CHAPTER XIV.
“MISS HAYES, I BELIEVE?”
Surely, there is no more melancholy task than collecting and putting away the belongings of the dead! Even such little everyday articles as gloves, pens, books, can inflict many agonizing stabs, however tenderly handled, ere they are thrust out of sight. Besides Emma’s own particular possessions, I had to open and investigate the great bullock trunk which contained the remnant of my father’s and mother’s property; so that I was at the present time actually surrounded and invested by the effects of three relatives who had passed away, and by many dumb and inanimate things, which nevertheless spoke with tongues.
The bullock trunk—being large and unwieldy—had been brought up to the drawing-room. I had given orders that no one was to be admitted. I had even locked the door, ere I turned the key in the trunk. It smelt strongly of camphor, and contained mostly my father’s effects—his uniform, his pistols, books, some rare coins, several valuable daggers, several files of paid bills, and boxes of cartridges. Quite at the bottom was a good-sized leathern despatch-box, and a few pale water-color sketches, carefully wrapped in tissue-paper, and also a slender gold-mounted riding-whip and a broken fan. The despatch-box was full of letters—my father’s and mother’s letters. I glanced at one or two. Somehow, I shrank from reading them, from prying into the secrets, the most sacred feelings of my dead parents. There was also an ivory Prayer-book, now very yellow, with the name, “Gwendoline Chalgrove,” inscribed in a bold hand. There were, moreover, a faded photograph of a girl, a little baby’s shirt, in which was stuck a rusty needle, and that was all.
These I put aside; they were relics to be specially treasured. And then I repacked the great box (filling up the space with some of poor Emma’s possessions), and sent it down-stairs. I had a great deal too many cases for a person of my indigent circumstances. My own paraphernalia was sufficiently modest, but I could not and would not abandon that great pile of luggage which had no living owners. I was going to London the next day. I had bidden good-by to the grave—paid our small accounts. I had packed up all Emma’s belongings. I was now busily putting together my own effects in my little room above the drawing-room: I do believe that one’s clothes swell! I was very hot and tired as I knelt on the floor stuffing mine into a choking trunk, when Mrs. Gabb came pounding up the stairs and gasped out as she opened the door, “There’s a gentleman below!” My mind of course, flew to Mr. Somers, and I made a gesture of dismissal. “I can’t see any one,” I began.
“He says he must see you; and he—I couldn’t well catch his name, but I believe he is lord. Here, just tidy yourself, and let me pick the white threads off you.”
I hurried down, with a very tumultuous heart, and discovered (as I had half suspected) Lord Chalgrove. The room was in the utmost confusion, and he was standing in the middle of it, with one of the little water-color drawings in his hand, which he laid aside as I entered.
“Miss Hayes, I—I believe?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Yes; my name is Hayes.”
“You are the daughter of Desmond Hayes and my sister Gwendoline?”
“I am,” I acknowledged gravely.
“Then, my dear,” he said, taking my hand in his, “I have come to take you home.”
I gazed at him incredulously.
“You understand, don’t you, that I am your uncle? Your mother was my only sister—you are my nearest of kin, except Dolly. You are the image of my poor Gwen!”
And this sedate little gray-bearded gentleman, whom I had never spoken to before, drew me nearer to him and kissed me timidly.
“How did you find me out?” I asked as he sat down beside me.
“I saw Mrs. Hayes’s death in the paper. I made inquiries from Grindlay and Co. her agents. There was a Miss Hayes, they believed—a step-daughter—and I came by the first train. I am going to take you back with me to-day”—looking at his watch—“by the four o’clock train. We shall not be home before ten o’clock to-night. I see you are half packed.”
“Yes, I was going to-morrow.”
“Then I am just in the nick of time! I never knew of your existence, my dear, until this morning. I wish I had. There is no use in raking up old miseries now. My father and mother were stern and unforgiving—especially my father; and your mother had been everything to them—they were so proud of her. Well, she was headstrong. My Dolly is the same. Your father was a singularly handsome and fascinating fellow. She walked out and married him one morning in St. James’s Piccadilly; and my father, when he heard the news, drew the blinds down all over the house, and gave out that Gwen was dead. And then poor Gwen died within a year in real earnest. We heard that the baby died too; but I—I wished to make sure, and I wrote out to your father and made inquiries, and offered to receive the child, if it had survived, and he simply returned me my own letter. If I had known, it would have been different for you of late years. Your father was too proud. Pride cost a good deal, you see. It cost my father his daughter—well, well!”
“How is Miss Chalgrove? I heard she had met with an accident.”
“It’s not much—a mere strain, she says. Only for that, she would have accompanied me; but she has to lie still—a hard thing for her; and she is not Miss Chalgrove, but your cousin Dolly. She declares that she recognized you at a dance by your likeness to the family. I saw you too, and was struck by the same thing, but I thought it was accidental. Dolly tried to find out your name, and to get formally introduced to you, but she was told that you were a niece of some Miss Bennys, and that they had taken you away early in the evening. Then we returned home, and, almost immediately, she met with this horrible fall, and that put things out of her head until the other day, when some one wrote a letter and spoke of a pretty Miss Hayes, living here, having lost her stepmother. Then we saw the Times notice, and put two and two together, and here I am! Even if your likeness to Gwen did not speak for you, I see her things about. That Prayer-book, there, I gave her myself. How was it that you never sent me a line?”
“I never heard anything about my mother’s people until after that ball, when I told my stepmother of Miss Chalgrove’s resemblance to myself. And then she told me all about my mother, and how my father would never hear the name of Chalgrove mentioned. He never dreamt that he would be leaving me alone in the world; and he was implacable on that one subject.”
We talked for more than half an hour, my uncle and I. I felt as if I had known him for a long time. I told him all my circumstances; in short, told him everything—excepting about Mr. Somers.
“You know the Somers, perhaps?” he asked.
“Yes; I—I—have met them.”
“They are connections of ours—of yours. Everard is my heir, as perhaps you may have heard, and a fine fellow. His father is my next-of-kin, but has completely lost his memory; and Lady Hildegarde and I, though we know each other since we were in pinafores—well—we don’t stable our horses together.”
(Nor did Lady Hildegarde and I use the same stable!)
“I suppose I ought to drive out to the Abbey; but it might run me for time, and we must go by the four o’clock train. May I ring for your landlady? She can help you to put your things up. Some she can send after you; and meanwhile I’ll go to the post-office and wire the news to Dolly.”
What a fuss Mrs. Gabb made! She was far more in the way than otherwise. However, in a very short time I had closed my gaping boxes, written directions, taken a dressing-bag, put on my hat and cloak, and was ready to start.
Miss Skuce entered as I was casting my last look round the sitting-room. (She had had her usual few words with Mrs. Gabb, and was almost incoherent.)
“Well, Gwendoline!”—a long pause, employed in staring at me very hard, as if she expected me to look different in some way—“and so your uncle is ‘a lord,’ and has come to fetch you! Lord Chalgrove! Well, well, well! I congratulate you”—kissing me effusively—“I am quite broken-hearted that you are going.” She had never mentioned this before. “And you will be a great lady—indeed, I am not one bit surprised—you always had the grand air,” and she held me back at arm’s length, and surveyed me, this time with undisguised admiration. “When you are living in high places, and driving in your coroneted carriage, you won’t forget your poor friends who were intimate with you” (far too intimate) “in your days of poverty and adversity?”
“No, no, Miss Skuce,” eager to escape, “I’ll never forget you—I can promise you that most faithfully.”
“Dear! You don’t mean to say that you have been over saying good-by to those horrid, common Mounds?”
“Certainly I have; they have been most kind to me. Why should I not take leave of them?”
“Well, I shall miss you frightfully. Living opposite to you has been as interesting as a tale in The Family Reader or Bow Bells. What with your coming so poor and lowly, and then knowing Lady Hildegarde, and turning the heads of hundreds at the Moate ball—oh, I heard all about it—and then being left desolate, and scorned, and, lastly, being fetched away by a lord, your own uncle—why, it’s most—most awfully affecting!” and she actually was so excited and upset that she began to cry.
In the midst of her sobs, my uncle reappeared, followed by a fly from the station. He gazed in puzzled bewilderment at Miss Skuce, who gasped out in jerky sentences—
“So sorry—to part—with this dear sweet girl—Lord Chalgrove. I am her oldest friend, too—as she will tell you. Known her—known her since she first came—a—stranger to Stonebrook.”
“I am sure I am greatly obliged to you, ma’am. A kindness to my niece is a double kindness to me.”
“Then,” hastily drying her eyes, “will you do me a favor, and allow me to come and see her off, your lordship?”
“Certainly; only too delighted,” handing her into the fly: Mrs. Gabb and family, Mrs. Mound and family, being assembled, and spectators of this most proud moment!
Then I took leave of them all, and of that dingy little house, where I had known many sorrows and but few joys; and was rattled off to the station at a great pace—my uncle being engaged all the time in listening to Miss Skuce’s voluble regrets.
It was a new experience to me to be waited upon; my uncle took all trouble off my hands. Whilst he was getting the tickets, I noticed the Abbey carriage drive up; it contained Lady Hildegarde and Lady Polexfen—who was evidently going away. They seemed surprised to see Lord Chalgrove, and accosted him warmly. He said something in reply, and then both ladies turned and looked hard at me; but there was no time for further conversation, for our train was entering the station.
As my uncle joined me with tickets and newspapers, I said in a low voice, “Not in the same carriage with Lady Polexfen, please—please!”
Then I said farewell to Miss Skuce, who, sobbing hysterically, folded me in her arms; there was no use in struggling, but I promised myself that it would be for the last time. Much as I hated her endearments, they evidently afforded her sincere gratification.
As the clock pointed to four, we steamed slowly away, leaving her on the platform dissolved in tears, and Lady Hildegarde looking after us with a glare of stony incredulity.