"She is dead, my dear," was all Aunt Ellen would say with grave reserve, "she died when you were born—in India." Was there a picture of her? No, there was no picture. What was she like? We never saw her. What was her Christian name? It was Stella—and clearly the name itself was not approved—considered foolish, fantastic.
Indeed the child's periodical questions on the subject of her mother were torture to the three secretive, old-fashioned women, who shrank from all remembrance of the shameless being who had bewitched their "poor Charles" and led him astray, dragging the name of Carrington through the divorce court. At the time of the scandal they had blamed Charles for marrying the abandoned creature, and when she died, a year later, they were glad, though she left an unwelcome infant who was promptly sent home by the widower to The Chestnuts. The child was, of course, received, but under protest, a protest that vanished when "poor Charles" was killed in a frontier skirmish, a death (for his country) that in the eyes of his mother and sisters fully atoned for his backslidings and the disgrace he had brought on a name that had ever been associated with brave deeds in the East.
India!—the very word held a magic fascination for the child of "poor Charles." Stella loved the smell of the curios in the drawing-room, and her "great treat" on wet days was permission to open the camphor-wood chest on the landing; fingering the contents, she would feel almost intoxicated with the sight and scent of fine muslin veils heavily embroidered, funny little caps, tinsel-encrusted; a packet of pictures painted on talc of Indian ladies, black-haired, almond-eyed, smiling, wonderfully robed. At the bottom of the chest were pistols and daggers, and swords, all chased and inlaid with ivory and gold; and there was a carved box full of tiger claws, and silver ornaments, bracelets, anklets, and necklaces that jingled.... In addition to the camphor-wood chest there was the lumber room, a low attic that ran the length of the roof; here were stacks of other interesting relics, horns and moth-eaten skins of wild animals, hog-spears and clumsy old guns shaped like trumpets. Also piles of old books and pamphlets, packets of letters and papers, yellow, crumbling, tied up with string and thrown into cardboard boxes.
On this luckless Sunday afternoon Stella's mind turned to the lumber room. As yet she had not the courage to descend and face grandmamma and the aunts after the scene she had made at the dining-table; and presently she stole into the passage, that was lined with a wall-paper depicting Chinese scenes, square bordered, then ran up the ladder-like stairs leading to the long attic in the roof.
There, poring over old papers and pamphlets and books, she forgot Maud Verrall and all that young person's advantages, forgot grandmamma and the aunts, and boiled mutton and her rebellious outburst against her own "lot"—forgot everything but India, the land of elephants and tigers, tents and palanquins, rajahs and battles, and marvels without end. She thrilled again as she read of Carringtons who had fought at Plassey and Paniput, in the Mahratta wars, and before the walls of Seringapatam. A Carrington had perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a Carrington had been the friend of Warren Hastings, in the Mutiny a Carrington had performed noble deeds; Carrington women and children had been sacrificed for the honour of their country....
To-day Stella realised for the first time that her father must have been the last male Carrington of the line. No more Carrington exploits would be recorded in the history of British India. The name of Carrington in the East belonged solely to the past. Why, oh! why—had not she been born a boy?