"What will you have?" he asked carelessly; "roast beef and salad, or chicken pie? I can recommend the salad, which has travelled remarkably well." And all the time he was looking at her with happy contentment, a little smile under his red moustache; and her heart was beating so that she could not answer him.
The luncheon was discussed at leisure, and, as far as Mr. Brion could judge, was a highly successful entertainment. The younger girls, whatever might be going to happen to-morrow, could not help enjoying themselves to-day—could not help getting a little intoxicated with the sweetness of the summer air and the influences of the scene generally, and breaking out in fun and laughter; even Elizabeth, with her desperate anxieties, was not proof against the contagion of their good spirits now and then. The travelled stranger, who talked a great deal, was the most entertaining of guests, and the host congratulated himself continually on having added him to the party. "We only want Paul now to make it all complete," said the happy old man, as he gave Patty, who had a dreadful appetite after her long drive, a second helping of chicken pie.
When the sylvan meal was ended, and the unsightly remnants cleared away, the two men smoked a soothing cigarette under the trees, while the girls tucked up their clean gowns a little and tied handkerchiefs over their heads, and then Mr. Brion, armed with matches and a pound of candles, marched them off to see the caves. He took them but a little way from where they had camped, and disclosed in the hillside what looked like a good-sized wombat or rabbit hole. "Now, you stay here while I go and light up a bit," he said, impressively, and he straightway slid down and disappeared into the hole. They stooped and peered after him, and saw a rather muddy narrow shaft slanting down into the earth, through which the human adult could only pass "end on." The girls were rather dismayed at the prospect.
"It is a case of faith," said Mr. Yelverton. "We must trust ourselves to Mr. Brion entirely or give it up."
"We will trust Mr. Brion," said Elizabeth.
A few minutes later the old man's voice was heard from below. "Now, come along! Just creep down for a step or two, and I will reach your hand. Who is coming first?"
They looked at each other for a moment, and Patty's quick eye caught something from Mr. Yelverton's. "I will go first," she said; "and you can follow me, Nelly." And down she went, half sliding, half sitting, and when nearly out of sight stretched up her arm to steady her sister. "It's all right," she cried; "there's plenty of room. Come along!"
When they had both disappeared, Mr. Yelverton took Elizabeth's unlighted candle from her hand and put it into his pocket. "There is no need for you to be bothered with that," he said: "one will do for us." And he let himself a little way down the shaft, and put up his hand to draw her after him.
In a few seconds they stood upright, and were able, by the light of the three candles just dispersing into the interior, to see what kind of place they had come to. They were limestone caves, ramifying underground for a quarter of a mile or so in direct length, and spreading wide on either side in a labyrinth of chambers and passages. The roof was hung with a few stalactites, but mostly crusted with soft bosses, like enormous cauliflowers, that yielded to the touch; lofty in places, so that the candle-light scarcely reached it, and in places so low that one could not pass under it. The floor, if floor it could be called, was a confusion of hills and vales and black abysses, stony here, and dusty there, and wet and slippery elsewhere—altogether an uncanny place, full of weird suggestions. The enterprising and fearless Patty was far ahead, exploring on her own account, and Mr. Brion, escorting Eleanor, dwindling away visibly into a mere pin's point, before Mr. Yelverton and Elizabeth had got their candle lighted and begun their investigations. A voice came floating back to them through the immense darkness, duplicated in ever so many echoes: "Are you all right, Elizabeth?"
"Yes," shouted Mr. Yelverton instantly, like a soldier answering to the roll-call. Then he took her hand, and, holding the candle high, led her carefully in the direction of the voice. She was terribly nervous and excited by the situation, which had come upon her unawares, and she had an impulse to move on hastily, as if to join her sisters. Bat her lover held her back with a turn of his strong wrist.
"Don't hurry," he said, in a tone that revealed to her how he appreciated his opportunity, and how he would certainly turn it to account; "it is not safe in such a place as this. And you can trustmeto take care of you as well as Mr. Brion, can't you?"
She did not answer, and he did not press the question. They crept up, and slid down, and leapt over, the dark obstructions in their devious course for a little while in silence—two lonely atoms in the vast and lifeless gloom. Fainter and fainter grew the voices in the distance—fainter and fainter the three tiny specks of light, which seemed as far away as the stars in heaven. There was something dreadful in their isolation in the black bowels of the earth, but an unspeakably poignant bliss in being thus cast away together. There was no room for thought of anything outside that.
Groping along hand in hand, they came to a chasm that yawned, bridgeless, across their path. It was about three feet wide, and perhaps it was not much deeper, but it looked like the bottomless pit, and was very terrifying. Bidding Elizabeth to wait where she was, Mr. Yelverton leaped over by himself, and, dropping some tallow on a boulder near him, fixed his candle to the rock. Then he held out his arms and called her to come to him.
For a moment she hesitated, knowing what awaited her, and then she leaped blindly, fell a little short, and knocked the candle from its insecure socket into the gulf beneath her. She uttered a sharp cry as she felt herself falling, and the next instant found herself dragged up in her lover's strong arms, and folded with a savage tenderness to his breast.Thistime he held her as if he did not mean to let her go.
"Hush!—you are quite safe," he whispered to her in the pitch darkness.
The girls were boiling a kettle and making afternoon tea, while the men were getting their horses and buggy furniture together, at about four o'clock. Elizabeth was on her knees, feeding the gipsy fire with dry sticks, when Mr. Yelverton came to her with an alert step.
"I am going to drive the little buggy back," he said, "and you are coming with me. The others will start first, and we will follow."
She looked up with a startled expression that puzzled and disappointed him.
"What!" he exclaimed, "do you mean to say that you would rather not?"
"Oh, no, I did not mean that," she faltered hurriedly; and into her averted face, which had been deadly pale since she came out of the cave, the hot blood flushed, remembering how long he and she had stood there together in a profound and breathless solitude, and the very blackest night that ever Egypt knew, after he took her into his arms, and before they remembered that they had a second candle and matches to light it with. In that interval, when she laid her head upon his shoulder, and he his red moustache upon her responsive lips, she had virtually accepted him, though she had not meant to do so. "No," she repeated, as he silently watched her, "you know it is not that."
"What then? Do you think it is improper?"
"Of course not."
"You would really like it, Elizabeth?"
"Yes—yes. I will come with you. We can talk as we go home."
"We can. That was precisely my object in making the arrangement."
Eleanor, presiding over her crockery at a little distance, called to them to ask whether the water boiled—and they perceived that it did. Mr. Yelverton carried the kettle to the teapot, and presently busied himself in handing the cups—so refreshing at the close of a summer picnic, when exercise and sun and lunch together have resulted in inevitable lassitude and incipient headaches—and doling out slices of thin bread and butter as Patty deftly shaved them from the loaf. They squatted round amongst the fern fronds and tussocks, and poured their tea vulgarly into their saucers—being warned by Mr. Brion that they had no time to waste—and then packed up, and washed their hands, and tied on their hats, and shook out their skirts, and set forth home again, declaring they had had the most beautiful time. The large buggy started first, the host driving; and Mr. Yelverton was informed that another track would be taken for the return journey, and that he was to be very careful not to lose himself.
"If we do lose ourselves," said Mr. Yelverton, as his escort disappeared over the crest of the hill, and he still stood in the valley—apparently in no haste to follow—tucking a light rug over his companion's knees, "it won't matter very much, will it?"
"Oh, yes, it will," she replied anxiously. "I don't know the way at all."
"Very well; then we will keep them in sight. But only just in sight—no more. Will you have the hood up or down?"
"Down," she said. "The day is too lovely to be shut out."
"It is, it is. I think it is just about the most lovely day I ever knew—not even excepting the first of October."
"The first of October was not a lovely day at all. It was cold and dismal."
"That was its superficial appearance." He let down the hood and climbed to his seat beside her, taking the reins from her hand. He had completely laid aside his sedate demeanour, and, though self-contained still, had a light in his eyes that made her tremble. "On your conscience," he said, looking at her, "can you say that the first of October was a dismal day? We may as well begin as we mean to go on," he added, as she did not answer; "and we will make a bargain, in the first place, never to say a word that we don't mean, nor to keep back one that we do mean from each other. You will agree to that, won't you, Elizabeth?"—his disengaged arm was round her shoulder and he had drawn her face up to his. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth,"—repeating the syllables fondly—"what a sweet and honest name it is! Kiss me, Elizabeth."
Instead of kissing him she began to sob. "Oh, don't, don't!" she cried, making a movement to free herself—at which he instantly released her. "Let us go on—they will be wondering where we are. I am very foolish—I can't help it—I will tell you presently!"
She took out her handkerchief, and tried to calm herself as she sat back in the buggy; and he, without speaking, touched his horses with his whip and drove slowly out of the shady dell into the clear sunshine. For a mile or more of up-and-down tracking, where the wheels of the leading vehicle had left devious ruts in sand and grass to guide them, they sat side by side in silence—she fighting with and gradually overcoming her excitement, and he gravely waiting, with a not less strong emotion, until she had recovered herself. And then he turned to her, and laid his powerful hand on hers that had dropped dejectedly into her lap, and said gently, though with decision—"Now tell me, dear. What is the matter? Imustknow. It is not—it isnot"—contracting his fingers sharply—"that you don't mean what you have been telling me, after all? For though not in words, youhavebeen telling me, have you not?"
"No," she sighed; "it is not that."
"I knew it. I was sure it could not be. Then what else can matter?—what else should trouble you? Is it about your sisters? Youknowthey will be all right. They will not lose you—they will gain me. I flatter myself they will be all the better for gaining me, Elizabeth. I hoped you would think so?"
"I do think so."
"What then? Tell me."
"Mr. Yelverton, it is so hard to tell you—I don't know how to do it. But I am afraid—I am afraid—"
"Of what? Ofme?"
"Oh, no! But I want to do what is right. And it seems to me that to let myself be happy like this would be wrong—"
"Wrong to let yourself be happy? Good heavens! Who has been teaching you such blasphemy as that?"
"No one has taught me anything, except my mother. But she was so good, and she had so many troubles, and she said that she would never have been able to bear them—to have borne life—had she not been stayed up by her religious faith. She told us, when it seemed to her that we might some day be cast upon the world to shift for ourselves, never to let go of that—to suffer and renounce everything rather than be tempted to give up that."
"Who has asked you to give it up?" he responded, with grave and gentle earnestness. "Not I. I would be the last man to dream of such a thing."
"But you—youhave given up religion!" she broke forth, despairingly.
"Have I? I don't think so. Tell me what you mean by religion?"
"I mean what we have been brought up to believe."
"By the churches?"
"By the Church—the English Church—which I have always held to be the true Church."
"My dear child, every Church holds itself to be the true Church, and all the others to be false ones. Why should yours be right any more than other people's?"
"My mother taught us so," said Elizabeth.
"Yes. Your mother made it true, as she would have made any other true, by the religious spirit that she brought into it. They arealltrue—not only those we know of, but Buddhism and Mohammedanism, and even the queer faiths and superstitions of barbarian races, for they all have the same origin and object; and at the same time they are all so adulterated with human errors and vices, according to the sort of people who have had the charge of them, that you can't say any one of them is pure. No more pure than we are, and no less. For you to say that the rest are mistaken is just the pot calling the kettle black, Elizabeth. You may be a few degrees nearer the truth than those are who are less educated and civilised, but even that at present does not look so certain that you are justified in boasting about it—I mean your Church, you know, not you."
"But we go by our Bible—we trust, not in ourselves, but inthat."
"So do the 'Dissenters,' as you call them."
"Yes, I am speaking of all of us—all who are Christian people. What guide should we have if we let our Bible go?"
"Why should you let it go? I have not let it go. If you read it intelligently it is truly a Holy Scripture—far more so than when you make a sort of charm and fetish of it. You should study its origin and history, and try to get at its meaning as you would at that of any other book. It has a very wonderful history, which in its turn is derived from other wonderful histories, which people will perversely shut their eyes to; and because of this undiscriminating ignorance, which is the blindness of those who won't see or who are afraid to see, it remains to this day the least understood of all ancient records. Some parts of it, you know, are a collection of myths and legends, which you will find in the same shape in older writings—the first dim forms of human thought about God and man and the mysteries of creation; and a great many good people readtheseas gospel truth, in spite of the evidence of all their senses to the contrary, and take them as being of the same value and importance as the beautiful books of the later time. And there are other Bibles in the world besides ours, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not."
Elizabeth listened with terror. "And do you say it isnotthe light of the world after all?" she cried in a shaken voice.
"There should be no preaching to the heathen, and spreading the good tidings over all lands?"
"Yes, there should," he replied; "oh, yes, certainly there should. But it should be done as it was by Christ, to whom all were with Him who were not against Him, and with a feeling that we should share all we know, and help each other to find out the best way. Not by rudely wrenching from the heathen, as we call him, all his immemorial moral standards, which, if you study them closely, are often found, rough as they are, to be thoroughly effective and serviceable, and giving him nothing in their places except outworn myths, and senseless hymns, and a patter of Scripture phrases that he can't possibly make head or tail of. That, I often think, is beginning the work of salvation by turning him from a religious man into an irreligious one. Your Church creed," he went on, "is just the garment of religion, and you wear finely-woven stuffs while the blacks wear blankets and 'possum-skins; they are all little systems that have their day and cease to be—that change and change as the fashion of the world changes. But the spirit of man—the indestructible intelligence that makes him apprehend the mystery of his existence and of the great Power that surrounds it—which in the early stages makes him cringe and fear, and later on to love and trust—that is thebody. That is religion, as I take it. It is in the nature of man, and not to be given or taken away. Only the more freely we let that inner voice speak and guide us, the better we are, and the better we make the world and help things on. That's my creed, Elizabeth. You confuse things," he went on, after a pause, during which she kept an attentive silence, "when you confound religion and churchism together, as if they were identical. I have given up churchism, in your sense, because, though I have hunted the churches through and through, one after another, I have found in them no adequate equipment for the work of my life. The world has gone on, and they have not gone on. The world has discovered breechloaders, so to speak, and they go to the field with the old blunderbusses of centuries ago. Centuries!—of the prehistoric ages, it seems, now. My dear, I have lived over forty years—did you know I was so old as that?—seeking and striving to get hold of what I could in the way of a light and a guide to help me to make the best of my life and to do what little I might to better the world and brighten the hard lot of the poor and miserable. Is that giving up religion? I am not a churchman—I would be if I could, it is not my fault—but if I can't accept those tests, which revolt the reason and consciousness of a thinking man, am I therefore irreligious?AmI, Elizabeth?"
"You bewilder me," she said; "I have never made these distinctions. I have been taught in the Church—I have found comfort there and help. I am afraid to begin to question the things that I have been taught—I should get lost altogether, trying to find a new way."
"Then don't begin," he said. "Iwill not meddle with your faith—God forbid! Keep it while you can, and get all possible help and comfort out of it."
"But you have meddled with it already," she said, sighing. "The little that you have said has shaken it like an earthquake."
"If it is worth anything," he responded, "it is not shaken so easily."
"Andyoumay be able to do good in your own strength," she went on, "but how could I?—a woman, so weak, so ignorant as I?"
"Do you want a policeman to keep you straight? I have a better opinion of you. Oh, you will be all right, my darling; don't fear. If you only honestly believe what youdobelieve, and follow the truth as it reveals itself to you, no matter in what shape, and no matter where it leads you, you will be all right. Be only sincere with yourself, and don't pretend—don't, whatever you do, pretend toanything. Surely that is the best religion, whether it enables you to keep within church walls or drives you out into the wilderness. Doesn't it stand to reason? We can only do our best, Elizabeth, and leave it." He put his arm round her again, and drew her head down to his shoulder. They were driving through a lone, unpeopled land, and the leading buggy was but a speck on the horizon.
"Oh!" she sighed, closing her eyes wearily, "if I only knewwhatwas best!"
"Well," he said, "I will not ask you to trust me since you don't seem equal to it. You must decide for yourself. But, Elizabeth, if youknewwhat a life it was that I had planned! We were to be married at once—within a few weeks—and I was to take you home tomyhome. Patty and Nelly were to follow us later on, with Mrs. Duff-Scott, who wants to come over to see my London work, which she thinks will help her to do something here when she returns. You and I were to go away alone—wouldn't you have liked that, my love?—to be always with me, and taken care of and kept from harm and trouble, as I kept you to-day and on that Exhibition morning. Yes, and we were to take up that fortune that has been accumulating so long, and take Yelverton, and make our home and head-quarters there; and we were to live a great deal in London, and go backwards and forwards and all about amongst those unhappy ones, brightening up their lives because our own were so bright and sweet. You were to help me, as only a woman like you—the woman I have been looking for all my life—could help; but I was not going to let you work too hard—you were to be cared for and made happy, first of all—before all the world. And Icouldmake you happy—I could, I could—if you would let me try." He was carried away for the moment with the rush of his passionate desire for that life that he was contemplating, and held her and kissed her as if he would compel her to come to him. Then with a strong effort he controlled himself, and went on quietly, though in a rather unsteady voice: "Don't you think we can be together without harming each other? We shall both have the same aims—to live the best life and do the most good that we can—what will the details matter? We could not thwart each other really—it would be impossible. The same spirit would be in us; it is only the letter we should differ about."
"If we were together," she said, "we should not differ about anything. Spirit or letter, I should grow to think as you did."
"I believe you would, Elizabeth—I believe you would. And I should grow to think as you did. No doubt we should influence each other—it would not be all on one side. Can't you trust me, my dear? Can't we trust each other? You will have temptations, wherever you go, and with me, at least, you will always know where you are. If your faith is a true faith it will stand all that I shall do to it, and if your love for me is a true love—"
He paused, and she looked up at him with a look in her swimming eyes that settled that doubt promptly.
"Then you will do it, Elizabeth?"
"Oh," she said, "you know you canmakeme do it, whether it is right or wrong!"
It was a confession of her love, and of its power over her that appealed to every sentiment of duty and chivalry in him. "No," he said, very gravely and with a great effort, "I will not make you do anything wrong. You shall feel that it is not wrong before you do it."
An hour later they had reached the shore again, and were in sight of the headland and the smoke from the kitchen chimney of Seaview Villa, and in sight of their companions dismounting at Mr. Brion's garden gate. They had not lost themselves, though they had taken so little heed of the way. The sun was setting as they climbed the cliff, and flamed gloriously in their faces and across the bay. Sea and sky were bathed in indescribable colour and beauty. Checking their tired horses to gaze upon the scene, on the eve of an indefinite separation, the lovers realised to the full the sweetness of being together and what it would be to part.
Mr. Brion stood at his gate when the little buggy drove up, beaming with contentment and hospitality. He respectfully begged that Mr. Yelverton would grant them the favour of his company a little longer—would take pot-luck and smoke an evening pipe before he returned to his hotel in the town, whither he, Mr. Brion, would be only too happy to drive him. Mr. Yelverton declared, and with perfect truth, that nothing would give him greater pleasure. Whereupon the hotel servant was dismissed in charge of the larger vehicle, and the horses of the other were put into the stable. The girls went in to wash and dress, and the housekeeper put forth her best efforts to raise the character of the dinner from the respectable to the genteel in honour of a guest who was presumably accustomed to genteel dining.
The meal was served in the one sitting-room of the house, by the light of a single lamp on the round table and a flood of moonlight that poured in from the sea through the wide-open doors. After the feasts and fatigues of the day, no one had any appetite to speak of for the company dishes that Mrs. Harris hastily compounded, course by course, in the kitchen; but everyone felt that the meal was a pleasant one, notwithstanding. Mr. Yelverton, his host, and Patty, who was unusually sprightly, had the conversation to themselves. Patty talked incessantly. Nelly was amiable and charming, but decidedly sleepy; and Elizabeth, at her lover's side, was not, perhaps, unhappy, but visibly pale and noticeably silent. After dinner they went out upon the verandah, and sat there in a group on the comfortable old chairs and about the floor, and drank coffee, and chatted in subdued tones, and looked at the lovely water shining in the moonlight, and listened to it booming and splashing on the beach below. The two men, by virtue of their respective and yet common qualities, "took to" each other, and, by the time the girls had persuaded them to light the soothing cigarette, Mr. Brion was talking freely of his clever lad in Melbourne, and Mr. Yelverton of the mysterious disappearance of his uncle, as if it were quite a usual thing with them to confide their family affairs to strangers. Eleanor meanwhile swayed herself softly to and fro in a ragged rocking chair, half awake and half asleep; Elizabeth, still irresistibly attracted to the neighbourhood of her beloved, sat in the shadow of his large form, listening and pondering, with her eyes fixed on the veiled horizon, and all her senses on the alert; Patty squatted on the edge of the verandah, leaning against a post and looking up into the sky. She was the leading spirit of the group to-night. It was a long time since she had been so lively and entertaining.
"I wonder," she conjectured, in a pause of the conversation, "whether the inhabitants of any of those other worlds are sitting out on their verandahs to-night, and looking atus. I suppose we are not so absolutely insignificant but thatsomeof them, our own brother and sister planets, at any rate, can see us if they use their best telescopes—are we, Mr. Yelverton?"
"We will hope not," said Mr. Yelverton.
"To think that the moon—miserable impostor that she is!—should be able to put them out," continued Patty, still gazing at the palely-shining stars. "The other Sunday we heard a clergyman liken her to something or other which on its appearance quenched the ineffectual fires of thelesserluminaries—"
"He said the sun," corrected Elizabeth.
"Well, it's all the same. What's the sun? The stars he hides are better suns than he is—not to speak of their being no end to them. It shows how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by mere superficial appearances."
"The sun and moon quench the stars forus, Patty."
"Pooh! That's a very petty parish-vestry sort of way to look at things. Just what you might expect in a little bit of a world like this. In Jupiter now"—she paused, and turned her bright eyes upon a deep-set pair that were watching her amusedly. "Mr. Yelverton, I hope you are not going to insist upon it that Jupiter is too hot to do anything but blaze and shine and keep life going on his little satellites—are you?"
"O dear no!" he replied. "I wouldn't dream of such a thing."
"Very well. We will assume, then, that Jupiter is a habitable world, as there is no reason why he shouldn't be thatIcan see—-just for the sake of enlarging Elizabeth's mind. And, having assumed that, the least we can suppose—seeing that a few billions of years are of no account in the chronology of the heavenly bodies—is that a world on such a superior scale was fully up toourlittle standard before we began. I mean our present standard. Don't you think we may reasonably suppose that, Mr. Yelverton?"
"In the absence of information to the contrary, I think we may," he said. "Though I would ask to be allowed to reserve my own opinion."
"Certainly. I don't ask for anybody's opinion. I am merely throwing out suggestions. I want to extend Elizabeth's vision in these matters beyond the range of the sun and moon. So I say that Jupiter—and if not Jupiter, one of the countless millions of cooler planets, perhaps ever so much bigger than he is, which lie out in the other sun-systems—was well on with his railways and telegraphs when we began to get a crust, and to condense vapours. You will allow me to say as much as that, for the sake of argument?"
"I think you argue beautifully," said Mr. Yelverton.
"Very well then. Millions of years ago, if you had lived in Jupiter, you could have travelled in luxury as long as your life lasted, and seen countries whose numbers and resources never came to an end. Think of the railway system, and the shipping interest, of a world of that size!"
"Don't, Patty," interposed Elizabeth. "Think what a little, little life it would have been, by comparison! If we can't make it do us now, what would its insufficiency be under such conditions?"
Patty waved her hand to indicate the irrelevancy of the suggestion. "In a planet where, we are told, there are no vicissitudes of climate, people can't catch colds, Elizabeth; and colds, all the doctors say, are the primary cause of illness, and it is because they get ill that people die. That is a detail. Don't interrupt me. So you see, Mr. Yelverton, assuming that they knew all that we know, and did all that we do, before the fire and the water made our rocks and seas, and the chalk beds grew, and the slimy things crawled, and primitive man began to chip stones into wedges to kill the saurians with—just imagine for a moment the state of civilisation that must exist in Jupiter,now. Not necessarily our own Jupiter—any of the older and more improved Jupiters that must be spinning about in space."
"I can't," said Mr. Yelverton. "My imagination is not equal to such a task."
"I want Elizabeth to think of it," said Patty. "She is a little inclined to be provincial, as you see, and I want to elevate her ideas."
"Thank you, dear," said Elizabeth.
"It is a pity," Patty went on, "that we can't have a Federal Convention. That's what we want. If only the inhabited planets could send representatives to meet and confer together somewhere occasionally, then we should all have broad views—then we might find out at once how to set everything right, without any more trouble."
"Space would have to be annihilated indeed, Miss Patty."
"Yes, I know—I know. Of course I know it can't be done—at any rate, notyet—not in the present embryonic stage of things. If a meteor takes a million years to travel from star to star, going at the rate of thousands of miles per second—and keeps on paying visits indefinitely—Ah, what was that?"
She sprang from her low seat suddenly, all her celestial fancies scattered to the mundane winds, at the sound of a wakeful magpie beginning to pipe plaintively on the house roof. She thought she recognised one of the dear voices of the past. "Canit be Peter?" she cried, breathlessly. "Oh, Elizabeth, I do believe it is Peter! Do come out and let us call him down!"
They hurried, hand in hand, down to the shelving terrace that divided the verandah from the edge of the cliff, and there called and cooed and coaxed in their most seductive tones. The magpie looked at them for a moment, with his head cocked on one side, and then flew away.
"No," said Patty, with a groan, "it isnotPeter! They are all gone, every one of them. I have no doubt the Hawkins boys shot them—little bloodthirsty wretches! Come down to the beach, Elizabeth."
They descended the steep and perilous footpath zig-zagging down the face of the cliff, with the confidence of young goats, and reaching the little bathing-house, sat down on the threshold. The tide was high, and the surf seething within a few inches of the bottom step of the short ladder up and down which they had glided bare-footed daily for so many years. The fine spray damped their faces; the salt sea-breezes fanned them deliciously. Patty put her arms impulsively round her sister's neck.
"Oh, Elizabeth," she said, "I am so glad for you—Iamso glad! It has crossed my mind several times, but I was never sure of it till to-day, and I wouldn't say anything until I was sure, or until you told me yourself."
"My darling," said Elizabeth, responding to the caress, "don't be sure yet.Iam not sure."
"Youare not!" exclaimed Patty, with derisive energy. "Don't try to make me believe you are a born idiot, now, because I know you too well. Why, a baby in arms could see it!"
"I see it, dear, of course; both of us see it. We understand each other. But—but I don't know yet whether I shall accept him, Patty."
"Don't you?" responded Patty. She had taken her arms from her sister's neck, and was clasping her knees with them in a most unsympathetic attitude. "Do you happen to know whether you love him, Elizabeth?"
"Yes," whispered Elizabeth, blushing in the darkness; "I know that."
"And whether he loves you?"
"Yes."
"Of course you do. You can't help knowing it. Nobody could. And if," proceeded Patty sternly, fixing the fatuous countenance of the man in the moon with a baleful eye, "if, under those circumstances, you don't accept him, you deserve to be a miserable, lonely woman for all the rest of your wretched life. That's my opinion if you ask me for it."
Elizabeth looked at the sea in tranquil contemplation for a few seconds. Then she told Patty the story of her perplexity from the beginning to the end.
"Nowwhatwould you do?" she finally asked of her sister, who had listened with the utmost interest and intelligent sympathy. "If it were your own case, my darling, and you wanted to do what was right,howwould you decide?"
"Well, Elizabeth," said Patty; "I'll tell you the truth. I should not stop to think whether it was right or wrong."
"Patty!"
"No. A year ago I would not have said so—a year ago I might have been able to give you the very best advice. But now—but now"—the girl stretched out her hands with the pathetic gesture that Elizabeth had seen and been struck with once before—"now, if it were my own case, I should take the man I loved, no matterwhathe was, if he would take me."
Elizabeth heaved a long sigh from the bottom of her troubled heart. She felt that Patty, to whom she had looked for help, had made her burden of responsibility heavier instead of lighter. "Let us go up to the house again," she said wearily. "There is no need to decide to-night."
When they reached the house, they found Eleanor gone to bed, and the gentlemen sitting on the verandah together, still talking of Mr. Yelverton's family history, in which the lawyer was professionally interested. The horses were in the little buggy, which stood at the gate.
"Ah, here they are!" said Mr. Brion. "Mr. Yelverton is waiting to say good-night, my dears. He has to settle at the hotel, and go on board to-night."
Patty bade her potential brother-in-law an affectionate farewell, and then vanished into her bedroom. The old man bustled off at her heels, under pretence of speaking to the lad-of-all-work who held the horses; and Elizabeth and her lover were left for a brief interval alone.
"You will not keep me in suspense longer than you can help, will you?" Mr. Yelverton said, holding her hands. "Won't a week be long enough?"
"Yes," she said; "I will decide it in a week."
"And may I come back to you here, to learn my fate? Or will you come to Melbourne to me?"
"Had I not better write?"
"No. Certainly not."
"Then I will come to you," she said.
He drew her to him and kissed her forehead gravely. "Good-night, my love," he said. "You will be my love, whatever happens."
And so he departed to the township, accompanied by his hospitable host, and she went miserable to bed. And at the first pale streak of dawn the little steamer sounded her whistle and puffed away from the little jetty, carrying him back to the world, and she stood on the cliff, a mile away from Seaview Villa, to watch the last whiff of smoke from its funnels fade like a breath upon the horizon.
If we could trace back the wonderful things that happen to us "by accident," or, as some pious souls believe, by the operation of a special Providence or in answer to prayer, to their remote origin, how far should we not have to go? Into the mists of antiquity, and beyond—even to the primal source whence the world was derived, and the consideration of the accident of its separation from its parent globe; nay, of the accident which separated our sun itself from the countless dust of other suns that strew the illimitable ether—still leaving the root of the matter in undiscoverable mystery. The chain of causes has no beginning for us, as the sequence of effects has no end. These considerations occurred to me just now, when I sat down, cheerful and confident, to relate how it came to pass (and what multitudinous trifles could have prevented it from coming to pass) that an extraordinary accident happened to the three Miss Kings in the course of the week following Mr. Yelverton's departure. Thinking it over, I find that I cannot relate it. It would make this chapter like the first half-dozen in the book of Chronicles, only much worse. If Mr. King had not inherited a bad temper from his great-great-grandfathers—I could get as far as that. But the task is beyond me. I give it up, and content myself with a narration of the little event (in the immeasurable chain of events) which, at this date of which I am writing—in the ephemeral summer time of these three brief little lives—loomed so large, and had such striking consequences.
It happened—or, as far as my story is concerned, it began to happen—while the steamer that carried away Mr. Yelverton was still ploughing the ocean waves, with that interesting passenger on board. Seaview Villa lay upon the headland, serene and peaceful in the sunshine of as perfect a morning as visitors to the seaside could wish to see, all its door-windows open to the south wind, and the sibilant music of the little wavelets at its feet. The occupants of the house had risen from their beds, and were pursuing the trivial round and common task of another day, with placid enjoyment of its atmospheric charms, and with no presentiment of what was to befall them. The girls went down to their bath-house before breakfast, and spent half an hour in the sunny water, diving, and floating, and playing all the pranks of childhood over again; and then they attacked a dish of fried flathead with appetites that a schoolboy might have envied. After breakfast the lawyer had to go to his office, and his guests accompanied him part of the way. On their return, Sam Dunn came to see them, with the information that his best boat, which bore the inappropriate title of "The Rose in June," was moored on the beach below, and an invitation to his young ladies to come out for a sail in her while the sea was so calm and the wind so fair. This invitation Elizabeth declined for herself; she was still wondering in which direction the right path lay—whether towards the fruition of her desires or the renunciation of all that now made life beautiful and valuable to her—and finding no solution to the problem either in meditation or prayer; and she had little inclination to waste any of the short time that remained to her for making up her mind. But to Patty and Eleanor it was irresistible. They scampered off to their bedrooms to put on their oldest frocks, hats, and boots, rushed into the kitchen to Mrs. Harris to beg for a bundle of sandwiches, and set forth on their expedition in the highest spirits—as if they had never been away from Sam Dunn and the sea, to learn life, and love, and trouble, and etiquette amongst city folks.
When they were gone, the house was very still for several hours. Elizabeth sat on the verandah, sewing and thinking, and watching the white sail of "The Rose in June" through a telescope; then she had her lunch brought to her on a white-napkined tray; after eating which in solitude she went back to her sewing, and thinking, and watching again. So four o'clock—the fateful hour—drew on. At a little before four, Mr. Brion came home, hot and dusty from his long walk, had a bath and changed his clothes, and sat down to enjoy himself in his arm-chair. Mrs. Harris brought in the afternoon tea things, with some newly-baked cakes; Elizabeth put down her work and seated herself at the table to brew the refreshing cup. Then home came Patty and Eleanor, happy and hungry, tanned and draggled, and in the gayest temper, having been sailing Sam's boat for him all the day and generally roughing it with great ardour. They were just in time for the tea and cakes, and sat down as they were, with hats tilted back on their wind-roughened heads, to regale themselves therewith.
When Patty was in the middle of her third cake, she suddenly remembered something. She plunged her hand into her pocket, and drew forth a small object. It was as if one touched the button of that wonderful electric apparatus whereby the great ships that are launched by princesses are sent gliding out of dock into the sea. "Look," she said, opening her hand carefully, "what he has given me. It is a Queensland opal. A mate of his, he says, gave it to him, but I have a terrible suspicion that the dear fellow bought it. Mates don't give such things for nothing. Is it not a beauty?"—and she held between her thumb and finger a silky-looking flattened stone, on which, when it caught the light, a strong blue sheen was visible. "I shall have it cut and made into something when we go back to town, and I shall keep itfor ever, in memory of Sam Dunn," said Patty with enthusiasm.
And then, when they had all examined and appraised it thoroughly, she carried it to the mantelpiece, intending to place it there in safety until she went to her own room. But she had no sooner laid it down, pushing it gently up to the wall, than there was a little click and a faint rattle, and it was gone.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "whatshallI do? It has fallen behind the mantelpiece! Iquiteforgot that old hole—and it is there still. Surely," she continued angrily, stamping her foot, "when Mr. Hawkins took the trouble to do all this"—and she indicated the surface of the woodwork, which had been painted in a wild and ghastly imitation of marble—"he might have taken a little more, and fixed the thing close up to the wall?"
Mr. Brion examined the mantelpiece, pushed it, shook it, peered behind it with one eye, and said that he had himself lost a valuable paper-knife in the same distressing manner, and had long intended to have the aperture closed up. "And I will get a carpenter to-morrow morning, my dear," he boldly declared, "and he shall take the whole thing to pieces and fix it again properly. Yes, I will—as well now as any other time—and we will find your opal."
Having pledged himself to which tremendous purpose, he and they finished their tea, and afterwards had their dinner, and afterwards sat on the verandah and gossiped, and afterwards went to bed—and in due time got up again—as if nothing out of the common way had happened!
In the morning Fate sent another of her humble emissaries from the township to Seaview Villa, with a bag of tools over his shoulder—tools that were keys to unlock one of her long-kept secrets. And half an hour after his arrival they found the opal, and several things besides. When, after Mrs. Harris had carefully removed the furniture and hearthrug, and spread cornsacks over the carpet, the carpenter wrenched the mantelpiece from its fastenings, such a treasure-trove was discovered in the rough hollows of the wall and floor as none of them had dreamed of. It did not look much at the first glance. There were the opal and the paper-knife, half a dozen letters (circulars and household bills of Mrs. King's), several pens and pencils, a pair of scissors, a silver fruit-knife, a teaspoon, a variety of miscellaneous trifles, such as bodkins and corks, and a vast quantity of dust. That seemed all. But, kneeling reverently to grope amongst these humble relics of the past, Elizabeth found, quite at the bottom of everything, a little card. It was an old, old card, dingy and fretted with age, and dried and curled up like a dead leaf, and it had a little picture on it that had almost faded away. She carefully wiped the dust from it with her handkerchief, and looked at it as she knelt; it was a crude and youthful water-colour drawing of an extensive Elizabethan house, with a great many gables and fluted chimney-stacks, and much exuberance of architectural fancy generally. It had been minutely outlined by a hand trained to good draughtsmanship, and then coloured much as a child would colour a newspaper print from a sixpenny paint-box, and less effectively, because there was no light and shade to go upon. It was flat and pale, like a builder's plan, only that it had some washy grass and trees about it, and a couple of dogs running a race in the foreground, which showed its more ambitious pretensions; and the whole thing had evidently been composed with the greatest care. Elizabeth, studying it attentively, and thinking that she recognised her father's hand in certain details, turned the little picture over in search of the artist's signature. And there, in a corner, written very fine and small, but with elaborate distinctness, she read these words:—"Elizabeth Leigh, from Kingscote Yelverton, Yelverton, June, 1847."
She stared at the legend—in which she recognised a peculiar capital K of his own invention that her father always used—with the utmost surprise, and with no idea of its tremendous significance. "Why—why!" she gasped, holding it up, "it belongs tohim—it has Mr. Yelverton's name upon it! How in the world did it come here? What does it mean? Did he drop it here the other day? But, no, that is impossible—it was quite at the bottom—it must have been lying here for ages. Mr. Brion,whatdoes it mean?"
The old man was already stooping over her, trying to take it from her hand. "Give it to me, my dear, give it to me," he cried eagerly. "Don't tear it—oh, for God's sake, be careful!—let me see what it is first." He took it from her, read the inscription over and over and over again, and then drew a chair to the table and sat down with the card before him, his face pale, and his hands shaking. The sisters gathered round him, bewildered; Elizabeth still possessed with her first impression that the little picture was her lover's property, Eleanor scarcely aware of what was going on, and Patty—always the quickest to reach the truth—already beginning dimly to discern the secret of their discovery. The carpenter and the housekeeper stood by, open-mouthed and open-eyed; and to them the lawyer tremulously addressed himself.
"You had better go for a little while," he said; "we will put the mantelpiece up presently. Yet, stay—we have found a very important document, as I believe, and you are witnesses that we have done so. You had better examine it carefully before you go, that you may know it when you see it again." Whereupon he solemnly proceeded to print the said document upon their memories, and insisted that they should each take a copy of the words that made its chief importance, embodying it in a sort of affidavit, to which they signed their names. Then he sent them out of the room, and confronted the three sisters, in a state of great excitement. "I must see Paul," he said hurriedly. "I must have my son to help me. We must ransack that old bureau of yours—there must be more in it than we found that time when we looked for the will. Tell me, my dears, did your father let you have the run of the bureau, when he was alive?"
No, they told him; Mr. King had been extremely particular in allowing no one to go to it but himself.
"Ah," said the old man, "we must hunt it from top to bottom—we must break it into pieces, if necessary. I will telegraph to Paul. We must go to town at once, my dears, and investigate this matter—before Mr. Yelverton leaves the country."
"He will not leave the country yet," said Elizabeth. "What is it, Mr. Brion?"
"I think I see what it is," broke in Patty. "Mr. Brion thinks that father was Mr. Yelverton's uncle, who was lost so long ago. King—King—Mr. Yelverton told us the other day that they calledhim'King,' for short—and he was named Kingscote Yelverton, like his uncle. Mother's name was Elizabeth. I believe Mr. Brion is right And, if so—"
"And, if so," Patty repeated, when that wonderful, bewildering day was over, and she and her elder sister were packing for their return to Melbourne in the small hours of the next morning—"if so, we are the heiresses of all those hundreds of thousands that are supposed to belong to our cousin Kingscote. Now, Elizabeth, do you feel like depriving him of everything, and stopping his work, and leaving his poor starved costermongers to revert to their original condition—or do you not?"
"I would not take it," said Elizabeth, passionately.
"Pooh!—as if we should be allowed to choose! People can't do as they like where fortunes and lawyers are concerned. For Nelly's sake—not to speak of mine—they will insist on our claim, if we have one; and then do you supposehewould keep your money? Of course not—it's a most insulting idea. Therefore the case lies in a nutshell. You will have to make up your mind quickly, Elizabeth."
"I have made up my mind," said Elizabeth, "if it is a question of which of us is most worthy to have wealth, and knows best how to use it."
They did not wait for the next steamer, but hurried back to Melbourne by train and coach, and reached Myrtle Street once more at a little before midnight, the girls dazed with sleep and weariness and the strain of so much excitement as they had passed through. They had sent no message to Mrs. Duff-Scott at present, preferring to make their investigations, in the first place, as privately as possible; and Mr. Brion had merely telegraphed to his son that they were returning with him on important business. Paul was at the house when they arrived, but Mrs. M'Intyre had made hospitable preparations at No. 6 as well as at No. 7; and the tired sisters found their rooms aired and their beds arranged, a little fire lit, gas burning, kettle boiling, and a tempting supper laid out for them when they dragged their weary limbs upstairs. Mrs. M'Intyre herself was there to give them welcome, and Dan, who had been reluctantly left behind when they went into the country, was wild with rapture, almost tearing them to pieces in the vehemence of his delight at seeing them again, long past the age of gambols as he was. Mr. Brion was consoled for the upsetting of his own arrangements, which had been to take his charges to an hotel for the night, and there luxuriously entertain them; and he bade them an affectionate good-night, and went off contentedly to No. 7 under the wing of Paul's landlady, to doze in Paul's arm-chair until that brilliant ornament of the press should be released from duty.
Cheered by their little fire—for, summer though it was, their fatigues had made them chilly—and by Mrs. M'Intyre's ham and chicken and hot coffee, the girls sat, talking and resting, for a full hour before they went to bed; still dwelling on the strange discovery of the little picture behind the mantelpiece, which Mr. Brion had taken possession of, and wondering if it would really prove them to be the three Miss Yelvertons instead of the three Miss Kings, and co-heiresses of one of the largest properties in England.
As they passed the old bureau on their way to their rooms, Elizabeth paused and laid her hand on it thoughtfully. "It hardly seems to me possible," she said, "that father should have kept such a secret all these years, and died without telling us of it. He must have seen the advertisements—he must have known what difficulties he was making for everybody. Perhaps he did not write those names on the picture—handwriting is not much to go by, especially when it is so old as that; you may see whole schools of boys or girls writing in one style. Perhaps father was at school with Mr. Yelverton's uncle. Perhaps mother knew Elizabeth Leigh. Perhaps she gave her the sketch—or she might have come by it accidentally. One day she must have found it—slipped in one of her old music-books, maybe—and taken it out to show father; and she put it up on the mantelpiece, and it slipped down behind, like Patty's opal. If it had been of so much consequence as it seems to us—if they had desired to leave no trace of their connection with the Yelverton family—surely they would have pulled the house down but what they would have recovered it. And then we have hunted the bureau over—we have turned it out again and again—and never found anything."
"Mr. Brion thinks there are secret drawers," said Eleanor, who, of all the three, was most anxious that their golden expectations should be realised. "It is just the kind of cabinet work, he says, that is always full of hidden nooks and corners, and he is blaming himself that he did not search it more thoroughly in the first instance."
"And he thinks," continued Patty, "that father seemed like a man with things on his mind, and believes hewouldhave told us had he had more warning of his death. But you know he was seized so suddenly, and could not speak afterwards."
"Poor father—poor father!" sighed Elizabeth, pitifully. They thought of his sad life, in the light of this possible theory, with more tender compassion than they had ever felt for him before; but the idea that he might have murdered his brother, accidentally or otherwise—and for that reason had effaced himself and done bitter penance for the rest of his days—never for a moment occurred to them. "Well, we shall know by to-morrow night," said the elder sister, gently. "If the bureau does not yield fresh evidence, there is none that we can allow Mr. Brion, or anyone else, to act upon. The more I think it over, the more I see how easily the whole thing could be explained—to mean nothing so important as Mr. Brion thinks. And, for myself, I should not be disappointed if we found ourselves only Miss Kings, without fortune or pedigree, as we have always been. We are very happy as we are."
"That is how I felt at first," said Patty. "But I must say I am growing more and more in love with the idea of being rich. The delightful things that you can do with plenty of money keep flashing into my mind, one after the other, till I feel that I never understood what being poor meant till now, and that I could not content myself with a hundred a year and Mrs. Duff-Scott's benefactions any more. No; the wish may be father to the thought, Elizabeth, but Idothink it, honestly, that we shall turn out to be Mr. Yelverton's cousins—destined to supersede him, to a certain extent."
"I think so, too," said Eleanor, anxiously. "I can't—Iwon't—believe that Mr. Brion is mistaken."
So they went, severally affected by their strange circumstances, to bed. And in the morning they were up early, and made great haste to get their breakfast over, and their sitting-room in order, in readiness for the lawyer's visit. They were very much agitated by their suspense and anxiety, especially Patty, to whom the impending interview with Paul had become of more pressing consequence, temporarily, than even the investigations that he was to assist. She had had no communication with him whatever since she cut him on the racecourse when he was innocently disporting himself with Mrs. Aarons; and her nerves were shaken by the prospect of seeing and speaking to him again, and by the vehemence of her conflicting hopes and fears. She grew cold and hot at the recollection of one or two accidental encounters that had taken placesinceCup Day, and at the picture of his contemptuous, unrecognising face that rose up vividly before her. Elizabeth noticed her unusual pallor and restless movements, and how she hovered about the window, straining her ears to catch a chance sound of the men's voices next door, and made an effort to divert her thoughts. "Come and help me, Patty," she said, putting her hand on her sister's shoulder. "We have nothing more to do now, so we may as well turn out some of the drawers before they come. We can look over dear mother's clothes, and see if they have any marks on them that we have overlooked. Mr. Brion will want to have everything examined."
So they began to work at the bureau with solemn diligence, and a fresh set of emotions were evolved by that occupation, which counteracted, without effacing, those others that were in Patty's mind. She became absorbed and attentive. They took out all Mrs. King's gowns, and her linen, and her little everyday personal belongings, searched them carefully for indications of ownership, and, finding none, laid them aside in the adjoining bedroom. Then they exhumed all those relics of an olden time which had a new significance at the present juncture—the fine laces, the faded brocades, the Indian shawl and Indian muslins, the quaint fans and little bits of jewellery—and arranged them carefully on the table for the lawyer's inspection.
"We knownow," said Patty, "though we didn't know a few mouths ago, that these are things that could only belong to a lady who had been rich once."
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "But there is another point to be considered. Elizabeth Leigh ran away with her husband secretly and in haste, and under circumstances that make it seemmostunlikely that she should have hampered herself and him with luggage, or bestowed a thought on such trifles as fans and finery."
The younger sisters were a little daunted for a moment by this view of the case. Then Eleanor spoke up. "How you do love to throw cold water on everything!" she complained, pettishly. "Why shouldn't she think of her pretty things? I'm sure if I were going to run away—no matter under what circumstances—I should take allmine, if I had half an hour to pack them up. So would you. At least, I don't know about you—but Patty would. Wouldn't you, Patty?"
"Well," said Patty, thoughtfully, sitting back on her heels and folding her hands in her lap, "I really think I should, Elizabeth. If you come to think of it, it is the heroines of novels who do those things. They throw away lovers, and husbands, and fortunes, and everything else, on the slightest provocation; it is a matter of course—it is the correct thing in novels. But in real life girls are fond of all nice things—at least, that is my experience—and they don't feel like throwing them away. Girls in novels would never let Mrs. Duff-Scott give them gowns and bonnets, for instance—they would be too proud; and they would burn a bureau any day rather than rummage in it for a title to money that a nice man, whom they cared for, was in possession of. Don't tell me. You are thinking of the heroines of fiction, Elizabeth, and not of Elizabeth Leigh.She, I agree with Nelly—however much she might have been troubled and bothered—did not leave her little treasures for the servants to pawn. Either she took them with her, or someone able to keep her destination a secret sent them after her."
"Well, well," said Elizabeth, who had got out her mother's jewellery and was gazing fondly at the miniature in the pearl-edged locket, "we shall soon know. Get out the books and music, dear."
They were turning over a vast pile of music, which required at least half a day to examine properly, when the servant of the house tapped at the door to ask, with Mr. Brion's compliments, when it would be convenient to Miss King to receive that gentleman. In a few minutes father and son were in the room, the former distributing hasty and paternal greetings all around, and the latter quietly shaking hands with an air of almost aggressive deliberation. Paul was quite polite, and to a certain extent friendly, but he was terribly, uncompromisingly business-like. Not a moment did he waste in mere social amenities, after shaking hands with Patty—which he did as if he were a wooden automaton, and without looking at her—but plunged at once into the matter of the discovered picture, as if time were money and nothing else of any consequence. Patty's heart sank, but her spirit rose; she determined not to "let herself down" or in any way to "make an exhibition of herself," if she could help it. She drew a little aside from the bureau, and went on turning over the music—which presently she was able to report valueless as evidence, except negative evidence, the name, wherever it had been written at the head of a sheet, having been cut out or erased; while Elizabeth took the remaining articles from their drawers and pigeon-holes, and piled them on the table and in Nelly's arms.
For some time they were all intent upon their search, and very silent; and it still seemed that they were to find nothing in the shape of that positive proof which Elizabeth, as the head of the family, demanded before she would give permission for any action to be taken. There were no names in the old volumes of music, and the fly-leaves had been torn from the older books. Some pieces of ancient silver plate—a pair of candlesticks, a pair of salt-cellars, a teapot and sugar basin (now in daily use), a child's mug, some Queen Anne spoons and ladles—were all unmarked by crest or monogram; and two ivory-painted miniatures and three daguerreotypes, representing respectively one old lady in high-crowned cap and modest kerchief, one young one with puffs all over her head, and a classic absence of bodice to her gown, one little fair-haired child, similarly scanty in attire, and one middle-aged gentleman with a large shirt frill and a prodigious quantity of neck-cloth—likewise failed to verify themselves by date or inscription when carefully prised out of their frames and leather cases with Paul Brion's pen-knife. These family portraits, understood by the girls to belong to the maternal side of the house, were laid aside, however, along with the pearl-rimmed locket and other jewels, and the picture that was found behind the mantelpiece; and then, nothing else being left, apparently, the two men began an inspection of the papers.
While this was going on, Patty, at a sign from Elizabeth, set up the leaves of a little tea-table by the window, spread it with a white cloth, and fetched in such a luncheon as the slender larder afforded—the remains of Mrs. M'Intyre's chicken and ham, some bread and butter, a plate of biscuits, and a decanter of sherry—for it was past one o'clock, and Mr. Brion and Paul had evidently no intention of going away until their investigations were complete. The room was quite silent. Her soft steps and the brush of her gown as she passed to and fro were distinctly audible to her lover, who would not so much as glance at her, but remained sternly intent upon the manuscripts before him. These were found to be very interesting, but to have no more bearing upon the matter in hand than the rest of the relics that had been overhauled; for the most part, they were studies in various arts and sciences prepared by Mr. and Mrs. King for their daughters during the process of their education, and such odds and ends of literature as would be found in a clever woman's common-place books. They had all been gone over at the time of Mr. King's death, in a vain hunt for testamentary documents; and Elizabeth, looking into the now bare shelves and apertures of the bureau, began to think how she could console her sisters for the disappointment of their hopes.
"Come and have some lunch," she said to Paul (Mr. Brion was already at the table, deprecating the trouble that his dear Patty was taking). "I don't think you will find anything more."
The young man stood up with his brows knitted over his keen eyes, and glanced askance at the group by the window. "We have not done yet," he said decisively; "and we have learned quite enough, in what wehaven'tfound, to justify us in consulting Mr. Yelverton's solicitors."
"No," she said, "I'll have nothing said to Mr. Yelverton, unless the whole thing is proved first."
Never thinking that the thing would be proved, first or last, she advanced to the extemporised lunch table, and dispensed the modest hospitalities of the establishment with her wonted simple grace. Mr. Brion was accommodated with an arm-chair and a music-book to lay across his knees, whereon Patty placed the tit-bits of the chicken and the knobby top-crust of the loaf, waiting upon him with that tender solicitude to which he had grown accustomed, but which was so astonishing, and so interesting also, to his son.
"She has spoiled me altogether," said the old man fondly, laying his hand on her bright head as she knelt before him to help him to mustard and salt. "I don't know how I shall ever manage to get along without her now."
"Has this sad fate overtaken you in one short week?" inquired Paul, rather grimly. "Your sister should be labelled like an explosive compound, Miss King—'dangerous,' in capital letters." Paul was sitting in a low chair by Elizabeth, with his plate on his knee, and he thawed a good deal, in spite of fierce intentions to the contrary, under the influence of food and wine and the general conversation. He looked at Patty now and then, and by-and-bye went so far as to address a remark to her. "What did she think of the caves?" he asked, indifferently, offering her at the same moment a glass of sherry, which, though unaccustomed to fermented liquors, she had not the presence of mind to refuse—and which she took with such a shaking hand that she spilled some of it over her apron. And she plunged at once into rapid and enthusiastic descriptions of the caves and the delights of their expedition thereto, absurdly uplifted by this slight token of interest in her proceedings.
When luncheon was over, Elizabeth culled Eleanor—who, too restless to eat much herself, was hovering about the bureau, tapping it here and there with a chisel—to take her turn to be useful by clearing the table; and then, as if business were of no consequence, bade her guests rest themselves for a little and smoke a cigarette if they felt inclined.
"Smoke!" exclaimed Paul, with a little sarcastic laugh. "Oh, no, Miss King, that would never do. What would Mrs. Duff-Scott say if she were to smell tobacco in your sitting-room?"
"Well, what would she say?" returned Elizabeth, gently—she was very gentle with Paul to-day. "Mrs. Duff-Scott, I believe, is rather fond of the smell of tobacco, when it is good."
Mr. Brion having satisfied the demands of politeness with profuse protestations, suffered himself to indulge in a mild cigarette; but Paul would not be persuaded. He resumed his study of the manuscripts with an air of determination, as of a man who had idled away precious time. He conscientiously endeavoured to fix his attention on the important business that he had undertaken, and to forget everything else until he had finished it. For a little while Patty wandered up and down in an aimless manner, making neat heaps of the various articles scattered about the room and watching him furtively; then she softly opened the piano, and began to play, just above a whisper, the "Sonata Pathetique."
It was between two and three o'clock; Mr. Brion reposed in his arm-chair, smoking a little, talking a little to Elizabeth who sat beside him, listening dreamily to the piano, and feeling himself more and more inclined to doze and nod his head in the sleepy warmth of the afternoon, after his glass of sherry and his recent severe fatigues. Elizabeth, by way of entertaining him, sat at his elbow, thinking, thinking, with her fingers interlaced in her lap and her gaze fixed upon the floor. Patty, intensely alert and wakeful, but almost motionless in her straight back and delicately poised head, drooped over the keyboard, playing all the "soft things" that she could remember without notes; and Paul, who had resisted her enchantments as long as he could, leaned back in his chair, with his hand over his eyes, having evidently ceased to pay any attention to his papers. And, suddenly, Eleanor, who was supposed to be washing plates and dishes in the kitchen, flashed into the room, startling them all out of their dreams.
"Elizabeth, dear," she exclaimed tremulously, "forgive me for meddling with your things. But I was thinking and thinking what else there was that we had not examined, and mother's old Bible came into my head—the little old Bible that she always used, and that you kept in your top drawer. I could not help looking at it, and here"—holding out a small leather-bound volume, frayed at the corners and fastened with silver clasps—"here is what I have found. The two first leaves are stuck together—I remembered that—but they are only stuck round the edges; there is a little piece in the middle that is loose and rattles, and, see, there is writing on it." The girl was excited and eager, and almost pushed the Bible into Paul Brion's hands. "Look at it, look at it," she cried. "Undo the leaves with your knife and see what the writing is."
Paul examined the joined leaves attentively, saw that Eleanor was correct in her surmise, and looked at Elizabeth. "May I, Miss King?" he asked, his tone showing that he understood how sacred this relic must be, and how much it would go against its present possessor to see it tampered with.
"I suppose you had better," said Elizabeth.
He therefore sat down, laid the book before him, and opened his sharp knife. A sense that something was really going to happen now—that the secret of all this careful effacement of the little chronicles common and natural to every civilised family would reveal itself in the long-hidden page which, alone of all the records of the past, their mother had lacked the heart to destroy—fell upon the three girls; and they gathered round to watch the operation with pale faces and beating hearts. Paul was a long time about it, for he tried to part the leaves without cutting them, and they were too tightly stuck together. He had at last to make a little hole in which to insert his knife, and then it was a most difficult matter to cut away the plain sheet without injuring the written one. Presently, however, he opened a little door in the middle of the page, held the flap up, glanced at what was behind it for a moment, looked significantly at his father, and silently handed the open book to Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, trembling with excitement and apprehension, lifting up the little flap in her turn, read this clear inscription—
"To my darling child,ELIZABETH,From her loving mother,ELEANOR D'ARCY LEIGH.Bradenham Abbey. Christmas, 1839.Psalm xv., 1, 2."
There was a dead silence while they all looked at the fine brown writing—that delicate caligraphy which, like fine needlework, went out of fashion when our grandmothers passed away—of which every letter, though pale, was perfectly legible. A flood of recollection poured into the minds of the three girls, especially the elder ones, at the sight of those two words, "Bradenham Abbey," in the corner of the uncovered portion of the page. "Leigh" and "D'Arcy" were both unfamiliar names—or had been until lately—but Bradenham had a place in the archives of memory, and came forth at this summons from its dusty and forgotten nook. When they were children their mother used to tell them stories by the firelight in winter evenings, and amongst those stories were several whose scenes were laid in the tapestried chambers and ghostly corridors, and about the parks and deer-drives and lake-shores of a great "place" in an English county—a place that had once been a famous monastery, every feature and aspect of which Mrs. King had at various times described so minutely that they were almost as familiar with it as if they had seen it for themselves. These stories generally came to an untimely end by the narrator falling into an impenetrable brown study or being overtaken by an unaccountable disposition to cry—which gave them, of course, a special and mysterious fascination for the children. While still little things in pinafores, they were quick enough to perceive that mother had a personal interest in that wonderful place of which they never tired of hearing, and which evidently did not belong to the realms of Make-believe, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty and Blue-beard's castle; and therefore they were always, if unconsciously, trying to understand what that interest was. And when, one day when she was painting a wreath of forget-me-nots on some little trifle intended for a bazaar, and, her husband coming to look over her, she said to him impulsively, "Oh, do you remember how they grew in the sedges round the Swan's Pool at Bradenham?"—and when he sternly bade her hush, and not speak of Bradenham unless she wished to drive him mad—then Patty and Elizabeth, who heard them both, knew that Bradenham was the name of the great house where monks had lived, in the grounds of which, as they had had innumerable proofs, pools and swans abounded. It was the first time they had heard it, but it was too important a piece of information to be forgotten. On this memorable day, so many years after, when they read "Bradenham Abbey" in the well-worn Bible, they looked at each other, immediately recalling that long-ago incident; but their hearts were too full to speak. It was Mr. Brion who broke the silence that had fallen upon them all.