"P.S.—I have reserved my most important bit of news till the last, as lady correspondents are said to do. Observe, I write 'are said to do,' because in this matter I have very little personal experience of my own to go upon. You, dear mum, are my solitary lady correspondent, and postscripts are a luxury in which you rarely indulge. But to proceed, as the novelists say. Some two years ago it was my good fortune to rescue a little yellow-skinned princekin from the clutches of a very fine young tiger (my feet are on his hide at this present writing), who was carrying him off as a tit-bit for his supper. He was terribly mauled, you may be sure, but his people followed my advice in their mode of doctoring him, and he gradually got round again. The lad's father is a Rajah, immensely rich, and a direct descendant of that ancient Mogul dynasty which once ruled this country with a rod of iron. The Rajah has daughters innumerable, but only this one son. His gratitude for what I had done was unbounded. A few weeks ago he gave me a most astounding proof of it. By a secret and trusty messenger he sent me—But no, dear mum, I will not tell you what the Rajah sent me. This letter might chance to fall into other hands than yours (Indian letters dosometimesmiscarry), and the secret is one which had better be kept in the family—at least for the present. So, mother mine, your curiosity must rest unsatisfied for a little while to come. I hope to be with you before many months are over, and then you shall know everything."The value of the Rajah's present is something immense. I shall sell it when I get to England, and out of the proceeds I shall—well, I don't exactly know what I shall do. Purchase my next step for one thing, but that will cost a mere trifle. Then, perhaps, buy a comfortable estate in the country, or a house in Park Lane. Your six weeks every season in London lodgings was always inexplicable to me."Or shall I not sell the Rajah's present, but offer myself in marriage to some fair princess, with my heart in one hand and the G.H.D. in the other? Madder things than that are recorded in history. In any case, don't forget to pray for the safe arrival of your son, and (if such a petition is allowable) that he may not fail to bring with him the G.H.D."C.C."
"P.S.—I have reserved my most important bit of news till the last, as lady correspondents are said to do. Observe, I write 'are said to do,' because in this matter I have very little personal experience of my own to go upon. You, dear mum, are my solitary lady correspondent, and postscripts are a luxury in which you rarely indulge. But to proceed, as the novelists say. Some two years ago it was my good fortune to rescue a little yellow-skinned princekin from the clutches of a very fine young tiger (my feet are on his hide at this present writing), who was carrying him off as a tit-bit for his supper. He was terribly mauled, you may be sure, but his people followed my advice in their mode of doctoring him, and he gradually got round again. The lad's father is a Rajah, immensely rich, and a direct descendant of that ancient Mogul dynasty which once ruled this country with a rod of iron. The Rajah has daughters innumerable, but only this one son. His gratitude for what I had done was unbounded. A few weeks ago he gave me a most astounding proof of it. By a secret and trusty messenger he sent me—But no, dear mum, I will not tell you what the Rajah sent me. This letter might chance to fall into other hands than yours (Indian letters dosometimesmiscarry), and the secret is one which had better be kept in the family—at least for the present. So, mother mine, your curiosity must rest unsatisfied for a little while to come. I hope to be with you before many months are over, and then you shall know everything.
"The value of the Rajah's present is something immense. I shall sell it when I get to England, and out of the proceeds I shall—well, I don't exactly know what I shall do. Purchase my next step for one thing, but that will cost a mere trifle. Then, perhaps, buy a comfortable estate in the country, or a house in Park Lane. Your six weeks every season in London lodgings was always inexplicable to me.
"Or shall I not sell the Rajah's present, but offer myself in marriage to some fair princess, with my heart in one hand and the G.H.D. in the other? Madder things than that are recorded in history. In any case, don't forget to pray for the safe arrival of your son, and (if such a petition is allowable) that he may not fail to bring with him the G.H.D.
"C.C."
"I never could understand before to-day what the letters G.H.D. were meant for," said Lady Chillington, as Janet gave her back the letter. "It is now quite evident that they were intended forGreat Hara Diamond; all of which, as I said before, is confirmatory of the story you have just told me. Of course, after the lapse of so many years, there is not the remotest possibility of recovering the diamond; but my obligation to you, Sergeant Nicholas, is in no wise lessened by that fact. What are your engagements? Are you obliged to leave here immediately, or can you remain a short time in the neighbourhood?"
"I can give your ladyship a week, or even a fortnight, if you wish it."
"I am greatly obliged to you. I do wish it—I wish to talk to you respecting my son, and you are the only one now living who can tell me about him. You shall find that I am not ungrateful for what you have done for me. In the meantime, you will stop at the King's Arms, in Eastbury. Miss Hope will give you a note to the landlord. Come up here to-morrow at eleven. And now I must say good-morning. I am not very strong, and your news has shaken me a little. Will you do me the honour of shaking hands with me? It was your hands that closed my poor boy's eyes—that touched him last on earth; let those hands now be touched by his mother."
Lady Chillington stood up and extended both her withered hands. The old soldier came forward with a blush and took them respectfully, tenderly. He bent his head and touched each of them in turn with his lips. Tears stood in his eyes.
"God bless you, Sergeant Nicholas! You are a good man and a true gentleman," said Lady Chillington. Then she turned and slowly left the room.
After her interview with Sergeant Nicholas, Lady Chillington dismissed Janet for the day, and retired to her own rooms, nor was she seen out of them till the following morning. No one was admitted to see her save Dance. Janet, after sitting with Sister Agnes all the afternoon, went down at dusk to the housekeeper's room.
"Whatever did you do to her ladyship this morning?" asked Dance as soon as she entered. "She has tasted neither bit nor sup since breakfast, but ever since that old shabby-looking fellow went away she has lain on the sofa, staring at the wall as if there was some writing on it she was trying to read but didn't know how. I thought she was ill, and asked her if I should send for the doctor. She laughed at me without taking her eyes off the wall, and bade me begone for an old fool. If there's not a change by morning, I shall just send for the doctor without asking her leave. Surely you and that old fellow have bewitched her ladyship between you."
Janet in reply told Dance all that had passed at the morning's interview, feeling quite sure that in doing so she was violating no confidence, and that Lady Chillington herself would be the first to tell everything to her faithful old servant as soon as she should be sufficiently composed to do so. As a matter of course Dance was full of wonder.
"Did you know Captain Chillington?" asked Janet, as soon as the old dame's surprise had in some measure toned itself down.
"Did I know curly-pated, black-eyed Master Charley?" asked the old woman. "Ay—who better? These arms, withered and yellow now, then plump and strong, held him before he had been an hour in the world. The day he left England I went with her ladyship to see him aboard ship. As he shook me by the hand for the last time he said, 'You will never leave my mother, will you, Dance?' And I said, 'Never, while I live, dear Master Charles,' and I've kept my word."
"Her ladyship has never been like the same woman since she heard the news of his death," resumed Dance after a pause. "It seemed to sour her and harden her, and make her altogether different. There had been a great deal of unhappiness at home for some years before he went away. He and his father, Sir John—he that now lies so quiet upstairs—had a terrible quarrel just after Master Charles went into the army, and it was a quarrel that was never made up in this world. He was an awful man—Sir John—a wicked man: pray that such a one may never cross your path. The only happiness he seemed to have on earth was in making those over whom he had anypower miserable. It was impossible for my lady to love him, but she tried to do her duty by him till he and Master Charles fell out. What the quarrel was about I never rightly understood, but my lady would have it that Master Charles was in the right and her husband in the wrong. One result was that Sir John stopped the income that he had always allowed his son, and took a frightful oath that if Master Charles were dying of starvation before his eyes he would not give him as much as a penny to buy bread with. But her ladyship, who had money in her own right, said that Master Charles's income should go on as usual. Then she and Sir John quarrelled; and she left him and came to live at Deepley Walls, leaving him at Dene Folly; and here she stayed till Sir John was taken with his last illness and sent for her. He sent for her, not to make up the quarrel, but to jibe and sneer at her, and to make her wait on him day and night, as if she were a paid nurse from a hospital. While this was going on, and after Sir John had been quite given up by the doctors, news came from India of Master Charles's death. Well, her ladyship went nigh distracted; but as for the baronet, it was said, though I won't vouch for the truth of it, that he only laughed when the news was told him, and said that if he was plagued as much with corns in the next world as he had been in this, he should find Master Charles's arm very useful to lean upon. Two days later he died, and the title, and Dene Folly with it, went to a far-away cousin, whom neither Sir John nor his wife had ever seen. Then it was found how the baronet had contrived that his spite should outlive him—for only out of spite and mean cruelty could he have made such a will as he did make: that Deepley Walls should not become her ladyship's absolute property till the end of twenty years, during the whole of which time his body was to remain unburied, and to be kept under the same roof with his widow, wherever she might live. The mean, paltry scoundrel! Perhaps her ladyship might have had the will set aside, but she would not go to law about it. Thank Heaven! the twenty years are nearly at an end. Deepley Walls has been a haunted house ever since that midnight when Sir John was borne in on the shoulders of six strong men. And now tell me whether her ladyship is not a woman to be pitied."
At a quarter before eleven next morning, Mr. Solomon Madgin, Lady Chillington's agent and general man-of-business, arrived by appointment at Deepley Walls. Mr. Madgin was indispensable to her ladyship, who had a considerable quantity of house property in and around Eastbury, consisting chiefly of small tenements, the rents of which had to be collected weekly. Then Mr. Madgin was bailiff for the Deepley Walls estate, in connection with which were several small farms or "holdings" which required to be well looked after in many ways. Besides all this, her ladyship, having a few spare thousands, had taken of late years to dabbling in scrip andshares in a small way, and under the skilful pilotage of Mr. Madgin had hitherto contrived to steer clear of those rocks and shoals of speculation on which so many gallant argosies are wrecked. In short, everything except the law-business of the estate filtered through Mr. Madgin's hands, and as he did his work cheaply and well, and put up with her ladyship's ill-temper without a murmur, the mistress of Deepley Walls could hardly have found anyone who would have suited her better.
Mr. Solomon Madgin was a little dried-up man, about sixty years old. His tail-coat and vest of rusty black were of the fashion of twenty years ago. He wore drab trousers, and shoes tied with bows of black ribbon. His head, bald on the crown, had an ample fringe of white hair at the back and sides, and was covered, when he went abroad, with a beaver hat, very fluffy and much too tall for him, and which, once upon a time, had probably been nearly as white as his hair, but was now time-worn and weather-stained to one uniform and consistent drab. Round his neck he always wore a voluminous cravat of unstarched muslin fastened in front with an old-fashioned pearl brooch, above which protruded the two spiked points of a very stiff and pugnacious-looking collar. A strong alpaca umbrella, unfashionably corpulent, was his constant companion. Mr. Madgin's whiskers were shaved off in an exact line with the end of his nose. His eyebrows were very white and bushy, and could serve on occasion as a screen to the greenish, crafty-looking eyes below them, which never liked to be peered into too closely. The ordinary expression of his thin, dried-up face was one of hard, worldly shrewdness; but there was a lurking bonhommie in his smile which seemed to imply that, away from business, he might possibly mellow into a boon companion.
Mr. Madgin had to wait a few minutes this morning before Lady Chillington could receive him. When he was ushered into her sitting-room he was surprised to find that she and Miss Hope were not alone; that a plainly-dressed man, who looked almost as old as Mr. Madgin himself, was seated at the table. After one suspicious glance at the stranger, Mr. Madgin made his bow to the ladies and walked up to the table with his bag of papers.
"You can put all those things away for the day, Mr. Madgin," said her ladyship. "A far more important matter claims our attention just now. In the first place I must introduce to you Sergeant Nicholas, many years ago servant to my son, Captain Chillington, who died in India. (Sergeant, this is Mr. Madgin, my man of business.) The Sergeant, who has only just returned to England, told me yesterday a very curious story which I am desirous that he should repeat in your presence to-day. The story relates to a diamond of great value, said to have been stolen from the body of my son immediately after death, and I shall require you to give me your opinion as to the feasibility of its recovery. You will take such notesof the narrative as you may think necessary, and the Sergeant will afterwards answer, to the best of his ability, any questions you may choose to put to him." Then turning to the old soldier, she added: "You will be good enough, Sergeant, to repeat to Mr. Madgin such parts of your narrative of yesterday as have any reference to the diamond. Begin with my son's dying message. Repeat, word for word, as closely as you can remember, all that was told you by the sycee Rung. Describe as minutely as possible the personal appearance of M. Platzoff; and detail any other points that bear on the loss of the diamond."
So the Sergeant began, but the repetition of a long narrative not learnt by heart is by no means an easy matter, especially when they to whom it was first told hear it for the second time, but rather as critics than as ordinary listeners. Besides, the taking of notes was a process that smacked of a court-martial and tended to flurry the narrator, making him feel as if he were upon his oath and liable to be browbeat by the counsel for the other side. He was heartily glad when he got to the end of what he had to tell. The postscript to Captain Chillington's letter was then read by Miss Hope.
Mr. Madgin took copious notes as the Sergeant went on, and afterwards put a few questions to him on different points which he thought not sufficiently clear. Then he laid down his pen, rubbed his hands, and ran his fingers through his scanty hair. Lady Chillington rang for her butler, and gave the Sergeant into his keeping, knowing that he could not be in better hands. Then she said: "I will leave you, Mr. Madgin, for half-an-hour. Go carefully through your notes, and let me have your opinion when I come back as to whether, after so long a time, you think it worth while to institute any proceedings for the recovery of the diamond."
So Mr. Madgin was left alone with what he called his "considering cap." As soon as the door was closed behind her ladyship, he tilted back his chair, stuck his feet on the table, buried his hands deep in his pockets and shut his eyes, and so remained for full five-and-twenty minutes. He was busy consulting his notes when Lady Chillington re-entered the room. Mr. Madgin began at once.
"I must confess," he said, "that the case which your ladyship has submitted to me seems, from what I can see of it at present, to be surrounded with difficulties. Still, I am far from counselling your ladyship to despair entirely. The few points which, at the first glance, present themselves as requiring solution are these:—Who was the M. Platzoff who is said to have stolen the diamond? and what position in life did he really occupy? Is he alive or dead? If alive, where is he now living? If he did really steal the diamond, are not the chances as a hundred to one that he disposed of it long ago? But even granting that we were in a position to answer all these questions; suppose, even, that this M. Platzoff were living in Eastbury at the present moment, and that fact were known to us,how much nearer should we be to the recovery of the diamond than we are now? Your ladyship must please to bear in mind that as the case is now we have not an inch of legal ground to stand upon. We have no evidence that would be worth a rush in a court of law that M. Platzoff really purloined the diamond. We have no trustworthy evidence that the diamond itself ever had an existence."
"Surely, Mr. Madgin, my son's letter is sufficient to prove that fact."
"Sufficient, perhaps, in conjunction with the other evidence, to prove it in a moral sense, but certainly not in a legal one," said Mr. Madgin, quietly but decisively. "Your ladyship must please to bear in mind that Captain Chillington in his letter makes no absolute mention of the diamond by name; he merely writes of it vaguely under certain initials, and, if called upon, how could you prove that he intended those initials to stand for the wordsGreat Hara Diamond, and not for something altogether different? If M. Platzoff were your ladyship's next-door neighbour, and you knew for certain that he had the diamond still in his possession, you could only get it from him as he himself got it from your son—by subterfuge and artifice. Your ladyship will please to observe that I have put forward no opinion on the case. I have merely offered a statement of plain facts as they show themselves on the surface. With those facts before you it rests with your ladyship to decide what further steps you wish taken in the matter."
"My good Madgin, do you know what it is to hate?" demanded Lady Chillington. "To hate with a hatred that dwarfs all other passions of the soul, and makes them pigmies by comparison? If you know this, you know the feeling with which I regard M. Platzoff. If you want the key to the feeling, you have it in the fact that his accursed hands robbed my dead son: even then you must have a mother's heart to feel all that I feel." She paused for a moment as if to recover breath; then she resumed. "See you, Mr. Solomon Madgin; I have a conviction, an intuition, call it what you will, that this Russian scoundrel is still alive. That is the first fact you have to find out. The next is, where he is now residing. Then you will have to ascertain whether he has the diamond still in his possession, and if so, by what means it can be recovered. Only recover it for me—I ask not how or by what means—only put into my hands the diamond that was stolen off my son's breast as he lay dead; and the day you do that, my good Madgin, I will present you with a cheque for five thousand pounds!"
Mr. Madgin sat as one astounded; the power of reply seemed taken from him.
"Go, now," said Lady Chillington, after a few moments. "Ordinary business is out of the question to-day. Go home and carefully digest what I have just said to you. That you are a man of resources, I know well; had you not been so, I would not have employed youin this matter. Come to me to-morrow, next day, next week—when you like; only don't come barren of ideas; don't come without a plan, likely or unlikely, of some sort of a campaign."
Mr. Madgin rose and swept his papers mechanically into his bag. "Your ladyship said five thousand pounds, if I mistake not?" he stammered out.
"A cheque for five thousand pounds shall be yours on the day you bring me the diamond. Is not my word sufficient, or do you wish to have it under bond and seal?" she asked with some hauteur.
"Your ladyship's word is an all-sufficient bond," answered Mr. Madgin, with sweet humility. He paused, with the handle of the door in his hand. "Supposing I were to see my way to carrying out your ladyship's wishes in this respect," he said deferentially, "or even to carrying out a portion of them only, still it could not be done without expense—not without considerable expense, maybe."
"I give you carte-blanche as regards expenses," said her ladyship with decision.
Then Mr. Madgin gave a farewell duck of the head and went. He took his way homeward through the park like a man walking in his sleep. With wide-open eyes and hat well set on the back of his head, with his blue bag in one hand and his umbrella under his arm, he trudged onward, even after he had reached the busy streets of the little town, without seeing anything or anyone. What he saw, he saw introspectively. On the one hand glittered the tempting bait held out by Lady Chillington; on the other loomed the dark problem that had to be solved before he could call the golden apple his.
"The most arrant wild-goose chase that ever I heard of in all my life," he muttered to himself, as he halted at his own door. "Not a single ray of light anywhere—not one."
"Popsey," he called out to his daughter, when he was inside, "bring me the decanter of whisky, some cold water, my tobacco-jar and a new churchwarden into the office; and don't let me be disturbed by anyone for four hours."
(To be continued.)
Decorative
It is a matter of common remark that the epistolary art has been killed by the penny post, not to speak of post-cards.
This is a result which was hardly anticipated by Sir Rowland Hill, when, in the face of many obstacles, he carried his great scheme; and certainly it did not dwell very vividly before the mind of Mr. Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, when he travelled over England, speaking there, as he had already done in America, in favour of an ocean penny postage.
It is urged that in the old days when postage was dear, and "franks" were difficult to procure, and when the poor did not correspond at all, writers were very careful to write well and to say the very best they could in the best possible way—to make their letters, in a word, worthy of the expense incurred. But those who argue on this ground leave out of consideration one little fact.
The classes to whom English literature is indebted for the epistolary samples on which reliance is placed for proof of this proposition, very seldom indeed paid for the conveyance of the letters in question. The system of "franking"—by which the privileged classes got not only their letters carried, but a great deal too often their dressing-cases and bandboxes as well—grew into a most serious grievance; so serious indeed that the opposition for a long period carried on against cheap postage arose solely from over nice regard to the vested interests of those who could command a little favour from a Peer, a Member of Parliament, or an official of high rank, not to speak of those patriotic worthies themselves.
The fact may thus be made to cut two ways.
From our point of view, it may be cited in direct denial of the conclusion that people wrote well in past days simply because the conveyance of their letters was costly. We believe that the mass wrote just as badly and loosely then as the mass do now, in fact that they were rather loose on rules of spelling; and that the specimens preserved and presented to us in type are exceptional, and escaped destruction with the mass precisely because they were exceptional.
Other circumstances may be taken to account for the loose epistolary style or rather no-style now so common; and this refers us to the general question of education—more especially the education of women. In those days the few were educated; and to be educated was regarded as the distinctive mark of a leisured and cultivated class: now, education is general, but, like many other things, it has suffered in the process of diffusion, whether or not it may in the long run suffer by the diffusion itself.
The truth is, time alone can tell whether among the selectnowadays the epistolary art is not simply as perfect as it was in days past; at all events we believe so, and proceed to set down a few reflections on letter-writing.
To write a really good letter, two things in especial are demanded. The first is, that you write only of that which is either familiar to you or in which you have some interest; and in the next, that you can write with ease, and on a footing of freedom as regards your correspondent. "The pen," says Cervantes, "is the tongue of the mind," and in no form of composition is this more strictly true than of letters. In a certain degree a letter should share the characteristics of good conversation: the writer must realise the presence and the mood of the person for whom the letter is destined. Just as good-breeding suggests that you must have the tastes and sentiments of your interlocutor before you for ends of enjoyable conversation, and that, within the limits of propriety and self-respect, you should at once humour them and use them; so in good letter-writing you must write for your correspondent's pleasure as well as please, by merely communicating, yourself.
Here comes in the delightful element of vicarious sympathy, or dramatic transference, which, brought into play successfully, with some degree of wit and sprightliness of expression, may raise letter-writing to the level of a fine art.
And this allowed, it is clear that letters may just be as good now as at any former period, and accidental circumstances have really little to do with it. Humboldt has well said that "A letter is a conversation between the present and the absent. Its fate is that it cannot last, but must pass away like the sound of the voice."
And just as in conversation all attempt at eloquence and personal celebration in this kind is rigidly proscribed, so in letter-writing are all kinds of fine-writing and rhetoric. "Brilliant speakers and writers," it has been well said, "should remember that coach wheels are better than Catherine wheels to travel on." One's first business, in letter-writing is to say what one has to say, and the second to say it well and with taste and ease.
A.H. Japp, LL.D.
Decorative
Breakfast was on the table in Mr. Hamlyn's house in Bryanstone Square, and Mrs. Hamlyn waited, all impatience, for her lord and master. Not in any particular impatience for the meal itself, but that she might "have it out with him"—the phrase was hers, not mine, as you will see presently—in regard to the perplexity existing in her mind connected with the strange appearance of the damsel watching the house, in her beauty and her pale golden hair.
Why had Philip Hamlyn turned sick and faint—to judge by his changing countenance—when she had charged him at dinner, the previous evening, with knowing something of this mysterious woman? Mysterious in her actions, at all events; probably in herself. Mrs. Hamlyn wanted to know that. No further opportunity had then been given for pursuing the subject. Japhet had returned to the room, and before the dinner was at an end, some acquaintance of Mr. Hamlyn had fetched him out for the evening. And he came home with so fearful a headache that he had lain groaning and turning all through the night. Mrs. Hamlyn was not a model of patience, but in all her life she had never felt so impatient as now.
He came into the room looking pale and shivery; a sure sign that he was suffering; that it was not an invented excuse. Yes, the pain was better, he said, in answer to his wife's question; and might be much better after a strong cup of tea; he could not imagine what had brought it on.Shecould have told him though, had she been gifted with the magical power of reading minds, and have seen the nervous apprehension that was making havoc with his.
Mrs. Hamlyn gave him his tea in silence, and buttered a dainty bit of toast to tempt him to eat. But he shook his head.
"I cannot, Eliza. Nothing but tea this morning."
"I am sorry you are ill," she said, by-and-by. "I fear it hurts you to talk; but I want to have it out with you."
"Have it out with me!" cried he, in real or feigned surprise. "Have what out with me?"
"Oh, you know, Philip. About that woman who has been watching the house these two days; evidently watching for you."
"But I told you I knew nothing about her: who she is, or what she is, or what she wants. I really do not know."
Well, so far that was true. But all the while a sick fear lay onhis heart that he did know; or, rather, that he was destined to know very shortly.
"When I told you her hair was like threads of fine, pale gold, you seemed to start, Philip, as if you knew some girl or woman with such hair, or had known her."
"I daresay I have known a score of women with such hair. My dear little sister who died, for instance."
"Do not attempt to evade the subject," was the haughty reprimand. "If—"
Mrs. Hamlyn's sharp speech was interrupted by the entrance of Japhet, bringing in the morning letters. Only one letter, however, for they were not as numerous in those days as they are in these.
"It seems to be important, ma'am," Japhet remarked, with the privilege of an old servant, as he handed it to his mistress. She saw it was from Leet Hall, in Mrs. Carradyne's handwriting, and bore the words: "In haste," above the address.
Tearing it open, Eliza Hamlyn read the short, sad news it contained. Captain Monk had been taken suddenly ill with inward inflammation. Mr. Speck feared the worst, and the Captain had asked for Eliza. Would she come down at once?
"Oh, Philip, I must not lose a minute," she exclaimed, passing the letter to him, and forgetting the pale gold hair and its owner. "Do you know anything about the Worcestershire trains?"
"No," he answered. "The better plan will be to get to the station as soon as possible, and then you will be ready for the first train that starts."
"Will you go down with me, Philip?"
"I cannot. I will take you to the station."
"Why can't you?"
"Because I cannot just now leave London. My dear, you may believe me, for it is the truth. Icannot do so. I wish I could."
And she saw it was true: for his tone was so earnest as to tell of pain.
Making what haste she could, kissing her boy a hundred times, and recommending him to the special care of his nurse and of his father during her absence, she drove with her husband to the station, and was just in time for a train. Mr. Hamlyn watched it steam out of the station, and then looked up at the clock.
"I suppose it's not too early to see him," he muttered. "I'll chance it, at any rate. Hope he will be less suffering than he was yesterday, and less crusty, too."
Dismissing his carriage, for he felt more inclined to walk than to drive, he went through the park to Pimlico, and gained the house of Major Pratt.
This was Friday. On the previous Wednesday evening a note had been brought to Mr. Hamlyn by Major Pratt's servant, a sentence in which, as the reader may remember, ran as follows:
"I suppose there was no mistake in the report that that ship did go down—and that none of the passengers were saved from it?"
"I suppose there was no mistake in the report that that ship did go down—and that none of the passengers were saved from it?"
This puzzled Philip Hamlyn: perhaps somewhat troubled him in a hazy kind of way. For he could only suppose that the ship alluded to must be the sailing vessel in which his first wife, false and faithless, and his little son of a twelvemonth old had been lost some five or six years ago—theClipper of the Seas. And the next day, (Thursday) he had gone to Major Pratt's, as requested, to carry the prescription for gout he had asked for, and also to inquire of the Major what he meant.
But the visit was a fruitless one. Major Pratt was in bed with an attack of gout, so ill and so "crusty" that nothing could be got out of him excepting a few bad words and as many groans. Mr. Hamlyn then questioned Saul—of whom he used to see a good deal in India, for he had been the Major's servant for years and years.
"Do you happen to know, Saul, whether the Major wanted me for anything in particular? He asked me to call here this morning."
Saul began to consider. He was a tall, thin, cautious, slow-speaking man, honest as the day, and very much attached to his master.
"Well, sir, he got a letter yesterday morning that seemed to put him out, for I found him swearing over it. And he said he'd like you to see it."
"Who was the letter from? What was it about?"
"It looked like Miss Caroline's writing, sir, and the postmark was Essex. As to what it was about—well, the Major didn't directly tell me, but I gathered that it might be about—"
"About what?" questioned Mr Hamlyn, for the man had come to a dead standstill. "Speak out, Saul."
"Then, sir," said Saul, slowly rubbing the top of his head, and the few grey hairs left on it, "I thought—as you tell me to speak—it must be something concerning that ship you know of; she that went down on her voyage home, Mr. Philip."
"TheClipper of the Seas?"
"Just so, sir; theClipper of the Seas. I thought it by this," added Saul: "that pretty nigh all day afterwards he talked of nothing but that ship, asking me if I should suppose it possible that the ship had not gone down and every soul on board, leastways of her passengers, with her. 'Master,' said I, in answer, 'had that ship not gone down and all her passengers with her, rely upon it, they'd have turned up long before this.' 'Ay, ay,' stormed he, 'and Caroline's a fool'—Which of course meant his sister, you know, sir."
Philip Hamlyn could not make much of this. So many years had elapsed now since news came out to the world that the unfortunate ship,Clipper of the Seas, went down off the coast of Spainon her homeward voyage, and all her passengers with her, as to be a fact of the past. Never a doubt had been cast upon any part of the tidings, so far as he knew.
With an uneasy feeling at his heart, he went off to the city, to call upon the brokers, or agents, of the ship: remembering quite well who they were, and that they lived in Fenchurch Street. An elderly man, clerk in the house for many years, and now a partner, received him.
"TheClipper of the Seas?" repeated the old gentleman, after listening to what Mr. Hamlyn had to say. "No, sir, we don't know that any of her passengers were saved; always supposed they were not. But lately we have had some little cause to doubt whether one or two might not have been."
Philip Hamlyn's heart beat faster.
"Will you tell me why you think this?"
"It isn't that we think it; at best 'tis but a doubt," was the reply. "One of our own ships, getting in last month from Madras, had a sailor on board who chanced to remark to me, when he was up here getting his pay, that it was not the first time he had served in our employ: he had been in that ship that was lost, theClipper of the Seas. And he went on to say, in answer to a remark of mine about all the passengers having been lost, that that was not quite correct, for that one of them had certainly been saved—a lady or a nurse, he didn't know which, and also a little child that she was in charge of. He was positive about it, he added, upon my expressing my doubts, for they got to shore in the same small boat that he did."
"Is it true, think you?" gasped Mr. Hamlyn.
"Sir, we are inclined to think it is not true," emphatically spoke the old gentleman. "Upon inquiring about this man's character, we found that he is given to drinking, so that what he says cannot always be relied upon. Again, it seems next to an impossibility that if any passenger were saved we should not have heard of it. Altogether we feel inclined to judge that the man, though evidently believing he spoke truth, was but labouring under an hallucination."
"Can you tell me where I can find the man?" asked Mr. Hamlyn, after a pause.
"Not anywhere at present, sir. He has sailed again."
So that ended it for the day. Philip Hamlyn went home and sat down to dinner with his wife, as already spoken of. And when she told him that the mysterious lady waiting outside must be waiting for him—probably some acquaintance of his of the years gone by—it set his brain working and his pulses throbbing, for he suddenly connected her with what he had that day heard. No wonder his head ached!
To-day, after seeing his wife off by train, he went to find Major Pratt. The Major was better, and could talk, swearing a great deal over the gout, and the letter.
"It was from Caroline," he said, alluding to his sister, Miss Pratt, who had been with him in India. "She lives in Essex, you know, Philip."
"Oh, yes, I know," answered Philip Hamlyn. "But what is it that Caroline says in her letter?"
"You shall hear," said the Major, producing his sister's letter and opening it. "Listen. Here it is. 'The strangest thing has happened, brother! Susan went to London yesterday to get my fronts recurled at the hairdresser's, and she was waiting in the shop, when a lady came out of the back room, having been in there to get a little boy's hair cut. Susan was quite struck dumb when she saw her:She thinks it was poor erring Dolly; never saw such a likeness before, she says; could almost swear to her by the lovely pale gold hair. The lady pulled her veil over her face when she saw Susan staring at her, and went away with great speed. Susan asked the hairdresser's people if they knew the lady's name, or who she was, but they told her she was a stranger to them; had never been in the shop before. Dear Richard, this is troubling me; I could not sleep all last night for thinking of it. Do you suppose it is possible that Dolly and the boy were not drowned? Your affectionate sister, Caroline.' Now, did you ever read such a letter?" stormed the Major. "If that Susan went home and said she'd seen St. Paul's blown up, Caroline would believe it. Who's Susan, d'ye say? Why, you've lost your memory, Philip. Susan was the English maid we had with us in Calcutta."
"It cannot possibly be true," cried Mr. Hamlyn with quivering lips.
"True, no! of course it can't be, hang it! Or else what would you do?"
That might be logical though not satisfactory reasoning. And Mr. Hamlyn thought of the woman said to be watching for him, and her pale gold hair.
"She was a cunning jade, if ever there was one, mark you, Philip Hamlyn; that false wife of yours and kin of mine; came of a cunning family on the mother's side. Put it that shewassaved: if it suited her to let us suppose she was drowned, why, she'd do it.Iknow Dolly."
And poor Philip Hamlyn, assenting to the truth of this with all his heart, went out to face the battle that might be coming upon him, lacking the courage for it.
The cold, clear afternoon air touching their healthy faces, and Jack Frost nipping their noses, raced Miss West and Kate Dancox up and down the hawthorn walk. It had pleased that arbitrary young damsel, who was still very childish, to enter a protest against going beyond the grounds that fine winter's day; she would be in the hawthornwalk, or nowhere; and she would run races there. As Miss West gave in to her whims for peace' sake in things not important, and as she was young enough herself not to dislike running, to the hawthorn walk they went.
Captain Monk was recovering rapidly. His sudden illness had been caused by drinking some cold cider when some out-door exercise had made him dangerously hot. The alarm and apprehension had now subsided; and Mrs. Hamlyn, arriving three days ago in answer to the hasty summons, was thinking of returning to London.
"You are cheating!" called out Kate, flying off at a tangent to cross her governess's path. "You've no right to get before me!"
"Gently," corrected Miss West. "My dear, we have run enough for to-day."
"We haven't, you ugly, cross old thing! Aunt Eliza says youareugly. And—"
The young lady's amenities were cut short by finding herself suddenly lifted off her feet by Mr. Harry Carradyne, who had come behind them.
"Let me alone, Harry! You are always coming where you are not wanted. Aunt Eliza says so."
A sudden light, as of mirth, illumined Harry Carradyne's fresh, frank countenance. "Aunt Eliza says all those things, does she? Well, Miss Kate, she also says something else—that you are now to go indoors."
"What for? I shan't go in."
"Oh, very well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer."
Kate dearly loved new silk frocks, and she raced away. The governess followed more slowly, Mr. Carradyne talking by her side.
For some months now their love dream had been going on; aye, and the love-making too. Not altogether surreptitiously; neither of them would have liked that. Though not expedient to proclaim it yet to Captain Monk and the world, Mrs. Carradyne knew of it and tacitly sanctioned it.
Alice West turned her face, blushing uncomfortably, to him as they walked. "I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something to you," she spoke with hesitation. "Are you not upon rather bad terms with Mrs. Hamlyn?"
"She is with me," replied Harry.
"And—amIthe cause?" continued Alice, feeling as if her fears were confirmed.
"Not at all. She has not fathomed the truth yet, with all her penetration, though she may have some suspicion of it. Eliza wants to bend me to her will in the matter of the house, and I won't be bent. Old Peveril wishes to resign the lease of Peacock Range to me; I wish to take it from him, and Eliza objects. She says Peverilpromised her the house until the seven years' lease was out, and that she means to keep him to his bargain."
"Do you quarrel?"
"Quarrel! no," laughed Harry Carradyne. "I joke with her, rather than quarrel. But I don't give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments, telling me that I am no gentleman, that I'm a bear, and so on; to which I make my bow."
Alice West was gazing straight before her, a troubled look in her eyes. "Then you see that Iamthe remote cause of the quarrel, Harry. But for thinking of me, you would not care to take the house on your own hands."
"I don't know that. Be very sure of one thing, Alice: that I shall not stay an hour longer under the roof here if my uncle disinherits me. That he, a man of indomitable will, should be so long making up his mind is a proof that he shrinks from committing the injustice. The suspense it keeps me in is the worst of all. I told him so the other evening when we were sitting together and he was in an amiable mood. I said that any decision he might come to would be more tolerable than this prolonged suspense."
Alice drew a long breath at his temerity.
Harry laughed. "Indeed, I quite expected to be ordered out of the room in a storm. Instead of that, he took it quietly, civilly telling me to have a little more patience; and then began to speak of the annual new year's dinner, which is not far off now."
"Mrs. Carradyne is thinking that he may not hold the dinner this year, as he has been so ill," remarked the young lady.
"He will never give that up, Alice, as long as he can hold anything; and he is almost well again, you know. Oh, yes; we shall have the dinner and the chimes also."
"I have never heard the chimes," she said. "They have not played since I came to Church Leet."
"They are to play this year," said Harry Carradyne. "But I don't think my mother knows it."
"Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes? I seem to have gathered the idea, somehow," added Alice. But she received no answer.
Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her home. This involved the attendance of Miss West, who now found herself summoned to the charge.
Having escorted Mrs. Ram to her lowly door, and had innumerable intricate questions answered touching trimmings and fringes, Miss Kate Dancox, disregarding her governess altogether, flew back along the road with all the speed of her active limbs, and disappeared within the churchyard. At first Alice, who was growing tired and followedslowly, could not see her; presently, a desperate shriek guided her to an unfrequented corner where the graves were crowded. Miss Kate had come to grief in jumping over a tombstone, and bruised both her knees.
"There!" exclaimed Alice, sitting down on the stump of an old tree, close to the low wall. "You've hurt yourself now."
"Oh, it's nothing," returned Kate, who did not make much of smarts. And she went limping away to Mr. Grame, then doing some light work in his garden.
Alice sat on where she was, reading the inscription on the tombstones; some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible. While standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk's wife, sitting in the church-porch and watching her attentively. The poor old woman had been ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out. Leaving the inscriptions, she went across the churchyard.
"Ay, my dear young lady, I be up again, and thankful enough to say it; and I thought as the day's so fine, I'd step out a bit," she said, in answer to the salutation. An intelligent woman, and quite sufficiently cultivated for her work—cleaning the church and washing the parson's surplices. "I thought John was in the church here, and came to speak to him; but he's not, I find; the door's locked."
"I saw John down by Mrs. Ram's just now; he was talking to Nott, the carpenter," observed Alice. "Nancy, I was trying to make out some of those old names; but it is difficult to do so," she added, pointing to the crowded corner.
"Ay, I see, my dear," nodded Nancy. "Hisbe worn a'most right off. I think I'd have it done again, an' I was you."
"Have what done again?"
"The name upon your poor papa's gravestone."
"Thewhat?" exclaimed Alice. And Nancy repeated her words.
Alice stared at her. Had Mrs. Cale's wits vanished in her illness? "Do you know what you are saying, Nancy?" she cried; "I don't. What had papa to do with this place? I think you must be wandering."
Nancy stared in her turn. "Sure, it's not possible," she said slowly, beginning to put two and two together, "that you don't know who you are, Miss West? That your papa died here? and lies buried here?"
Alice West turned white, and sat down on the opposite bench to Nancy. She did know that her father had died at some small country living he held; but she never suspected that it was at Church Leet. Her mother had gone to London after his death, and set up a school—which succeeded well. But soon she died, and the ladies who took to the school before her death took to Alice with it. The child was still too young to be told by her mother of the serious past—or Mrs.West deemed her to be so. And she had grown up in ignorance of her father's fate and of where he died.
"When we heard, me and John, that it was a Miss West who had come to the Hall to be governess to Parson Dancox's child, the name struck us both," went on Nancy. "Next we looked at your face, my dear, to trace any likeness there might be, and we thought we saw it—for you've got your papa's eyes for certain. Then, one day when I was dusting in here, I let fall a hymn-book from the Hall pew; in picking it up it came open, and the name writ in it stared me in the face, 'AliceWest.' After that, we had no manner of doubt, him and me, and I've often wished to talk with you and tell you so. My dear, I've had you on my knee many a time when you were a little one."
Alice burst into tears of agitation. "I never knew it! I never knew it. Dear Nancy, what did papa die of?"
"Ah, that was a sad piece of business—he was killed," said Nancy. And forthwith, rightly or wrongly, she, garrulous with old age, told all the history.
It was an exciting interview, lasting until the shades of evening surprised them. Miss Kate Dancox might have gone roving to the other end of the globe, for all the attention given her just then. Poor Alice cried and sighed, and trembled inwardly and outwardly. "To think that it should just be to this place that I should come as governess, and to the house of Captain Monk!" she wailed. "Surely he did notkillpapa!—intentionally!"
"No, no; nobody has ever thought that," disclaimed Nancy. "The Captain is a passionate man, as is well known, and they quarrelled, and a hot blow, not intentional, must have been struck between 'em. And all through them blessed chimes, Miss Alice! Not but that they be sweet to listen to—and they be going to ring again this New Year's Eve."
Drawing her warm cloak about her, Nancy Cale set off towards her cottage. Alice West sat on in the sheltered porch, utterly bewildered. Never in her life had she felt so agitated, so incapable of sound and sober thought.Nowit was explained why the bow-windowed sitting-room at the Vicarage would always strike her as being familiar to her memory; as though she had at some time known one that resembled it, or perhaps seen one like it in a dream.
"Well, I'm sure!"
The jesting salutation came from Harry Carradyne. Despatched in search of the truants, he had found Kate at the Vicarage, making much of the last new baby there, and devouring a sumptuous tea of cakes and jam. Miss West? Oh, Miss West was sitting in the church porch, talking to old Nancy Cale, she said to Harry.
"Why! What is it?" he exclaimed in dismay, finding that the burst of emotion which he had taken to be laughter, meant tears. "What has happened, Alice?"
She could no more have kept the tears in than she could help—presently—telling him the news. He sat down by her and held her close to him, and pressed for it. She was the daughter of George West, who had died in the dispute with Captain Monk in the dining-room at the Hall so many years before, and who was lying here in the corner of the churchyard; and she had never, never known it!
Mr. Carradyne was somewhat taken to; there was no denying it; chiefly by surprise.
"I thought your father was a soldier, Alice—Colonel West; and died when serving in India. I'm sure it was said so when you came."
"Oh, no, that could not have been said," she cried; "unless Mrs. Moffit, the agent, made the mistake. It was my uncle who died in India. No one here ever questioned me about my parents, knowing they were dead. Oh, dear," she went on in agitation, after a silent pause, "what am I to do now? I cannot stay at the Hall. Captain Monk would not allow it either."
"No need to tell him," quoth Mr. Harry.
"And—of course—we must part. You and I."
"Indeed! Who says so?"
"I am not sure that it would be right to—to—you know."
"To what? Go on, my dear."
Alice sighed; her eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the fast falling twilight. "Mrs. Carradyne will not care for me when she knows who I am," she said in low tones.
"My dear, shall I tell you how it strikes me?" returned Harry: "that my mother will be only the more anxious to have you connected with us by closer and dearer ties, so as to atone to you, in even a small degree, for the cruel wrong which fell upon your father. As to me—it shall be made my life's best and dearest privilege."
But when a climax such as this takes place, the right or the wrong thing to be done cannot be settled in a moment. Alice West did not see her way quite clearly, and for the present she neither said nor did anything.
This little matter occurred on the Friday in Christmas week; on the following day, Saturday, Mrs. Hamlyn was returning to London. Christmas Day this year had fallen on a Monday. Some old wives hold a superstition that when that happens, it inaugurates but small luck for the following year, either for communities or for individuals. Not that that fancy has anything to do with the present history. Captain Monk's banquet would not be held until the Monday night: as was customary when New Year's Eve fell on a Sunday. He had urged his daughter to remain over New Year's Day; but she declined, on the plea that as she had been away from her husband on Christmas Day, she would like to pass New Year's Day with him. The truth being that she wanted to get to London to see after that yellow-haired lady who was supposed to be peeping after Philip Hamlyn.
On the Saturday morning, Mrs. Hamlyn was driven to Evesham in the close carriage, and took the train to London. Her husband, ever kind and attentive, met her at the Paddington terminus. He was looking haggard, and seemed to be thinner than when she left him nine days ago.
"Are you well, Philip?" she asked anxiously.
"Oh, quite well," quickly answered poor Philip Hamlyn, smiling a warm smile, that he meant to look like a gay one. "Nothing ever ails me."
No, nothing might ail him bodily; but mentally—ah, how much! That awful terror lay upon him thick and threefold; it had not yet come to any solution, one way or the other. Major Pratt had taken up the very worst view of it; and spent his days pitching hard names at misbehaving syrens, gifted with "the deuce's own cunning" and with mermaids' shining hair.
"And how have things been going, Penelope?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn of the nurse, as she sat in the nursery with her boy upon her knee. "All right?"
"Quite so, ma'am. Master Walter has been just as good as gold."
"Mamma's darling!" murmured the doting mother, burying her face in his. "I have been thinking, Penelope, that your master does not look well," she added after a minute.
"No, ma'am? I've not noticed it. We have not seen much of him up here; he has been at his club a good deal—and dined three or four times with old Major Pratt."
"As if she would notice it!—servants never notice anything!" thought Eliza Hamlyn in her imperious way of judging the world. "By the way, Penelope," she said aloud in light and careless tones, "has that woman with the yellow hair been seen about much?—has she presumed again to accost my little son?"
"The woman with the yellow hair?" repeated Penelope, looking at her mistress, for the girl had quite forgotten the episode. "Oh, I remember—she that stood outside there and came to us in the square-garden. No, ma'am, I've seen nothing at all of her since that day."
"For there are wicked people who prowl about to kidnap children," continued Mrs. Hamlyn, as if she would condescend to explain her inquiry, "and that woman looked like one. Never suffer her to approach my darling again. Mind that, Penelope."
The jealous heart is not easily reassured. And Mrs. Hamlyn, restless and suspicious, put the same question to her husband. It was whilst they were waiting in the drawing-room for dinner to be announced, and she had come down from changing her apparel after her journey. How handsome she looked! a right regal woman! as she stood there arrayed in dark blue velvet, the fire-light playing upon her proud face, and upon the diamond earrings and brooch she wore.
"Philip, has that woman been prowling about here again?"
Just for an imperceptible second, for thought is quick, it occurred to Philip Hamlyn to temporise, to affect ignorance, and say, What woman? just as if his mind were not full of the woman, and of nothing else. But he abandoned it as useless.
"I have not seen her since; not at all," he answered: and though his words were purposely indifferent, his wife, knowing all his tones and ways by heart, was not deceived. "He is afraid of that woman," she whispered to herself; "or else afraid ofme." But she said no more.
"Have you come to any definite understanding with Mr. Carradyne in regard to Peacock's Range, Eliza?"
"He will not come to any; he is civilly obstinate over it. Laughs in my face with the most perfect impudence, and tells me: 'A man must be allowed to put in his own claim to his own house, when he wants to do so.'"
"Well, Eliza, that seems to be only right and fair. Percival made no positive agreement with us, remember."
"Isit right and fair! That may be your opinion, Philip, but it is not mine. We shall see, Mr. Harry Carradyne!"
"Dinner is served, ma'am," announced the old butler.
That evening passed. Sunday passed, the last day of the dying year; and Monday morning, New Year's day, dawned.
New Year's Day. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn were seated at the breakfast-table. It was a bright, cold, sunny morning, showing plenty of blue sky. Young Master Walter, in consideration of the day, was breakfasting at their table, seated in his high chair.
"Me to have dinner wid mamma to-day! Me have pudding!"
"That you shall, my sweetest; and everything that's good," assented his mother.
In came Japhet at this juncture. "There's a little boy in the hall, sir, asking to see you," said he to his master. "He—"
"Oh, we shall have plenty of boys here to-day, asking for a new year's gift," interposed Mrs. Hamlyn, rather impatiently. "Send him a shilling, Philip."
"It's not a poor boy, ma'am," answered Japhet, "but a little gentleman: six or seven years old, he looks. He says he particularly wants to see master."
Philip Hamlyn smiled. "Particularly wants a shilling, I expect. Send him in, Japhet."
The lad came in. A well-dressed beautiful boy, refined in looks and demeanour, bearing in his face a strange likeness to Mr. Hamlyn. He looked about timidly.
Eliza, struck with the resemblance, gazed at him. Her husband spoke. "What do you want with me, my lad?"
"If you please, sir, are you Mr. Hamlyn?" asked the child, going forward with hesitating steps. "Are you my papa?"
Every drop of blood seemed to leave Philip Hamlyn's face and fly to his heart. He could not speak, and looked white as a ghost.
"Who are you? What is your name?" imperiously demanded Philip's wife.
"It is Walter Hamlyn," replied the lad, in clear, pretty tones.
And now it was Mrs. Hamlyn's turn to look white. Walter Hamlyn?—the name of her own dear son! when she had expected him to say Sam Smith, or John Jones! What insolence some people had!
"Where do you come from, boy? Who sent you here?" she reiterated.
"I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold, and was in bed all last week."
Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his heart that the earth would open and engulf him. "Eliza, my love, allow me to deal with this matter," he said, his voice taking a low, tender, considerate tone. "I will question the boy in another room. Some mistake, I reckon."
"No, Philip, you must put your questions before me," she said, resolute in her anger. "What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however disreputable it may be."
"I dare not tell you," he gasped; "it is not—I fear—the disreputable thing you may be fancying."
"Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman 'papa'?" she passionately demanded of the child.
"Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before because of not wishing to part from me."
Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. "Where were you born?"
"At Calcutta; that's in India. Mamma brought me home in theClipper of the Seas, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in it, though papa thought so."
The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the whole truth now, staggered back in terror.
"Philip! Philip! is it true? Was itthisyou feared?"
He made a motion of assent and covered his face. "Heaven knows I would rather have died."
He stood back against the window-curtains, that they might shade his pain. She fell into a chair and wished hehaddied, years before.
But what was to be the end of it all? Though Eliza Hamlyn went straight out and despatched that syren of the golden hair with a poison-tipped bodkin (and possibly her will might be good to do it), it could not make things any the better for herself.
New Year's Night at Leet Hall, and the banquet in full swing—but not, as usual, New Year's Eve.
Captain Monk headed his table, the parson, Robert Grame, at his right hand, Harry Carradyne on his left. Whether it might be that the world, even that out-of-the-way part of it, Church Leet, was improving in manners and morals; or whether the Captain himself was changing: certain it was that the board was not the free board it used to be. Mrs. Carradyne herself might have sat at it now, and never once blushed by as much as the pink of a sea-shell.
It was known that the chimes were to play this year; and, when midnight was close at hand, Captain Monk volunteered a statement which astonished his hearers. Rimmer, the butler, had come into the room to open the windows.
"I am getting tired of the chimes, and all people have not liked them," spoke the Captain in slow, distinct tones. "I have made up my mind to do away with them, and you will hear them to-night, gentlemen, for the last time."
"Really, Uncle Godfrey!" cried Harry Carradyne, in most intense surprise.
"I hope they'll bring us no ill-luck to-night!" continued Captain Monk as a grim joke, disregarding Harry's remark. "Perhaps they will, though, out of sheer spite, knowing they'll never have another chance of it. Well, well, they're welcome. Fill your glasses, gentlemen."
Rimmer was throwing up the windows. In another minute the church clock boomed out the first stroke of twelve, and the room fell into a dead silence. With the last stroke the Captain rose, glass in hand.
"A happy New Year to you, gentlemen! A happy New Year to us all. May it bring to us health and prosperity!"
"And God's blessing," reverently added Robert Grame aloud, as if to remedy an omission.
Ring, ring, ring! Ah, there it came, the soft harmony of the chimes, stealing up through the midnight air. Not quite as loudly heard, perhaps, as usual, for there was no wind to waft it, but in tones wondrously clear and sweet. Never had the strains of the "Bay of Biscay" brought to the ear more charming melody. How soothing it was to those enrapt listeners; seeming to tell of peace.
But soon another sound arose to mingle with it. A harsh, grating sound, like the noise of wheels passing over gravel. Heads were lifted; glances expressed surprise. With the last strains of the chimes dying away in the distance, a carriage of some kind galloped up to the hall door.
Eliza Hamlyn alighted from it—with her child and its nurse. As quickly as she could make opportunity after that scene enacted inher breakfast-room in London in the morning, that is, as soon as her husband's back was turned, she had quitted the house with the maid and child, to take the train for home, bringing with her—it was what she phrased it—her shameful tale.
A tale that distressed Mrs. Carradyne to sickness. A tale that so abjectly terrified Captain Monk, when it was imparted to him on Tuesday morning, as to take every atom of fierceness out of his composition.
"Not Hamlyn's wife!" he gasped. "Eliza!"
"No, not his wife," she retorted, a great deal too angry herself to be anything but fierce and fiery. "That other woman, that false first wife of his, was not drowned, as was set forth, and she has come to claim him, with their son."
"His wife; their son," muttered the Captain as if he were bewildered. "Then what are you?—what is your son? Oh, my poor Eliza."
"Yes, what are we? Papa, I will bring him to answer for it before his country's tribunal—if there be law in the land."
No one spoke to this. It may have occurred to them to remember that Mr. Hamlyn could not legally be punished for what he did in innocence. Captain Monk opened the glass doors and walked on to the terrace, as if the air of the room were oppressive. Eliza went out after him.
"Papa," she said, "there now exists all the more reason for your making my darlingyourheir. Let it be settled without delay. He must succeed to Leet Hall."
Captain Monk looked at his daughter as if not understanding her. "No, no, no," he said. "My child, you forget; trouble must be obscuring your faculties. None but alegaldescendant of the Monks could be allowed to have Leet Hall. Besides, apart from this, it is already settled. I have seen for some little time now how unjust it would be to supplant Henry Carradyne."
"Isheto be your heir? Is it so ordered?"
"Irrevocably. I have told him so this morning."
"What am I to do?" she wailed in bitter despair. "Papa, what is to become of me—and of my unoffending child?"
"I don't know: I wish I did know. It will be a cruel blight upon us all. You will have to live it down, Eliza. Ah, child, if you and Katherine had only listened to me, and not made those rebellious marriages!"
He turned away as he spoke in the direction of the church, to see that his orders were being executed there. Harry Carradyne ran after him. The clock was striking midday as they entered the churchyard.
Yes, the workmen were at their work—taking down the bells.
"If the time were to come over again, Harry," began Captain Monk as they were walking homeward, he leaning upon his nephew'sarm, "I wouldn't have them put up. They don't seem to have brought luck somehow, as the parish has been free to say. Not but that must be utter nonsense."
"Well, no they don't, uncle," assented Harry.
"As one grows in years, one gets to look at things differently, lad. Actions that seemed laudable enough when one's blood was young and hot, crop up again then, wearing another aspect. But for those chimes, poor West would not have have died as he did. I have had him upon my mind a good bit lately."
Surely Captain Monk was wonderfully changing! And he was leaning heavily upon Harry's arm.
"Are you tired, uncle? Would you like to sit down on this bench and rest?"
"No, I'm not tired. It's West I'm thinking about. He lies on my mind sadly. And I never did anything for the wife or child to atone to them! It's too late now—and has been this many a year."
Harry Carradyne's heart began to beat a little. Should he say what he had been hoping to say sometime? He might never have a better opportunity than this.
"Uncle Godfrey," he spoke in low tones, "would you—would you like to see Mr. West's daughter? His wife has been dead a long while; but—would you like to see her—Alice?"
"Ay," fervently spoke the old man. "If she be in the land of the living, bring her to me. I'll tell her how sorry I am, and how I would undo the past if I could. And I'll ask her if she'll be to me as a daughter."
So then Harry Carradyne told him all. It was Alice West who was already under his roof, and who, fate and fortune permitting,Heavenpermitting, would sometime be Alice Carradyne.
Down sat Captain Monk on a bench of his own accord. Tears rose to his eyes. The sudden revulsion of feeling was great: and truly he was a changed man.
"You spoke of Heaven, Harry. I shall begin to think it has forgiven me. Let us be thankful."
But Captain Monk found he had more to thank Heaven for ere many minutes had elapsed. As Harry Carradyne sat by him in silence, marvelling at the change, yet knowing that the grievous blow which was making havoc of Eliza had effected the completeness of the subduing, he caught sight of an approaching fly. Another fly from the railway station at Evesham.
"How dare you come here, you villain!" shouted Captain Monk, rising in threatening anger, as the fly's inmate called to the driver to stop and began to get out of it. "Are you not ashamed to show your face to me, after the evil you have inflicted upon my daughter?"