her position was, and so on—when my cousin Jasper adopted her?” he asked aloud.

“No, sir. Mr. Treverton has kept that oncommon close. He’d been away from the Manor a twelvemonth when he brought her home without a word of warning to anyone in the house, and told his old housekeeper, as how he’d adopted this little girl—who was an orphan—the daughter of an old friend of his, and that’s all he ever said about her from that time to this. Miss Malcolm was about seven or eight year old at that time, as pretty a little girl as you could see—and she has grown up to be a beautiful young woman.”

Beautiful. Oh, this artful young person was beautiful, was she? John Treverton determined that her good looks should have no influence upon his opinions.

The man was quite willing to talk, but his companion asked no more questions. He felt indeed that he had already asked more than he was warranted in asking, and felt a little ashamed of himself for having done so. The rest of the drive therefore, passed for the most part in silence. The journey had seemed long to John Treverton, partly because of his own impatience, partly on account of the numerous ups and downs of that everlasting lane, but it was little more than half an hour after leaving the station when they entered a village street where there was not a glimmer of light at this hour, except one solitary lamp shining feebly before the door of the general shop and post office. This was the village of Hazlehurst, near which Hazlehurst Manor House was situated. They drove to the end of this quiet street and along a high road bordered by tall elms, which looked black against the night sky, till they came to a pair of great iron gates.

The man handed the reins to his companion, and then dismounted and opened these gates. John Treverton drove slowly into a winding carriage drive that led up to the house, a great red brick mansion with many long narrow windows, and a massive carved stone shell over the door, which was approached on each side by a flight of broad stone steps.

There was light enough from the stars for John Treverton to see all this as he drove slowly up to the hall door. His coming had evidently been awaited anxiously, as the door was opened before he had alighted from the gig, and an old manservant peered out into the night. He opened the door wide when he saw John Treverton. The gardener—or groom, whichever he might happen to be—led the gig slowly away to a gate at the side of the house, opening into a stable yard. John Treverton went into the hall, which looked very bright and cheerful after his dreary drive—a great square hall hung with family portraits and old armour, and with crimson sheepskins and tawny hides of savage beasts lying about on the black and white marble pavement. There was a roomy old fireplace on one side of this hall, with a great fire burning in it, a fire which was welcome as meat and drink to a traveller this cold night. There were ponderous carved oak chairs with dark red velvet cushions, looking more comfortable and better adapted for the repose of the human frame than such chairs are wont to be, and at the end of the hall there was a great antique buffet adorned with curious bowls and bottle-shaped jars in Oriental China.

John Treverton had time to see these things as he sat before the fire with his long legs stretched out upon the hearth, while the old servant went to announce his arrival to Miss Malcolm.

“A pleasant old place,” he said to himself. “And to think of my never having seen it before, thanks to my father’s folly in having quarrelled with old Jasper Treverton, and never having taken the trouble to heal the breach, as he might have done, I daresay, with some slight exercise of diplomacy. I wonder whether the old fellow is very rich. Such a place as this might be kept up on a couple of thousand a year, but I have a notion that Jasper Treverton has six times as much as that.”