Dearest:I have just been telegraphed for on account of my brother's illness, and must leave here at once. I will write you at greater length as soon as possible. Meanwhile, believe me,Devotedly yours,G. O.
Dearest:
I have just been telegraphed for on account of my brother's illness, and must leave here at once. I will write you at greater length as soon as possible. Meanwhile, believe me,
Devotedly yours,
G. O.
It was arranged that this note should be delivered to Anna by messenger next morning, after she and Fanny should have left the house for their usual forenoon ramble.
The second note read as follows:
Dear Miss Drelincourt:After what occurred between us at our last few meetings on the sands of Carthew Bay, you probably think it due to you that I should have written you before now; and, indeed, my omission to do so would have been unpardonable had not my silence been dictated by certain considerations which I have found it impossible to ignore.Into the nature of those considerations I have no wish to enter, nor would it, perhaps, be desirable that I should do so. It will be enough to state, in as few words as possible, to what conclusion they have gradually but surely led me. It is to this: That, unwittingly and unthinkingly, and as one walking blindfold, I have been guilty of the most deplorable mistake of my life.Is there any need for me to be more explicit, or to enter into details which could not fail of being painful to us both? No, I am sure there is not. Your woman's instinct will have already revealed to you the nature of the mistake in question.This I may add, that when I last parted from you I had no faintest prevision of what was so soon to happen. Perhaps it never would have happened had circumstances not called me away from Combe Fenton.Yet who shall say it is not best for the happiness of both that the discovery should have been made before the time had gone by for remedying it! That is the light in which I trust you will endeavor to regard it.In conclusion, my dear Miss Drelincourt, I can only ask you to believe in the sincerity of my contrition should my conduct be the cause of any temporary unhappiness to you. And that, in any case, it will be no more than temporary is the heartfelt hope of him who now subscribes himselfYour obedient and devoted servant,Guy Ormsby.
Dear Miss Drelincourt:
After what occurred between us at our last few meetings on the sands of Carthew Bay, you probably think it due to you that I should have written you before now; and, indeed, my omission to do so would have been unpardonable had not my silence been dictated by certain considerations which I have found it impossible to ignore.
Into the nature of those considerations I have no wish to enter, nor would it, perhaps, be desirable that I should do so. It will be enough to state, in as few words as possible, to what conclusion they have gradually but surely led me. It is to this: That, unwittingly and unthinkingly, and as one walking blindfold, I have been guilty of the most deplorable mistake of my life.
Is there any need for me to be more explicit, or to enter into details which could not fail of being painful to us both? No, I am sure there is not. Your woman's instinct will have already revealed to you the nature of the mistake in question.
This I may add, that when I last parted from you I had no faintest prevision of what was so soon to happen. Perhaps it never would have happened had circumstances not called me away from Combe Fenton.
Yet who shall say it is not best for the happiness of both that the discovery should have been made before the time had gone by for remedying it! That is the light in which I trust you will endeavor to regard it.
In conclusion, my dear Miss Drelincourt, I can only ask you to believe in the sincerity of my contrition should my conduct be the cause of any temporary unhappiness to you. And that, in any case, it will be no more than temporary is the heartfelt hope of him who now subscribes himself
Your obedient and devoted servant,
Guy Ormsby.
When the foregoing had been written, it was sealed up, addressed in full to "Miss Drelincourt, Rosemount, near Combe Fenton, Devon," and taken charge of by Mrs. Jenwyn.
All that now remained to be done was to arrange for the handing over of the hundred pounds, and then for Mrs. Jenwyn to take her departure.
Within a month of the events recorded in the preceding chapter, Mrs. Jenwyn and her charge had left Combe Fenton. Anna had conceived a violent dislike to the place, and was restless till she got away from it. After her receipt of Guy Ormsby's letter, which Mrs. Jenwyn had arranged to have mailed from London, she never set foot on the sands of Carthew Bay. It is almost needless to state that the girl Fanny was left behind. She had heard of John Clisby's visit to Rosemount, and she needed no one to tell her why Mrs. Jenwyn had chosen to dispense with her services.
A few days before Anna's departure she received the news of her half brother's marriage. The ceremony had been solemnized at the British embassy at Naples, the bride being a Miss Madeline Fenwicke, whose name Anna seemed to remember as that of a visitor at Denham Lodge some three years previously.
In the course of the next four years, at the end of which period we take up their history afresh, Mrs. Jenwyn and her charge found a temporary home in three or four widely different places.
Anna's coming of age, and with it her command of the fortune left her by her father, had made no difference in her simple and inexpensive mode of life. She had had more than enough before for all her needs, and except that she now set aside a considerably larger sum for charitable purposes, the major portion of her income was never drawn upon, but allowed to accumulate untouched in her banker's coffers.
Anna and her brother had met but once since the latter's marriage, and then he brought with him the news of the birth of a daughter.
It was during the time of Anna's sojourn at Dieppe that Drelincourt, when on his way back from London, whither some law business had taken him, made a detour on purpose to see his sister and spend a week with her. He had exiled himself from England, preferring to live abroad, chiefly in Italy, the climate of which seemed to suit both him and his wife, but now and then wintering in Egypt or elsewhere.
But although he and Anna saw so little of each other, he wrote to her regularly once a month, and his letters, chatty, vivacious, and stuffed with news and gossip of one kind or another, made one of the chief pleasures of her quiet existence.
They were the sole link between her and that great, restless, seething world outside her about which she knew so little, and from any closer contact with which she was kept by her constitutional timidity and that distaste for mixing in general society which she found it quite impossible to overcome.
But latterly--that is to say, within the last twelve months or so--the dread shadow which for so long a time had brooded over her life had been penetrated by a ray of sunlight which was gradually broadening and brightening, so that it seemed as if, at no very distant date, Dr. Pounceby's prediction that, in the course of time, Anna would outgrow her mental malady, was on the eve of fulfilment.
For some time past each recurrent attack had been of shorter duration than the preceding one, so that now, instead of extending over twelve days or a fortnight, as used to be the case, they lasted for two or three days only; and there was every reason for hoping that in the course of another year or two they would leave her altogether.
Mrs. Jenwyn had few living relatives, and only one with whom she kept up anything like a regular correspondence. The person in question was a first cousin, Martin Soanes by name, whose position in life was that of managing clerk to a London solicitor in a large way of business.
From Mr. Soanes, when she had been about six months at Guernsey, she one day received a letter, the contents of which proved to be of a sufficiently startling kind.
In it her cousin informed her that, in consequence of an advertisement he had come across in theTimes, he had called upon a certain firm in his own line of business, and, on making himself known to them, was told that the person advertised for had, through the death of an uncle in Australia, become entitled to a bequest of twenty two thousand pounds.
That fortunate person was none other than herself, Henrietta Jenwyn,néeHenrietta Wynter, daughter of so and so. Finally, Mr. Soanes wrote, her presence was desired in London as speedily as possible, with the view of enabling her to prove her identity.
For a little while after reading the letter Mrs. Jenwyn felt like a stunned person. Some time was needed to enable her to realize her good fortune--if such it should prove to be; and, indeed, at first she hardly knew whether to feel glad or sorry, not being able just yet to discern to what extent it might affect the relations between herself and Anna.
But presently she took comfort. Why need it affect them in any way--this legacy by a man she had never set eyes on, even if it should prove to be hers? Why should not matters go on as they had hitherto done? It certainly would not be her fault if they did not.
The legacy proved to be no myth, but a very pleasant and substantial reality. The sum total was invested in certain railway scrip which for the last half dozen years had never paid a less dividend than five per cent per annum, and there the fortunate legatee decided to let it remain.
It would not have been easy to find a safer or more profitable investment, and the income derivable therefrom seemed to her amply sufficient to meet all needful requirements on her part, even should she finally decide on carrying out a certain project which had been simmering in her brain from within a few hours of her receipt of her cousin's letter.
But it was a project not to be decided upon in a hurry. It was rife with certain consequences from which there would be no escape, and some of them might, perhaps, prove to be of a far more serious kind than was apparent on the surface.
She turned it over in her mind, not once, but a thousand times, considering it from every conceivable point of view; indeed, during those few days all other subjects, including the arrangements connected with her legacy, were subordinated to it. The temptation to carry it into effect appealed to her with an all but irresistible force, and at length she yielded to it so far as to say to herself:
"I will sound Anna. I will put certain questions to her, and from her answers I shall be enabled to judge whether it will be safe to venture any farther, or wiser to draw back, and keep silence for evermore."
When her cab stopped at the garden gate, Anna came flying down the pathway to greet her.
"Well, you dear old thing, what luck have you had?" she cried, as soon as she had given her an affectionate hug. "Has the legacy taken to itself wings and vanished into thin air, or have you brought back a portmanteau stuffed with bank notes?"
"Neither one nor the other. The legacy has not taken to itself wings, but I have not brought so much as a slice of it back with me. It is all safely invested, and I think I can't do better than let if remain where it is."
"And you come back just the same as you went--not even an inch taller than you were five days ago! The same dowdy gown and old-fashioned bonnet. Where's the good of having twenty thousand pounds left you if you have nothing to show for it?"
"That is a question easier to ask than answer. I was quite content, and as happy as I ever expect to be, before this money came. What more can I hope to be now?"
"And you say that you never even saw this uncle of yours who has remembered you so handsomely in his will?" queried Anna, as soon as they were indoors.
"Not so far as my memory serves me, although I believe he saw me when I was an infant. He emigrated when I was about three years old. My mother, who was his favorite sister, heard from him at long intervals for a period of seven or eight years. Then followed a silence which, so far as I am aware, was never broken, and at home the belief gradually grew up among us that he was dead."
"Possibly, if your cousin had not seen the advertisement in theTimes, you would never have known anything about your legacy?"
"I think that very probable indeed. I was advertised for under my maiden name, and except my cousin (who, I believe, prides himself on the fact that nothing in theTimesescapes him), few, if any, of those now living who knew me before my marriage would be likely to see it, or, if they should see it, would know where to find me."
Although Mrs. Jenwyn had made up her mind to a certain course, she seemed in no special hurry to carry her purpose into effect. Indeed, she was one of those women who never appear to hurry; she could always afford to bide her time.
Besides, in the present case, a few days--or, for that matter, a few weeks or a few months--would make no difference. She told herself that she would not make an opportunity, but wait till one should come to her. Perhaps she was not without a lingering doubt as to the spirit in which Anna might receive her communication, and was not disinclined to let matters go on as they were for a little while longer.
Of one thing she felt sure--that nothing could ever be quite the same as it had been when once her lips should have been unsealed and her secret have passed from her own keeping.
Her opportunity, or what seemed such, came on a certain afternoon when the weather, would not admit of their going out, and she and Anna were seated by the window, one busy with her sewing, the other with her knitting.
The maid had just been in to ask leave to go and visit her mother, who was said to be dying. The girl had been in deep distress.
"I have sometimes wondered, Tetta," said Anna presently, "whether it is harder for a mother to lose her child or for a child to lose its mother. I am not referring to cases like Charlotte's, where the child is grown up; although, if tears are anything to go by, she seems extremely attached to her mother."
"A great deal depends on circumstances. When a mother loses her only child, or one of two, it may reasonably be assumed that she feels the loss far more than she would do if she had other children left to comfort her. Again, where a child loses its mother while still at a tender age, it is not to be expected that the loss can seem such an irreparable one as it would do at a later period, when it is old enough not only to appreciate her love, but to reciprocate it in full measure."
"It was my misfortune to lose my mother when I was at a very tender age," said Anna presently, in a low voice.
"It was. You were barely five years old when she died. I suppose you remember very little about her?"
"Not a great deal. I seem to see her nearly always as an invalid, lying either on a couch or in bed. I have an impression that she was very fond of me, but that I was told I must not make a noise when in her room, nor stay with her too long at a time."
"I suppose it has been a source of never ending regret to you that you lost her at such an early age?" She was watching Anna keenly from between her narrowed lids.
"Of never ending regret?"--with a little surprise in her tone. "No, Tetta, scarcely that, I think. How could it be? At that age our regrets are nearly as fleeting as our joys. I was too young to sound the depths of sorrow, or to allow of any loss touching me very deeply for longer than a few passing hours."
"Still, you often thought of her--often do now, perhaps--and have felt that by her death a void was left in your life which nothing else could fill; and have longed to have her with you, that you might pour your troubles and confidences into her sympathetic ear, for, to a daughter, whose ear is like her mother's?"
For a little while Anna went on stitching in silence. Her brows were knitted, her face wore an expression of dubiety.
Presently she said: "Yes, I have often thought about my poor dead mother, and have sometimes wondered, if she had lived, how she and I would have got on together; perhaps not so well as you and I have, Tetta. But I can't say that I have ever felt about her as you seem to think I ought to have done. Was it wrong and wicked of me not to have those feelings? If it was, I cannot help it. I did not make myself."
Again there was a space of silence which Mrs. Jenwyn did not break. All her attention was apparently being given to her work, but a close observer might have seen that her hands were trembling slightly, and that more than once she dropped her stitches.
Presently Anna spoke again.
"I think, Tetta, it must have been because I have had you by my side to love and cling to almost ever since I can remember, that I have missed my mother as little as I seem to have. You have filled her place to me. I have grown up under your hands, molded by you so far as it was possible for any one to mold me. You have been to me a warm and living reality; she nothing but a dim, sweet memory. How was it possible that she should be anything more to me?"
Mrs. Jenwyn lifted her eyes from her knitting and looked fixedly at Anna. On her face was an expression which seemed to transfigure it.
"Suppose, my dear one," she said, and the words came brokenly and with difficulty, as though she were feeling her way like one in doubt--"mind, I only say suppose--that things had so fallen out that not Mrs. Drelincourt, but I--I--were your mother--what would you have said and thought in that case?"
Anna's eyes met hers with a great wonder shining in them, not unmingled with perplexity. She drew a long breath before she spoke.
"What should I have said and thought in that case--or, rather, what should I say and think now? I should thank Heaven on my knees for having given me a living mother in the place of a dead one, and one whom I could love from the bottom of my heart, as I have loved you from childhood."
Here she rose impulsively from her chair, and making three steps forward, she went down on her knees before Mrs. Jenwyn and laid her clasped hands on the other's lap.
"But, oh, Tetta, what do you mean--whatdoyou mean by asking me such a question?" On her face was the radiance of a dawning hope. Expectation sat on her parted lips; her bosom rose and fell quickly.
Mrs. Jenwyn bent forward and touched Anna's sunny hair with her lips. "Oh, my darling, cannot you guess?" she said, in a voice shaken with emotion. "I am your mother--I, and not another!"
It was a quarter of an hour later when Mrs. Jenwyn began her confession--for nothing less than that could it be called. As a matter of course, certain things--not necessarily everything--must be told Anna in satisfaction of her legitimate curiosity, and there seemed no reason why the telling of them should not be got over and done with as speedily as possible.
The two were seated side by side on a couch, and Anna held one of her mother's hands in hers as the latter proceeded with her narrative.
"My father, the Rev. George Wynter, was a poor curate in a rural district, with little or no hope of preferment, and when, at the age of sixteen, I was offered the post of companion to Miss Lemoine, of Waterend, he was only too pleased that I should accept it, and so lighten the burden at home.
"For me the next three years were very happy ones, I was not merely Clara Lemoine's companion, but her bosom friend. She was a warm-hearted girl of strong attachments, and I soon learned to love her very dearly. At the end of that time Mrs. Lemoine, who had been an invalid for years, died. The home was broken up, and Clara went out to Calcutta to join her father, who held a position in the Indian Civil Service. There, after a time, she met Colonel Drelincourt and married him, becoming his second wife.
"After about a year the colonel, together with his regiment, returned to England, his wife, of course, accompanying him. Some three or four years later he was ordered out to Egypt at a few days' notice, and was under the necessity of leaving his young wife, to whom he was passionately attached, behind him. He had not been gone a month when she was prematurely confined at a London hotel, but the child, a girl, only lived three weeks.
"By this time I had been a couple of years married, and you, my dear one, were born a fortnight before Mrs. Drelincourt's child. Clara, while in India, had written to me from time to time, and I had duly replied to her letters, so that the link between us had never been broken. She knew of my marriage, and of many, but not the whole, of the circumstances connected with it. She had called upon me at my house in the suburbs of London only a few days before the birth of her daughter. Within an hour of the child's death she sent me a telegram, asking me to go and see her without delay. This I did, and then it was that she went on her knees to me and implored me, with the most passionate entreaties, to give up my child to her, so that she might be enabled to pass it off to her husband in the place of the one that was dead.
"It was a proposition to which, much as I loved Clara Lemoine, and willing though I was to make almost any sacrifice for her, I could not for some time persuade myself to accede. But she bore down my opposition by degrees. Colonel Drelincourt, who was not on good terms with his only son, was extremely desirous of having another child--a boy preferably, but better, far better, a girl than none at all.
"He had been informed in due course of the birth of his daughter, and Clara dreaded the effect which the tidings of the child's death would have upon him--dreaded, or so she made out, that his love for her (there being no likelihood of her having any more children) might gradually fade into indifference, or even turn into positive dislike. 'I will not face my husband without his child, or one he believes to be his, in my arms,' she said. 'If you refuse to give me yours, I will drown myself.' And in the mood in which she then was she was quite capable of doing so.
"But, over and above all this, there were circumstances in my own life which, when I called them to mind, compelled me in my own despite to lend a more favorable ear to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. My husband was a bad and cruel man. (It is better you should know the truth, however painful it may be.) He was both a drunkard and a spendthrift, and something worse than either. He had deserted me months before you were born, leaving me all but penniless.
"I neither knew where he was nor when to expect him back; and it was his return I dreaded more than anything else in the world. Could I have been sure that I should never see him again, I should have felt comparatively happy. But I might hear his knock at the door at any hour of the day or night, and the fear of it turned my life into a perpetual nightmare. Oh, I had good cause for being afraid of him!
"Not to weary you, it will be enough to say that I finally gave way and yielded to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. Of what it cost me to do so I will say nothing.
"When Mrs. Drelincourt was well enough to leave the London hotel, at which she was an entire stranger, it was to go down to Wyvern Towers. It was at a little country station, at which she made a stoppage for the purpose, that you were given over into her charge. Our faithful servant; since dead, with whose services it was impossible to dispense, was our sole confidant in the affair.
"For the next four years I lived as companion to an invalid lady, to whom some portion of my history was known, and who did not object to my passing under a fictitious name--the one by which I have ever since been known. At the end of that time Mrs. Drelincourt sent for me.
"She was in a consumption, and was quite aware that her recovery was hopeless. She had grown to care for you as if you were her own child, and her object in sending for me was not merely that I might nurse her through her last illness, but that after she was gone I might have the permanent charge of you, at any rate for several years to come; nor did she rest satisfied till she had extracted a promise from her husband that her wishes in this respect should be faithfully observed by him. Me, two days before she died, she bound by a solemn promise that only under the most extreme circumstances would I ever reveal the true story of your parentage."
In view of the amazing confession just made by the elder woman, mother and daughter found no lack of subjects to talk about, but it was not till an hour later that a new and, to her, very surprising thought struck Anna.
"If you are my mother," she said, "and of course you are, then Felix cannot be my half brother?"
"That is very true," replied Mrs. Jenwyn, with a faint smile. She had been waiting for Anna to make the discovery.
"Nor any relation at all. Oh, dear! I am very, very sorry for that. I always loved Felix--although, all the same, I used to stand a little bit in awe of him. And now, I suppose I've no right to love him any more. But perhaps you don't intend to tell him even a part of that which you have just told me. In that case, matters would go on as they have always done, and he would continue to think of me and to treat me as his sister."
"And, knowing what you know now, would you be content to go on living on money to which you have no right?"
Anna looked dumfounded.
"I had not thought of that," she said. "No, I suppose I should not be content--indeed, I am quite sure I should not be. But what is to be done?"
"There is only one way out of the difficulty, and that is, for Anna Drelincourt to die."
"Good gracious, Tetta--I mean, mother dearest--you frighten me!"
"I have thought it all out. Listen! In the course of a few days you shall write to Mr. Drelincourt, informing him that you purpose taking a voyage to Madeira for the good of your health, which has been anything but satisfactory of late. We will go and stay there a month; but while on the return voyage Anna Drelincourt shall die, and shall be buried at sea, and on landing it will be my painful duty to inform Mr. Drelincourt of her demise. I think you said that his last letter to you was dated from Bordighera."
Her voice and manner were as dry and matter of fact as if she were explaining some detail of housekeeping, but when she had come to an end Anna sat and stared at her like one doubtful whether she had heard aright.
"Why do you look at me so strangely?" asked her mother, after a minute's silence. "There is no other way open to us that I can see. Can you discern any other?"
Anna shook her head. "No," she said faintly, "I cannot."
"You do not know, you cannot comprehend," resumed Mrs. Jenwyn--and now there was a ring of genuine emotion in her voice--"what I have gone through in the course of the last few days, since I knew that this money was coming to me. On the one hand was my promise to Mrs. Drelincourt not to reveal the secret of your birth, except under very exceptional circumstances; on the other was a mother's heart hungering and crying out for her child. There is no one left alive to whom the death of Anna Drelincourt will be a matter of much moment. Mr. Felix Drelincourt will grieve about her for a little while, but her fortune will make a handsome addition to his income, and he may perhaps derive some consolation from that.
"And so--and so at length I came to the determination to tell you everything. I wanted to claim you as my own--my very own. I wanted to break down the invisible barrier which has kept us apart for too many years. Oh, my darling, do not tell me that I have done wrong!"
"Wrong, mother! How can you imagine such a thing?" cried Anna, as she burst into tears and flung her arms round Mrs. Jenwyn's neck. "In gaining you I have gained everything. All else is as nothing compared with that."
The audacious scheme conceived by Mrs. Jenwyn was carried to a successful issue. To Felix Drelincourt in his Italian home came the tidings of his half sister's death on shipboard while on her way back from Madeira. He grieved sincerely for her loss, and wrote Mrs. Jenwyn a letter full of sympathy, regrets, and grateful acknowledgment of her services to the dead girl. Before leaving England Anna had made a will, in which she bequeathed all she possessed, with the exception of a few trinkets, to Drelincourt. This step was rendered necessary by the peculiar circumstances of the case.
The money which thus accrued to him made a very welcome addition to Drelincourt's somewhat limited income. After the reading of the will he wrote to Mrs. Jenwyn, expressing his surprise and regret that, except so far as regarded the aforesaid trinkets, her name found no mention in it, and offering to continue to her for life the income his father had set aside for her so long as she and Anna should remain together. In reply, Mrs. Jenwyn informed him, with many thanks, that, by the death of a relative, she had recently succeeded to a legacy which would amply suffice to meet all her simple needs in time to come.
And there matters between them came to an end forever, as they probably thought, neither of them foreseeing where and under what peculiar circumstances they should meet again, nor having any prevision of the underlying purpose for which fate had interwoven the threads of their destiny.
It is a lovely afternoon in early summer, and a pair of youthful lovers have the morning room at Fairlawn to themselves.
And a very pleasant room it is, at once sunny and airy, with two long windows which open on a space of greenest lawn interspersed with flower beds of various quaint shapes and sizes, which as yet are hardly in their full summer beauty. At one end of the room is an archway shrouded by a portière, forming the entrance to the second Mrs. Drelincourt's boudoir.
At a table between the windows a very charming girl, as fresh and sweet as a rosebud dipped in dew, is arranging some cut flowers in a Nankin jar. On a couch no great distance away, admiring her with all his eyes, lounges a rather jaded looking young man in flannels; jaded, be it understood, not from dissipation, but from overwork.
"I only sat out two dances the whole evening, and it was my own fault I didn't dance those." It was Marian Drelincourt who spoke.
"No doubt you fancied yourself the belle of the ball," rejoined the young man. "I dare say there were several other young ladies there who cherished the same pleasing delusion."
"No such silly thought ever entered my head. But I will say this--that if there had been twice as many dances, I could have had partners for all of them."
"You seem on particularly good terms with your young self this afternoon. I almost wonder how you escaped falling in love with one or other of your partners."
"How do you know that I did escape? There were two or three who made themselves especially agreeable. But for anything that may have happened you have only yourself to blame. You ought to have been there to look after me, and keep me out of danger. Mrs. Delisle could easily have managed to get a ticket for you."
"My dear Marian, as if I had not already explained to you how utterly impossible it was for me to start on my holidays till late yesterday afternoon! I took the first train after I was at liberty----"
"And reached Fairlawn just as papa and mamma were sitting down to dinner. Although you professed to be so exceedingly delighted to see them, mamma told me that she never saw you pull such a dismal face as you did last evening. I wonder why?"
"Then you may have the pleasure of wondering, because I shan't tell you why."
"Amiable youth!"
"But why didn't Mrs. Drelincourt take you to the ball herself, instead of leaving you to be chaperoned by Mrs. Delisle?"
"Mamma rarely goes anywhere. In the first place, as you know, her health is very delicate, and, in the second, she wouldn't go anywhere without papa."
"Is Mr. Drelincourt, now that he has come back to England, as much of a recluse as he was during the time he lived abroad?"
"Just as much. His coming home has made no difference in his mode of life. We see no company, or next to none, and he and mamma visit nowhere."
"It seems to me that it must be rather a dull sort of life to lead."
"Not at all. You forget for how many years they led the same kind of life abroad. Wet or fine, papa goes out on horseback for a couple of hours every morning. Then, all forenoon he is busy in his laboratory. You may or may not know that he is a fellow of more than one learned society. In the afternoon he and mamma--sometimes taking me with them--drive or walk, and for the evening we have books, chess, and music."
"You, at least, must find such an existence very, very quiet."
"Quiet, yes; dull, no. Since I left school it is the only kind of life I have known, and I have never longed for any other. Besides"--with a demure glance at the young man--"have I not everything a girl could wish for to make me happy?"
"Sweet one!" exclaimed Walter Deane,--as he sprang to his feet. That half veiled glance was more than flesh and blood could withstand.
Another instant and his arms would have been about her. But Miss Drelincourt sprang back with a warning finger on her lips. "Hush! I think there's some one coming," she whispered. In point of fact, she thought nothing of the kind. But the pretense answered its purpose. Young Deane slunk back to his seat with rather a shamefaced air.
Finding no one appeared, he made a mental note that he had been tricked, but deemed it best to postpone his revenge.
"I don't think I ever saw two people so wholly devoted to each other as Mr. and Mrs. Drelincourt are," he presently remarked. "They are more like--well--like lovers than----"
"Than two people who have been long enough married to have a daughter who will be eighteen on the second of next month. But they are always the same. They seem to live only for each other."
"And for their daughter."
"Oh, I am quite a secondary person, I assure you, especially with papa. Do you know, Wally, I believe he is sometimes actually jealous of me when he thinks I am paying mamma too many attentions. It almost seems as if he grudged me more than a tiny corner of her heart."
"That seems rather a strange feeling for a father to entertain."
"Somehow, papa seems different from other people. I can't explain how or in what way, only I feel that there is a difference."
"There's a magnetism about Mr. Drelincourt which seems to draw people to him whether they wish it or no. Me he attracts more than any man I ever met."
"You are not the only one by many who has experienced the same peculiar attraction. Can you wonder at mamma and I loving him so dearly?"
Before there was time to say more the portière was drawn aside, and the second Mrs. Drelincourt advanced slowly into the room.
Although she had left her fortieth birthday behind her, she was still a very beautiful woman, with a freshness and purity of complexion almost rivaling that of her daughter. Strangers seeing them together found it hard to realize that she was Marian's mother.
"Mamma," exclaimed Marian, "I have here the very first Gloire de Dijon which has come into bloom. I've been watching it for days on purpose that you might have it. I've not forgotten that it's your favorite flower."
"You are always thinking of me."
"As if it were possible to think of you and love you half as much as you deserve!" said Marian, as she proceeded to fix the flower in her mother's dress.
"That would indeed be an impossibility."
Everybody started and turned their eyes in one direction. The speaker was Mr. Drelincourt. He was standing in the archway, holding the portière aside with one hand.
"Have you not another rose for me,petite?" he asked, as he came forward:
"It is the only one which is yet open, papa; but there will be a lot more in a day or two."
"By which time they will have become common.N'importe. I must try to find existence endurable without one." Then, turning to his wife: "The postman has just brought me a letter which must have been delayed in transit, since it was evidently intended to reach me yesterday. It is dated from Paris a couple of days ago, and is written by my old friend, Colonel Winslow. In it he says that we may expect him at Fairlawn on Thursday--that's today--in time for dinner. He may arrive at any moment."
"Was it not Colonel Winslow, papa, who stayed with us at Bordighera five or six years ago?"
"That was the man."
"I was in short frocks at the time, and I remember that I quite fell in love with him."
"I should advise you not to repeat the process now," remarked young Deane in an aside to her.
"And why not, pray?" she asked in the same tone. "Colonel Winslow, let me tell you, is a very charming man. I always did like elderly men better than boys. I think it very likely that I shall fall desperately in love with him."
Without giving her lover time to reply, she picked up her hat, and swinging it by its ribbons, passed out through one of the long windows. Before she had time to cross the lawn and plunge into the shrubbery beyond, Walter was following her. Drelincourt and his wife stood watching them through the other window.
The twenty years which had passed over Felix Drelincourt's head since his first wife's death had changed him very little to outward seeming. His black hair was turning gray about the temples, his long, thin face looked a trifle longer and thinner, a few crow's feet had gathered about his eyes, and there was a slight but perceptible stoop of his tall, lean figure. And that was all.
"I hope that Colonel Winslow will make a long stay with us," remarked Mrs. Drelincourt, as she seated herself in a favorite easy chair.
"Why do you hope so?"
"Because the presence of your old friend will be such a pleasure to you; because he will cheer your loneliness, and----"
"Mr. Ormsby," intoned the solemn voice of Wicks, the butler, before any one was aware that the door had been opened.
Drelincourt turned on the instant, and confronted his visitor, one lean, muscular hand gripping the back of his wife's chair like a vise.
Our old acquaintance, his silk, hat balanced carefully in his left hand, advanced with that air of self-consequence which was so much a part of him that he could no more have divested himself of it than he could-have unscrewed and laid aside one of his limbs. He never forgot that he was Mr. Ormsby, of Denham Lodge--not even when he repeated aloud the responses in church and avouched himself a miserable sinner.
He was considerably stouter than when we saw him last, and more scant of breath. His cheeks, too, were fuller and rounder, and his double chin more noticeable than of yore. His complexion was no longer mottled, but of one uniform tint, and that the tint of a boiled lobster, while his once sandy hair had turned completely white. In other respects no change was discernible in him.
"Drelincourt," he began at once, "you and I have not met for twenty years. I have called on you twice since your return, but both times was told you were not at home--a statement which, I tell you candidly, I did not credit. Today, however, I am more fortunate, and it is well I am so, seeing that I am the bearer of news which can scarcely fail to make even you--cold-blooded cynic though you always were--rejoice and feel glad. At last, Drelincourt, at last, and after all these years, the murder of my poor sister will be avenged."
For the next few seconds his listeners might have been figures of wood or stone. They neither stirred nor spoke, but stood or sat in the particular position in which each of them had been arrested by Ormsby's ominous words.
The silence was broken by Drelincourt's clear, level accents.
"My dear Ormsby, you speak in enigmas."
"Enigmas? Stuff! They are a sort of rubbish I never deal in; more in your line, by far. Man alive! I tell you we have got hold of the wretch, the double dyed villain who did the deed, and have laid him safely by the heels in Sunbridge jail. And, after all, Drelincourt, whom do you think the fellow turns out to be?"
"Guessing riddles is not in my line."
"Why, that scoundrel Gumley."
"A--h!" It was more an indrawing of the breath than an exclamation. Never had Drelincourt's marvelous command over himself stood him in better stead. For a second or two there was a slight flickering of his eyelids, and that was all.
"Yes, sir," resumed the other, "Gumley, the under gardener, the man who was arrested at the time on suspicion, but ultimately liberated. From the first I made no secret of my belief that he was the criminal. From that belief I have never swerved, and today facts have fully justified it."
"May I inquire as to the nature of the facts in question?"
"The most important of them is the fellow's own confession."
There was a perceptible pause on Delincourt's part. Then "Gumley's own confession that----" Another pause.
"That it was he who stole my sister's jewels."
"So! And does his confession end there?"
"It does. But surely no sane person can doubt that the hand which stole the jewels was guilty of the far graver crime!"
"And yet there might be found people, whether sane or otherwise, to doubt the accuracy of such an assumption."
A coldly malignant gleam shot from Ormsby's porcine eyes. "I have not forgotten, Drelincourt, how you stood up for the fellow twenty years ago. Had it not been for your evidence about the locket, in all probability he would have been convicted then. But stand up for him now, after his own confession! On my soul, Drelincourt, it almost looks as if you knew more about the affair than you choose to tell!"
Mrs. Drelincourt let her soft cheek rest for a moment like a caress against her husband's hand, which was still grasping the back of her chair.
"Ormsby, I am one of those men, too few in number, I am sorry to think, who decline to accept assumptions in lieu of facts. You say this fellow has confessed to the robbery. Well and good; let him be punished for it. But to assume that he is, therefore, and as if it were a matter of course, guilty of the more heinous crime seems to me monstrous in the extreme."
"If you were a man of the world, Drelincourt, instead of being the student and recluse you are, you wouldn't talk such rot--for I can call it by no other name. So convinced are I and my brother magistrates of Gumley's guilt that we have unanimously made up our minds to commit him to the next assizes on the double charge of robbery and murder."
"Iv that case, there's nothing more to be said," remarked Drelincourt with a shrug, as he turned away.
"My errand is discharged; I will no longer inrtrude," said Ormsby.
He made a sweeping, old fashioned bow, and then marched out, his nose in the air, and the color in his cheeks a shade deeper than when he had entered the room. Wicks shut the door behind him, and the next moment the first dinner bell sounded.
"I will follow you in a few moments," said Drelincourt to his wife. "I have a note to write which must be despatched at once."
He waited with a nonchalant air, a couple of fingers of each hand thrust into his waistcoat pockets, till she had gone, then he sank wearily into a chair.
"At last the sword has fallen! For twenty long years it has been suspended over my head, and now the hair that held it has snapped. Fate guides our footsteps through a blind labyrinth, and brings us to the exit by ways we wot not of. But it may be that all is not yet lost. Some loophole of escape there may be still, though all is dark at present. Through what mischance has Gumley been caught in the toils after all these years? Why has he confessed to the robbery of the jewels? Why---- But these are idle questions. I must see Rodd and get him to fathom this mystery for me."
Therewith he rang the bell. "Tell Mr. Marsh that I wish to see him at once in the library," he said to Wicks. Then to himself he added: "In all the world there is but one soul to whom I can freely talk and from whom I have no concealments."
When he entered the library, three minutes later, he found Roden Marsh already there.
"So--you have heard," he said, as he shut the door, and paused for a moment before advancing. "I can read your news in your face."
"I wanted to be the first to tell it you, so that you might be prepared; but I could find no opportunity of seeing you alone."
"My dear Rodd, night and day for twenty years I have never been otherwise than prepared. But tell me what it is you have heard. At present I am altogether in the dark. That Gumley has been arrested, and has confessed to the robbery of my first wife's jewels--so much I have been told, but beyond that I know nothing."
"Yesterday morning Gumley, who has not been seen in this part of the country for a number of years, tried to pawn a lady's watch. The suspicions of the pawnbroker were aroused, the police were called in, Gumley's lodging was searched, and in it was found nearly the whole of Mrs. Drelincourt's stolen property. This morning I happened to be in Sunbridge on business when Gumley was brought up at the court house before Mr. Ormsby and two other magistrates. It was Draycot, the chief constable, who told me of the arrest, so, of course, I took care to be present at the hearing."
"It seems strange, does it not, that the fellow should have kept his ill-gotten gains by him all these years?"
"Not when you know the circumstances, as you shall hear."
At this point Drelincourt sat down, and motioned Rodd to do the same.
"To go back to the affair of twenty years ago," resumed the latter. "It seems Gumley's cupidity had been excited by the sight of the jewelry worn at different times by Mrs. Drelincourt, besides which he had sworn to be revenged on her for the horsewhipping she had administered to him a few days before the robbery. He obtained access to the dressing room through the window, by means of a ladder planted outside, purloined by him from one of the outhouses, and duly taken back when he had accomplished his purpose. He had chosen a time when he knew there was not much likelihood of his being interrupted, Lucille, Mrs. Drelincourt's maid, who slept next her mistress' dressing room, being out of the way on leave of absence. Having found the jewel casket, he emptied it of its contents, and got back to his own room at the east lodge by the way he had come. With the exception of the locket afterwards found on him----"
"To account for his possession of which I perjured myself."
"He hid away the whole of the stolen property in the thatch of the lodge, where the police failed to discover it. I ought here to mention that Gumley had a bed room at the east lodge, which he had not yet given up, although Mrs. Drelincourt had discharged him some days before. Well, finding it impossible, after his release from prison, to obtain possession of the jewelry, he left the neighborhood, only coming back to it about a week ago. At last his long waited for opportunity had arrived. As you know, a new lodge has just been built. The old one was untenanted and on the point of being pulled down. A night or two since Gumley forced his way into it, and there, under the thatch, he found the little parcel he had hidden twenty years ago. What followed is known to you."
"And yet--fools that we are--how many of us are ready to affirm that blind chance alone is the arbiter of our destinies!" Drelincourt sighed heavily, then he rose and took a turn or two across the floor, after which he resumed his seat.
"Ormsby tells me that he and his brother dunderheads have made up their minds to commit Gumley for trial on the capital charge."
"There is little doubt but they will do so."
"When do the assizes take place?"
"Three weeks from now."
"Should Gumley be committed tomorrow, as I suppose he will be, you must go up to London, and see a certain solicitor whose name and address I will give you. You will put Gumley's case into his hands, and instruct him to engage the best counsel. Expense must be no object; only, it must not be known from whence or whom the requisite funds will be forthcoming."
"I understand. But suppose----"
"My dear Rodd, let us have no suppositions, as thou lov'st me! They are hateful things. When you have carried out my instructions, you will have done all that can be done."
Again he rose and in his restless fashion took a turn or two from end to end of the room. Then, as he laid a hand on Rodd's shoulder: "You have read how, during the First Revolution, when the guillotine was busy at work and the Conciérgerie was crammed with prisoners who had been tried and condemned, morning after morning the tumbrels used to come to the prison gate and the names used to be called out of those who were to be led off to execution--you have read all that?"
"Certainly--and how gay the prisoners were, or made believe to be; and how they used to get up little dances among themselves, although they knew that for some of them the sun would rise next morning for the last time."
"Rodd, I feel exactly as I can conceive those condemned prisoners used to feel, except that in my case the end is a little farther off, although none the less inevitable. Meanwhile, let us eat, drink, and be merry. Bring roses and garlands. Let us have in the hautboy and the flute. And as for the grim Shadow biding its time behind my chair--I can feel its presence there already--you and I alone have eyes to see it."
Rodd regarded him with a troubled expression. "I fail to understand you," he said. "You don't mean to imply----"
"Hush!"
Marian was standing at the open door.
"Ah! here comes my little girl," exclaimed Drelincourt, turning to her with his gayest smile.
Rodd went slowly out of the room, with bowed head and heart as heavy as lead.
"Yes, you tiresome old thing, and come to scold you. Mamma wants to know what is keeping you so long. If you don't come at once, you won't be able to finish dressing before the bell rings, and then everybody will be kept waiting."
"That would, indeed, be a grave misdemeanor. By the way, you have not told me how you enjoyed the ball last night. When you got back you stole off to bed without my having seen you."
"I saw a light in the laboratory, but was afraid of disturbing you. The ball? Oh, it was just lovely! And what do you think? I danced every dance but two!"
"Greedy child! Then you did not fail to enjoy yourself, although a certain person was not there to keep you company."
"It was my first ball, papa--think of that! I could scarcely fail to enjoy myself, could I? Of course I should have enjoyed myself far more if Wally had been there."
"You seem very much in love with Wally, as you call him."
"Of course I am, papa. Have not you yourself agreed that some day we are to be married?"
"I suppose you won't care how soon that 'some day' comes?"
"Indeed, then, I don't want it to come, oh, for ever so long! As if I were in a hurry to leave you and mamma! It is most unkind of you even to hint at such a thing, and I have a great mind to sulk with you for the rest of the day."
"Such a threat is enough to make any one shake in his shoes. Do you know,petite, of what I have been thinking?"
"How should I, papa?"
"Why, now Walter and my old friend Winslow are both here, that we will try for a little while--say, for the next few weeks--to be as jolly as sandboys. Yes, we will be gay, we will be dissipated even (fancy poor mamma being dissipated, eh?), and our mottoes shall be 'Away with melancholy' and 'Vive la bagatelle!'"
"That will be awfully nice."
"Awfully. Tomorrow, if the weather hold fine, we will drive as far as Beauchamp Chase and picnic there. Then mamma and you must arrange for a garden party, and possibly we may be able to get up a dance or two--and I know not what other frivolities." To himself he said: "What a mockery is all this!"
"You darling papa! How happy we shall be! But come along, do, or mamma will say that you are making me as bad as yourself."