"And now, dear, prepare yourself for what will be to you both a surprise and a disappointment. Mr. Hodgson is dead!
"It was late yesterday afternoon when I reached Stavering. It is a town of but a few thousand inhabitants, and on inquiry I was told that the one good hotel in the place is the 'King's Arms.' As you will see by the heading of this letter, it is from there that I am now writing to you.
"By the time I had done dinner it was nearly dark, and it would evidently have been useless to set about anything till the morrow. While turning matters over in my mind, with no company but my cigar, it struck me that it might not be a bad plan to put a few questions to the landlord of the hotel. If Mr. Hodgson were at all known in the town he would be pretty sure to be in a position to supply me with his address and perhaps, also, to give me some further information about him, which might or might not prove of service to me.
"Accordingly, after breakfast this morning, I sought an interview with mine host--a chatty, communicative middle-aged man, who has lived in Stavering nearly all his life. It was from him I learned the fact of Mr. Hodgson's demise; but, in order to make sure that his Mr. Hodgson was the same as ours, I showed him my pen-and-ink sketch, which I had taken care to bring with me. He recognized the likeness in a moment.
"It would appear that Mr. Hodgson was a man of high standing in his profession, and the legal adviser to a number of the first families in Stavering and its neighborhood. Further inquiry elicited the information that he died within a week of the date of his last visit to Ashdown, which may possibly serve to account for the fact that Mr. Brancker's letter to him has remained unanswered. Mr. Hodgson had no partner in his business, nor, so far as is known to my landlord, has anyone been appointed as his successor.
"I must confess that I am taken very considerably aback by what has just been told me, and that for the present I am altogether nonplussed as to what my next step ought to be. However, I do not despair. Difficulties are made to be encountered and, if possible, overcome. In any case, I will write you again in the course of to-morrow."
From Clement Hazeldine to Hermia Rivers.
"In the course of our many talks together, you have more than once confided to me certain details of your earliest impressions and recollections. What I now want you to do is, to shut your eyes and go back in memory to those early days, and then to write down in detail, and with careful minuteness, everything you can call to mind about your childhood previously to your adoption by Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte. I am afraid that all you can tell me will amount to very little, but I want the information in question for a certain purpose, about which I may have more to tell you by-and-bye. Meanwhile, I shall await your reply with as much patience--or as little--as Providence has seen fit to endow me with."
From Hermia Rivers to Clement Hazeldine.
"You are quite right in your assumption that anything I may be able to tell you of my earliest recollections will amount to very little. Until I heard from Uncle John the story of his adoption of me, I had no absolute knowledge of any existence apart from, or prior to, my life with him and Aunt Charlotte. It is true that I seemed to remember certain people and certain incidents with whom or which uncle and aunt seemed to be in no way mixed up, although there was nothing to prove to me that I was not living under uncle's roof at the time to which they referred. Indeed, so shadowy were they that at times there came over me a doubt as to whether they had any basis of fact whatever; and in any case they lived in my recollections as so many faded pictures, which each year that passed tended to render dimmer and more indistinct; and there is little question that had it not been for what Uncle John told me they would by-and-bye have vanished utterly from my memory.
"Uncle John, as you are aware, had no information to give me beyond the fact that, after he had arranged to adopt me, I was taken to his house one evening after dark by a respectable-looking, middle-aged woman, who, judging from her appearance, might be the wife of a well-to-do mechanic. Uncle asked no questions and the woman proffered no statement. She was not more than five minutes in the house, and he never saw her again.
"Well, Uncle John's statement threw me back upon myself, so to speak. Again and again I went over my confused and half-forgotten recollections, striving to piece them together, and bring them into clearer relief, but to very little purpose, I'm afraid. However, I will now proceed to sketch for you in outline the three incidents, if I may term them such, which stand out most definitely in my memory as evidently pertaining to a time which I now know must have been anterior to that of my adoption.
"Incident the first. I see myself, as a very little girl, seated in a shut-up carriage in company with a man and a woman, neither of whose faces I can bring to mind. I am hugging to my breast a gaily-dressed doll as my dearest earthly treasure. It is a gloomy evening, and the rain is falling fast. I seem to have been in the carriage a long time, jolting over the dreary country roads, but as to where I came from and how I happened to be there at all, I can remember nothing whatever. Then I seem to wake up from sleep, roused by the sudden stoppage of the carriage, and, looking out, I see someone open two large iron gates, which swing slowly back on their hinges. But what takes my childish attention more than anything else is the fact that on the top of one of the supporting pillars--I can only see one from where I sit--there is fixed a strange-looking animal carved in stone, as it might be a griffin, or a dragon, holding a shield between its paws. But one half of the shield and one of the creature's paws are broken away and missing, and I remember thinking how strangely forlorn it looked in its maimed condition, and how the rain-drops, trickling from the end of its nose, seemed like tears, so that I felt quite to pity the poor thing.
"After that comes a blank.
"In the next scene of which I retain anything like a clear recollection--although how long a time elapsed between it and the preceding one I am unable to say--I am in a gloomy panelled room, the two high, narrow windows of which look out upon a small, semi-circular lawn shut in by a tall hedge. A case-clock in one corner ticks slowly and solemnly. Against the wall on one side of the room stands a tall bureau of black oak carved with fruit and quaint figures. There is a large open fireplace, in which a few embers glow faintly red. On two high, straight-backed chairs sit two angular, straight-backed ladies; both elderly, both with long, thin faces, both having the same cold, unsympathetic eyes and the same frozen expression, and so much alike generally, that I can only now conclude they must have been sisters. As I stand before them in my white frock and bronze shoes, with my hands behind my back, I glance timidly from one to the other. They are talking about me in a language I don't understand; but all the same, I am quite aware that I am the subject of their conversation. It is growing dusk, and presently a man--the same, I fancy, that was with me in the carriage--brings in two lighted candles in silver candlesticks on a silver tray, and sets them down on the table between the two ladies. Then one of the ladies takes up the snuffers--also of silver--and solemnly extinguishes one of the candles. Somehow, I have an impression, how or whence derived I am quite at a loss to know, that it is a nightly custom for the manservant to bring in two lighted candles, and for one of them to be at once put out.
"The manservant, having raked together the dying embers in the grate, is on the point of leaving the room, when the same lady who had put out the candle holds up her hand, covered with a black lace mitten, to arrest him. 'You may take her away,' she says, evidently alluding to me. 'I have no wish ever to see her again.' With that, the man leads me by the hand from the room, and with the shutting of the door everything becomes a blank again.
"Next I am in bed, where I am awakened by a kiss on my forehead. I open two sleepy eyes, to see for a moment a tall figure in white stealing from the room with a night-light in her hand. I do not see her face, but something tells me it is one of the two ladies whom I saw in the panelled room, but not the one who ordered me to be taken away.
"Such, dear Clement, are the particulars of three scenes which live more vividly in my memory than any others of a date prior to my passing into the charge of Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte. I fail to see how they can prove of the slightest service to you in the quest you have undertaken for the sake of one who can but wish herself more worthy of so much love and devotion."
Clement Hazeldine to Hermia Rivers.
"You were altogether wrong, dearest, in assuming that the particulars which I received from you three days ago would prove of no service to me, as shall now be demonstrated to you.
"All along--that is to say, from the time I became aware that Mr. Hodgson had been practising in Stavering for considerably more than a quarter of a century--the probability has seemed to me that the person or persons who employed him as their agent in your case would be found, if found at all, no great distance away from this place. In any case, and more especially after the receipt of your letter, I determined to make Stavering the centre of a systematic process of search and inquiry, which I at once proceeded to put in execution. 'But a search for what?' I seem to hear you asking. You shall now be told.
"The first thing I did was to hire a dog-cart, and in addition secure the services of a driver who knew every road and lane for a dozen miles round Stavering. Thus equipped, I began my quest. The object I set before me first of all was to find a pair of old-fashioned lodge gates, one of the pillars of which was surmounted by a griffin rampant, or other heraldic monstrosity, supporting a broken shield, but minus one of its paws. For two days I scoured the country roads and byeways, but to no purpose. Plenty of lodge gates I saw, surmounted, some of them, by one or another design in stone or stucco, but nowhere the particular one I was in search of. This morning, however, I was more fortunate.
"My driver had taken a road which we had not explored before. We had not gone more than three miles when we came to a pair of lodge gates of wrought iron, which drew my attention by their ruinous and neglected condition. The driver stopped at my request and I alighted in order to examine them more closely. The gates themselves, which were of an intricate and finely-wrought pattern, and must at one time have been very beautiful, were now thickly rusted and filthy with the grime of years, and having fallen forward a little, hung loosely together as though they were trying to support each other in their hour of misfortune. The padlock and chain which fastened them seemed to indicate that they were rarely, if ever, opened. Close by, however, there was an arched entrance in the wall, evidently intended for pedestrians, with a rude, unpainted door which formed a fitting complement to the rusted gates. No figure of any kind crowned the square freestone pillars on which the gates were hung, yet they seemed to me to have a bare and unfinished aspect, as though they lacked some crowning adornment.
"Pushing open the rude door, which yielded to my hand, I entered the park. Inside were the remains of what had at one time been a two-storied lodge, which was now little more than the skeleton of a house, with huge gaps in its roof and a great part of its flooring gone, and scarcely a whole pane in its window-frames. Unsightly weeds and great prickly brambles grew all about, and, in short, the whole scene was one of melancholy neglect and decay. Stepping backward a pace or two, while wondering whether it would be worth my while to sketch the ruined lodge and its surroundings, I caught my foot against some hard substance in the rank grass, and with difficulty saved myself from falling. On looking down to ascertain the nature of the obstruction, my eyes caught sight of something which, as the saying goes, brought my heart into my mouth. There, half-buried among the docks and weeds, lay the identical object I had been at such pains to find--your mutilated griffin to wit, with its broken shield. How it had come there mattered nothing, but only that it was there. I drew a long breath, feeling little doubt that I had now in my hands the second link of the chain of which the first had been the tracing of Mr. Hodgson. Where shall I find the third?
"The poor griffin, or whatever it may have been intended to represent, was lying on its side and looking very forlorn and dirty indeed. The first thing I did was to raise it into an upright position, then, with my pocket-knife, I partially cleared a small space around it of weeds and grass, and then I proceeded to make a sketch of it. That sketch I now send you for the purpose of verification. It seems to me most unlikely that there should have been two mutilated griffins and two broken shields; still, that such may have been the case is by no means impossible. But be that as it may, do not fail to drop me a line by return post and let me know whether you recognize the creature as being anything like the one seen by you that day out of the carriage window while waiting for the opening of the park gates.
"As soon as I got back to the dog-cart I began to question the driver, but all I could elicit from him was that the name of the mansion inside the park, of which, however, nothing could be seen from the lodge, is Broome, and that its sole inmate, with the exception of a few domestics, is a certain Miss Pengarvon, a lady well advanced in years, whom the fellow described in terse but caustic terms, as being 'a reg'lar old varmint, and no mistake.'
"To-morrow I shall prosecute my inquiries with regard to the aforesaid Miss Pengarvon."
Hermia Rivers to Clement Hazeldine.
"The sketch you have sent me is an exact counterpart of the sculptured creature seen by me so many years ago. The sight of it has brought back the whole scene to my memory as freshly as if it belonged to yesterday."
From Clement Hazeldine to Hermia Rivers.
"Having written and posted my last letter to you, I lost no time in asking Mr. Gruding, the landlord of the hotel where I am staying, to again favor me with his company for a short time. It was from him I had obtained my information about Mr. Hodgson, and it seemed not unlikely that he might be able to supply me with some particulars anent Miss Pengarvon, of Broome.
"Nor was I mistaken. Gruding had much that was interesting to tell me in answer to the questions I put to him; all of which shall be re-told you fully when next we meet.
"The interview with my landlord took place on Saturday. Having decided upon seeing Miss Pengarvon for myself, I made my way yesterday morning to the church she is in the habit of attending, which is situated on the outskirts of the village of Dritton, and within half-a-mile of the Hall; and there, in a square, old-fashioned pew, shut up by herself in isolated dignity, sat the last living representative of the old family.
"I was fortunate enough to be so placed as to have a good view of Miss Pengarvon during the progress of the service, and I took care to be standing close to the porch when she emerged from the church. She was followed by an old serving man, who limped somewhat, and who carried his mistress's capacious umbrella and large-print prayer-book.
"Enclosed is a sketch-likeness of Miss Pengarvon, elaborated from a rougher sketch which I made seated on a tombstone, as soon as the congregation had dispersed and I was left alone.
"Now I want you, dearest, to tell me whether you can detect in the sketch any resemblance to either of the two ladies whom you saw that evening in the oak-panelled room, as described by you in your last letter but one."
Hermia Rivers to Clement Hazeldine.
"Without committing myself to a positive statement, I can safely say that the sketch of Miss Pengarvon, which I received from you this morning, bears a marked resemblance to the face of the elder of the two sisters--if sisters they were--as stored up in my memory all these years. More than that it would not be safe for me to say."
If Clem had been troubled by any faint doubts before as to whether he was on the right track, the receipt of Hermia's last note would have served to finally dissipate them. Being satisfied so far, he was at once faced by the question, what ought his next step to be? It was a question hard to answer, because it seemed to him that beyond the point at which he had now arrived he had no sure ground to go upon.
As far as he had gone each step he had taken had pointed the way to the next; but he now found himself, as it were, confronted by a dead wall. Despite all he had discovered so far, he felt that he had no sufficient basis of facts to warrant him in going to Miss Pengarvon. What, indeed, could he say to her if he sought and obtained an interview? He would simply be showing his hand prematurely, with the result, in all likelihood, of defeating the very object he had in view.
But although he could not see his way to call upon the mistress of Broome, Clement was by no means minded to give up his quest at the point to which he had now brought it, and admit his inability to push it to a further issue. Somewhere in the dark must be hidden another link of the chain, if only he knew in which direction to put forth his hands and grope for it.
Two or three days passed without bringing him any suggestion that seemed worth following up. Then, on the third forenoon, as he stood leaning over a gate in a country lane, staring at nothing in particular in a somewhat disconsolate mood, he said to himself: "Perhaps if I could obtain access to the old Hall, and were allowed to go over it, I might chance to light on something which would furnish me with a hint or a clue to that which I am so anxious to find out." The course in question seemed such an obvious one that he was surprised it had failed to suggest itself to him before.
As soon as he got back to the hotel he sought another interview with his landlord, who opened his eyes to their fullest extent when told his guest's object in sending for him. He, Gruding, had never heard of anybody who wanted to go over Broome. It wasn't a show place, and, as far as he knew, there was nothing in it worth seeing. But granting that anyone should want to go over it, he didn't for a moment suppose that Miss Pengarvon would allow them to do so. Still, he might be wrong. He had reason to believe that his barmaid's brother was engaged to a young woman who was in service at Broome, and there was no doubt the young fellow in question could easily get to know through his sweetheart whether there was any likelihood of a stranger being allowed to explore the interior of the Hall.
At Clement's request a message was sent to Mark Finch--that being the young fellow's name--asking him to call upon Doctor Hazeldine at the "King's Arms" as soon as his day's work was over. In due course he made his appearance, and great was his astonishment when told what he was wanted for. Like the landlord, he had never heard of anybody who was anxious to explore the old mansion; nor did he believe they would be allowed to do so. However he would ask his sweetheart, Lucy Grice, whom he was going to meet that evening, and would let the gentleman know her opinion in the matter by breakfast-time next morning.
Lucy's opinion proved to be merely a confirmation of those already enunciated by Gruding and Mark Finch, except that it was expressed in still more emphatic terms. Anybody, she said, who was acquainted with Miss Pengarvon would know quite well that on no account whatever would that lady allow a stranger, who could allege the gratification of an idle curiosity as his only motive for wanting to do so, to set foot across the threshold of Broome. Many people in Clem's place would have given up the point as hopeless; but he was composed of more stubborn stuff. Mark Finch was told to come again in the evening, when he would have time for a long talk with Dr. Hazeldine.
Into the details of the conversation that passed between the two it is not needful that we should enter. Mark and Lucy, it seemed, were desirous of getting married, and were saving up towards housekeeping with that end in view. Towards the fund thus being accumulated Clem offered to contribute five pounds, on condition that Lucy, unknown to the other inmates, should admit him to the Hall, and show him over that part of it which was shut up and unoccupied. The girl would be at his heels the whole time he was inside the house, and would be able to watch his every movement; while, finally, he engaged that an hour and a half at most should elapse between the time of his entering the house and leaving it.
The temptation proved too strong for the lovers to resist. Lucy foresaw no difficulty in carrying out her part of the scheme. Once a month her uncle, Barney Dale, went to Marrowfield, as he had done for the last quarter of a century, to dispose of the work of his mistress's needle. Three days hence was his time for going, and Dr. Hazeldine's exploration must take place while he was away. Breakfast would be over, and Miss Pengarvon, intent on her work in the Green Parlor, would hear nothing. As a further safeguard, however, it might be as well if the young doctor were to wear a pair of list slippers over his boots.
As it was arranged so it was carried out. Clement was surreptitiously admitted at the side entrance about half-an-hour after Barney had taken his departure. Under the guidance of the girl he tramped upstairs and down in his list slippers, passing from one unused room to another, having here a shutter opened for him, so as to let in a modified daylight, and there a blind partly drawn up. Many of the rooms were entirely denuded of furniture, while in others what there was of it was sheeted up in brown holland. Everywhere the dust lay thick and heavy; the clouded mirrors could but reflect the ghosts, as it were, of the young man and the girl as they passed in front of them. Nearly every corner was festooned with huge cobwebs; behind the wainscoting the mice squeaked and scampered; everything was touched by the mouldering finger of decay. When Clement and his guide spoke to each other it was as people speak in the chamber of death.
Last of all they came to the picture-gallery, where hung some score or more portraits of dead and gone Pengarvons. A lozenge-paned oriel window at one end, the upper half of which was filled with painted glass, suffused the gallery with a faintly-tinted half-light, which seemed fitly to accord with the place and the throng of dumbly-staring effigies on its walls. Clem walked up to the oriel and gazed out into the grounds, while Lucy proceeded to open the shutters of two of the long windows which fronted the portraits. Presently Clem's eyes came back to the window, and to a recognition of the fact that sundry names and initials had been scratched with a diamond here and there on its panes. Among them he found one which sent a sudden rush of blood to his heart the moment his eyes lighted on it. Surmounted by a true lover's knot, and with the date 1649 below, were the two names "Hermia Moray" and "Rupert Pengarvon." Here was proof positive of one thing--that "Hermia" was a name not unknown in the Pengarvon annals upwards of two centuries ago. Clem felt that this discovery alone amply rewarded him for his exploration of the Hall. Presently he turned to examine the portraits. One after another his gaze took them in till the series was exhausted. They comprised both sexes, and some of the oldest of them, judging from their costumes, seemed to date back to the time of the First or Second Charles, but apparently none were more modern than the first decade of the present century. Then Clement went back to one of the portraits, and stood gazing at it in silence for a long time. It was the likeness of a girl of nineteen or twenty, wearing a short-waisted white robe, a broad blue sash, and a wide-brimmed hat with sweeping plumes over an elaborate arrangement of curls and loosely-coiled tresses. Taken simply as a work of art, it was the gem of the gallery, and Clem at once set it down as being from the brush of either Lawrence or Sir Joshua. But what struck him more than aught else was the strange, haunting likeness it bore to Hermia. Not merely was it that the eyes and hair of one and the other approximated closely in color, and that the features of both might almost have been cast in the same mould, there was an indescribable something, a sort of spiritual likeness, so to call it, which brought them into closer affinity than any mere similarity of physical attributes would have served to do. Long and earnestly did Clement gaze at the beautiful face with its hovering smile, and its fathomless violet eyes which seemed as if they were reading his inmost thoughts. Lucy, when questioned, could tell him nothing about the original. She had only been in the gallery once before, and felt anything but comfortable with all those staring eyes following her every movement. But it would not do to linger there forever. Clem had brought sketching materials with him in readiness for any emergency that might arise, and he now proceeded, with a few bold, swift touches, to secure the salient points of the likeness which had for him an interest far exceeding that of all the other portraits put together.
He left Stavering by the afternoon train that same day, and a few hours later was back at home.
But Clement Hazeldine's business at Stavering was by no means at an end. A certain purpose, the outcome of his visit to Broome, had taken him back to Ashdown; but that accomplished to his satisfaction, which it was in the course of a few days, he lost no time in returning to the scene of his further operations.
Among other information for which he was indebted to Lucy Grice, he had learned that her uncle, Barney Dale, was in the habit of spending a couple of hours, two or three evenings a week, in the bar-parlor of the "Chequers" Inn at Dritton, where he smoked his pipe and imbibed his tankard of ale in the company of sundry cronies whose tastes in that respect were similar to his own. On inquiry, Clem found that they had one spare bed at the "Chequers," which he at once engaged, and there he proceeded to take up his quarters, leaving his portmanteau, however, in his old lodging at Stavering. Dritton was a tiny hamlet of some three or four hundred inhabitants, and as there were more than one good trout stream in the neighborhood, Clem, who had brought his rod and tackle with him, passed for a disciple of the gentle craft, and was welcomed as such among the frequenters of the bar-parlor. The advent of a stranger who was in no way "stuck-up," and not above hobnobbing with one or another of them, made a pleasant break in the monotony of their meetings, and freshened up their provincial wits for the time in a way which surprised no one more than themselves.
But it was to Barney Dale that Clem paid the most assiduous court, so contriving matters as to occupy the seat next his, and to engage him in talk about such subjects as the old man was likely to take an interest in. He soon found that under a somewhat crabbed and forbidding exterior, Barney hid a personality at once quaint and kindly, and, in some respects, of an almost childlike simplicity. On more than one occasion, as they sat side by side, Clem tried to bring the conversation round to Broome and its mistress; but Barney became at once so stolidly dull, and was so evidently disinclined to touch on the subject in any way, that, for fear of rendering him suspicious as to his ulterior motives, he felt it best to lead back the talk into other and less personal channels.
It was Clem's object to take the old man unawares, in the hope that, in the first moment of surprise, he might unwittingly let fall some exclamation or remark which would help to indicate the direction in which his next step should be taken.
On a certain evening, after he had been about a week at the "Chequers," Clem was lounging purposely at the door when Barney, with the help of his stout blackthorn, came limping slowly up. After greetings had passed, Clem said:
"Just come into this room for a moment, Mr. Dale. I have something I want to show you."
With that he opened the door of a side room, and, Barney followed him in. Having shut the door and turned up the gas, Clem took from the table a "tinted" cabinet-size photograph, and placed it in the old man's hands. It was Hermia's portrait, which he had that morning received from an Ashdown photographer. In it she was represented in a short-waisted white robe, a blue sash, and a grey, broad-brimmed hat with a feather of the same color; while, under her lover's directions, her chestnut locks had been arranged after a fashion to which they had never had to submit before, and in all probability never would again.
"Put on your glasses, Mr. Dale," said Clem, "and look at this, and tell me whether you recognize it as the likeness of anyone you have ever seen or known."
Putting down the photograph for a moment till he had got his spectacles astride his nose, Barney took it up again, and moving closer under the gaslight, brought his eyes to bear upon it. After staring at it for a full half-minute, his hands began to tremble, and he turned on Clem a face that was working with suppressed emotion.
"Whose likeness is this?" he demanded, hoarsely.
"Do you not recognize it as a photograph of a certain picture in the gallery at Broome, with which you are doubtless well acquainted?"
Again the old man turned his gaze on the portrait. "Aye, aye, to be sure, I know it now," he said; and yet there was an echo of doubt in his tone. "It's a likeness of Miss Elinor Pengarvon, who lived eighty or ninety years syne, and was engaged to Lord Doverley, but died a week afore her wedding-day. I mind me of the picture well. But--but how did you come by it?" he added glowering at the other with eyes which had suddenly become charged with a sort of fierce suspicion.
"It is time to undeceive you," said Clement. "The likeness in your hands is not that of the Elinor Pengarvon of ninety years ago, but of another young lady who is alive and well at this moment. It is the portrait of Miss Hermia Rivers."
Clement had nothing to go upon as to whether the mention of the name would wake any dormant echo in Barney's memory. He could only trust to chance that it might do so. As it proved, his hit was a fortunate one.
"Of Miss Hermia Rivers!" repeated the old man, in a sort of awed whisper. "Can the dead come back to life?" Then his eyes went again to the portrait. "But you say that she isn't dead--that she is alive and well; is it the truth you are telling me?"
"I was in the company of Miss Rivers less than a fortnight ago."
"Thank goodness that she still lives! M'appen, then, it may not be too late."
"Too late! What do you mean?" asked Clem.
But the old man sank into a chair and took no heed of the question.
"And I to have got it into my doited old head that the darling died long years ago!" he said presently, with the air of one who is talking to himself. "To be sure it was the mistress herself that led me to think so, and how was I to guess that she wanted to hide the truth?"
Presently he roused himself, and after staring at Clem for a few moments like one collecting his faculties, he said, laying a finger on the photograph:
"And you say, sir, that you know her, and that she is alive and well?"
"I do say so," answered Clement, in his most impressive tones.
"Tell me about her--tell me all you know," exclaimed Barney, with trembling eagerness.
Accordingly, without going into any superfluous details, Clement proceeded to give his hearer an outline of Hermia's history from the date of her adoption by John Brancker onward. He was careful to speak slowly and distinctly, and as Barney's intelligence took in one point of the narrative after another, he nodded his head and muttered a word or two under his breath, but otherwise he kept silent till Clem had come to an end.
"And now that I have told you so much, Mr. Dale," continued Clem, after a pause, "I trust that you, in your turn, will be able to answer me one or two questions. In the first place, will you be good enough to inform me what relation Miss Hermia Rivers is to Miss Pengarvon?"
Barney blinked at his questioner and sucked in his under-lip for a moment or two, then he said:
"I darena tell you aught, and you mustna ask me. Years and years ago my mistress bound me down by oath, never without her leave to open my lips about certain things to man, woman, or child. It was a very solemn oath, and I darena break it."
Clement was nonplussed. "At least, you can tell me this," he said presently. "Is either of Miss Rivers's parents still living?"
"I darena answer, and you mustna ask me," was the old man's dogged reply.
Clem made a gesture of annoyance. "Come, then, Mr. Dale," he said, "you can hardly refuse to tell me what you meant by your remark just now, that, perhaps, it 'may not be too late.'"
Barney was sitting with rounded shoulders, resting his chin on his hands, which were crossed over his stick. For a little while he did not answer.
"Bring her down to Stavering," he said, at last, bending a slow look on the young surgeon, "and I'll contrive for the mistress to see her. Who can tell what may come of it?" Then for the second time he said: "And I to have got it into my doited old head that the darling died ever so many years ago!"
He rose with a little difficulty, and possessed himself of his hat which he had taken off on entering the room. Then, laying a hand on Clem's shoulder, he said, impressively,
"Eh, but there's a great change come over the mistress! She had a sort of fit in the night about a week ago, and now the doctor comes to see her every day. But she's getting round again--oh, yes, she's getting round; and m'appen, by-and-bye, she'll be just the same as she allus was. And now, sir, do you listen to this: Don't say a word to a soul about Miss Hermia, or what brings her to Stavering. The Lord only knows what'll come of it all, but I'll try my best--I'll try my best."
In the course of the next day, Clement returned to Ashdown, where a great surprise awaited him. He reached Nairn Cottage soon after five o'clock, but found no Hermia there to greet him. Instead, a note was put into his hand by Aunt Charlotte.
"Dear Clement"--it ran.
"I have had to set off, all in a hurry, for London, where I purpose staying for the next few days with my friend, Mrs. Wingate, who was a schoolfellow of mine. I have what seem to me amply sufficient reasons for taking this step, but I do not feel at liberty to enter into any particulars until after my return, when I may have much to tell you, or, on the other hand, very little. Anyway, I hope you won't worry the least bit about me, because there is really no occasion to do so. I received your telegram this morning announcing your return, but, under the circumstances, have thought it better not to wait and see you. I will explain everything when we meet, which I hope will not be later than two or three days hence.
"Yours now and always,
"Hermia Rivers."
Clement, when he had read the note, stared at Aunt Charlotte with an air of stupefaction. "What does it mean?" he asked.
"I can tell you very little more than the note tells you," was the reply. "Yesterday was Hermia's afternoon for visiting among the poor widows and others whom she is in the habit of calling upon once a week, and oftener in cases of sickness or necessity. On reaching home last evening rather later than usual, she told us that Mrs. Varrel, a widow whom both of us have known for some years, was dead. She was very quiet during the rest of the evening, and seemed to be deep in thought. This morning, at breakfast, she announced her intention of starting for London by the eleven o'clock train. In answer to the questions John and I naturally put to her, she simply said that we must forgive her for not telling us anything at present, but that all should be explained the moment she returned. She assured us that nothing but a matter of extreme importance would have induced her to take such a step, but that we might be quite satisfied as to her safety under the roof of Mrs. Wingate. So you see, my dear Mr. Clement, that we shall just have to stifle our curiosity as best we can, till it pleases her ladyship to return and lift us off the tenterhooks of suspense."
Miss Brancker, so far as her means allowed, was one of the most charitable of women. She had always a number of pensioners on hand, chiefly elderly spinsters, with whom life was a continual struggle, and widows left forlorn without son or daughter to help them in their declining years.
Miss Brancker had a small--a very small--private income, the whole of which of late years, since her brother's salary had more than sufficed for the needs of the little household, she had given away in charity, not by any means always in the form of money, but in a score of other ways in which help, judiciously administered, may be made still more precious to its recipients. As Hermia grew up, she got into the way of accompanying her aunt on her weekly visits among those whom Miss Brancker held it to be a part of her duty to call upon at their own homes. During the last year and a half, however, in consequence of an affection of the knee-joint, which made much walking painful to Aunt Charlotte, Hermia had, in the majority of cases, been compelled to do the visiting alone.
Among others whom Hermia made a point of calling upon at least once a week was a' certain poor widow, Mrs. Varrel by name, who was slowly dying of an incurable malady. She had lost her husband, a retired sergeant-major with a small service pension, several years before, and latterly her sole means of livelihood had been a few shillings a week allowed her by a daughter of her former mistress, for at one time Mrs. Varrel had been maid to a lady of quality; a fact she was careful to impress upon all who were brought into contact with her. There had been a time after her husband's death, a period extending over several years, when her only son was in a position to help her, and when, in point of fact, he did help her liberally in accordance with his means. Then something dreadful had come to pass, and Richard Varrel had been able to help his mother no more.
It was this same Richard Varrel who, as the reader may or may not remember, had been one of the first on the day of the trial to congratulate John Brancker on his acquittal. He it was who, when John and those who were with him had settled themselves in the fly in which they were to be driven home, had pushed his way through the little crowd of onlookers and laid a detaining hand on the vehicle. "Mr. Brancker, sir," he said, in a voice coarsened with drink, "if such a wretch as I maybe allowed to thank heaven for anything, then I thank it that you are once more a free man. From the first I swore that whoever else might be guilty of Mr. Hazeldine's death, you were innocent. As for him--curse him! he hounded me to my ruin, and he deserved his fate. For him no pity is needed."
Up to a certain point the fortunes of Richard Varrel and Ephraim Judd had moved upon almost parallel lines. The mother of each was a widow in poor circumstances; they had both been educated at the same school, where they had both been show scholars; the elder Mr. Avison had taken a fancy to both of them, and had found humble berths for them in the Bank, where, in the course of time, they had worked themselves up to positions of trust and responsibility. But there the likeness between the two had ended, for while Ephraim Judd was a painstaking plodder, slow but sure, handsome Dick Varrel carried everything with a dash and a laughing quick-wittedness which made light of every obstacle that stood in the way of his upward career. There had been a time when he was one of the most popular young fellows in the town; but it was his social success and his fondness for company that proved his ruin. In a moment of weakness, when hard pressed by petty monetary difficulties, he did a certain thing which rendered him liable to a prosecution for felony. Detection followed. By this time the elder Mr. Avison had retired from business, and the younger one was abroad. To the latter the details of the case were reported by Mr. Hazeldine in due course, who went as far as he durst venture in his endeavors to induce the banker to take a lenient view of the affair. But Mr. Avison, while being a strictly just man, was also an inflexible one, and he sent positive orders, by return, that Varrel should be proceeded against. Mr. Hazeldine had no option but to carry out his employer's instructions, the consequence being that the handsome and popular Dick Varrel was tried and sentenced to a short term of penal servitude.
That term had expired about a year before he accosted John Brancker on the day of the latter's acquittal. How long Varrel had been in the town prior to that date, and how long he stayed there after it, John had no means of knowing. In any case, he saw him no more.
Mrs. Varrel rented a couple of rooms in one of the humblest parts of the town. Even on her bed of sickness, which she was quite aware that she should never leave till she had drawn her last breath, she held herself somewhat proudly aloof from the class of persons around her. "It is my misfortune to be compelled to live among them," she would sometimes remark to Hermia, "but I never allow them to consider that they are in any way my equals." Even with the hand of death upon her, she could not forget that for five years she had been confidential maid to Lady Warlingham. How near to breaking her heart her son's crime and its punishment had gone no one ever knew but herself. At the time she had in a measure set the world at defiance, by her protestations that Dick had been convicted on false evidence; and the world, or that infinitesimal section of it to which she had appealed, compassionating her as a mother, had made believe (while in her sight and hearing) to indorse her view of the case. For some time past, however, no one had heard her mention her son's name. He seemed as one lost to her for ever.
Mrs. Varrel always seemed especially glad to see Hermia. "You never preach at me as nearly all my other lady visitors do, and that's what I like you for," she would say. "As for them, they can't leave me an ounce of tea without reminding me that I'm not long for this world--as if I didn't know it already--and exhorting me to seek forgiveness of my sins. By the way some of them talk I might be one of the vilest of sinners. Yet, I suppose, if I were to reply that, so far as I am aware, I have led just as good a life as they, and stand no more in need of forgiveness than they do, they would be highly indignant. I only wish some of them could be made to change places with me for a single week. It would teach them a lesson they wouldn't forget to their dying day."
Hermia was in the habit of taking wine and grapes and whatever else Aunt Charlotte thought might tempt the sick woman's appetite, or help to keep up her strength; for during the last few weeks her illness had made great strides, and day by day it became more evident that the end could not much longer be delayed. Sometimes Hermia read to her; sometimes she simply chatted with her, telling her such items of local gossip as she thought would interest her. Sometimes Mrs. Varrel, when she felt a little stronger, would talk to the girl about her early life and things that had happened years before; but never once, till the end was drawing very near, did she make any mention of her son.
At length, however, there came a day when, after lying for a little space with closed eyes, she said:
"Do you know, Miss Hermy, what the one wish is I have now left in this world?"
Hermia smiled and shook her head.
"I might guess a dozen times without guessing aright. But tell me what it is you wish, Mrs. Varrel."
"It is to see my son Richard for the last time--him, you know, that was said to have gone wrong years ago."
"Surely that is a wish which ought to be very easily gratified," said Hermia. "I am, of course, assuming that you know where he may be found."
"Where he himself is I cannot say, but when I saw him last he gave me a certain address in London where he said a letter would always find him."
"Then let me write to him in your name," said Hermia, eagerly. "He cannot be aware how ill you are, or he would have been to see you before now."
But it was not till the following day that the widow could be induced to let Hermia write, and not then till she had given her promise not to reveal to any one Richard Varrel's address.
It was just a week before the end came that Hermia wrote, but day passed after day without bringing a response of any kind. The dying woman listened with an eagerness painful to witness, for her son's footfall on the stairs, but listened in vain.
"Who knows but that he's in trouble again and can't come," she moaned wearily to herself more than once.
During those last few days Hermia was a great deal with her. The person in whose house Mrs. Varrel lodged happened also to be ill at the time, and could not wait upon her as she had been in the habit of doing. As the dying woman's weakness increased she began to wander in her mind, but in all her wanderings her son seemed somehow to be mixed up. As far as Hermia could make out, he appeared to be always in some dire trouble from which his mother was vainly trying to extricate him; but there was nothing coherent about her utterances--they were merely a jumble of disconnected sentences, the gaps between which her listener lacked the knowledge needful to enable her to fill up. But, indeed, Hermia took very little heed of anything that fell from the widow's lips at such times, but waited patiently till the light of reason came back to her poor bewildered brain, for such wanderings were only occasional; the greater part of the time she was as mentally clear as ever she had been.
One day, however--it was the third day before she died--while one of her wandering fits was on her, she gave utterance to a remark which startled Hermia not a little. "There's blood on the notes!" she exclaimed. "Why should you want me to have charge of them? Take them back! I won't touch them!" Then her voice died away in an inarticulate murmur. After that it was impossible for Hermia to do otherwise than listen.
About an hour later, after a long silence, the dying woman cried out in a voice which sent a shiver through the girl, "No, no, I won't believe it! What! My boy--my Richard! Anyone but him--anyone but him!" Then later still, as before, "There's blood on the notes! I won't touch them!"
Hermia went home that night in a maze of perplexity and wonder. She felt as if she were standing on the verge of some dark mystery which might or might not be presently illumined for her by some unexpected. flash. She knew not what to think, what to do. What, indeed, could she do? She told herself nothing.
Next day Mrs. Varrel was perceptibly weaker, and although her mind wandered at times, her voice was so faint that it was only now and then it rose above a whisper. One connected sentence and no more, but one full of significance, reached the ears of the wondering girl. "Thirty--forty--fifty bright new sovereigns. Not one of them will I touch till you have told me where you got them from--not one!"
Did she fancy she was addressing her son? If not, whom?
It was an hour or two later. Mrs. Varrel had been asleep. Suddenly she awoke, and sat up in bed without help, a thing she had not been able to do for several weeks. The clear light of sanity had come back to her eyes. Laying a hand on Hermia's wrist, she said in a quavering voice. "He won't come now. I feel it--I know it. Before it is too late--and very soon it will be--I have something to give into your charge, Miss Hermy--something which I want you to promise to send to my boy after I'm gone, with just a line to say how his mother longed to see him before she died, but that she loved him to the last in spite of all." Then, after glancing round, although there was no one but themselves in the room, she drew Hermia closer to her and whispered, "It's money--money, my dear Miss Hermy, that I want to give into your charge."
"Whatever I can do in the way of helping you to carry out your wishes, Mrs. Varrel, you may rely upon my doing," replied the girl, in her most earnest tones.
Thereupon, by the widow's direction, she searched for and found two small packets which had been hidden away between the mattress and the bed. One of them was a stout envelope sealed with red wax, containing some soft substance, the nature of which Hermia was at a loss to make out. The other was a small canvas bag full of money. Then, still by the dying woman's request, she procured paper, and string and made the two up into one parcel, which she addressed to Richard Varrel, at the same place to which the letter had been addressed.
"You will send it to him by post, dear Miss Hermy, after I'm gone, won't you, with just a line, as you promised?" gasped Mrs. Varrel.
"But seeing that your son has failed to respond to the note I wrote him," replied Hermia, "is it not possible that he may have gone away without informing you; and should that be the case what will become of the money?"
"I never thought of that," gasped Mrs. Varrel, with a sudden scared look. "And yet he must have the money--he must! Tell me--tell me, Miss Hermy, what is to be done?"
For a few moments Hermia did not answer--she could not. Her nerves had just undergone a shock which had left her as white and trembling as if she had seen a ghost. Drawing a deep breath, and speaking as steadily as she could force herself to do, she presently said:
"I will myself take the parcel to London, and if it be anyhow possible, I will find your son and deliver it into his hands and into those of no one else."
The dying woman thanked her and blessed her. It was evident that a great weight had been lifted off her mind.
Next day when Hermia went to see her she was unconscious, and a few hours later she breathed her last.