CHAPTER XIII.—A SISTER’S LOVE
His years but young, but his experience old;
His head unmellow’d, but his judgment ripe,
And in a word (for far behind his worth
Come all the praises that I now bestow),
He is complete in feature and in mind,
With all good grace to grace a gentleman.
—Shakspere.
Lotte Clinton, returning home to her apartment with some fresh work from the persons who employed her, arrived near to her abode at the culminating point of a great disturbance in the immediate vicinity.
With some alarm, she learned that the uproar had commenced in the house in which she resided, and that some low man had grievously maltreated a gentleman, who had been taken to the hospital, while his assailant, aided by a large proportion of the mob—who, it appeared, had espoused his cause—had escaped.
On entering the house, she found the lodgers and the landlady assembled in solemn conclave; and the moment they perceived her, they called upon her for an explanation of such “goings on” in her apartment—a demand she heard with astonishment, and with which she was utterly unable to comply.
Regarding those who addressed her with an affrighted look, she made no reply, but ran upstairs, entered her apartment, and turned the key, for a variety of strange thoughts, connected with Helen, ran through her mind.
She was not surprised to find her pale and motionless, tears still clinging to her pallid cheeks. She threw down the parcel she had brought home with her, and at once applied some simple restoratives to her senseless companion; but it was not until a long and patient perseverance had been exercised that she was rewarded with the signs of returning animation.
When Helen had so far recovered as to be able to speak, and to recollect what had passed, she threw herself into Lotte’s arms, and told her all.
Then followed passionate pleadings and supplications to the humble work-girl to quit her present place of abode, and move to another more obscure and secluded, where they were not likely to be tracked nor disturbed—where not even Lotte’s own brother should, for a time, know how to find them.
Lotte, as she listened to Helen’s urgent appeals, gazed round her neat little room—at her bird, her flowers—all that made it so cheerful, and ministered so much to her happiness. She thought of the brief but delicious visits of her brother; and there were latent impressions, too—most agreeable even to contemplate—of probable morning calls to be made by Mr. Mark Wilton. These anticipated and other actual pleasures she must sacrifice, if she complied with the wish of Helen. Nay, more, she felt that a sudden departure and secret mode of living must fling her own fair character under the shadow of suspicion.
She was progressing now in the world’s favour—she was more prosperous than she had ever been—she was lifted out of a state of the hardest and poorest paid toil; the world seemed to begin to smile in earnest upon her. To go back into a species of obscurity with Helen was to deaden, if not destroy, all those brighter hopes which, without making them known to mortal, she had shaped and fashioned and pressed to her heart—it was, in fact, to renew under yet harder terms her desperate battle with life.
All these considerations struck her with their full force. The sacrifice required was of herself, not for herself.
She gazed thoughtfully—pained thought it was—upon Helen’s beautiful but woe-stricken face. She perceived the lines of acute misery which already had begun to display themselves, and it flashed across her brain at the instant that if she said nay to Helen’s prayer, Helen would go alone into secrecy among strangers, friendless and heart-broken.
Lotte supported the trembling, earnest, agonized suppliant in her arms.
“If I had not found a friend in my extremity,” she whispered to her, “I had perished. We will go away from here together, and let the world say what it may of me, I am innocent of ill-doing. I can justify myself in the eyes of the Almighty, and I need care little for what others may unkindly believe; I may be humble, but you shall find me, Miss Grahame, a true friend. I will sustain you to the last in your terrible affliction to the best of my power: so compose and calm yourself as well as you can, and leave the rest to me.”
“Oh, Lotte, Lotte!” sobbed Helen, kissing her cheek, passionately. “My more than friend, how can I be ever sufficiently grateful to you?”
“Not a word—not a word!” cried Lotte, putting her hand gently before her mouth, and conducting her tenderly to a seat.
By eight o’clock the next evening, Lotte and her companion had removed from their late abode, without leaving behind them a clue to their new address.
Lotte had managed well. She had no debts, so it was not likely that there would be any active inquiries after her when she had left. Her late landlady, who liked all her lodgers to be the patterns of prudence and quietude, was not, after the two appearances of Mr. Bantom, altogether disturbed at losing the two young girls, especially as they had from the first declined her advances, repudiated her familiarity, and had at no time been seduced by her into the sin of gossiping.
She knew nothing about their private affairs, from first to last; she, therefore, did not trouble herself to inquire whither they were going, or why they had left her house. She wished, if anything, for inquirers, if there happened to be any, to conclude that she had herself given them warning.
Lotte wrote a note to her brother Charley, informing him that she had quitted her apartments, but that she had, at present, a motive for concealing the locality to which she had moved. She added, that in due time he would know the occasion for the mystery surrounding her movements; and she called upon him to have the same strong faith in her truth and virtue which he had hitherto entertained, and to which she felt she was, and always would be, justly entitled. She appended a postscript—that of course—it was affectionate, heartily loving in fact, but it was worded so mysteriously as to cause him the pain of forming some horrible surmises and conjectures, and it carried him post-haste to the abandoned residence. But he could learn only that she, together with her companion, her bird, and her flowers, had left the house, without leaving any clue even to the direction which she had taken.
After racking his brain for a motive for his sister’s strange conduct, or a suggestion which might help him to trace her out, it occurred to him that Harry Vivian might be able to furnish him with some intelligence respecting her inexplicable flight.
Lotte, in fervent language, had acquainted him with the services Hal had rendered her in the perilous moment when Wilton’s house was in flames, as well as later, when he suddenly met with her and saved her from destruction.
Charley was quite aware also, from subsequent circumstances, that Vivian had expressed a friendly anxiety for Lotte’s future welfare, and had betrayed an interest in her well being and doing since she had been at her late abode; it was not improbable that, on comparing notes with him, Vivian might be able to bring to light some matter which would enable the brother to follow and to find his sister, and to obtain from her some better reasons for her remarkable conduct than her note to him contained.
The premises at Clerkenwell were closed, and he made his way to Highbury.
Strange events still.
Mr. Harper’s son, the absent and unregretted, had returned home. A wild profligate and outcast he was in years gone by, when he quitted in ignominious flight his father’s roof and the land that gave him birth. He returned a ragged, dirty, discharged soldier from the East India Company’s service—discharged, too, in disgrace.
His sudden appearance, sufficiently in liquor to be brutish in his conduct, his demand to be received, and to make his father’s house his home—a drunken mad orgie on the night of his return, when valuable glass, pictures, ornaments, were wantonly and recklessly destroyed, produced in Mr. Harper a fit of apoplexy, and in two hours he was a corpse.
It was during the outrageous rioting of the prodigal son that Harry Vivian returned home from Harleydale. His efforts to restrain the ruffian from his acts of violence ended in a tremendous struggle between the two, during which the younger Harper swore with fearful oaths to murder his antagonist; but Harry’s strength prevailed, and he succeeded in forcing him to the ground; and there, with Mr. Harper’s help, binding him so firmly, that he could do no further mischief. They then conveyed him to a bed, upon which he was laid to sleep off his drunkenness.
But he continued shouting, howling and blaspheming for a greater portion of the night, until, exhausted by his own ravings and horrible threats, he fell into a deep sleep.
The horrors of that night slew Mr Harper.
As soon as his son Robert, upon returning to a state of consciousness from his drunken sleep, was informed of his father’s death, he insisted upon being relieved from his gyves; and, only partially restored to sobriety, he demanded why he had been thus secured. When it was explained to him by a workman of his father’s, a powerful fellow, who had been placed to watch him, and who related what had taken place in strong and not flattering language, his brow fell; he said not a word, but seemed to feel ashamed of his conduct of the previous night.
He asked to be released, and promised not to be guilty of like conduct, especially as his father at that moment lay dead in the house.
When he descended to his father’s bed-room, and had assured himself the old man was no more, he ascertained from his prostrate, heart-broken, weeping mother, the name of his father’s solicitor and his address, on pretence of making the necessary arrangements consequent upon the unhappy event which had happened.
At an interview with this solicitor, he elicited that, so far as he knew, Mr. Harper had made no will; at least his professional services had not been called in to execute one. In fact, the latter said, he had often urged upon his client the importance and the necessity of making a proper disposition of his worldly affairs, but those urgings had never been attended, to the extent of his knowledge, with the proper success.
Robert Harper thanked him, told him he should send him notice to be present at the funeral, and made his way to the manufactory, where, as he expected, he found Vivian.
In a few brief, bitter words, he informed Hal of the death of his uncle—his generous patron, his unfailing friend. Mr. Harper had been seized with apoplexy, and had expired after Hal had left Highbury at dawn that morning.
Robert gazed with an insolent air of triumph upon the shocked white features of Hal, who stood transfixed like a statue, and he said to him—
“I’m master here now; I suppose you know that. If you don’t, I’ll soon make you know it. The old man’s gone off and left no will behind him. Do you know that? because if you don’t, you will know it from this time, and be made to know it, too. I am the heir and sole master of all here. Now, last night, you assumed some mighty fine airs, and if it wasn’t that a parcel of fools might be talking, I would give you such a thrashing now that you shouldn’t be able to crawl for a month. There is one thing I can do, and that I will do. See, I am master! get out of here! Come, be off at once, or I’ll kick you out, beggar! If you fancy you have any claim upon me, go to law for it—I can stand that. You shan’t have a farthing from me any other way. You’ve been king of the castle here too long, so be off, Mr. Beggarly Upstart!”
He extended his arm to push young Vivian to the door, but the latter turned to him with a glittering eye, and a lip which trembled with intense emotion.
“Do not lay a hand upon me,” he said, in low but emphatic tones, “or I will fell you to the earth. I would not, in memory of the dear and noble man your father, and my constant benefactor, willingly be guilty of such an act at this moment; but the horrible consequence of your last night’s frantic bestiality, coupled with your present barbarous behaviour, almost drives me into a frenzy of desperation; it wants but your touch to thrust me into madness. I warn you to let me pass hence, without another word or gesture.”
Robert Harper had had a too lengthened experience in physiognomy not to be able to interpret the expression which made Hal’s features rigid, as though they were chiselled in marble, and he turned on his heel, without attempting to reply. Harry Vivian seized his hat and cloak, and rushed from the place.
One earnest interview he sought with the solicitor who had so long conducted Mr. Harper’s affairs, in which that gentleman promised to protect the interests of Mrs. Harper, and to place the property under proper seal and authority, so that Robert Harper could not commence to dissipate it in wild debauchery before it was proved, beyond a doubt, that there was no will—and then to Highbury.
We pass over Hal’s passionate grief at the bedside of his deceased relative, to whom he was so fondly and warmly attached, and the equally sorrowful interview between Mrs. Harper and him, during which her agony and incoherence, occasioned by the terrible affliction with which she had been so suddenly visited, prevented him narrating what that morning had taken place at the manufactory, or telling her that he would not fail to watch over her when she should be left alone with her son.
Subsequently he forwarded a claim to Robert Harper, to be present at the funeral of his uncle. His letter was returned to him, torn in two halves.
Yet he was present at the solemn ceremony, prayed fervently during the service, and lingered long after the cortege had gone, that he might stand by the new-made grave, and pay the tribute of his tears and the last sad testimonies of his loving respect for the departed.
When he quitted the graveyard, it was no more to return to the house which had sheltered him from boyhood.
These were the facts which Charley Clinton partially gathered from his inquiries at Highbury; and as no one knew where Harry Vivian was now to be found, he had to turn disappointedly away.
His acute intellect was not, however, to be so easily thwarted. The very nature of his occupation gave a tone of inquiry to his mind; and in the getting up of evidence—on which service he had been frequently employed—he had found so much advantage result from pushing investigation beyond what appeared to be its natural limits, that he resolved not to pause at the point he had now reached.
Often what we seek is to be found in places where we deem it least likely to be situated. Charley knew this, and he cast about for some other acquaintance or friend of Lotte’s who might be able to drop even a hint upon which he could act.
He thought eventually of Miss Wilton, and at once made his way to the Regent’s Park, to see whether the family was in town: if not, he determined to write as soon, as he reached his lodgings.
Having absolutely no claim to insist on seeing Miss Wilton, if she were to be denied to him—presuming that she was at the town house—he determined upon his mode of proceeding.
By an accident, he mistook Mr. Grahame’s residence for Mr. Wilton’s, and commenced those operations upon the porter there which were intended for the functionary next door.
He was skilled and successful. Whelks, being called into the conference and fee’d, it was resolved that Mr. Clinton should see Mr. Grahame’s youngest daughter—the eldest being from home, and the next at the opera with her mamma.
Charley had explained that his business was of importance, and had nothing whatever to do with any charitable institution, or case of urgent distress recommended by the vicar of his parish; therefore, it was considered that a few words with Miss Evangeline—who, after all, was not looked upon as holding any position in the family—could result in nothing likely to turn out unpleasant to the parties paid to effect the interview.
Accordingly, Charles Clinton and Evangeline Grahame were brought face to face.
He was a little embarrassed at first, but when he began to explain that he came to put a few questions to her, which he hoped she would be able to answer, respecting a missing young lady, he at once lost his embarrassment, and grew interested in observing a flush mount to her cheek, and her eyes glisten while in earnestness she rested her small hand upon his arm, and looked up into his face watching his countenance and listening to his words with intense avidity.
She did not notice that he addressed her as Miss Wilton, but when he mentioned that it was his sister who was missing, she turned from him with an air of grievous disappointment.
This movement produced an explanation, and he delicately contrived to elicit from her that she too had lost a sister, under circumstances no less strange and mysterious than those attending the disappearance of Lotte.
While she was speaking, the remembrance of Lotte’s new-made friend, the companion of her flight, flashed across his mind, and when she had ceased speaking, he gave a rapid sketch of her person to Evangeline; it was graphic and truthful.
“It is she!” exclaimed Evangeline, clasping her hands.
Then followed a thousand questions put to him vehemently. The date, the day, the dress, all confirmed her supposition, but his answers were necessarily limited; he could say very little, save that up to a certain time a young lady had resided with his sister, and that they had departed somewhere together—where, he could not conjecture; but was now engaged in endeavouring to ascertain.
Again and again she made him repeat the particulars which assured her that Helen was still living, and though once more hiding away in some mysterious lurking-place, she was, nevertheless, neither beyond the pale of discovery, nor the probability of being communicated with, visited, perhaps restored to her home by her Evangeline.
Oh, that she might be permitted to assist in the search for her! She suggested this very, very earnestly, and seemed sadly disconcerted when he shook his head. Was there no portion of the inquiry in which she could take part!—was there no species of aid she could lend? Ah! if he could only point out in what particular her services would be useful, with what delight she would render them.
He gazed earnestly upon her features.
“Pardon me,” he said, suddenly, while a peculiar expression of surprise stole over his face, “I fear I have committed some mistake. If you are the sister of the young lady lately residing with mine, you can hardly be Miss Wilton, or surely your brother Mark would have recognized her.”
“My name is Grahame. My sister’s name is Helen Grahame; I have no brother named Mark,” responded Evangeline, naively.
“Then I trust you will pardon my intrusion,” he added, moving as if about to retire. “Miss Wilton is a—a—friend of my sister’s, though a stranger to me, and I hoped that I should from her obtain some desirable information.”
“Oh, pray do not apologize!” exclaimed Evangeline, with a half-frightened air, seeming to feel the long-desired clue to her sister slipping through her fingers. “Miss Wilton when in town resides in the next dwelling to this, but that young lady, with her papa, has been for some long time away from London. She cannot possibly know anything about Miss—Miss”—she looked at his card—“Miss Clinton’s sudden departure, I am sure.”
“Or the causes which have led to it?” he asked, with rather a marked emphasis.
She gave an inquiring look into his face and said—
“You told me you had a letter?”
“Ay,” he said, with bitterness, “so written, as to acquaint me with my sister’s purposed departure—to drive me half distracted; and to bid me live upon the shadowy hope that she will some day see me again.”
“She will—she will!”
“She shall—she must. I will not rest until I find her.”
“And Helen with her?”
“To be sure; if, as I suppose, they are yet together.”
“They are surely together—you believe they are together, do you not?”
“Upon my honour, my dear young lady, I do. Indeed I know my sister Lotte so well, that I am inclined to believe that she is plunging into some mysterious course of proceeding to favour her companion and friend, without having a thought or reflection upon the injury it may do herself.”
“Oh! sir,” said Evangeline, tenderly, “do not be angry with your sister—I can so well appreciate and sympathise with conduct such as hers. If it should prove that, for Helen’s sake, she has incurred your displeasure, and the cold world’s censure, I will, love her, and take her to my heart, and be a fond, affectionate friend, if she will permit me to be.”
Charley here very nearly gravely committed himself. He was in the habit—when Lotte gave utterance to sentiments which chimed with his best feelings, to seize her round the waist, press her to his breast, and kiss her forehead. The words which had just fallen from the lips of Evangeline were uttered in such a soft tone, and evinced so much kindness and gentleness of nature, that upon the impulse, he was about to seize her and go through the usual performance, when she spoke again and brought him back to a recollection of the presence in which he stood.
“Let me implore you,” she exclaimed, with much warmth of manner, “to abstain from judging your dear sister unkindly until you are actually in possession of the true facts which have influenced her actions. It is, sir, so easy to conjecture in a defaming spirit—so impossible to make reparation for the wound an unjust accusation inflicts upon an innocent and honest heart. I pray you, therefore, to forbear judging her until you can justly claim the title to do so.”
Charley felt extremely gratified by what fell from Eva’s lips. No more complete illustration of his real feelings could have been given even by himself, and he expressed himself with some fervour in reply. Preparing to take his leave, he promised to relax no effort likely to enable him to discover the secret abode of the two fugitives.
A problem now gravely presented itself. Evangeline was and would be devoured by an intense anxiety to learn any tidings connected with her sister Helen; and a firm conclusion that in future Charles Clinton must be the medium through whom it was to be obtained’ settled itself in her mind.
But how?
Charles Clinton was a stranger to her family. He was unentitled to visit them. If he wrote to her, her letters would be opened before they reached her either by her mamma or by her sister Margaret. As the family, save herself, had, by common consent, forborne to mention her sister Helen’s name, and even to think of her as one dead, she arrived at a conviction that no letter written by Charles Clinton, containing matter connected with Helen, would ever be permitted to reach her.
What was to be done?
To both it appeared the simplest thing in the world to settle the question.
They could meet in some retired spot at periods agreed upon at each meeting. At these interviews Charles would recount his labours and report progress. Evangeline would be able to gratify the wish nearest her heart, by being brought nearer to communion with her sister, and probably to win her back to peace, happiness and her home.
No sense of the impropriety of such clandestine meetings occurred to either. Charles Clinton had no thought of wrong; had Evangeline’s station been far humbler than his own, he would have met her, treated her with the respectful deference due from man to virtue and innocence, would have protected her if she needed his brave defence, and have restored her to her home as pure as when she first put her full trust in his honour.
Evangeline knew so little of evil, she saw none in taking this step. Her relatives were all frigid and harshly repellant to her. Helen had been cold to her, too, but at times she had displayed a passionate fondness for her, and those ebullitions of fondness had appeared when they were and could only be evidences of heart emotions, and it was these evident impulses which made Evangeline know that a fire of affection glowed beneath the icy surface, and to love her therefore. No trouble had been taken to instil and graft upon her innocent nature a full and perfect system of world-proprieties. She, therefore, arranged with Charles Clinton for their first meeting, in the most guileless faith in his honour—in the most implicit trustfulness in the expediency of the step she purposed taking, the end being good and charitable; and in perfect unconsciousness of the consequences likely to result from a series of clandestine meetings between a young and beautiful girl, and a very frank, open-featured, good-looking young fellow.
They were in an apartment upon the ground floor, whose windows opened and gave egress to a lawn, conducting to a gravelled path in the garden.
They had named the place, the day, the hour they were to meet, when Charles was to report to her how far his search was to prove successful. Evangeline had just innocently placed her hand in his, as he was bidding her farewell, when a shadow fell upon the pair.
Both looked up, startled.
They beheld before them a young man, whose form was concealed by a cloak, but whose face was white and haggard.
Evangeline uttered a faint scream, and instinctively drew close to Charles for protection.
The stranger observed the surprise of one, and the affright of the other.
“Be not alarmed,” he cried, in a low, hurried tone; “I have no sinister motive, I swear before Heaven, though I appear thus strangely before you. Miss Gra-hame, I would have one word with you—for mercy sake do not deny me.”
Evangeline shrank still closer to Charles, in evident alarm. The latter instantly said, sharply—
“Explain, sir, who you are, and why you appear here in this abrupt and strange manner.”
The stranger made him no reply, but, clasping his hands, he stretched them towards Evangeline, and said, in tones of suffering and anxiety—
“Where is Helen—tell me only where is Helen? I have heard that she is gone—fled hence in secret. Oh! tell me only whither she has gone, that I may but see her once again! You are young and child-like—your heart cannot be made of adamant. Tell me, in pity tell me, where is Helen!”
A thousand thoughts careered wildly through the brain of Evangeline. Who was this man?—what had he to do with Helen’s flight?—was he the cause?
She turned deathly white and faint. She burst into tears.
The stranger, still with clasped hands, sank upon his knees before her, murmuring with intense excitement. “Is it true that she is gone?”
Evangeline wrung her hands, and could not speak.
“She has fled from home,” said Charles.
“She fled alone?” cried the stranger to him, eagerly. “She did,” replied Charles.
“Where—where?—in mercy tell me that!”
“We have yet to learn. It is my purpose to search for, and, if possible, to find her.”
“Is she in London—think you she is in London?”
“I believe—nay, I am convinced of that,” replied Charles, emphatically.
“God bless you!” cried the stranger, wildly. “Once more I shall see her, for London has no secret spot I will not narrowly examine, until I have found her—the whole world shall not keep her from me.”
With these words he rushed from the room by the way he had entered, with, if possible, increased wildness of manner, leaving Charles astounded, and Evangeline yet frightened and weeping. Charles endeavoured to restore Eva to a degree of composure by suggesting that the remarkable event which had just happened might, perhaps, afford a clue to the sudden flight from home of her sister; but before he could finish his sentence a tremendous knock at the hall-door resounded through the building.
“My father,” faintly cried Evangeline, and like a startled fawn ran from Charles to her own room.
He advanced to the door, feeling his cheek burn fiercely, and wholly at a loss what to say to the haughty owner of the mansion.
The hall-door was flung back wide; he heard the shuffling of feet, a rapid step ascend the stairs, and then a door banged loudly.
The next instant Whelks stood by his side.
“Mr. Grahame” he said in a whisper, and added, with a grin—“Would you like to see ‘im? he’s in the libree.”
Charles shook his head with a degree of energy indicative of the strength of the negative he wished to convey, and slipped a shilling into the hand of Whelks as an additional contribution; it happened to be a new one, felt thick and crisp; Whelks slid it into his pocket under the impression that it was a sovereign.
He laid his finger upon the side of his nose.
“I shall know you when you come again, sir,” he whispered. “If she’s at home, sir, you shall see her. Foller me, sir. Tread lightly. Good night.”
Charley stood once more in the park alone. The stars shone brightly above him. He had certainly met with a remarkable adventure, but where was Lotte.
He was no nearer to the object with which he came there than he was before.