“Perhaps it may be hid, Paul. It may turn out it is all a delusion—or an imposture.”
“Let us go to my mother’s room,” said Paul.
He said nothing as he went up the stairs, but when he got to the landing he turned round upon the pale girl beside him carrying the light, whose white face illuminated by her candle made a luminous point in the gloom. He turned round to her all at once in the blackness of the great vacant place.
“It is no imposture; it is true. Whether we can bear it or not, it is true!”
“God will help us to bear it, Paul; if you will not desert us—if you will stay by us——”
“Desert you—was there ever any question of deserting you?” he said. He looked at his sister with a half-complaining curiosity and surprise, and shrugged his shoulders, so foolish did it sound to him. Then he took the candle from her hand, almost rudely, and walked before her to their mother’s room. “You women never understand,” he said.
CHAPTER II.
After this a sudden veil and silence fell upon Markham. Nothing could be more natural than that this should be the case. Paul went to town with his uncle Fleetwood and the family lawyer, and shortly after the boys went back to school, and perfect silence fell upon the mourning house. The woods began to be touched by that finger of autumn which is chill rather than fiery, notwithstanding Mr. Tennyson—a yellow flag hung out here and there to warn the summer world, still in full brightness, of what was coming; but no crack of gun was to be heard among the covers. The county persistently and devotedly came to call, but Lady Markham was not yet able to see visitors. She was visible at church and sometimes driving, but never otherwise, which was all quite natural too, seeing that she was a woman who had always been a tender wife. No whisper of any complication, of anything that made grief harder to bear had escaped from the house. Or so at least they thought who lived an anxious life there, not knowing what was to happen. But nevertheless by some strange magnetism in the air it was known from one end to another of the county that there was something mysterious going on. The servants had felt it in the air almost before the family themselves knew. When Brown helped “the little furrin gentleman” on with his coat on the evening of the funeral day do you think he did not know that this was his future master? The knowledge breathed even about the cottages and into the village, where generally the rustic public was obtuse enough in mastering any new fact. The young master who had been Sir Paul for one brief day sank into Mr. Paul again, nobody knowing how, and what was still more wonderful, nobody asking why. Among the higher classes there was more distinct curiosity, and many floating rumours. That there was a new claimant everybody was aware; and that there was to be a great trial unfolding all the secrets of the family for generations and showing a great many respectable personages to the world in an entirely new light, most people hoped. It was generally divined and understood that the odd little foreigner (as everybody thought him) who had made himself conspicuous at the funeral, and whom many people had met walking about the roads, was the new heir. But how he came by his claim few people understood. Sir William was not the man to be the hero of any doubtful story, or to leave any uncertainty upon the succession to his property. This was just the one evil which no one, not even his political enemies, could think him capable of; therefore the imagination of his county neighbours threw itself further back upon his two brothers who had preceded him. Of these Sir Paul was known to have borne no spotless reputation in his youth, and even Sir Harry might have had antecedents that would not bear looking into. From one or other of these, the county concluded, and not through Sir William, this family misfortune must have come.
One morning during this interval, when Paul was absent and all the doings of the household at Markham were mysteriously hidden from the world, a visitor came up the avenue who was not of the usual kind. She seemed for some time very doubtful whether to go to the great door, or to seek an entrance in a more humble way. She was a tall and slim young woman, dressed in a black alpacca gown, with a black hat and feather, and a shawl over her arm, a nondescript sort of person, not altogether a lady, yet whom Charles, the footman, contemplated more or less respectfully, not feeling equal to the impertinence of bidding her go round to the servants’ door; for how could any one tell, he said? there were governesses and that sort that stood a deal more on their dignity than the ladies themselves. Mrs. Fry, who happened to see her from a window in the wing where she was superintending the great autumn cleaning in the nursery, concluded that it was some one come about the lady’s-maid’s place, for Alice’s maid was going to be married. “But if you get it,” said Mrs. Fry mentally, “I can tell you it’s not long you’ll go trolloping about with that long feather, nor wear a bit of a hat stuck on the top of your head.” While, however, Mrs. Fry was forming this rapid estimate of her, Charles looked at the young person with hesitating respect, and behaved with polite condescension, coming forward as she approached. When she asked if she could see Lady Markham, Charles shook his head. “My lady don’t see nobody,” he replied with an ease of language which was the first symptom he showed of feeling himself on an equality with the visitor. It was the tone of her voice which had produced this effect. Charles knew that this was not how a lady spoke.
“But she’ll see me, if she knows who I am,” said the girl. “I know she’ll see me if you’ll be so kind as to take up my name. Say Miss Janet Spears—as she saw in Oxford—”