by Ellen Wood
“It cannot possibly be true,” cried Mr. Hamlyn with quivering lips.
“True, no! of course it can’t be, hang it! Or else what would you do?”
That might be logical though not satisfactory reasoning. And Mr. Hamlyn thought of the woman said to be watching for him, and her pale gold hair.
“She was a cunning jade, if ever there was one, mark you, Philip Hamlyn; that false wife of yours and kin of mine; came of a cunning family on the mother’s side. Put it that she was saved: if it suited her to let us suppose she was drowned, why, she’d do it. I know Dolly.”
And poor Philip Hamlyn, assenting to the truth of this with all his heart, went out to face the battle that might be coming upon him, lacking the courage for it.
II
The cold, clear afternoon air touching their healthy faces, and Jack Frost nipping their noses, raced Miss West and Kate Dancox up and down the hawthorn walk. It had pleased that arbitrary young damsel, who was still very childish, to enter a protest against going beyond the grounds that fine winter’s day; she would be in the hawthorn walk, or nowhere; and she would run races there. As Miss West gave in to her whims for peace’ sake in things not important, and as she was young enough herself not to dislike running, to the hawthorn walk they went.
Captain Monk was recovering rapidly. His sudden illness had been caused by drinking some cold cider when some out-door exercise had made him dangerously hot. The alarm and apprehension had now subsided; and Mrs. Hamlyn, arriving three days ago in answer to the hasty summons, was thinking of returning to London.
“You are cheating!” called out Kate, flying off at a tangent to cross her governess’s path. “You’ve no right to get before me!”
“Gently,” corrected Miss West. “My dear, we have run enough for to-day.”
“We haven’t, you ugly, cross old thing! Aunt Eliza says you are ugly. And—”
The young lady’s amenities were cut short by finding herself suddenly lifted off her feet by Mr. Harry Carradyne, who had come behind them.
“Let me alone, Harry! You are always coming where you are not wanted. Aunt Eliza says so.”
A sudden light, as of mirth, illumined Harry Carradyne’s fresh, frank countenance. “Aunt Eliza says all those things, does she? Well, Miss Kate, she also says something else — that you are now to go indoors.”
“What for? I shan’t go in.”
“Oh, very well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer.”
Kate dearly loved new silk frocks, and she raced away. The governess followed more slowly, Mr. Carradyne talking by her side.
For some months now their love-dream had been going on; aye, and the love-making too. Not altogether surreptitiously; neither of them would have liked that. Though not expedient to proclaim it yet to Captain Monk and the world, Mrs. Carradyne knew of it and tacitly sanctioned it.
Alice West turned her face, blushing uncomfortably, to him as they walked. “I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something to you,” she spoke with hesitation. “Are you not upon rather bad terms with Mrs. Hamlyn?”
“She is with me,” replied Harry.
“And — am I the cause?” continued Alice, feeling as if her fears were confirmed.
“Not at all. She has not fathomed the truth yet, with all her penetration, though she may have some suspicion of it. Eliza wants to bend me to her will in the matter of the house, and I won’t be bent. Old Peveril wishes to resign the lease of Peacock Range to me; I wish to take it from him, and Eliza objects. She says Peveril promised her the house until the seven years’ lease was out, and that she means to keep him to his bargain.”
“Do you quarrel?”
“Quarrel! no,” laughed Harry Carradyne. “I joke with her, rather than quarrel. But I don’t give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments, telling me that I am no gentleman, that I’m a bear, and so on; to which I make my bow.”
Alice West was gazing straight before her, a troubled look in her eyes. “Then you see that I am the remote cause of the quarrel, Harry. But for thinking of me, you would not care to take the house on your own hands.”
“I don’t know that. Be very sure of one thing, Alice: that I shall not stay an hour longer under the roof here if my uncle disinherits me. That he, a man of indomitable will, should be so long making up his mind is a proof that he shrinks from committing the injustice. The suspense it keeps me in is the worst of all. I told him so the other evening when we were sitting together and he was in an amiable mood. I said that any decision he might come to would be more tolerable than this prolonged suspense.”
Alice drew a long breath at his temerity.
Harry laughed. “Indeed, I quite expected to be ordered out of the room in a storm. Instead of that, he took it quietly, civilly telling me to have a little more patience; and then began to speak of the annual new year’s dinner, which is not far off now.”
“Mrs. Carradyne is thinking that he may not hold the dinner this year, as he has been so ill,” remarked the young lady.
“He will never give that up, Alice, as long as he can hold anything; and he is almost well again, you know. Oh, yes; we shall have the dinner and the chimes also.”
“I have never heard the chimes,” she said. “They have not played since I came to Church Leet.”
“They are to play this year,” said Harry Carradyne. “But I don’t think my mother knows it.”
“Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes? I seem to have gathered the idea, somehow,” added Alice. But she received no answer.
Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her home. This involved the attendance of Miss West, who now found herself summoned to the charge.
Having escorted Mrs. Ram to her lowly door, and had innumerable intricate questions answered touching trimmings and fringes, Miss Kate Dancox, disregarding her governess altogether, flew back along the road with all the speed of her active limbs, and disappeared within the churchyard. At first Alice, who was growing tired and followed slowly, could not see her; presently, a desperate shriek guided her to an unfrequented corner where the graves were crowded. Miss Kate had come to grief in jumping over a tombstone, and bruised both her knees.
“There!” exclaimed Alice, sitting down on the stump of an old tree, close to the low wall. “You’ve hurt yourself now.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” returned Kate, who did not make much of smarts. And she went limping away to Mr. Grame, then doing some light work in his garden.
Alice sat on where she was, reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible. While standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk’s wife, sitting in the church-porch and watching her attentively. The poor old woman had been ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out. Leaving the inscriptions, she went across the churchyard.
“Ay, my dear young lady, I be up again, and thankful enough to say it; and I thought as the day’s so fine, I’d step out a bit,” she said, in answer to the salutation. An intelligent woman, and quite sufficiently cultivated for her work — cleaning the church and washing the parson’s surplices. “I thought John was in the church here, and came to speak to him; but he’s not, I find; the door’s locked.”
“I saw John down by Mrs. Ram’s just now; he was talking to Nott, the carpenter,” observed Alice. “Nancy, I was trying to make out some of those old names; but it is difficult to do so,” she added, pointing to the crowded corner.
“Ay, I see, my dear,” nodded Nancy. “His be worn a’most right off. I think I’d have it done again, an I was you.”
“Have what done again
?”
“The name upon your poor papa’s gravestone.”
“The what?” exclaimed Alice. And Nancy repeated her words.
Alice stared at her. Had Mrs. Cale’s wits vanished in her illness? “Do you know what you are saying, Nancy?” she cried; “I don’t. What had papa to do with this place? I think you must be wandering.”
Nancy stared in her turn. “Sure, it’s not possible,” she said slowly, beginning to put two and two together, “that you don’t know who you are, Miss West? That your papa died here? and lies buried here?”
Alice West turned white, and sat down on the opposite bench to Nancy. She did know that her father had died at some small country living he held; but she never suspected that it was at Church Leet. Her mother had gone to London after his death, and set up a school — which succeeded well. But soon she died, and the ladies who took to the school before her death took to Alice with it. The child was still too young to be told by her mother of the serious past — or Mrs. West deemed her to be so. And she had grown up in ignorance of her father’s fate and of where he died.
“When we heard, me and John, that it was a Miss West who had come to the Hall to be governess to Parson Dancox’s child, the name struck us both,” went on Nancy. “Next we looked at your face, my dear, to trace any likeness there might be, and we thought we saw it — for you’ve got your papa’s eyes for certain. Then, one day when I was dusting in here, I let fall a hymn-book from the Hall pew; in picking it up it came open, and the name writ in it stared me in the face, ‘Alice West.’ After that, we had no manner of doubt, him and me, and I’ve often wished to talk with you and tell you so. My dear, I’ve had you on my knee many a time when you were a little one.”
Alice burst into tears of agitation. “I never knew it! I never knew it. Dear Nancy, what did papa die of?”
“Ah, that was a sad piece of business — he was killed,” said Nancy. And forthwith, rightly or wrongly, she, garrulous with old age, told all the history.
It was an exciting interview, lasting until the shades of evening surprised them. Miss Kate Dancox might have gone roving to the other end of the globe, for all the attention given her just then. Poor Alice cried and sighed, and trembled inwardly and outwardly. “To think that it should just be to this place that I should come as governess, and to the house of Captain Monk!” she wailed. “Surely he did not kill papa! — intentionally!”
“No, no; nobody has ever thought that,” disclaimed Nancy. “The Captain is a passionate man, as is well-known, and they quarrelled, and a hot blow, not intentional, must have been struck between ‘em. And all through them blessed chimes, Miss Alice! Not but that they be sweet to listen to — and they be going to ring again this New Year’s Eve.”
Drawing her warm cloak about her, Nancy Cale set off towards her cottage. Alice West sat on in the sheltered porch, utterly bewildered. Never in her life had she felt so agitated, so incapable of sound and sober thought. Now it was explained why the bow-windowed sitting-room at the Vicarage would always strike her as being familiar to her memory; as though she had at some time known one that resembled it, or perhaps seen one like it in a dream.
“Well, I’m sure!”
The jesting salutation came from Harry Carradyne. Despatched in search of the truants, he had found Kate at the Vicarage, making much of the last new baby there, and devouring a sumptuous tea of cakes and jam. Miss West? Oh, Miss West was sitting in the church porch, talking to old Nancy Cale, she said to Harry.
“Why! What is it?” he exclaimed in dismay, finding that the burst of emotion which he had taken to be laughter, meant tears. “What has happened, Alice?”
She could no more have kept the tears in than she could help — presently — telling him the news. He sat down by her and held her close to him, and pressed for it. She was the daughter of George West, who had died in the dispute with Captain Monk in the dining-room at the hall so many years before, and who was lying here in the corner of the churchyard; and she had never, never known it!
Mr. Carradyne was somewhat taken to; there was no denying it; chiefly by surprise.
“I thought your father was a soldier, Alice — Colonel West; and died when serving in India. I’m sure it was said so when you came.”
“Oh, no, that could not have been said,” she cried; “unless Mrs. Moffit, the agent, made a mistake. It was my uncle who died in India. No one here ever questioned me about my parents, knowing they were dead. Oh, dear,” she went on in agitation, after a silent pause, “what am I to do now? I cannot stay at the Hall. Captain Monk would not allow it either.”
“No need to tell him,” quoth Mr. Harry.
“And — of course — we must part. You and I.”
“Indeed! Who says so?”
“I am not sure that it would be right to — to — you know.”
“To what? Go on, my dear.”
Alice sighed; her eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the fast-falling twilight. “Mrs. Carradyne will not care for me when she knows who I am,” she said in low tones.
“My dear, shall I tell you how it strikes me?” returned Harry: “that my mother will be only the more anxious to have you connected with us by closer and dearer ties, so as to atone to you, in even a small degree, for the cruel wrong which fell upon your father. As to me — it shall be made my life’s best and dearest privilege.”
But when a climax such as this takes place, the right or the wrong thing to be done cannot be settled in a moment. Alice West did not see her way quite clearly, and for the present she neither said nor did anything.
This little matter occurred on the Friday in Christmas week; on the following day, Saturday, Mrs. Hamlyn was returning to London. Christmas Day this year had fallen on a Monday. Some old wives hold a superstition that when that happens, it inaugurates but small luck for the following year, either for communities or for individuals. Not that that fancy has anything to do with the present history. Captain Monk’s banquet would not be held until the Monday night: as was customary when New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday. He had urged his daughter to remain over New Year’s Day; but she declined, on the plea that as she had been away from her husband on Christmas Day, she would like to pass New Year’s Day with him. The truth being that she wanted to get to London to see after that yellow-haired lady who was supposed to be peeping after Philip Hamlyn.
On the Saturday morning Mrs. Hamlyn was driven to Evesham in the close carriage, and took the train to London. Her husband, ever kind and attentive, met her at the Paddington terminus. He was looking haggard, and seemed to be thinner than when she left him nine days ago.
“Are you well, Philip?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, quite well,” quickly answered poor Philip Hamlyn, smiling a warm smile, that he meant to look like a gay one. “Nothing ever ails me.”
No, nothing might ail him bodily; but mentally — ah, how much! That awful terror lay upon him thick and threefold; it had not yet come to any solution, one way or the other. Major Pratt had taken up the very worst view of it; and spent his days pitching hard names at misbehaving syrens, gifted with “the deuce’s own cunning” and with mermaids’ shining hair.
“And how have things been going, Penelope?” asked Mrs. Hamlyn of the nurse, as she sat in the nursery with her boy upon her knee. “All right?”
“Quite so, ma’am. Master Walter has been just as good as gold.”
“Mamma’s darling!” murmured the doting mother, burying her face in his. “I have been thinking, Penelope, that your master does not look well,” she added after a minute.
“No, ma’am? I’ve not noticed it. We have not seen much of him up here; he has been at his club a good deal — and dined three or four times with old Major Pratt.”
“As if she would notice it! — servants never notice anything!” thought Eliza Hamlyn in her imperious way of judging the world. “By the way, Penelope,” she said aloud in light and careless tones, “has that woman with the yellow hair been seen about much? — has
she presumed again to accost my little son?”
“The woman with the yellow hair?” repeated Penelope, looking at her mistress, for the girl had quite forgotten the episode. “Oh, I remember — she that stood outside there and came to us in the square-garden. No, ma’am, I’ve seen nothing at all of her since that day.”
“For there are wicked people who prowl about to kidnap children,” continued Mrs. Hamlyn, as if she would condescend to explain her inquiry, “and that woman looked like one. Never suffer her to approach my darling again. Mind that, Penelope.”
The jealous heart is not easily reassured. And Mrs. Hamlyn, restless and suspicious, put the same question to her husband. It was whilst they were waiting in the drawing-room for dinner to be announced, and she had come down from changing her apparel after her journey. How handsome she looked! a right regal woman! as she stood there arrayed in dark blue velvet, the firelight playing upon her proud face, and upon the diamond earrings and brooch she wore.
“Philip, has that woman been prowling about here again?”
