The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 1 of 3

In the strong-room of the Daneford Bank all the money and securities held by the bank were kept. The last duty of Mr. Aldridge, manager of the Daneford Bank, each day, was to return the cash, bills, books, &c., to this strong-room. To this strong-room there were three keys in the possession of the staff of the bank, one held by the manager, one by the accountant, and one by the teller.

The door could not be opened save by the aid of the three keys. Thus no officer of the Bank could commit a larceny in the strong-room without the countenance of two others.

Mr. Grey had duplicates of the keys held by the accountant and teller. But the key held by the manager was unique, and even Mr. Grey himself could not enter the strong-room without the manager's key.

In this strong-room were kept not only the valuables of the bank, but cases and chests containing all kinds of highly portable and extremely precious substances and papers belonging to customers of the Bank. Here were iron plate-chests, iron deed-boxes, jewel-caskets in great numbers, left for safe keeping, not being part of the Bank's property, and against which there was no charge by the Bank but an almost nominal one for storage.

The evening after Mr. Grey had that interview with his mother, he called at the Bank, found the manager in, and having told Mr. Aldridge that a secret report had reached him to the disadvantage of a customer whose name he was not allowed to disclose, he wished to borrow the manager's key for half an hour, as he wanted to turn over the suspected man's account.

He got the key and a candle, and went down to the strong-room. In half an hour he returned, and handing back the key to Mr. Aldridge, said: "I am glad to say that the account I spoke of is quite satisfactory, and that it will not be necessary to make any alteration in our dealings with the customer I alluded to."

The next day Mr. Grey went to London, and returned the evening after. A few days later, among the letters was an advice from Mr. Grey's London correspondents to the effect that Messrs. Barrington, Ware, & Duncan had lodged twenty thousand pounds with them to Mr. Grey's credit.

That day Mr. Grey called upon his mother, and told her some of the expected good luck had come – not all, but still twenty thousand out of the fire.

"I told you, Henry, you had only to wait and face it, and you would win. If you did any of those romantic and foolish things with daggers and poison-bowls, they would say you were little better than a thief."

"Now they could not even say as much," he said softly to himself.

"What are you dreaming about now!" his mother cried, in exasperation.

He looked up with one of his best and brightest smiles, and said: "Dreams, madam! nay, it is. I know not dreams;" and kissing his mother to punctuate his parody, he smiled again, and added: "I was only joking, just to enjoy the sight of your anger now that things are looking better. Good-bye."

And so he left her.

CHAPTER V

AN UNSELFISH FATHER

The city of Daneford, on the river Weeslade, is about eighteen miles from the small watering-town, Seacliff, which stands in a little bay at the mouth of the river. Between Daneford and Seacliff the width of the river varies, but is never less than a mile.

At a distance of less than four miles from the city the river widens considerably into a loop, and in the loop is the island of Warfinger. The island, which rarely is called by its particular name, but is spoken of as "The Island," measures a mile long by half a mile broad. It rises gradually from the shores to the centre, and on the highest point of it stands Island Castle, the seat of the Midharsts for generations. In the neighbourhood the title of Island Castle is cut down also, and no one at all familiar with the locality ever calls it anything but "The Castle."

In the early part of the year 1866 the tenant for life of Island Castle was old Sir Alexander Midharst, a widower, who lived in the Castle in great retirement and the meanest economy. His wife had then been dead twenty years. She had died in giving birth to her only child, Maud, now rapidly approaching her majority; a girl of such gentle beauty and simple childlike manners that all who met her spoke of her beauty and her grace with tender respect and ready enthusiasm.

Maud Midharst did not need any adventitious aid to make her beauty apparent and her presence acceptable, but her delicate complexion, her dark sweet eyes, her pleasant smile, all came out in strong contrast with her surroundings at the Castle.

In the building everything, including the structure itself, seemed hastening to decay. The walls, the floor, the furniture, the servants, the master, all were old. She formed the one exception to the general appearance of approaching dissolution. The outer walls of the pile were seamed and lined, the water had eaten into the stone, the frost had cracked the mortar, and unsightly yellow stains lay upon the masonry, like long skeleton fingers pointing to the earth into which the walls were hastening.

When castles were places of defence as well as of residence, Island Castle was well known. It had stood two sieges, and had been a famous place of meeting among the Jacobites. Its insular position, the wide prospect it commanded, the fact that it could not be invested on all sides at once except by a whole army, the facilities it afforded to approach and flight of friends, and the difficulty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of reaching it by surprise except under the favour of night or a fog, all added together made it a place of great importance once upon a time.

The Castle had not always been in the Midharst family. It had come to them early in the eighteenth century, upon the failure in heirs male of the great Fleurey family, by which failure the historic earldom of Stancroft was lost to the blood for ever. The Midharsts had some of the female Fleurey blood in their veins, but it was of distant origin; and title to the fine castle and property was declared to Sir John Midharst, the first of his name who laid claim to it, only after long and expensive litigation and much scandal.

Up to that time the Midharsts had been poor baronets. The property accompanying the Island in the year 1866 brought in a rental of more than twenty-two thousand pounds a year.

It was a very singular fact that from the first baronet who sat as master in Warfinger Island Castle down to old Sir Alexander, no son succeeded a father. It was always a grandson or a nephew, or a grand-nephew or some remote cousin. Now matters were worse than ever. Sir Alexander was upwards of seventy years of age, with an only child, a daughter, and the closest male was a direct descendant of the youngest son of the baronet, the lucky Sir John who came in for the property that had supported the extinct earldom of Stancroft.

No doubt this remote cousin was a Midharst in name and blood, but somehow it was hard for Sir Alexander to feel very cordial or friendly towards one so remote from him, one who was going to take the property and the title away from his immediate family.

At the time Lady Midharst died Sir Alexander was but a little over fifty years of age, and many thought he would marry again. But even then he was ailing, and doctors told him that between asthma and valvular derangement of the heart his chance of living even a few years was slight. Of course, they said, he might live fifty years, but he was heavily handicapped.

As long as his wife, who had been much younger than he, lived he continued to hope for an heir; but upon the death of Lady Midharst, having ascertained the precise nature and import of the diseases from which he suffered, he made up his mind to give up all thought of an heir, and devote himself wholly to making a suitable provision for his daughter Maud, who was healthy and well-grown, and promised to be strong and long-lived.

And now began with Sir Alexander Midharst the practices by which he disgraced his order, and made himself a byword for all who knew his habits and his name.

He shut up his London house and advertised it to be let. A rich distiller took it furnished at two hundred pounds a month during the season, and a manufacturing jeweller for eighty pounds a month during the unfashionable periods of the year.

He sold his horses and carriages, all save one old state coach, which he could not sell for two reasons; first, because its preservation and "maintenance" were provided for by his predecessors; and secondly, because no one would pay haulage for it from the Island to the city.

He dismissed all his servants but the housekeeper, one maid, and one man, allowing, however, a nurse and "governess" for the baby, who yet lacked of three months. He resigned the membership of his two London clubs, of the three county clubs he belonged to, and intimated to all institutions or bodies or guilds to which he was patron, chairman, subscriber, or member, that his connection in any way with them must cease.

He discharged his steward, and resolved upon collecting his own rents and superintending his own property.

Up to this anyone who chose might go over his fine old Castle. Anyone still might go over the Castle, but an entrance fee of one shilling was now demanded from each sightseer.

As time advanced, and he became more imbued with avarice, more expert in meanness, he cut and shaved and clipped here and there and everywhere, until he had reduced his expenditure to about a thousand a year.

But he did not rest content with cutting down his own expenses; he was fully as careful to increase his income by every means in his power.

When leases expired they were renewed only on payment of heavy fines. His care was not so much to inflate the rent-roll as to get in all the ready-money he could. He had, he calculated, only a few years, if so long, to live, and the rent-roll would then be the concern of that William Midharst whom he had never seen and whom he wished never to see.

He cut down and sold all the timber as far as his right to do so extended; and all the trimming and underwood, which had previously been allowed to go as perquisites to the men or as gleaning among the poor, he took possession of and sold.

He let the right of shooting over his land and the right of fishing in his streams and rivers. He sold off all he might of the more modern furniture at the Castle.

He sold all his personal plate and jewels, and all the pictures he had acquired in his lifetime. When he was young he had made a collection of coins; this, too, he converted into cash.

At one time he contemplated letting one wing of the Castle to a rich tallow-chandler of the city, and was absolutely in treaty with him, when with a shudder of shame he drew back and broke off the negotiations.

When he commenced his scheme of economy and exactions, he had said to himself that if he pursued it for one year, and sold off all the things he then contemplated, he should be able to leave his baby-girl close on forty thousand pounds. At the end of twelve months he found he had put more money together than he had anticipated. There was no new cause of anxiety with regard to his health, and he made up his mind to continue upon the track he had adopted. He might live a year, ay, two years yet; if he lasted two years more the leases of Garfield estate would fall in, and he should reap a harvest out of renewals. Give him two years more, that is, three from the beginning, and he should be able to leave his only child close upon one hundred thousand pounds.

At the end of the three years he found he had not come within several thousand pounds of his limit; so he resolved to complete the hundred thousand before he changed his manner of living or of dealing with the property.

When the end of the fourth year was reached he had saved more than the hundred thousand pounds. By this time he had become accustomed to the loss of all his old associations, had grown to love the new, and, above all, had become the slave of avarice, that most inflexible and enduring of all the passions. Therefore, he threw all idea of change to the winds, and resolved as long as he lived, whether for a week or twenty years, to save all the money he could, in order that the descendants of his side of the family might be able to hold up their heads hereafter.

At the death of his wife Sir Alexander Midharst closed his London banking account and transferred all his business to the Daneford Bank, where he had had an account when he came into the property, and where his predecessor in the title had also kept his account.

Now in money matters Sir Alexander may have been a good sergeant, or even on occasions a trustworthy captain; but he was no general, and he knew it. He accordingly resolved to consult with Mr. Grey, father of Wat. He explained the whole scheme to the banker, and the purpose for which the money was being saved, and said that in the first place he wanted to invest the money safely, and in the second of course he wanted some interest for it.

The banker suggested that for the present the money should be invested in the Three per Cent. Consols, which could be realised readily should any more desirable form of investment offer itself, and where it would be as safe as in land.

After some consideration Sir Alexander agreed to follow the banker's advice, on the condition that Mr. Grey would buy the stock, keep the account of it, with the heirloom jewels and plate of Island Castle, but that in this case Mr. Grey was to retain the key of the chest containing the valuables and transact all the business connected with the Consols, such as receiving dividends, crediting the amount, and buying in more Consols with the interest of the Consols themselves, and any money Sir Alexander should lodge to the Midharst (Consols) account.

"I shall save the money," said the baronet, "and you will take care of it."

And so it was arranged. Sir Alexander gave the banker power-of-attorney with regard to these Consols and all the money lodged to their account for the future; all communications from the Bank of England, of solicitors, or anyone else, were to be addressed to Sir Alexander Midharst, Daneford Bank, Daneford. These letters were to be opened and attended to by Mr. Grey, who was to make a reasonable charge for the trouble.

Things went on thus until the elder Mr. Grey's death, when the son succeeded to the banking business and a considerable private fortune in 1856.

Young Mr. Grey, as soon as he came into the business, at once waited upon Sir Alexander Midharst, and said he would advise that some new plan should be adopted with regard to the baronet's business and accounts.

The baronet, who knew young Grey very well, and liked him exceedingly, told him that his father had managed the business excellently, and that the son ought to be able to do as well.

Young Grey said the responsibility was very great, the sum being now more than two hundred thousand pounds over which Grey had complete power.

The baronet took him by the hand and said:

"You are a younger man than your father, and ought not to be more timid. Our family have known your bank before now; for my part, I am not able to take charge of these things. I prefer your guardianship to that of my lawyer's or of anybody else. If your father charged too little for the trouble, you may charge more. You know the money is for my little daughter: the estates go to a stranger after my death; and this money is the fortune of my child, that no man shall say she, a Midharst – the last of the direct line, I may say – was left penniless and portionless, though she may be left homeless, on the world."

"As you put it now I cannot refuse," answered young Grey.

"Look around you." They were in the gateway leading to the courtyard, with their faces turned towards the slope of the hill. "Look around you. I have shorn the land close for my child. I work night and day for her, as though her daily bread depended on my arms and my brain. I may die any time. I have no friend, no relative. I am alone with my child. Everyone seems against me. That greedy, rapacious young scoundrel who is to follow me is looking with hungry eyes upon Warfinger Island, and nightly praying for my death. All my old friends have given me up. I am not of them now, because I have striven to make provision for my child. They call me a sordid miser, a stain upon the order I share with them. Let them rave. I will do what I think right by my child. Let them do as they choose. I do not ask their help. I only ask them to let me alone. But you I ask to help me; and you will, for you are not ennobled by the accident of your birth, but by the generosity of your nature."

If any power of wavering had remained in young Grey, this appeal would have overcome it. So the matter was finally settled: the son was to act for the baronet precisely as the father had acted before.

During the year 1856 Mr. Grey the younger was a frequent visitor to Island Castle. He liked boating; and often in the fine evenings pulled down the river Weeslade to the Island, had a consultation with Sir Alexander, and then pulled back to Daneford in the sweet fresh twilight.

Often when it was growing dusk, and he was about to start from the Island for the city, he pushed off his boat into mid-stream, and rested on his oars, looking up at the mouldering Castle standing out clear against the darkening sky.

There was something desolate and forlorn about that vast pile, inhabited by that ageing man and that young girl.

In front, facing the wider water-passage, it stood high above him, its blind gateway looking down upon him, a lonely round tower at the right of the archway catching the strange gleams of light reflected from the Weeslade as the river glided silently towards the sea.

Winter and summer, when there was sunshine at sunset, the top of that tower caught the reflection of the last red streak that flickered on the polished surface of the river. This fact affected long ago the superstitious feelings of the people. There was a tradition in the neighbourhood that in times gone by the wicked mother of a Lord Stancroft used abominable witchcraft against her daughter-in-law, her son's bride, newly brought home from the kingdom of Spain, a country far away, and near the sun, and full of gallant men and fine ladies, whose eyes it were a marvellous fine feast to see, but who were – the ladies – treacherous and light of love.

The abominable and damnable exercises practised by the wicked dowager caused the dark-eyed Lady Stancroft, who had come among strangers out of the far-away kingdom of Spain, to wither up and grow old and loathsome in a year. So that the young lord turned away from her, and cared nothing for her any more. And the poor young lady, gap-toothed and wrinkled and foul-looking as she had been made by devilish witchcraft, was still young in her mind and her affections, and doated on the lord, who would not as much as come nigh the Castle while she was there, but took to wine and evil ways.

So at last the poor young wife, who looked eighty, was lost, and could be found nowhere. It was long after, and in the time of the next lord, that, in the topmost chamber of the round gate-tower, a chamber never used save in war-time, they discovered the skeleton of the young wife, and words written in a strange tongue, the language of Spain, saying how she had stolen up there to die, as she could not win back the love of her husband, the young lord. Ever after that the topmost chamber of the tower was red at sunset. Some thought this red gleam came from the fire where the wicked dowager Lady Stancroft suffered for her great sin; others thought this was the reflection from the wreath of glory worn by the poor young wife. But all agreed it had to do with the deed of the wicked Lady Stancroft; and so they called the tower the Witch's Tower, a name it bore until Walter Grey gave it another.

The year 1856 was one full of remarkable events in the life of Mr. Grey. In it his father died; he came into a considerable fortune; he purchased a house; and grew to be a frequent visitor at Island Castle. It often struck him as a peculiar coincidence that in the same year he should have become owner of the most remarkable house near Daneford, and caretaker to the fortune of the owner of the most remarkable house in the whole district.

About that time he read an account of a certain tree said to be in sympathy with a certain tower. The idea was fresh to him, and seemed to open up a new field of speculation, and he dwelt upon it a good deal.

One evening, as he was rowing from the Castle to his own home, a thought flashed into his mind. There was a striking coincidence in the fact of his being connected so closely with two such houses. Each was unpopular, each was weird, strange; there were queer stories about each, each had a tower. The tower of one had an unpleasant history connected with the skeleton of that poor Spanish lady; the tower on his house had that rusty framework of a tank that looked like a skeleton. "Might not," he thought, with a smile at the absurdity, "there be some sympathy between these two houses?"

He ceased to row, and looked at the vast pile that brooded over the dark waters of the Weeslade. He rested upon his oars.

"It looks, if like anything human, like a witch charming the river. My house, too, looks like a witch sitting at bay within her magic circle of grove. It wouldn't be bad to name them both The Weird Sisters. They are uglier than the crones in 'Macbeth.'"

He pulled a few strokes and mused again, resting on his oars.

"They don't use that tower. I don't use my tower. They found the skeleton of the Spanish Lady Stancroft in the top of that tower. There's the skeleton of that old tank on the top of mine. Towers and skeletons suggest Bombay and the Parsees. By Jove, the Towers of Silence would not be a bad name for those two."

Next day he told several people the names he had given the two houses and the two towers. All who heard of the new nomenclature smiled, and admired the cleverness; and from that time forth in Daneford the two houses were known as the Weird Sisters, and the two towers as the Towers of Silence.

CHAPTER VI

"TO THE ISLAND OR TO – ."

Early in the year 1866 the Midharst (Consols) account-book with the Daneford Bank showed that, after deducting all charges and paying all expenses, the principal and interest reached the enormous sum of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds, enough to buy such a property as the old baronet enjoyed.

By this time Sir Alexander had passed out of middle life into age. He was now thin and bent to one side, and very weak, but still firm of purpose. He had defeated the doctors by living so long; he had defeated "that ungrateful whelp," as he called his heir-presumptive. Of this distant cousin he had no knowledge whatever; he declined to listen to anything about him. Why he called him ungrateful no one ever knew; he called him a whelp because he was young. It was believed that Sir Alexander had never in all his life set eyes upon him, or even got an account of the young man from one who knew him.

At the time of his wife's death, the baronet made outline enquiries through his solicitor as to the age and descent of the boy. In the year of Lady Midharst's death, the boy, whose father had been a poor naval officer, was aged eight, having been born in 1838. The boy's father had died at sea. There could not be the shadow of a doubt that this William Midharst was heir-presumptive, and, if he lived, would inherit the title and the property, should Sir Alexander die without leaving a son.

Little of the baronet's time was spent with his daughter; often a whole week went by, and he did not pass more than an hour of the whole time with her. She had a suite of rooms for herself, where she lived with Mrs. Grant, an officer's widow, who knew much of the world, and was now glad to accept the position of lady's companion to the baronet's only child.

Owing to the eccentric life led by Sir Alexander, the facts that he saw no company and had no intercourse with any of the county families, Maud never went into society, and was wholly dependent on good sympathetic little Mrs. Grant for any knowledge she might gain of the great outside world. Mrs. Grant, who was of a gay and pleasure-loving disposition, had no patience with the whims and meannesses of the old man.

"You know, my dear," she said to Maud, as they sat over their tea in Maud's little drawing-room, "it's all very well for Sir Alexander to go on saving up money for you, so that you may be a great heiress one of these days; but that isn't all. He treats you as if you were a girl of twelve yet. Why, my dear, I had been out three years before I was your age, and had refused three or four offers. I had, indeed. I know you don't want offers, my dear; but I did; for I was only a poor rector's daughter, and hadn't even beauty to help me."