“Then your family have actually no idea that you are alive?”
“Not the slightest. They advertised their undying grief at my loss, and boomed that shipwreck all it was worth, for it cleared off a scandal in the most satisfactory way. The surprise wedding was buried in oblivion, and when a whisper of the truth got around, it was promptly silenced. Naturally, you couldn’t expect them allude to it on the tablet at Vindobona, though all of the other remarks proper to the occasion are there.”
“And no one in America ever penetrated the secret?”
“Just one man, and I was in deadly fear when I found it out. It was our mutual friend Hicks. He got it in his head that I was a Hamburg shipping clerk that the police were watching out for, who had forged his employer’s name and eloped with his daughter, and he set to work to trace my movements right back to my starting-point. Pretty soon he found he was on the wrong track, and then a chance word from a friend in Vindobona sent him flying along. The scandal, the rumoured marriage, the escaped Prince—there it all was, and if a mysterious hint in his paper hadn’t suddenly shown me what he was aiming at, so that I took Konstantia along, and we just threw ourselves on his mercy, he would have made his own fortune and the ‘Crier’s’ by revealing all of the story. He took pity upon us and kept his mouth shut, and he and I have been friends ever since. I have appointed him Félicia’s trustee in case of my death.”
“And you don’t intend to be reconciled to your family?”
“Why should I? They are all thoroughly happy, believing me dead, and enjoying my property. If my son had lived—well, I don’t know, but I guess I would have laid things before him when he came of age, and given him his choice. Florian left only a daughter behind him, and Ramon has three, and no sons. There seems a fate against us Albrets. If he had concluded to claim such rights as will be mine on Ramon’s death, I daresay we could have fixed it. With the pile I can show, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in having them recognise my marriage. The Emperor could do it, with Ramon’s consent, and if I greased the wheels a bit, Félicia would pretty soon be a Princess of Arragon.”
Maimie drew in her breath sharply. Usk spoke with some hesitation.
“Please don’t think me officious, sir—it’s quite against myself, you know—but do you think it is fair to keep her in ignorance—the Princess, I mean?”
“Miss Félicia Steinherz, you mean,” corrected Félicia’s father. “I think it so far fair that if the Emperor, and my brother Ramon, and all of my family, were to kneel to me to-morrow, and entreat me to come along back, I would refuse, and forbid them to mention the subject to her.”
“Then you feel that your experiment was a success?”
“I don’t pretend that I never felt the difference between the gayest and most polite society in Europe and that of a one-horse American coast-town, and the smart people in New York who would have liked to welcome me with open arms as a multi-millionaire haven’t compensated me much. But I made a determined break out of that elegant prison of mine, just to lead my own life,—a better life, I may fairly say, than that old one,—and if it was to do, I would do it again. A succession of such marriages as mine might yet save the great houses with which I have the honour to be connected; but they won’t see it so. I am glad to have cut myself off from them.”
“But should not Miss Steinherz know the truth?”
“No, sir, she should not.” The words came crisply. “If I told Félicia in the morning all of what I have told you, by the evening, prompted by that little firebrand Maimie, she would have cabled to Vindobona, ‘What price full recognition?’ I did my best to make her as democratic as we thought ourselves, sent her to the most typical American school and college I could find, and she comes back with the most consuming ambition for social distinction that I ever saw in a woman. It comes partly from the way girls are brought up in the States—but if that was all, it might expend itself in trampling under foot every male creature that comes near her. It is mostly the Hohenstaufen blood coming out. She would a million times rather be a poor relation in Ramon’s priest-ridden household than an American heiress of no particular birth—or so she thinks now. With so many needy archdukes to be provided for, it would be easy enough to fix her up with a husband, and she would be plunged back in the life from which I broke away.”
“But if she preferred it?”
“I don’t take any stock in her preferences. When I concluded to Americanise my family, Lord Usk, I guess I began a generation too late. I should have taken myself in hand first, for I have never acquired that subservience to my womenfolk which the true American glories in. The neighbours set my wife down as a domestic martyr, I believe; and I am free to confess that if she had thought less of the honour I had done her, we might both of us have been happier. But Félicia has grown up in full knowledge of her rights as an American woman, and a pretty strong determination to see that she gets them; and I will acknowledge to you that when we fall out the forces on either side are more evenly balanced than I care about. I give my orders and stick to them, and gain the victory that way; but the peace-offerings afterwards come expensive. Can you wonder that I have no particular use for a storm over this?”
“But supposing that she should ever find out——?”
“How’d she do it? But I have watched out for that. When she marries, her fortune will remain in the hands of trustees, though settled strictly on herself. If any other person, either her husband or any member of my family, claims to get control of the money by virtue of any family or state law, I have fixed it that all but the merest pittance will go to the Mayor of New York for the time being in trust for the beautifying of the city. I guess Tammany won’t have such a chance go by, and my noble relations must just climb down.”
“I think you are very wise,” said Usk slowly.
“But that’s only in case she marries a foreigner. What I should fairly admire would be to have her marry an Englishman. I thought of an American first; but where would I find one that wouldn’t lie down and let Félicia walk over him if there were ructions? Maybe you see now why I have encouraged you to visit here?”
“Because you think I could be trusted to keep Miss Steinherz in order?”
“Now don’t get mad. Your feelings were not just exactly a secret, you know, from the first day you came. The actual fact is that Hicks, knowing my wishes, brought you along that you might fall in love with Félicia, and you did, right away.”
“Perhaps Miss Steinherz knows your wishes too?”
“It is my mature opinion, sir, that she does not. If she did, I incline to think they would not stand much chance of fulfilment. But you are on a different platform, and I am talking with you as a business man. I would like to marry my daughter to an Englishman of sufficiently high position to make my family think twice before they meddled with him. You seem to me to fill the bill pretty well. So far as I understand, you are a young man needing money and some one to shove you along, and in marrying Félicia you would get both. I guess that tremendous ambition of hers would justify its existence then—she would see you Premier or die. Think it over.”
“What is there to think about?” demanded Usk hotly. “It’s not as if you had told me anything that could change my feelings. Félicia is Félicia, and I can’t say more than that. I should be proud and thankful to marry her this moment if she would have me. But supposing the truth ever comes out, how can I face her if she asks me how I dared to keep her in ignorance, when she might have made a far more splendid match?”
“How would it ever come out? You won’t tell her, Hicks won’t tell her, I won’t tell her—and there’s no other person knows the secret. It would need a series of most improbable coincidences to bring it to light, any way. As things are now, you are a most suitable match for her—rank on your side, the dollars on hers. Of course, if you are afraid to go ahead, just because the unlikely will maybe happen, I can’t help it.”
“I only want to act fairly by her. If I felt she could justly reproach me——”
“If she does, just go down town for an hour or so, and bring her along a bracelet when you come back,” was the unsympathetic reply. “Or it might even run to a necklace, but you would better reserve that for a pretty large emergency. Well, go home and think it over.”
“I don’t want to think it over. If you will only give your consent on condition that I keep silence, what can I do?”
“I don’t see but you’ll have to give in,” smiled Mr Steinherz, “being the man you are, and in your present state of high emotion.”
“Unless you meant me to consult my father——?”
“Not at all. I have the highest respect for your parents, but I understand they both look at everything from a lofty moral standpoint. They would think it my duty to do about forty million things that I don’t incline to do, and that would tire me. No, my first reason for telling you all of this was that it seemed playing it pretty low down to put you in a position in which some extraordinary chance might spring the family history on you without warning. And, of course, you might object to mix the Plantagenet blood you Mortimers are all so proud of with that of Albret and Hohenstaufen. You feel yourselves on a level with the royal houses of Europe, I believe—even leaving out of account the Continental adventures of your father and uncle, and the new lustre they have shed upon your name?”
“May I ask your other reasons?” asked Usk, his blood tingling at the tone of genial sarcasm. It was clear that Mr Steinherz did not share Mr Hicks’s enthusiasm over Count Mortimer’s marriage.
“There’s only one, but I won’t tell you that right now. You see this envelope? I will seal it and direct it to you, and you can open it this day six months, or at my death. The enclosure will explain itself.”
Usk put the envelope into his pocket, struck by the change in his host’s manner, but the momentary gloom passed quickly.
“Think things over to-night, as I said. We will meet at the club to-morrow at eleven, and you can tell me what you have concluded to do. I have been frank with you, and I look to you to be frank with me. And I’ll make just this one exception to your vow of silence. You may tell all of the circumstances to your uncle, Count Mortimer, if he should be in Europe any time. Don’t trust them to paper. He is a man of the world, and will fix you up with the best advice. I say this because Hicks asked me some time back to nominate him as a second trustee, if he would consent to act. And one thing yet. If by any grievous necessity you are forced to have the secret become public property, face it out boldly. You would rather marry the Yankee shipbuilder’s daughter than the morganatic daughter of a Prince of Arragon, wouldn’t you? So I thought. Well, remember that my marriage was not morganatic. I made it just as legal and binding every way as I could, and there is to be no half-recognition. If Félicia is not a Princess of Arragon, she is Miss Steinherz of Rhode Island. I leave her mother’s name in your care. All of the proofs that you’ll need are in Hicks’s hands—papers, portraits, little things that belonged to my mother, the list of witnesses of the Vindobona marriage, my own sworn and attested statement of the facts—Hicks has everything in charge.”
“What has Mr Hicks got in charge?” asked a voice gaily as Mr Steinherz opened the door leading into the sitting-room. Maimie stood at the side-table, pouring out a glass of iced water from the jug which was placed there in compliment to American tastes. Anxious to hear as much as she could, she had found it quite impossible to escape when the voices approached the door, and had barely succeeded in reaching the table.
“What are you doing here this time of night?” asked Mr Steinherz.
“Why, I have been sitting up,” said Maimie glibly, “and I guess my book wasn’t soothing enough. I don’t feel the least bit like going to sleep, any way, and the water in my room is just torrid, so I remembered this pitcher here, and came to get some.”
She faced her guardian boldly, with bright eyes and flushed face. “I just hope he won’t have me produce the book that proved so interesting,” she thought, and then became aware that the glass in her hand was shaking visibly, for the long crouching in a cramped position had left her deadly cold. “Like must cure like!” she said to herself, and drank off the water with a smile to Mr Steinherz. “I’d like to have you tell Félicia that she mustn’t pass along her nerve-attacks to me,” she added aloud. “What with her headache and that book, I’m so nervous I could dance.”
“Unless you have a particular wish for Lord Usk as a partner, I would advise you to go right to your own room, and do it there,” said Mr Steinherz, and Maimie was thankful to escape. Passing Félicia’s door, she caught the monotonous tones of the weary maid, who was reading her mistress to sleep, and heard also a pettish voice say, “What nonsense you make of it, Pringle! I believe you are going right asleep. I had just lost myself, and now you have waked me up again.”
“Maybe I ought to go and massage her head,” said Maimie thoughtfully to herself, “but I guess I’ll have Pringle go on suffering this once. I want to think. If Félicia only knew! But if I told her now, the same house wouldn’t hold her and her father. And I can’t tell Lord Usk about it, because he knows already, nor talk about it with Pappa Steinherz, because he would know I’d been listening, and it’s no use thinking of making it public, because he would be fit to deny all of the story, and I suppose it couldn’t be proved without him. When I concluded to find out why he was so set on marrying Félicia off to this lord, I didn’t ever expect this. It’s tremendous. For—the—land’s—sake!” she spoke slowly and emphatically, “what a boom I could work up if we were back in New York! But here I don’t see I can do anything with it any way. I guess I’ll just have to save it up in case Prince Malasorte should show his face again. I might fix things then so’s it would fall to him to charge it on Mr Steinherz. But what am I to say about my listening? I’m not ashamed of it a cent—though I did feel awfully mean when he talked about his love-affairs—but some folks would think it cast a doubt on my evidence. What I want is some queer fact that would be likely to set my wits to work until I puzzled out the thing for myself. But suppose there isn’t anything really. Suppose Mr Steinherz dreamed all of the story—suppose he has lost his mind! Oh, I can’t endure this! There must be something right away back that I could remember, to give me the clue I want. St Mary Windicotes! Where have I ever heard that name before?”
She sat for a while pondering the question, then sprang up, and throwing open a huge trunk in a corner, plunged her arm to the very bottom, and brought out a small old-fashioned Prayer-book. She turned to the fly-leaf. On it were written the words, “Julia Slazenger, from her sincere friend Marian Cotton. St Mary Windicotes Vicarage, May 18th, 18—.”
“I knew it!” she cried, “and Aunt Connie used to tell Fay and me all about it evenings when we were babies. We thought it must be a mean sort of a place, but she seemed real fond of it, and I would know it anywhere. I’ll go right there, and look up that register for myself. Charing Cross, Mr Steinherz said—that’s somewhere down town, I know—and Bradcross is a suburb, so I guess it can’t be far away. I’ll take that message about Félicia’s shoes to the store myself, instead of having Pringle go, and then I’ll go way down there without any other person’s knowing. Iwillfind out whether it’s a dream or not.”
“Oh, the dear cunning things! They’re just too sweet for words!”
Maimie was standing before the gate of St Mary Windicotes churchyard, contemplating, with a rapt expression of ecstasy, the two huge laurel-wreathed skulls, carved in stone, now hideously blackened with time, which crowned the high gate-posts. The clerk’s wife, unaware that in seeing these skulls the visitor was fulfilling one of her dearest and creepiest early hopes, felt that the grisly objects were not being treated with proper respect.
“They ain’t no figures of fun, miss. It’s what we all ’ave to come to,” she observed reprovingly. “Not but what old Mr Cowell opposite did say, when there was a talk of takin’ of ’em down and puttin’ up common stone balls like in their place, ‘Never a foot do I set within the church-door again if them death’s-’eads is took down,’ says he. ‘I’ve see ’em all my life as boy and man, and the church wouldn’t be the church without ’em.’ But there’s no call for strangers to be a-lovin’ of ’em, but only to remember their latter end, as may be sooner than they think.”
They were now walking up the path, itself flagged with gravestones, which led to the church-door, and Maimie noticed with something of a shudder the embattled rows of monuments on either hand, of all sizes and shapes and all manner of deviation from the perpendicular, and the ranges of displaced stones which lined the churchyard walls. For the moment she felt that she hated the place. How could people in their senses have had a wedding there? It was bound to turn out badly.
“And in that very pew there, as is now cleared away”—the clerk’s wife was concluding with much impressiveness a speech containing valuable historical information—“my mother see with her own eyes the great Dook of Wellington sit hevery Trinity Monday, for to ’ear the appointed sermon.”
This information was generally received with bated breath by visitors to the church, and the good woman was conscious of very natural disgust when Maimie responded to it merely with a casual “Is that so, really?” They had paused in the porch while the guide pointed out the modern representative of the fateful pew, but now she led the way in with a jangle of keys and a contemptuous sniff. Maimie devoured the scene with eager eyes. The fine dark oak carving in the chancel, the small oval window representing the Nativity, and the large window above it, decorated in stripes of crude colour—she knew them all, but there was something wanting.
“There ought to be pictures of Moses and Aaron there!” she cried, pointing to the chancel, “and right high up on that wall a big shadowy picture of some old king or queen, in a great gold frame.”
“Well, now, to think of you knowin’ that!” the clerk’s wife was somewhat mollified; “and you must ’a been rare and small when you left the parish, miss, for me not to remember you.”
“I’ve never been here in my life before, but I heard all about the church in America,” said Maimie breathlessly. “What’s come to the pictures?”
“Why, Moses and Aaron is there still, miss, hid out of sight behind that there bed-furniture, as I calls it—and as like as two peas to my aunt’s best bed, as lived out Earlham way,” pointing to an elaborate curtain behind the communion-table. “That’s the new Vicar’s doin’”—Maimie felt her heart sink—“and her Majesty Queen Hann and the Royal Harms is both took down and made away with—despisin’ of dignities, as we’re told shall be.”
“But the registers are here yet, I suppose? and I can see about this marriage, any way?” asked Maimie anxiously, for the clerk was coming up the church, unorthodox corduroys marring the effect of his professional black coat. She had discovered from a board over his door that he was an undertaker in a small way on week-days, and it had been necessary to send a boy to summon him, while his wife led the way to the church.
“Oh yes, miss. No one can’t do nothing to them. Here’s Clegg just a-comin’. You step this way,” and Maimie was ushered into the vestry, a small room panelled throughout in dark oak. Light was admitted by two windows close under the ceiling, and the decorations were confined to a table of the Degrees of Affinity, and another, quite as long and a good deal more complicated, of burial fees. Presently the clerk arrived, and opened a huge safe built in the thickness of the wall and masked by the wainscoting.
“What might be the year of the marriage you was wishin’ to find, miss?” he asked, and Maimie noticed that the woman looked suspiciously at her when she answered. She had determined that she would give no clue to her identity, in case some evil chance should lead Mr Steinherz to revisit the church, but she foresaw that it might be difficult to maintain this reticence.
“And ’ave you any idea what part of the year would be likely, miss?” asked the clerk again, selecting a volume and laying it upon the table.
“May, somewhere near the 18th,” was the reply, greeted with a gasp by the clerk’s wife.
“And the names, miss? There was a good few weddin’s just about that time.”
“Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland.” Maimie’s voice was shaking a little, but her excitement was nothing to that of the clerk’s wife.
“Now you just tell me who you are,” she said resolutely, interposing her substantial person between Maimie and the register. “You ain’t neither of them two foreign young ladies, that I’m certain, and you won’t tell me as you’re Mrs Bertram’s daughter—Miss Garland as was? What have you got to do with it?”
“My mother was at the wedding, and signed the register,” Maimie admitted.
“Then you ain’t got nothink to do with Mr Bertram’s family?—though why they should think to interfere at this time of day beats me.”
“’Ere it is, miss,” said the clerk. “Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland, by the Vicar, May 19th. Do you wish a copy?”
Moving aside unwillingly, the woman allowed Maimie to approach the table. There was no question of a dream or hallucination here, at any rate. There was the entry, and as Maimie turned over the pages, there also was the slight discoloration of the inside of the cover which showed where a slip of paper had been pasted upon it. She ran her finger along the line, and resisted an eager desire to try and tear the slip off. When the clerk asked again whether she would like a certified copy of the entry, she was obliged to pause before answering. Without the addition which that piece of paper held concealed, the certificate was of comparatively little value; and yet, supposing that by some accident or otherwise the church should be destroyed and the register with it, might not the copy just suffice to establish the marriage? Knowing nothing of Somerset House and its requirements, Maimie saw herself thedea ex machinâin the restoration of Mr Steinherz to his original position, and replied unhesitatingly that she would have a copy. While the clerk was making it out, she stood looking with a vague awe at the pile of registers remaining in the safe. Was there still among those dusty volumes with their ragged edges the one which, as Mrs Steinherz had told with bated breath, contained records of many burials distinguished by the letters “Pl.,” denoting a victim of the Great Plague? But the clerk’s wife was not content to waste such an opportunity, and interrupted her meditations.
“And so your ma—Miss Slazenger as she were then—signed there, did she, miss?” indicating the rudely formed letters in which a hand accustomed only to the German character had inscribed an unfamiliar name. “Mrs Cotton she took to her wonderful, just the same as to Miss Garland. It do seem a pity as you shouldn’t have come before she left the parish, after all the many times she have said to me, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘I would give a deal to know what become of Mr and Mrs Bertram after all, that I would.’”
“Then Mrs Cotton is not dead?” asked Maimie eagerly.
“Why, whatever give you that hidea, miss? The Vicar ’ad a stroke and give up the parish, and they lives down at Whitcliffe now. This last summer as ever was, they arsk Clegg and me down for the day, and took us for a ride in a carriage, and give us tea in the garden, just like ladies and gentlemen—though if you arsk me, I say give me an ’ouse, or even a harbour, the grass bein’ damp and spiders about.”
“Could you give me Mrs Cotton’s direction?”
“To be sure I could, miss—Windicotes, Cavendish Road, Whitcliffe-on-Sea. But, miss, if you’re lookin’ for witnesses to swear to that there weddin’, don’t you forget that me and Clegg was there just as much as Mrs Cotton and the Vicar, him givin’ the bride away and me ready with a bottle of salts in case of the ladies’ bein’ overcome. Why, Mrs Cotton she says to me herself that morning, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘don’t you let your Tommy go to school to-day, and I’ll make it up to him’; and if she didn’t set him to play marbles just outside the churchyard gate, sayin’ that if he saw a cab drive up, or so much as any strangers comin’ along, he was to run in and whisper to her at once, ‘and then, Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘you and me will fasten the church-door and pile the forms against it until Mr Cotton have finished the service, sooner nor let those dear young people be separated before they’re properly married, for it’s in my mind as Mr Bertram’s cruel relations will try to part ’em at the last.’ And I was that worked up with the thought of Miss Garland bein’ dragged off shriekin’ to one of them convents, and that nice young gentleman her ’usband—for a fine military-lookin’ gentleman he was, though a trifle ’aughty in speakin’—throwed into chains and a dungeon, that I ’id my broom be’ind the church-door, and I was ready to fight for ’em, I was. Not that anythink come of it, after all.” Mrs Clegg spoke with evident disappointment.
“I’ll remember,” said Maimie. “But don’t tell any one that I’ve been here, any way.” She folded up the certificate and placed it in her pocket-book, gave the clerk his fee, and prepared to go. “The cruel relations may show up yet, you know.”
“So they may, miss, but you may depend upon me and Clegg.” The clerk’s wife was now escorting her out of the church. “I see you know all about that bit of paper at the end of the book there, which I understand there’s property dependin’ on it. Now you’ll maybe ’ardly believe it, miss, but neither me nor Clegg have ever mentioned that slip to a livin’ soul, least of all to the new Vicar, as ain’t ashamed to walk about the parish in petticoats, and wearin’ a Roman mitre on his ’ead.”
The description was startling, but Maimie recognised the object of it when she was walking past the vicarage, having rid herself of Mrs Clegg by means of a gratuity. The green door in the high wall opened, and a tall thin man came out, wearing a cassock and a curious head-dress that seemed a cross between a Tam-o’-Shanter and a mortar-board. A youthful voice from the other side of the narrow street inquired shrilly, “Wheredidyou get that ’at?” and a small boy scampered away as fast as his legs would carry him, while the new Vicar, with the air of a martyr, walked rapidly towards the church. As for Maimie, she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to restrain a peal of hysterical laughter, and turned her steps hastily towards the station. Her experiences of the morning seemed altogether too absurd and incongruous for real life, and in spite of the strained excitement with which she had set forth on her quest, the clergyman’s martyrlike aspect put the finishing touch to her helpless mirth. When she was safely in the train, and had allowed herself the luxury of a long laugh over this anti-climax to her adventure, she became suddenly serious, however.
“Now let me see,” she said severely to herself; “what have I gained, any way? Well, I know that Mr Steinherz and Aunt Connie were married at that church, and that there’s a slip of paper whichmaycover their secret. And I’ve found three witnesses certainly—four if the old Vicar’s mind isn’t affected by his stroke—who can testify to the marriage. I guess it’s just as well that the gentleman in the ‘Roman mitre’ wasn’t the Vicar when Pappa Steinherz went to enlist his sympathies. I don’t believe he has any; he might even have assisted to drag poor Aunt Connie shrieking to a convent. Well, but after all, it’s quite possible yet for Mr Steinherz to have made out that he was Prince Joseph of Arragon when he isn’t, or even to have invented the tale just to impress Lord Usk. I don’t think so, but I’m set on looking things in the face. Any way, I guess I can’t do anything towards clearing up the affair without Mr Steinherz’s help, or else the use of those relics that Mr Hicks has in charge. How am I to fix things? I have no pull on Pappa Steinherz, and if I make him mad he’ll just take Fay right away from me, and break my heart. I’ll have to wait. And yet something ought to be done right now, or some of those old folks that can swear to the marriage will be dying off. I wonder if I couldn’t take their evidence. No, I’m pretty certain it would need to be sworn to before a judge, and I daren’t have any other person come into the secret, even if I knew a judge to speak to. Well, I guess I must sit tight, and that’s all just now.”
Nevertheless, when she left the train at Charing Cross, and took a hansom mechanically to drive to the hotel, her brain busied itself with a fresh problem, which was yet an old one, the question of preventing an engagement between Usk and Félicia. Such an engagement would put an end once for all to her ambitious schemes for Félicia’s future, which seemed perfectly feasible in the light of the revelations of the night before. Not that either Maimie or Félicia herself would have cared much for the engagement, had there been a prospect of a more brilliant alliance, but it would give Mr Steinherz a vantage-ground of which he would make full use. Once Félicia was engaged, he would see that the engagement was fulfilled. He would hurry on the marriage, and never relax his vigilance until his daughter had become Viscountess Usk, and Félicia, in her present mood, would offer no opposition. The prospect of escaping from his tutelage, and feeling that she was her own mistress (Usk did not count), was far more attractive to her than Maimie’s lofty hopes. It seemed that there was no help for it, and Maimie decided reluctantly to bow to circumstances, and make herself so agreeable to Usk that he could not but approve of her friendship with Félicia. As she came to this decision, she was startled by meeting Usk and Mr Steinherz face to face. Her driver was trying to cross Oxford Street in the direction of Bloomsbury, but there was a block in the traffic, and an inexorable policeman detained the hansom close to one of those islands of refuge on which strange groups assemble by force of circumstances. Here stood Mr Steinherz and Usk, unable to penetrate the solid phalanx of vehicles which confronted them, and waiting with what patience they might while the policeman marshalled a train of old ladies and country cousins in readiness for a break in the line. They were the last people Maimie would have chosen to meet at such a moment, when that dreadful certificate seemed to be burning in her pocket.
“You are out pretty early, Maimie,” said Mr Steinherz.
“I——I came out on an errand for Félicia, way down in the City,” stammered Maimie, remembering for the first time that the errand had never been performed.
“You should have mailed the order. I don’t choose to have you running around for Félicia. You look just tired out.”
“I wish you had been with us just now, Miss Logan,” said Usk, changing the subject hastily, either on account of Maimie’s evident embarrassment or because he could not bear to hear Félicia blamed. “We came across the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim and an aide-de-camp poking about Trafalgar Square in mufti. Wasn’t it a good thing I had studied him so long yesterday, so that I could point him out to Mr Steinherz? But I did wish you and Miss Steinherz were there.”
Usk spoke fast and somewhat nervously. Maimie read in his face that the night had made no change in his feelings. He was prepared to marry Félicia and keep her in ignorance of her father’s descent, and Mr Steinherz was well pleased with his decision. Maimie felt that she hated them both.
“By the way,” said Mr Steinherz, “I guess I am in Félicia’s black books yet?” Maimie nodded, for she had left Félicia comfortably established in her room, with no intention of showing herself for the present. “Well, we lunch Lord Usk to-day, and he would be real sorry to miss her. Do you happen to know anything she wants right now?”
“Why, I guess one of those gold girdles with turquoise bosses would fix up her new Paris tea-gown to perfection,” said Maimie slowly, adding vengefully to herself, as she saw Usk redden, “I won’t let you down easy this time, Pappa Steinherz—talking that way about Fay before her best young man!”
“Then maybe you’ll intimate that I’m bringing along something of the sort when you get back,” said Mr Steinherz.
“Why, certainly. I guess you’ll find Regent Street the best place,” cried Maimie, as the cab moved on. It was some satisfaction to her to see the disappointment on Usk’s face. “He’s death on getting it over,” she said to herself; “and now Mr Steinherz will have him trail half-way round London before coming in.”
But her satisfaction was dashed with dismay when she remembered again the pair of dainty high-heeled slippers still reposing in her satchel. How could she account to Félicia for the morning which was to have been devoted to changing them? If she refused to give an explanation, or offered a lame one, she knew Félicia would never rest until she had solved the mystery. And if she guessed that Maimie did not wish Mr Steinherz to know what she had been doing, she would appeal to him sooner than allow herself to be foiled. There was a relentless malevolence about Félicia on these occasions, when Maimie was trying to deceive her purely for her own good, which Maimie felt deeply.
“I don’t dare go back without changing them,” she sighed to herself, and standing up, began an agitated colloquy with the driver.
“Can you get back to the City from here, hackman, right away?” she asked him. “There’s something I have forgotten.”
The man asked where she wanted to go, and then opined that the shop could easily be reached by way of Holborn. He turned at the first opportunity, and as they approached the corner Maimie caught sight of Mr Steinherz and Usk a second time, looking at some books in a shop-window. They had not gone far towards Regent Street, and Maimie laughed to herself as she thought of Usk’s impatience. When she looked round again, her attention was attracted by a man standing on the pavement at the corner, who was gazing—glaring was the word that occurred to her—across the street at the bookshop opposite. He was elderly and poorly dressed, and evidently a foreigner, with a ragged beard and unkempt hair.
“An Italian,” said Maimie to herself. “How he looks! like a lion stalking his prey. What can he be staring at, any way?”
As the thought crossed her mind, the man dashed suddenly into the street in front of the hansom, and seeming not to hear the lively remonstrances of the driver, who was obliged to pull up pointblank, threaded his way through the traffic to the opposite corner. Maimie, watching him carelessly through the side-window, saw him reach the pavement. What followed was done all in a moment. He took one step forward, there was the flash of something long and shining which fell and rose and fell again, and Mr Steinherz sank heavily against Usk. That was all Maimie saw, for her wild scream sent the horse, already startled by the sudden check, tearing down Holborn, and it seemed to her an eternity before the driver succeeded in stopping it, and turning back again at her frenzied entreaty. The irate policemen whose orders they had disregarded in their wild career, and the other drivers whose destruction they had sought to compass, took no notice of them as they returned; every one was running or looking in one direction. Even at that moment Maimie was conscious of a feeling of wonder as the crowd gathered. People came hurrying out of shops, pouring down side streets, rushing up from behind, and very soon the hansom could go no farther. Maimie waited in agony while the driver tried to force his horse through the crowd, and found herself the recipient of the confidence bestowed on a friend by a boy with a baker’s basket.
“I see ’im come runnin’ like mad, brandishin’ ’is drippin’ knife—as good as a theaytre. ’E run strite into the middle of the street, all among the ’orses, rarght in front of the dray. Blowed if ’e didn’t ’it out at the ’orses with the knife as ’e went down. ’Ewasgyme!”
“Say, who is it? what has happened?” gasped Maimie to a policeman, who found even his authority insufficient to clear a passage for him into the midst of the crowd, and was forced to content himself with ordering the people on its outskirts to move on. He answered civilly, and with obvious self-importance.
“An Eye-talian, miss, supposed to be a lunatic, that stabbed an American gentleman, and then threw himself under the ’orses’ feet.”
“But Mr Steinherz—the gentleman who was stabbed?” she cried. “I saw it all. What about him? He is my guardian.”
“You saw it, miss? Then I must trouble you for your name and address. You’ll be wanted at the inquest. They’re takin’ him to the ’orspital.”
“Oh, where is it? You’ll show me, officer, won’t you? But I guess I ought to go and fetch his daughter. You’ll let the hack through?”
“It’s no good, miss. I doubt myself if he’ll live to reach the gate. You had better send the cab away, and I’ll take you to the ’orspital.”
“Tell me about it, any way. What did you see?” Maimie asked feverishly, as the policeman pushed a way for her through the crowd, after she had dismissed the cab.
“All I saw as I come along Oxford Street was ten or twelve people round an old party as I thought was preachin’ on the pavement. I went to move ’em on, and a lady bursts out and ketches ’old of me that tight I couldn’t move. ‘Oh, policeman, policeman!’ she says; ‘murder! save him! fetch a doctor, quick!’ and ’olds me tight all the time, while the old chap goes on jawin’ to the crowd about a righteous vengeance and the task of his ’ole life, and his father bein’ shot and his mother turned out of doors in a winter’s night, and defyin’ anybody to arrest him, though he’d thrown down his knife. And then, all of a sudden, while I was strugglin’ to get free from the lady, he give a great yell and cried out, ‘It’s the wrong man—not the Archduke!’ and caught up a long knife with blood drippin’ from it off of the pavement, and went for the people. They made room for him pretty quick, I can tell you, and he rushed across into ’Olborn, and me after him. You’d have said he was mad if you’d seen him charge the traffic just like an army, as I did, and he’d near got through when he was knocked down by a dray. And there’s no need to takehimto ’orspital. And what was it you saw, miss?”
“I just saw him standing on the side-walk and watching, and then he ran across and pulled out something, and struck—and struck—and then——” Maimie’s voice failed her.
“Case of mistaken hidentity,” remarked the policeman complacently, “but it’s not often those foreigners make mistakes. Now it’s a curious thing——”
But Maimie was not destined to receive further enlightenment from his stores of wisdom, for they had arrived at the hospital gate by this time, and Usk was coming out of it, looking like a man who was going to be hanged.
“He’s gone!” he said heavily, in answer to Maimie’s gasp of inquiry—“died just as they carried him in. But you’re here—and you know all about it—you’ll be able to tell Félicia. I didn’t know how to break it to her. I was trying to think what I should say if I had to tell Phil that our father was dead. But you’re a woman, you know how to put things, you can soften it to her——”
“Oh, I can’t! I daren’t!” cried Maimie, shrinking back. Then she remembered in a flash that if she threw the burden of the disclosure upon Usk, it would be a tacit recognition of his position with regard to Félicia. No, he was not engaged to her yet, and if Maimie could help it, the engagement should not take place.
“I guess I’ll have to do it,” she said resolutely.
“I’ll take you back to the hotel,” said Usk. “The policeman will call a hansom, for I’m sure you can’t walk.”
“Tell me just what happened. Who was the man?” asked Maimie breathlessly, when they were in the cab.
“I can’t tell you. It was all so awfully sudden. We were looking in at a shop-window, when suddenly some one shouted out something in Italian behind us—about his father and mother, I think—and I heard two blows struck, and Mr Steinherz gave a kind of gasp, and fell against me. I tried to lift him up and stop the bleeding, and people were standing round staring, and the man who had done it kept talking, talking, in English. But when I got Mr Steinherz’s head on my shoulder, so that his face showed, the man gave a yell and dashed away. They say there’s no doubt he mistook him for the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, and it’s curious that last night I noticed there was a distinct likeness between them from behind, but not the very least in front.”
“I would just love to tell you that I know exactly as much as you do!” thought Maimie enviously. Aloud she merely said, “And Mr Steinherz?”
“A doctor came up, and said he was stabbed in the lungs, and couldn’t possibly live. He tried to speak, though the doctor told him not, but he could only get out a few disjointed words. And just as they got him into the receiving-room he died.”
They had reached the hotel now, and Usk waited in the sitting-room while Maimie went to look for Félicia. It was more than an hour before she came back, and in the interval Usk was a prey to all kinds of interruptions. In order to spare the girls, he made all the arrangements he could without direct authority from them; other matters he put aside resolutely, refusing to allow Miss Steinherz to be troubled at present. When Maimie returned she looked so old and harassed that he was shocked.
“How is she?” he asked anxiously.
“Quieter now; I’ve given her a sleeping-draught. But it’s been terrible. Her nerves are pretty highly strung, and she screamed fit to make your blood run cold. And I know there are millions of things to do, and I can’t tell the way they fix them over here. Say, Lord Usk, you oughtn’t to be here, any way; people will talk, you know they will. Folks in England are so censorious. Do, please, go right away. It makes me nervous to see you there.”
Usk obeyed, with apparent willingness, for a splendid idea had entered his head. He went straight to the nearest post-office, and telegraphed to the Marchioness of Caerleon at Llandiarmid Castle.
“‘Terrible accident to Mr Steinherz. Daughter quite prostrate. Can you come?’” He read over the message. “That’ll bring her,” he muttered. “And I never knew the people yet that the mater couldn’t comfort when they were in trouble.”
As he put the change into his pocket he felt a paper there. Taking it out, he found it was the envelope Mr Steinherz had given him the night before, to be opened after his death. The time had come already, he realised with awe. Stepping aside, he opened the envelope, and drew out a cutting from a newspaper.
“Great consternation has been caused in august circles in Vindobona by the reported reappearance of the Grey Lady of the Hohenstaufens. The scene of the apparition was the portion of the Imperial Schloss known as the Arragon-Palast, which is occupied by the Prince of Arragon, titular King of Cantabria, and his family, when the Court is at Vindobona, and it is alleged that the ghost-seer, a sentinel on duty, is absolutely convinced of the reality of the sight, which is believed to portend an approaching death in the House of Hohenstaufen. The last recorded appearance of the Grey Lady in this portion of the Schloss took place prior to the death of the late King Paul of Cantabria, which occurred at an advanced age ten years ago. The king was connected with the Hohenstaufens through his mother, who was a Pannonian archduchess.”
“Great consternation has been caused in august circles in Vindobona by the reported reappearance of the Grey Lady of the Hohenstaufens. The scene of the apparition was the portion of the Imperial Schloss known as the Arragon-Palast, which is occupied by the Prince of Arragon, titular King of Cantabria, and his family, when the Court is at Vindobona, and it is alleged that the ghost-seer, a sentinel on duty, is absolutely convinced of the reality of the sight, which is believed to portend an approaching death in the House of Hohenstaufen. The last recorded appearance of the Grey Lady in this portion of the Schloss took place prior to the death of the late King Paul of Cantabria, which occurred at an advanced age ten years ago. The king was connected with the Hohenstaufens through his mother, who was a Pannonian archduchess.”
Soconfident was Usk in his mother’s kindness of heart that when Lord and Lady Caerleon arrived in London late that evening, he was waiting for them at the terminus, eager to conduct them at once to the Hotel Bloomsbury. Having seen the evening papers in the course of their journey, they were acquainted with the details of the tragedy, and did not need to be assured by him of the desolate state of the two girls.
“I knew you would come,” he said.
“How could we do anything else?” asked his mother. “Poor Félicia! one’s heart bleeds for her. Only just engaged, and her joy clouded in this terrible way——!”
“Oh, but—— we aren’t exactly engaged yet,” said Usk uncomfortably. “You see, Mr Steinherz had given his consent all right, but I hadn’t spoken to Félicia, and there has been no opportunity since.”
“No, of course not. But this makes it rather awkward, Usk. It seemed only natural to come and look after the poor girl when I thought she was engaged to you, but now she may consider it a liberty.”
“Not she, mater! She’ll think it just too sweet for words, as she and Miss Logan are always saying. They stand in tremendous awe of you.”
“There, Nadia!” said Lord Caerleon, “that settles it. You have somehow managed to inspire these unknown Americans with awe, and it’s your bounden duty to go and put things right—your duty, mind.”
“I will go and ask if I can do anything for them, certainly, as soon as we get there, but that’s different from having the right to go and mother them, as it were.”
“No; that’s just what they want,” said Usk. “Think of it, mater—two girls alone in a strange country in such terrible circumstances! Of course they want mothering.”
Lady Caerleon never allowed herself to shrink from a duty when it was once set plainly before her, and half an hour later she knocked at the door of the Steinherzes’ sitting-room. Maimie, who was sitting alone, worn out by innumerable harassing interviews with reporters, police inspectors, officials from the Pannonian and United States Embassies, and various tradesmen, thought wearily that here was another caller.
“Come right in,” she answered with resignation, but stood up astonished when she saw that the visitor was a stately and very handsome middle-aged lady. The surprise did not last more than a moment.
“You are the Marchioness of Caerleon,” she said, and again her tone spoke of hopeless resignation. “I sort of felt you would come.”
“My son told me of your sad trouble, and Lord Caerleon and I thought we might perhaps be some help to you,” said Lady Caerleon, almost timidly. She was trying to assure herself that Maimie’s words bespoke nothing but confidence, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion that they covered dislike, even defiance.
“Lord Usk is real considerate, but Miss Steinherz and I have no claim on the kindness of his relations,” said Maimie icily. Lady Caerleon mistook her meaning, and thought she had penetrated the secret of this cool reception.
“I assure you,” she said with a touch ofhauteur, “I know perfectly well how things stand between Miss Steinherz and my son. She need have no fear that Usk will intrude himself and his wishes upon her at such a time. Pray believe that I have merely come to offer you such help as I can.”
“You are real good,” said Maimie, blushing as she realised what her words had implied to Usk’s mother; “but I’m so awfully tired to-night, I just can’t seem to say things right. I don’t know what way they fix anything over here, or what to say to the people that have been coming around all day.”
“My husband will undertake to see any one who comes on business, and he will advise you in any way he can,” said Lady Caerleon, touched by the confession. “I really think you will find it an advantage to have a man to represent you,” she added gently. “People here like it better.”
“And in England it’s just as well to have a lord back of one all the time?” Maimie spoke quite seriously, but it struck her at once that the words sounded like an ill-timed joke.
“I won’t ask to see Miss Steinherz to-night,” said Lady Caerleon, with some coldness; “but if she feels well enough in the morning——”
“If you please, miss,” said Félicia’s maid, entering the room, “Miss Steinherz have woke up all of a tremble, and she says will her ladyship go and see her for a moment, if she would be so kind?”
“I’ll just speak to her,” said Maimie quickly, and she hastened to Félicia’s room. “Fay,” she whispered hurriedly, “you won’t have Lady Caerleon see you to-night, will you? I didn’t want to bring her along till to-morrow, when I’ve got things fixed. I’ve planned it all out for us to go right back home at once, so’s you won’t have to come to any conclusion yet, and then in the spring we’ll cross to Europe just by ourselves and have an elegant time.”
“You make me tired—you and your plans and plots!” cried Félicia vehemently. “I’m so nervous I could fly, and I want to see somebody quiet and restful. That’s what I feel all the time with Usk. He’s not smart, but he’s real good. Just bring his mother right along in.”
Warned by the shrill voice and gleaming eyes, Maimie obeyed without a word, wondering maliciously what Lady Caerleon would think of the unconventional greeting she would probably receive. But Félicia made her way to her visitor’s heart at once. After one look at the calm beautiful face bent over her, she rose impulsively and threw herself into Lady Caerleon’s arms.
“Oh, love me!” she cried. “Pet me, just as if I was a baby again!”
“Oh, my darling!” cried Lady Caerleon, taken by storm. “Are you come to me instead of my Phil? I have lost her, you know; she was married last year, and I have wanted a daughter so much.”
She held the quivering form in her arms, stilled the sobs which broke forth, murmured tender names, until Félicia consented to lie down again, and then sat by her until she fell asleep, Maimie watching in the background, with bitter jealousy gnawing at her heart. She, who had mothered Félicia since she was nine and Félicia six, was nothing to her now that this Englishwoman had come on the scene. Then she remembered certain previous experiences of the kind, and was comforted. Félicia had turned from her before, in transient fits of virtue or of friendship, but she had always come back.
“She is the dearest girl!” Lady Caerleon said to her husband, with tears in her eyes, when she was at length free to seek her own room; “very unconventional—quite a child of nature, but my heart went out to her. It seemed as if she had always felt the want of a mother so terribly, and to-night, of course, worse than ever.”
During the days that followed, not only Félicia, but Maimie, learned to be thankful for the presence and countenance of Usk’s parents. The reporters had been inclined to invent scandalous stories on the strength of the supposed likeness between the murdered American millionaire and the Pannonian Archduke, but when Lord Caerleon, backed by the police and the hospital officials, assured them that the likeness was purely a delusion of the murderer’s, they were forced to restrain their exuberant fancy. As for Usk, he stood uneasily aloof when discussions of this kind were taking place, wondering at the blindness of the experts. With his mind’s eye he saw continually one of the chief treasures of Llandiarmid, a snuff-box presented to his great-grandfather when a young soldier by the aged Emperor Matthias of Pannonia, the great-grandfather alike of the present Emperor and of Mr Steinherz, in recognition of a gallant deed of arms done under his own eye. The monarch’s portrait, set in diamonds, ornamented the lid of the box, and it seemed almost incredible to Usk that his father could look at the face of the murdered man and not recall at once the miniature which was so familiar to him.
In the absence of the clue which Usk possessed, public interest, though keenly excited by the tragedy, failed to seize upon its details with the wolfish eagerness which would have been aroused by any hint of the truth. It was made clear at the inquest that the murderer, who was identified as an Italian violinist named Marco Farinelli, had been known to the police for some time as an associate of foreign Republicans in London. He had lived many years in England, having just escaped the consequences of complicity in a plot against the Pannonian occupation of Venetia. His father, who had helped him to leave the country, and forcibly resisted the Pannonian soldiers sent to arrest him, had been summarily shot, and his mother, who was ill in bed, turned out in a winter night on the roadside, where she died. For nearly forty years Farinelli had cherished the memory of his wrongs, and it was shown that he was greatly excited by the news of the approaching visit to England of the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, who had been in military command of the district in which his parents lived. It was proved that he had tried to form a band of assassins, who were to see that the Archduke did not leave London alive; but his friends had other work on hand, or preferred not to bring themselves into public notice, and he had evidently determined to accomplish his vengeance alone. In the breast-pocket of his coat was found a paper which aroused much curiosity—a kind of itinerary of London, duly mapped out into days. “Wednesday, Trafalgar Square and British Museum; Thursday, Houses of Parliament and Government Offices ...” it ran, but the Scotland Yard officials charged with the protection of the Archduke during his visit were able to explain it. Having learnt, with considerable dismay, that the distinguished visitor proposed to devote his mornings while in London to wandering aboutincognito, they arranged with much care a false time-table, which was allowed to circulate freely in his household. The expected leakage occurred, and the whole arrangement became known in some mysterious way to Farinelli, but while he was keeping his eager watch in the neighbourhood of the Museum, the Archduke was being conducted over the Horse-Guards. The mistake which had occurred was now perfectly clear to the jury, who had heard Usk acknowledge that there was from one point of view a certain likeness between the Archduke and Mr Steinherz, and they returned a verdict of wilful murder against the Italian, adding an expression of their sympathy with the family of the victim. In Farinelli’s case the verdict was one of accidental death, although there was some attempt to bring it in as suicide, and the jury were discharged, and the nine days’ wonder was at an end.
Maimie had found Lord Caerleon a tower of strength while the inquest was going on. He made a point of accompanying her backwards and forwards each day, and sitting beside her in court, and he was so quiet and so impassive that her restless impatience seemed to be calmed perforce. She did not fret over the fact that Lady Caerleon and Félicia were continually together; and she received with outward resignation the news which was awaiting her when the inquest ended, and which she had, indeed, foreseen. It fell to Lady Caerleon to communicate it, which she prepared to do with some anxiety, and Maimie’s lip curled when she realised what was coming. It was quite like Félicia to depute another person to make an announcement that might prove disagreeable.
“Félicia and I have been talking things over,” said Lady Caerleon, “and we think we have arranged a very pleasant plan. But of course we could not decide upon it without you.”
“I guess not, indeed. Félicia and I don’teveract independently of one another,” returned Maimie, with sarcastic emphasis.
Lady Caerleon went on hastily. She thought she understood perfectly well the soreness which filled the heart of the girl who found herself set aside for the lover and his relations, and she was very sorry for Maimie. “It is very touching,” she said, “how stringently Mr Steinherz in his will expressed his desire to be buried in America by the side of his wife. I can quite sympathise with Félicia’s natural desire to take his body home herself, which she tells me you suggested she should do. But she is really not fit for it. I never saw any one so completely a creature of nerves. The least excitement seems to throw her into a fever, and the strain of such a journey at this time of year would be enough to kill her.”
“In other words, Fay don’t choose to risk a voyage in the fall,” said Maimie to herself, even while she was listening with polite interest to Lady Caerleon.
“And so our idea—of course I suggested it—was that Usk should cross to America with—the body, and superintend the funeral, and see that everything was done as you and Félicia would wish, and that you should both come home with us to Llandiarmid for the winter. The quiet country life would be sure to do Félicia good, and it would be the greatest pleasure to my husband and me to have young people about us again. I can’t tell you how I was dreading another winter without my daughter.”
“Lady Caerleon—” Maimie was looking at her with searching eyes—“I’d like to ask you just one question—does this bind Félicia to anything when Lord Usk comes home?”
Lady Caerleon looked surprised and somewhat annoyed. “I see nothing binding in what I have said,” she answered.
“There won’t be any doubt that Lord Usk goes as Mr Steinherz’s friend, not as Félicia’s lover—that his kindness gives him no claim on her? People look at things so differently over here.”
“I should have thought gentlemanly conduct was the same on both sides of the Atlantic. A gentleman does not consider that he has established a claim upon a woman when he does her a service.”
“Now I have made you mad,” said Maimie sorrowfully, “and I’m real grieved. It’s just for Félicia’s sake I’m speaking. I don’t want to see her engage herself right now, when she’s naturally thinking more of her father’s wish, and of all your sweet love and kindness to her, than of her own feelings.”
Lady Caerleon wished in vain that there was some means of knowing whether this girl was laughing at her or not. “You seem to suggest that nothing but pressure from her father would have induced Félicia to accept Usk,” she said. “If you have any reason to believe this, I think it is your duty to tell me.”
“Why, that’s just what I can’t tell you,” said Maimie, with the most engaging frankness. “I don’t see anything of Félicia these days, and I can’t seem to find out what she feels like. Only I had my misgivings before all of this happened, and I don’t want to see her rushed into anything.”
“You may feel quite happy. No one will put the slightest pressure upon Félicia to do anything but please herself,” said Lady Caerleon stiffly. “Usk won’t even try to come to an understanding with her before he sails.”
“And when he comes back, he’ll just begin over again from the beginning?” cried Maimie ecstatically. “Dear Lady Caerleon, you have taken a weight off my mind!”
“What a curious person Miss Logan is!” said Lady Caerleon afterwards to her son. “I can never make her out. She always seems to suspect us in some way.”
Usk’s private opinion was that Maimie suspected the Caerleon family, generally and individually, of anxiety to lay hold upon Félicia’s fortune, but he would not suggest this to his mother, lest in the shock of such an accusation she should insist upon washing her hands of both girls forthwith.
“Oh, I don’t think she likes me much,” he said lightly; “but one can’t wonder at it, when she’s so devoted to Félicia. You won’t let her turn Félicia against me while I am away, will you?”
But Maimie had no thought of doing anything so crude. One of her reasons for wishing to return to America had been the hope of obtaining from Mr Hicks some clue to the nature of the proofs Mr Steinherz had left in his charge; but since she was foiled in this, she had decided to keep her secret to herself for the present. As things were, Félicia’s claim upon her father’s relations would meet only with ridicule if it was brought to their notice. The house of Albret-Arragon would be likely to entertain it only if it offered some advantage, Mr Steinherz had said, and so far there was nothing but money to offer. But time might bring other opportunities, and it was time that Maimie had gained. Still, she did not think it well to let Félicia see that she was tolerably satisfied.
“I wonder just how long you’ll find Llandiarmid endurable!” she said to her. “You’re to have Phil’s room, you know, and sort of take her place.”
“I don’t care,” was the irritating reply. “Lady Caerleon is just sweet. I do love to have her sit by me and talk nicely about poor Pappa. It don’t remind me the least of what he was, but it’s real soothing to hear.”
There was a touch of the old Félicia in this speech, and Maimie saw in a flash why Lady Caerleon’s society had been preferred to her own of late. Félicia felt more at her ease with a stranger, who would naturally credit her with possessing all the feelings suitable to the occasion, than with one who knew as well as Maimie had done the lack of sympathy between her father and herself.
There was now no need to remain longer in London, and after a funeral service at a neighbouring church, which was attended by the American Ambassador, and to which the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim sent a representative, Usk started on his mournful journey. His farewell was clouded by the dismay which seized upon Félicia at the sight of the funeral arrangements. They were so poor, so shabby, she lamented; it would be said all over America that she had economised on her father’s funeral. It was in vain that Lord Caerleon assured her everything had been done without regard to expense; she was plunged in woe for a whole day, recounting to Lady Caerleon at intervals the extraordinary sums which had been spent on costly “caskets” and other accessories at the funerals of different acquaintances, not heeding that her auditor thought the expenditure a wicked waste, and the publication of the cost ostentation of the worst kind.
The next day the two girls travelled to Llandiarmid with Lord and Lady Caerleon. It was a long journey, and the autumn dusk was already gathering when they arrived, but just before the lamps were lighted, Maimie, who was helping the maid to unpack for Félicia, happened to glance out of the window, and laughed gently. Félicia, who was lying exhausted on the couch, recovered sufficiently to come and look out as well, and saw Lord and Lady Caerleon setting out together for a ramble in the twilight. He had already routed out and put on an old Norfolk jacket and tweed cap, and Lady Caerleon’s long skirt was gathered up to a serviceable length. Her hand was tucked into her husband’s arm, and they were stealing out like two children bent on a frolic, talking happily.
“Can you see yourself and Usk going out together that way?” asked Maimie, in a low voice.
“I guess not,” was Félicia’s emphatic answer.
“But why not? It’s just awfully charming. Why, they’re not even stout—Lord Caerleon is too active, and she worries too much over other folks—they’re just nice, solid, comfortable, middle-aged people. Oh, you’ll get like them, Fay. You’re going to be put in training for that now, and don’t you forget it.”
Félicia answered by an apprehensive glance round the room. Lady Philippa Mortimer had not been by any means a luxurious young person, and her favourite decorations appeared to have been hunting trophies. Her room had seemed to her the very acme of comfort, but she had never cared to stay indoors when she could possibly be out, and to the two American girls the place looked woefully bare. But there was a gleam of triumph in Maimie’s eye, and Félicia hid her dismay manfully. Maimie scolded herself for that involuntary glance, and waited.
For the first two or three days all went well. It was natural that Félicia should be considered an invalid after the journey, and she was pursued everywhere by Lady Caerleon or her maid, anxious to establish her on the most comfortable sofa that could be found. There was the Castle to explore, too—a small portion at a time, that she might not be fatigued; and if Lord Caerleon was wounded by her audacious and irreverent comments on the family portraits and other valued treasures, he was too hospitable to betray the fact, realising that she fully believed she was entertaining him. But the fatigue even of a six hours’ railway journey is not expected to last for ever, and presently Lady Caerleon hinted to Maimie that she thought it would be far better for Félicia’s health if she would exert herself a little. What was there she would like to do?
It was a shock to the busy mistress of Llandiarmid to learn that Félicia could not walk, could not sew or embroider, did not care to sing, play, or draw, and when she read, read nothing but new novels, of which the Castle was conspicuously destitute. Moreover, anything that she was invited to do happened to be one of the very things that hurt her eyes, or made her head ache, or her face flush. In her distress Lady Caerleon took counsel with Maimie, who, though well aware that Félicia would not walk lest it should make her feet large, or work lest it should spoil her hands, did not feel called upon to reveal these reasons.
“What do you do in America, if you never go for walks?” asked the perplexed hostess.
“Why, we go out riding,” answered Maimie carelessly.
“Riding? Why didn’t you tell me before? I never thought Félicia would ride, and it will be an excellent thing for her. There’s Phil’s horse——”
“Oh, I don’t mean that. I meant carriage-rides and sleigh-rides.”
“Oh,driving?” said Lady Caerleon involuntarily. “But she won’t come out with me.”
“I guess it’s just because she’s afraid you’ll have her go and see poor folks. We don’t do that sort of thing in America.”
“If Félicia is to live here after me, I hope she will be known as a friend in every house on the estate,” said Lady Caerleon seriously.
Maimie was silent. The suggestion was too absurd to need argument. Then a happy idea occurred to her. “But Félicia has learnt riding, Lady Caerleon, and if you have a well-mannered horse——”
“My husband trained Philippa’s horse himself,” said Lady Caerleon, and Maimie undertook to suggest the idea to Félicia. Félicia thought it sounded promising, especially since it involved Lord Caerleon’s escort, and she appeared in an exquisitely cut habit, perfect down to the minutest detail.
“She looks very well on horseback, but she sits a little stiffly,” remarked Lady Caerleon to Maimie, as they watched the riders start. “Has she ridden much across country?”
“Lady Caerleon!” shrieked Maimie in horror; “don’t tell me your husband’s going to take her ’cross lots. We don’t ride that way in America—not in the East, any way—only on the roads. She’ll be killed.”
“You may be quite sure my husband won’t take her anywhere dangerous,” said Lady Caerleon; but Maimie waited in agony until Félicia returned, more dishevelled-looking than she had ever seen her. Lord Caerleon’s good-humoured face was somewhat clouded as he helped her to dismount.
“You have a very good seat—for the Park,” was the only comment he allowed himself to make upon the ride, but Félicia was less reticent when she had reached her room.
“Maimie Logan,” she said emphatically, “I call you to witness that I won’t ever again go riding with an Englishman anywhere outside of London. When I had declined all the tempting fences and ditches Lord Caerleon showed me, I thought I was through; but suddenly we came out upon a piece of waste land, and he said, ‘This is Phil’s favourite bit of common. Shall we canter?’ and the horse flew off before I could refuse. I was shaken to death, and the wind was ahead of us, so I haven’t a scrap of skin left on my face, and I guess my bang won’t ever curl again.”
Maimie received this information with a shriek of unfeigned dismay, and for the next two days Félicia remained invisible to the rest of the household, submitting to many unpleasant and infallible remedies warranted to restore a damaged complexion. Lord and Lady Caerleon were overwhelmed with self-reproach, and Maimie assured Félicia that she would never be asked to ride again. This seemed to her quite satisfactory; but on the evening of the second day, when she rushed upstairs after dinner, she found her friend dissolved in tears.
“Why, Fay, your eyes!” she cried, and Félicia applied a handkerchief delicately, then wept again.
“Oh, it’s killing me!” was her moan. “Everything here’s just horrid. There isn’t any place to lounge—not even a rocker!”
It was quite true. There was an old-fashioned sofa, on which it was possible to lie at full length, but certainly not to lounge, and a low basket-chair, which Philippa, who had upholstered it herself, had thought the most restful thing in the world. The photograph of herself and her husband, which hung over the mantelpiece, in the place where she had always kept her family photographs, seemed to smile maliciously upon the present occupier of the room, as she sat curled-up in a nest of cushions. Maimie came gallantly to the rescue.
“Say, Fay, we’re fixed here for the winter, and I guess we must stick the time out. But I’ll have them give you a different room if you won’t spoil your eyes crying.”
“How?” asked Félicia, with some interest.
“Oh, I’ll fix things,” said Maimie, mysteriously but with secret satisfaction. Félicia was returning to her allegiance very fast. It was another reason for contentment that Félicia asked no questions as to the way in which she secured success. This was very simple. Maimie told Lady Caerleon that Félicia slept badly, which was true, and suggested that she ought not to sleep alone. Before Lady Caerleon, somewhat puzzled, had time to propose that Maimie should move into the same room, Maimie added that she felt sure the easterly aspect of Lady Philippa’s room was not good for Félicia. Informed that it was the outlook which Philippa had specially loved, Maimie retorted that that might be so, but Félicia was just perished with cold. Lady Caerleon remarked that she was sure to be cold in the winter if she would not go out; to which Maimie replied that in America the houses were heated, and people had not to go outdoors to get warm. Lady Caerleon was horrified by the implied reproach. She had meant the girl Usk loved to be so much to her, but in some mysterious way they seemed to be fast drifting apart. And now it was suggested that Félicia was suffering heroically in silence, fearing to wound her hostess by the suggestion that Philippa’s room was too cold for her! Always ready to accuse herself, Lady Caerleon blamed her own lack of sympathy and insight, and entreated Maimie to say what she thought it would be best to do. Maimie was quite prepared for this. There were two rooms opening into one another, and facing south-west, which she thought would be just right. And might she look about in the unoccupied rooms of the Castle, and choose the furniture that Félicia would probably like? In her compunction, Lady Caerleon would have given leave for anything, and in due time Maimie introduced Félicia to a kind of fairy bower. There were quaint tables and cabinets belonging to the Castle, but the draperies and ornaments came from Maimie’s own stores. She had foreseen this crisis, and provided against it.