CHAPTER XIV.AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
The two following days passed peacefully over. Prudence told her carefully-concocted story to Mrs. Wilcox, and said she would probably follow her sister in a fortnight. She despatched a great box, avowedly for the use of Augusta, to Paddington Station, and left it at the cloak-room to be kept till called for. She took every precaution that suggested itself to her, and even contemplated announcing at table the receipt of a letter from her sister declaring she was enjoying the fine sea air.
In fact, she felt she was beginning to lie with anaplombthat at once frightened and delighted her, but was accompanied by twinges of conscience. Many tears she shed in secret over the deception she was forced to practise.
The interest and excitement about Miss Semaphore had already abated somewhat.Her room had been turned out, cleaned, and made ready for a new boarder, and Prudence, who had sent on the additional thirty pounds to good Mrs. Brown, was congratulating herself on having acted with great promptitude, foresight, and caution, under trying and exceptional circumstances.
Her main idea now was to hear from the widow of the explorer whose fatal Water of Youth had proved the direful spring of all her woes. Night and day she considered the subject. Was there an antidote? If not, would her sister ever grow up? If she did grow up, would she grow up normally? Had she really, as Prudence thought, preserved her memory and understanding? Was she to be treated exactly like an ordinary baby? and, if not, in what respects should a difference be made? Should she be sent to school later on? Would her intelligence grow or lessen? All these racking questions, to which she could give no answer, tormented the younger Miss Semaphore continually.
When, sooner than she had ventured to hope, she found a letter lying on the hall-table addressed to her, in a foreign handwriting, and bearing the Paris post-mark, thepoor lady was so overcome between fear and hope that she scarcely had courage to open it. With tottering limbs, she made her way upstairs, locked her door, and sat down to read the most important missive she had ever received.
Mrs. Geldheraus expressed herself shocked and surprised at the sad story unfolded by Miss Prudence Semaphore, but, unfortunately, was not very helpful. She had never before heard of anyone taking too much of the Water of Youth, and knew of no method of counteracting its effects.
“I explained to your sister,” she said, “that a tablespoonful took about ten years off one’s age. Thus a woman of forty, taking two tablespoonfuls, would, in effect, be twenty. After that, a tea-spoonful every two years, would keep her at twenty as long as the Water lasted. She seemed quite to understand my directions. As such a case as you describe has never entered into my experience, I fear, dear madam, I can only recommend you to be patient under these distressing circumstances. I can give you no idea of how long the effects will last. Usually, the greater the quantity required in the first instance, the sooner the dose must berepeated, as the acquired youth wears off with a rapidity in proportion to one’s actual age. Whether this, however, will be the case with your sister, I cannot say. No one who has hitherto tried the Water has returned to infancy, so your sister’s is a very exceptional and awkward position, especially, as you tell me, you are living at a boarding-house. You may be thankful that your sister did not take a little more, or she would probably have vanished for ever, and your circumstances would be even more painful than they are. It is most probable that she retains her adult memory and understanding unimpaired, remaining a woman in mind though not in body. I regret, dear madam, that I cannot be more helpful, and am, yours faithfully,
Sophie Geldheraus.”
Sophie Geldheraus.”
Sophie Geldheraus.”
Sophie Geldheraus.”
As she concluded, Prudence broke down utterly, and, throwing herself on her bed, gave way to a bitter outburst of weeping. There was nothing for it now but to let things take their course, to accept all the annoyance, deception, seclusion, and suspicion involved in so anomalous, so unprecedented a situation. She saw nothing before her but a life spent in avoiding acquaintances, in evading enquiry—the life of a fugitive, dogged by a blameless past.
“It is horrible, horrible!” she wailed. “If it were anything else, I think I could bear it, but this is so incredible, so unheard of. How am I to manage about our business matters? Will Mr. Carson believe me if I tell him the truth? Will he ever credit that the infant I show him is Augusta?” (Mr. Carson was the solicitor who managed the affairs of the Misses Semaphore.) “What about signing deeds and so forth? Then, if I pretend she has died, he will want to come to the funeral, or see the death certificate, or take out probate, or something of that kind that will involve enquiry. Oh! what, what am I to do?”
At last, exhausted by weeping, Miss Prudence lay still, and stared with sodden eyes at the flies dancing on the ceiling. The one agreeable object of her reflections was that at least she had got Augusta safely away, and placed her in hands that were both kind and safe.
A longing to see her sister came over her. Though Augusta was dumb and helpless, it would at least be some consolation to talk to her, to pour out her woes.
To a woman of the stamp of Prudence, the necessity for secretiveness, for independentor uncounselled action, is terrible. She wanted someone to advise her, someone to lean on, and little consolation as she could expect from communing with Augusta, it would at least be a relief to say all that was in her mind.
Accordingly she rose, wrote a few lines to “good Mrs. Brown,” announcing her intention of calling at Plummer’s Cottages the following afternoon, and having donned a thick veil to conceal her distorted features, proceeded to post the note.
The walk did her good. A fresh wind was blowing, that cooled the hot cheeks of the troubled lady. In the air was something of rest that soothed her, and it was in a more equable frame of mind that she returned home.
At the door of 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, she became conscious that something unusual was agitating the inmates. A loud, angry voice reached her, muffled by intervening doors—a voice she seemed to recognise; and when, in answer to her ring, Müller opened the door, his face was flushed and his manner agitated.
“Oh, blease,” he gasped, when he saw her, “I am glat that you, matam, hafe come.Here it is a voman asking you to see, and ven I say you are notzu Haus, sheschimpfand cry, and vill not go avay.”
Prudence’s heart stopped beating, and she caught the door-post to save herself from falling.
“Where is she, Müller?” she gasped faintly.
“I did show her into the morning room,” said Müller, “ven she say that avay she vill not go; but therein she vill not remain, but valk into the hall and calls for you.”
Before he could say any more, there appeared before the shocked eyes of Prudence a vision of good Mrs. Brown, flushed, dishevelled, her bonnet to one side. With unsteady gait, she lurched down the hall, and confronted the trembling lady.
“So you’ve come at larst,” she said; “nice way to keep a ’spectable woman awytin for you. S’pose I’ve nothin’ better to do than sitting ’ere?”
“What do you want with me, Mrs. Brown?” asked Prudence, in an agitated voice.
“Wot d’ I want with you? Well, I likes that. Wot do I want, she sez! I want to know wot d’ you mean by sending a’spectable married woman for the keep of that there byby a cheque as she can’t get no money for? Eh? Tell me that? A bloomin’ shame, I calls it; but you just fork out that thirty pounds as you howe me, or I’ll ’ave the law of you,” said good Mrs. Brown, loudly but indistinctly.
Prudence was miserably conscious that two or three heads were peering over the balustrade from the landing above.
“Will you come in here, please,” she said as firmly as she could, “and tell me exactly what is the matter?”
“The matter?” queried Mrs. Brown, as she lurched against her. “Matter enough! What did you go for to send me a cheque at all, wen I told you I wouldn’t ’ave no cheques?”
By this Prudence had got her into the morning room, deserted, for a wonder, and closed the door.
“Now,” she said tremblingly, “what is all this about, and what do you mean by coming here and making such a noise? I am sorry I sent you a cheque, but I quite forgot you told me not to, and it is all right; there is nothing wrong with it.”
“Nothin’ wrong! Wy wot d’ you take mefor, a-sendin’ me a cheque as no one ’ll change?” said Mrs. Brown. “Nice conduck of a female as calls ’erself a lydy, a-sending of a pore woman to one public hafter another, an’ not one o’ the lot ’ll change the thing!”
“Let me see it,” said Prudence, bewildered.
Mrs. Brown glared rather unsteadily at the speaker for a minute, and then fumbled in her bag. After many futile dives, she at last turned out the contents on the table. There, amidst papers, a thimble, sixpence in coppers, some pawn tickets, a half-crown, a reel of cotton, a stump of blue pencil, and various other odds and ends, was the letter of Prudence, with her cheque, now very crumpled and dirty, protruding.
“Calls erself a lydy,” pursued good Mrs. Brown, “an’ sends me that!” Here she banged the cheque on the table.
Prudence, from force of habit, had crossed the cheque and marked it “not negotiable,” as the family solicitor, when first she had the handling of money, had instructed her always to do.
“I am sorry,” she said, “the cheque is crossed, and that is why they would not change it. It should be passed through abank. If you will wait here quietly for a moment, I will write you another.”
Good Mrs. Brown at first seemed indisposed to allow Prudence to leave the room at all. “Give me my money,” she said; “I don’t want none o’ your cheques. Money down’s the thing for me!”
A vast amount of explanation was required before she seemed to grasp the sense of what the unhappy lady was saying. Then she suddenly sat down on a chair and burst into tears, much to Miss Semaphore’s alarm and distress.
“You won’t try to starve the blessed hinfant,” she said, “and rob a pore woman of ’er ’ard earned money?”
Prudence earnestly assured her she would not, that nothing was farther from her intentions. She apologised again and again about the unlucky cheque, and implored her unexpected visitor to be calm, to be patient for one moment while she ran upstairs to fetch her cheque book.
Mrs. Brown, however, followed her to the door, and protested huskily against the younger Miss Semaphore’s “giving” her “the slip.”
As poor Prudence escaped, she had themisery of seeing the heads of Mrs. Whitley, the medical woman, and even of the stately Mrs. Dumaresq herself, hastily withdrawn from over the balustrade on the first landing. Every minute seemed an hour until a fresh cheque was made out, and good Mrs. Brown, grasping it tightly in one hand, had gone off to negociate it after a deal of explanation. Prudence felt quite sick with agitation and apprehension.
“I really almost believe,” she said to herself, “I really am inclined to think that Mrs. Brown must have been drinking.”
A dreadful uneasiness as to how Augusta might be faring weighed heavy on her heart.
“I will certainly go to-morrow and see the place,” she resolved, “and if I do not like it, I’ll take Augusta away.”
Her spirits drooped at the prospect of an impending conflict with good Mrs. Brown, for even if her thoughts wronged the respectable woman, that afternoon’s experience showed that the lady in question had another side to her character besides that observed by Prudence at London Bridge Station.