CHAPTER IV

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A BACKWARD GLANCE.

Presently Mr. Drelincourt quitted the library, and, traversing the entrance hall, went up the fine old oaken staircase at the farther end. But on reaching the spacious landing at the top, instead of turning to the right in the direction of his own and his late wife's apartments, he turned to the left, and after going some way down a corridor which gave access to sundry rooms, he came to a red baize covered door--the others were all of oak or walnut--with a bell pull pendent at one side of it. At this he gave a tug, which was responded to by a faint tinkle somewhere inside.

Half a minute later a little wicket in the door was drawn back, and a woman's face appeared at the opening. On perceiving who it was that had rung the bell, the face, an unusually grave one, for the most part, brightened perceptibly.

"Will you be kind enough to open the door," said Mr. Drelincourt. Sometimes he contented himself with asking a question or two at the wicket, and did not enter.

The woman nodded, and shut the wicket. Then from the bunch of keys at her waist she selected one, and with it opened the door, which was shut and relocked as soon as Mr. Drelincourt had crossed the threshold.

But at this point it may be as well to take leave of the master of Wyvern Towers for a while, and in order that the reader may have a due comprehension of what has yet to be told, make him acquainted, in as brief terms as may be, with certain particulars having reference to that person's family history, and to the relations which had existed between his father and himself.

The late Colonel Drelincourt had been twice married, and had left behind him two children--Felix, his son by his first wife, and Anna, his daughter by his second. At the time of the colonel's death the former was twenty three years old, and the latter thirteen. His second wife had predeceased him by a few years.

As a young man, Felix had serious differences with his father, whose pet project it was that his son should follow his own profession. This, however, Felix resolutely declined to do.

He had no taste whatever for soldiering; nor, on the other hand, did a political career hold out any attractions for him. He was a studious and bookishly inclined man, addicted to experimental chemistry, and with a strong liking for travel and exploration. Of sport, in the common acceptance of the term, he knew nothing and cared as little; but he had a fondness for horses, and was an intrepid rider.

The colonel, a military martinet of the old school, who held a blind obedience to one's superiors to be one of the main rules of conduct, never forgave his son's refusal to follow in the course he had prescribed for him. At his death it was found that, outside the entailed property, he had left everything he was possessed of to his daughter, to whom he had been passionately attached.

He had married her mother for love (like many another man, he had never touched even the fringe of romance till he was past his fortieth year), whereas he had married his first wife for her dowry. Thanks to certain arrangements made by his mother, Felix was in a measure independent of his father even before he became of age.

About three years prior to the colonel's death a terrible mischance befell his daughter, at that time in her tenth year.

It was Christmas week, at which season a certain amount of license is often winked at among the servants in country houses. In the dusk of afternoon, and in the gallery at the head of the stairs, Anna encountered what she took for an apparition, but which, in point of fact, was merely one of the servants dressed up in a sheet, and having her face whitened, on her way to join in some mummeries below stairs.

The child, who from her birth had been of a highly excitable temperament, with hysterical tendencies, gave one piercing scream, and fell to the ground in a fit, which was followed by several others, and for some days her life was despaired of.

Gradually, however, she regained her health, and everybody hoped--her father, of course, most of all--that the shock her system had undergone had left no ill effects behind it.

One of the colonel's first acts after his daughter's seizure had been to send for Mrs. Jenwyn, with whose services, only a little while before, he had seen fit to dispense. It was Mrs. Jenwyn who had nursed his wife through the long illness which had preceded her death, and it was in fulfilment of Mrs. Drelincourt's dying request that he had installed her in the dual position of nurse and governess to his motherless girl, who, in the course of time, had learned to love her almost, if not quite, as well as the parent she had lost.

Whether it was a feeling of jealousy that his child should care so much for any one but himself, or some other whim, which caused him to give Mrs. Jenwyn notice to leave, was known only to himself. In any case, Anna took the separation greatly to heart, far more so than her father was aware of, for the child's deepest moods were silent ones; of what she felt most she talked least, and the colonel was not skilled in reading below the surface.

Now, however, he blamed himself with undue severity for having sent Mrs. Jenwyn about her business. Again and again he told himself, most unreasonably, that had she been on the spot the mischance would never have happened. It was some consolation to him to witness the naïve and touching delight with which Anna welcomed Mrs. Jenwyn's return.

For all that, as he quitted the room, leaving them together, he could not help saying to himself, with a touch of bitterness, "She loves that woman better than she loves me."

Unfortunately, the colonel's fondly cherished hope that the shock to his daughter's system would entail no after consequences was not destined to be fulfilled. To all appearance, Anna had regained her health and strength in full measure, and her fright was a matter six months old, when, without any warning, so to speak, an unaccountable change came over her which found its physical expression in a state of irritability and low fever, supplemented by insomnia. Dr. Carew was called in, and prescribed, but declined to commit himself to any expression of opinion.

On the fifth day from the beginning of her attack, Anna fell into a deep, trance-like sleep which lasted eighteen hours. When at length she awoke, everything that had happened to her during the six months which had intervened since the date of her fright was lost to her memory. She went back and took up her life again at the point where consciousness had left her at the moment of her scare in the gallery.

All Mrs. Jenwyn had taught her in the interim was clean gone. A book half read at the time she now began afresh and finished, and she resumed the practice of a piece of music on which she had been engaged during the forenoon of that unfortunate day. The break in her memory was absolute and complete.

By Dr. Carew's recommendation, no attempt was made to enlighten her. Everybody about her accommodated themselves to circumstances as she believed them to be. The doctor trusted to time. It was all he could do.

Any attempt at a cure on his part, as he was not slow to recognize, might have been productive of more harm than good, and possibly have entailed consequences he would have been loath to face. He watched the case with the deepest interest, but beyond prescribing a harmless draft or two, he left nature to work after her own fashion.

At the end of a fortnight Anna fell into another trance-like sleep, and awoke from it her proper self. The two preceding weeks were blotted from her memory. She had merely had a longer and sounder sleep than ordinary, from which she had awaked feeling strangely refreshed.

From that time forward the same thing had happened to her, at irregular intervals, every three or four months. After certain preliminary symptoms, which hardly ever varied, she would fall into a deep sleep, always to awake at that moment of her life which preceded her meeting with the supposed apparition in the gallery. At the end of ten days or a fortnight, and after another sleep, she would become her normal self again.

She had been ten years old at the time of her first attack, and she was now eighteen. A lovely girl (but with no touch of resemblance to Felix), and of an affectionate and amiable disposition; bright and cheerful enough at times, but, for the most part, with a vague shadow of melancholy brooding over her, as of one who realized in all its bitterness the fact that there was about her a something which set her apart from her fellows; for long before now the full measure of her affliction had become known to her.

Mrs. Jenwyn had given Colonel Drelincourt her promise on his deathbed that she would never leave Anna while it was the latter's wish that she should stay with her. In order, however, to make assurance doubly sure, the colonel had left instructions in his will that the sum of two hundred guineas per annum should be paid to Mrs. Jenwyn out of his estate so long as she should retain her position by his daughter's side.

As already remarked, the colonel had bequeathed to Anna all that it was in his power to leave her. An ample sum was settled on her, under the control of trustees, during her minority, and when she should come of age she would find herself mistress of an income of twelve hundred a year, with absolute power over ten thousand pounds of the gross sum capitalized by her father.

About a year before his death, and when he had no prevision of that event being so near, Colonel Drelincourt had caused to be set aside, and specially arranged for their use, a suite of rooms in the left wing of the Towers, to which his daughter and Mrs. Jenwyn could retire whenever Anna's symptoms gave warning that one of her periodical attacks was imminent.

He had also caused a considerable space or ground on the same side of the house to be walled in, so as to form a private garden in which the two could obtain a sufficiency of fresh air and exercise without being overlooked or spied upon by any visitors at the house, or by any casual outsiders, there being a right of public footway through the park at the back of the Towers, as a consequence of which stragglers were sometimes found in those parts of the grounds where they had no business to be.

When, at his father's death, Felix Drelincourt came into the property, matters, so far as they related to his half sister, were in no wise changed. All he did was to cut down the staff of servants, and to request Mrs. Jenwyn to take upon herself the control of the establishment, he himself having no intention at that time of settling permanently at the Towers. Not till after his marriage, some three years later, did he make it his home.

When talking over future arrangements with his prospective wife, he had given Miss Ormsby clearly to understand that his marriage was to alter nothing so far as his half sister was concerned. Anna's home, as heretofore, would still be at the Towers, and the special suite of rooms in the left wing still be reserved for the occupancy of herself and Mrs. Jenwyn at certain seasons.

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