IT did not occur to the girls in their inexperience to make any attempt to find out who lived at No. 3, Grove Road. They got out of their cab at the door of the house with a flutter of anxious and excited feeling, but still without any thought that the stranger or strangers they were about to see were anonymous, and that their only warrant in thus invading an unknown house was the scrap of paper which they had brought with them as their credentials. The house was a kind of villa, such as abound in the suburbs, with shrubberies around it, and high hedges, and a green door, between two smooth green lines of privet. They stood for a moment and looked round them at the bare tree-tops rising all round against the chilly blue sky; and the unfrequented road all overgrown with grass; and the houses nearly hidden by these jealous hedges. The girls did not understand this jealous privacy of suburban life, and they shivered a little as they looked round, hearing nothing and seeing nothing. In the morning Grove Road was alive with tradesmen’s carts, with nursery-maids and children setting out for their walk on the heath, but in the afternoon a dead silence fell upon it. The rooms in which the inmates lived were on the other side, and here nothing was visible except a blank range of windows over those green lines of hedge, broken only by the still more absolute enclosure of the shut door. They looked at each other, and thought of their father coming out here into the dark, into the rain on that fatal night. They understood now how impossible it would be for him to get either shelter or a carriage to bring him back.
“You would think there was spite in those dreadful doors,” said Grace, “wouldn’t you, Milly? As if it would give them pleasure to shut themselves tight and refuse all shelter; not a porch that any one could stand under. Oh, when we used to hear of the English liking to be private, we never thought of this!”
Milly looked at them mournfully too, and they both thought of the different scenes they had been used to, with that comparison which it is almost impossible for strangers not to make. Then Grace turned round with a sudden impulse and pulled the bell, which they could hear make a long but subdued tinkle just over the green door. But they had to wait still for some minutes before there was any response. The moment the deed was done, the bell rung and entrance demanded, Milly turned to her sister with her usual “Oh!” of appeal.
“Who will you ask for?” she said.
It was a difficulty that never had occurred to them before; and in their sense of this extraordinary deficiency they had almost fled, shyness taking possession of them, and a sense of being altogether wrong and out of all respectable use and wont. But, on the other hand, it was shabby to run away, a trick not worthy of girls—a schoolboy crime. So they stood trembling, half with cold, half with terror, and by-and-by heard the opening of an inner door and steps approaching. If it had been a solemn butler who had opened to them, even at that moment they would have run away; but it was a pretty, smiling maid, with a white cap and white apron, over whose countenance there passed an indefinable sympathetic change as she saw first the two young faces, and then the deep crape of their dresses. They were cheered and encouraged by this mute sign, the freemasonry of youth and kindness.
“Is —— at home?” said Grace falteringly.
The maid was too intent upon the aspect of the young creatures before her to note that no name was uttered, but only a tremulous counterfeit of sound.
“Missis is not at home, miss,” said the girl, with an air of sympathetic regret. Then she added, “But Miss Anna is, and Mr Geoffrey, if one of them would do.”
The girls looked at each other again with a swift mutual consultation. “We should like to see Miss Anna, if you please,” said Grace.
And next moment they were within the house. They went along the shadowy green passage into the hall, and through another corridor to the drawing-room at the other side of the house, feeling as if they were in a dream. This, then, was an English home—the first they had ever penetrated into. It was an old house, not fresh and bright like those to which they were accustomed; a house full of old furniture, old hangings, old books. One or two doors were open, and they could not help glancing in as they passed, with a spring of youthful curiosity not yet quenched. When they got to the drawing-room they could scarcely restrain a cry of surprise. It had three long windows opening to a garden at the other side of the house. In front of them lay—all the world, as Grace thought—a great blue distance, in the centre of which rose a smoke, and a vision of distant towers and roofs—great London lying far below; and close at hand a slope of green lawn, with further slopes beyond of heath, and gorse, and dotted trees forming the foreground. This wonderful panorama quite unreasonably lightened their hearts. They had a long time to wait, but it was so full of curiosity and interest that it did not seem long. At length they became aware of the sound of a step coming slowly along the passages, a step accompanied by a little tap as of a stick on the door. It kept them in tantalising expectation for a minute—then turned aside, and there was again a pause. Finally the little maid came again to the door and led the way into another room.
It was a smaller room, with the same extended landscape before the window—a room very daintily furnished, lighted up with pretty china, pictures, everything full of delicate colour and glimmers of reflection; little mirrors hidden away in corners, shelves upon the dim walls with dainty vases and cups, everything delicate, everything bright. They took this in with one startled glance before their attention concentrated upon the occupant of the room—a lady who rose slowly, supporting herself with a stick, from a large easy-chair beside the fire. She rose with difficulty, yet there was a sort of slow stately grace in the very stiffness with which she moved. Was this Miss Anna? The hearts of Grace and Milly leaped into their throats: they were awed, and dared scarcely draw their breath. Ah, certainly this was England, the old country where queens and princesses were possible. They almost forgot themselves, and their trouble, and their sorrow, and all the strangeness of their circumstances, as they gazed upon this unexpected sight.
Miss Anna was a woman about sixty, with perfectly white hair, and keen, large, dark eyes. She was pale, but with a little evanescent colour, the colour of weakness, as if the slight movement she had made had set the blood in motion, and brought a faint rose tint to her cheeks; otherwise she was like ivory finely cut, her nose a little aquiline, her forehead softly shaded with the white, silvery lines of her hair. She was dressed in soft satin, clinging to her in long folds, which was not the fashion at the time, and, therefore, all the more impressive, and had on her head a sort of lace veil, half shrouding her hair and falling over her shoulders. Her dress had all the air of being studied and thought of, though the faint, yellowish tinge of the lace, and the dark sheen of the satin, wine-colour or plum-colour, were all the elements out of which this effect was produced. But the simple girls who stood before her had never seen anything like her, and the wonderful apparition took away their breath. She, on her part, looked at them keenly with her penetrating eyes—then she waved her hand towards two chairs set out in front of her throne.
“You asked for me,” she said. “Sit down; I fear I have kept you waiting.”
Grace and Milly were far too much excited to notice it—but, as a matter of fact, this stately lady was excited too, and the look with which she perused them, their faces, their mourning dresses, their whole appearance, was unquestionably anxious—though this would have seemed to them incredible, impossible. It was only when they sat down that they perceived some one behind at the other end of the room—a man leaning over a writing-table with his head turned away from them. Miss Anna sat full in the light between the window and the fire. She repeated, with a faint tremour of impatience, “You asked for me?”
“No,” said Grace—she would have liked to say madame, or my lady, or something that would have shown her reverence; but was too shy, with all her self-possession, to venture out of the beaten way. She sat down timidly and folded her hands, and looked at her questioner with that wistful, propitiating look, a faint smile quivering about her lips, her eyes cast upwards with a shy but earnest appeal, which sits so prettily upon extreme youth. “No,” she said, “indeed we did not even know your name. We are very unfortunate girls in great trouble, and we found your address among papa’s papers.”
“Who is your papa?”
Grace saw nothing but the old lady who gazed at her fixedly and riveted her eyes; but Milly, who had no responsibility of speech, saw more than her sister. She saw the man at the writing-table turn hastily round at the sound of Grace’s voice, then rise and approach nearer. When he came into the light she recollected that it was he who had come to them at the hotel the day before.
“Ah,” said Grace, her mouth all quivering; “papa is——. We came over from Canada——” Here, even she, absorbed in her story and the emotion it occasioned, made an involuntary pause, seeing the lady start and look over her head as if at some one behind with a curious look of alarm and trouble. Was it only sympathy? Grace paused while you might count ten, and then went on again—“only a fortnight since; and on Monday he died, and left us all alone, all alone in this strange place. We thought—we imagined that it was you he went to see the first night he was in England——”
Here she stopped again; the lady’s mouth seemed to quiver too. “Many people come to see me,” she said. “What was his name?”
“His name was Robert Yorke. We are his daughters; I am Grace, and this is Milly—we are the two eldest,” said the girl, still with the same pathetic smile about her mouth, and a look which appealed unconsciously for help and pity.
Miss Anna eyed them all the time with eyes that seemed to pierce them through and through. “This is a very sad story,” she said. There was a quiver in her voice which meant real suffering, not mere pity; but her words were not so tender as this emotion might have indicated; there was no effusiveness of kindness in them. “You are left, then, without friends, without resources? I feel for you very much; but I have a great many applicants——”
Grace started to her feet, pressing her hands together almost with violence. “Oh!” she said, “If you think we are coming to you for charity——”
“Aunt Anna,” said the young man, coming forward, “these are the young ladies whom I saw yesterday; if they are so kind, in their own trouble, as to bring us some information, some clue——”
Miss Anna made him an almost imperceptible sign, in which an anxious desire to keep him silent was mingled with the utmost intolerance of impatience. The young man stopped short suddenly; and Milly, who was the spectator of all, taking no other part, saw vaguely this transaction carried on over their heads, and wondered, though she did not know what it could mean.
But Grace perceived nothing at all: for once her perceptions were dulled; the tears in her eyes blinded her, scalding as they were with indignation, and the quick passionate shame with which so young a creature is apt to feel and resent a humiliating judgment. She continued vehemently, “We are not asking anything—we have money enough; we are rich enough: if that is what you mean.”
“I did not mean to be unkind,” said the stately lady. “Sit down, do not be impatient. Geoffrey, I think we can dispense with your presence. These young ladies will be more at their ease with me alone.”
He had pressed forward, in spite of her prohibition. He was a little like her, though not so handsome; but there was no mistaking the honest sympathy and feeling in his eyes. Both the girls turned to him with a conviction that here at least was a friend. A sort of faint half-smile of recognition passed between them. “Oh, is it you?” said Grace unawares. They seemed in this enchanted house, in this strange audience-chamber, to have encountered at last some one of their own species, some one who would stand by them. They looked at him with an anxious, unspoken entreaty not to go away; and he reassured them by the faintest movement of his head.
“I think,” he said, “it will be better if I stay.”
“I think otherwise,” said Miss Anna; but she said no more to him, and made no further objection. “Sit down,” she said, touching the chair from which Grace had risen, with her stick. “You must not be offended; I meant no harm. I should not have thought any worse of you had you come to me for help, and I don’t think any better of you for being well off. I am sorry for you all the same. But tell me why you came to me. No, wait a little, you can tell me presently. In the meantime, Geoffrey, you can ring for tea.”
He did it without a word, standing before the fire contemplating the group. The girls did not know what it all meant; but gradually it dawned upon them with a strange sensation that they were not the principals here, but that a veiled and hidden conflict was going on between the two strangers, who appeared to share this luxurious home, and who were somehow, they could not tell how, connected with themselves and their concerns. The innocent commonplace request to ring for the tea had, they felt, if they could but understand it, a much more serious meaning than appeared. Geoffrey obeyed, but they felt very grateful to him that he showed no intention of going away.
And then there was a curious pause.