OF all innocent domestic entertainments there is none more innocent, not to say tame, than the recent institution which is now so universally popular, of afternoon tea. The virtuous dulness, the gentle talk, is seldom enlivened by any dramatic interest going on under the surface. Now and then, indeed, a mild love affair will give a little excitement to the circle round the tea-table: but this is the utmost stretch to which the imagination can reach as connected with that mild entertainment. And among all the pretty suburban houses, surrounding London with endless circles of comfort and brightness, there could not have been found a more attractive group than that which occupied Miss Anna’s pretty sitting-room in Grove Road. But underneath this innocent seeming how many elements of tragedy were working! Miss Anna’s motive was known to none of them; but, whatever it was, it was strong enough to make her exert herself in a way which startled her nephew and gave him the watchful, suspicious, gloomy air which entirely changed the character of his face. Grace and Milly for their part soon began to feel the strange fascination exercised over them to be intolerable, yet what with their shyness, and strangeness, and bewilderment, suddenly plunged into a scene so new to them, did not know how to break the spell—though Grace became every moment more sensible of the false position, and even felt it a reproach to her in her sorrow to be turned aside out of her serious course by the light and graceful current of Miss Anna’s recollections and anecdotes. Geoffrey, who kept a sort of neutral place between them, was not really aware, save by the instinct which made him divine something wrong underneath the surface, of half the seriousness of the situation. It had not yet occurred to him to identify the dead father of the girls with the visitor who had caused so much commotion in the house some time before. He thought nothing more now than that they had generously come, though in grievous trouble, to convey some information respecting that stranger; and he saw clearly enough that the same motive which had induced his aunt to disown and dismiss the visitor then, was impelling her now to refuse to listen to anything about him.
“I have a great deal of fine Sèvres,” Miss Anna said. “Many people tell me I should exhibit it. There are continual exhibitions nowadays to which people send their treasures. There is South Kensington, you know; there is always something of the kind going on there. What! you have not been at South Kensington? Oh, that is very great negligence on the part of your friends. You must really make them take you before you go away. Yes, I was very much urged to send my china there.”
It was Milly who murmured the little response which civility demanded; for Grace’s impatience was getting the better of her. She felt that she must speak, though the words were taken out of her mouth. But still the old lady went smoothly on.
“Now that I cannot walk I take a great deal of pleasure in having all my pretty things about me. If you ever should be in such a position—which I trust may never be the case—you will understand what a pleasure it is to have bright surroundings. What, going? It is really quite dark. You must let Geoffrey get a cab for you. Geoffrey, go, dear, and look for a cab.”
Grace had got up with an irrestrainable impulse. She came forward a step with her hands tightly clasped. “It is not that we are going,” she said. “It is that I must talk to you about the thing that brought us here. I—I—do not know your name—except Miss Anna, as the maid said. Oh, will you please for a moment listen to me? The last night my father was well, before he took his illness, he was, so far as we can tell, here. We found your address among his papers; and he went out and left us for a long time that afternoon saying he was going to see old friends. We cannot think of any other interpretation; we feel sure that he must have been here. If you are our dearest father’s friend—anything to him—we should like—to know you,” said Grace, once more unconsciously clasping her hands. “We do not want anything from—we only want to know you, if you were dear papa’s friend.”
There was another pause, for the fervour of strong emotion with which the girl spoke, her clasped hands and wet eyes, impressed even the vigilant woman who was prepared for everything. It required a moment’s resolution even on her part before she could crush the hopes of the young forlorn creature who thus appealed to her. She made a pause, and drew a long breath. Then she said, “Who was your father? You forget that I know nothing about him——”
“Robert Leonard Yorke,” said Grace. The familiar dear name almost overcame her courage, but she held herself up by main force with her hands clasped. “There is nobody better known where we come from—Robert Leonard Yorke, of Quebec——”
“My dear young lady,” said Miss Anna—and she sank back in her chair with a certain relief—a relaxation of the strain with which she had kept herself up to be ready for any emergency, which was not lost upon her nephew at least—“you have made some mistake. I never heard the name in my life. I never knew any one, or, to my knowledge, saw any one of that name.”
“A fortnight ago, on Tuesday: and it rained very much in the evening,” Grace said eagerly. “He told us he could not get a cab, it was so far out of town; and he got very wet.”
“He caught cold—and it was that—it was that——” Milly added her contribution to what her sister said: but her voice broke, and she could not conclude her sentence.
Miss Anna sat and looked on politely attentive, but at the same time ostentatiously indifferent. “It is very sad,” she said. “It is impossible to tell you how sorry I am; but I never heard of Mr Yorke in my life. Geoffrey, that is true, it is very difficult to get a cab; go and look for one. I cannot permit these young ladies to wander away alone in a strange place. Go, Geoff, go!”
She was very anxious to be rid of him; her voice took the imperious tone, which he had obeyed so often, but he did not seem disposed to obey now.
“A fortnight ago,” he said, “on a dark afternoon, turning to rain?”
“Yes, yes! you remember—oh, do you remember?—and afterwards we saw you at the hotel.” The two girls spoke both together, one saying the former part, the other the latter of the sentence, both turning upon him with the most anxious eyes, gazing, trying to penetrate into his inmost soul.
“Geoff, why do you stand there?” cried Miss Anna. She, too, became energetic, and more and more imperious. “Go, I tell you, and get a cab for them. Two strangers, and far from where they are living. You know what your mother will think of such visitors. Go, directly, as I tell you.” She stamped as she spoke, first her stick and then her foot, impatiently on the floor.
“This cannot be settled so summarily,” said Geoffrey; “there is more in it. It is not necessary that we should stay in your room, Aunt Anna, if you dislike it; but I wish these ladies to remain till my mother sees them——”
“Your mother, who always believes everything that is said to her! Let there be an end to this folly at once, Geoff; go and get a cab.”
“Aunt Anna, there had better be no struggle between us—yet. What I ask is very simple—that they should see my mother.”
“Do you want to see his mother?” she said, suddenly turning upon the astonished girls. “You have made acquaintance with him, I can see; but mothers have sharp eyes, and his mother thinks every girl she sees is in love with her fascinating son. Can’t he see you at some other place? I warn you my sister will give you no pleasant reception if she finds you here.”
“Grace, Grace, let us go away,” cried Milly, rising to her feet, scarlet with shame; but Grace had other things to think of, and paid no attention to this assault.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” continued Miss Anna; “but if you are good girls it will be much better for you to go away at once. I don’t say you are not good girls, far from it. I don’t pretend to judge; but girls of your age should not be going about to strange houses without invitation, especially where there is a young man. It has a strange look—your people would not like it. I advise you as your friend to go away.”
Here Milly clasped Grace by the arm, and drew her back a little; perhaps some passing communication from Geoffrey’s eyes had made the younger sister the more keen-sighted of the two for once. Grace turned round a little, moved by her earnestness, and there was the usual consultation by looks between them; the result of which was that Grace’s pale countenance became also suffused with colour; but she held her ground, though her sister drew her back.
“I do not think, if you were kind,” she said, “that you would speak so to two girls like us. You would protect us rather from every evil thought. We came here because we have no friends, thinking that they must have been friends to whom papa went on his first day in England: thinking, perhaps, you were relations—somebody who would take a little interest in us. If it is not so, there can be no reason why we should stay.”
Geoffrey put out his hand with an eager gesture. “Till my mother comes,” he said.
“Young ladies,” cried Miss Anna, “I will tell you what that boy means; he wants to make you out to be the children of a sort of madman who was here some time ago—an impostor: a fellow who gave himself out as—who represented himself to be—a man who has been dead for years. Would you like to have a slur put upon your father, who appears to have been a respectable person?” she added more calmly. She had yielded to an impulse of anger, and had flushed passionately. But at the last words she calmed down, and spoke with distinct and slow utterance, with a slight curl of contempt about her mouth.
“Grace, Grace,” cried Milly, “let us go away!”
Grace’s face varied every moment as one emotion after another swept over it. “I don’t know what to do,” she said piteously, “Milly”: “But I think there is something to find out,” she added—“I think there is something more!”
“If you wish to have your father’s character taken away, and the cheat he attempted found out——” cried Miss Anna, with sudden fury. Then she stopped, seeing the mistake she had made. “I beg your pardon, I am sure,” she went on, with fictitious amiability. “You are making me identify this respectable person from Canada, poor man, for whom I am very sorry—with a wretched impostor, a fellow that never came back, or made the slightest effort to support his ridiculous claim. Of course, if you like to stay till my sister comes back,” she added, “I can have no objection. She is a silly, credulous woman; she will believe any story you like to tell her, so you may give the rein to your invention. But one caution I will give you: say nothing about her son. Make believe, at all events, that you know nothing about her son.”
“Oh, Grace, why should we be insulted? What can it matter to us? Let us go away,” Milly cried.
But if there was one thing better known among the young Yorkes than another, it was that Grace was obstinate. Nothing, the boys said, would make her give in, even when she was beaten. She turned round to Geoffrey, even while her sister was speaking.
“Sir,” she said, “we don’t know you, not even your name; but if you think your mother will understand better—if you think she will know anything about us, I would rather wait till she comes. We do not want money, or help, if that is what Miss Anna supposes; we want nothing except to know——”
“Then why in heaven’s name do you insist on staying? against my will, who am the mistress of the house? I say I will not have you here. I will have no adventurers here. I do not believe there is a word of truth in your story. That man is not dead. Impostors never die. It is all a got-up affair from beginning to end. Look here!” cried Miss Anna, striking her stick on the floor, “as I don’t want to have the whole story raked up in a court of justice, where you would not have a chance, not a leg to stand upon, you or your precious father—I’d rather come to terms with you, and let it go no further. How much will you take to give up your claims altogether? They are false, utterly false; but I don’t want to be made a talk of. I would rather settle it and be done with it, if you will say how much you will take, and start by the next steamboat. There is a steamboat every week, every day perhaps, for anything I know.”
The girls stood close together listening aghast, Milly thinking nothing less than that Miss Anna must be a mad woman, and that now her insanity was becoming visible. But to Grace’s more active mind, this strange proposal conveyed an impression quite different. She looked at Geoffrey, whose turn it now seemed to be to blush. He had made an effort to interfere, and stop Miss Anna, but, failing in that, had drawn a step back, and stood with a painful flush on his face listening to her. As she ended, he stepped forward again.
“With this proposal,” he said, “please to remark, neither I nor my mother have anything to do.”
“There is something, then, upon which we have a claim,” Grace cried; “and we are not mistaken after all!”
“Oh, Grace,” cried Milly, “come away—come away! What does it matter to us? We don’t understand this country, or its ways. Oh, how we used to think of England, how delightful it was to be! but now it is dreadful. If you went to the poorest house in Canada,” cried the girl, “and said, We are in trouble, we are all alone, our father is dead, they would take you in, they would be kind to you; but here they say we are impostors, and offer us money. Oh, Grace, Grace, come away!”
With her eyes sparkling through her tears, her soft cheeks flushed with resentment and shame, her hands clasping her sister’s arm, whom she endeavoured to draw away, Milly turned towards the door. It was not often she took the initiative, or even gave utterance to so many words; but Milly was not quick enough to divine any secret meaning, or to see anything but offence and insult in what had been said. Her only thought was to escape—all the more as she had felt a secret confidence that they had fallen among friends on seeing Geoffrey; and the disappointment made her revulsion of feeling more complete.
The door opened behind as she spoke, and another lady came in. The newcomer had her bonnet on, and brought with her a waft of fresh air from out of doors. She was not beautiful, like Miss Anna, but she had the same white hair and dark eyes—eyes not so penetrating, but kinder. She came in with an untroubled air, as a woman comes into her own house, expecting nothing but the ordinary domestic calm. She stopped short, however, when she saw the visitors, and uttered a little exclamation, “Oh!” somewhat tremulous, like Milly’s own. She was a shy woman for one thing, and for another, having been so lately excited by an unusual visitor, she felt slightly nervous of every new figure. “I did not know you had visitors, Anna,” she said.
“These are not my visitors,” said Miss Anna; “if they are anybody’s visitors, they are your son’s.”
Then the friendly face before them clouded over. She cast one reproachful look at Geoffrey, and turned her back upon the two dark figures in their depth of crape. This was her weakness, but it was a weakness which was full of compunctions. Her son was all she had in the world; and though she would say now and then that to see him married was the height of her ambition, yet this good mother feared and almost hated every feminine creature under thirty, and turned her back upon the whole race lest Geoffrey’s future wife might be found among them. When she had done this, however, her heart always melted, as now. She was, in reality, one of the most womanly of women, and liked nothing so well as feminine companions when she could put confidence in them that they would not take her son from her. The two faces, however, upon which she cast a remorseful glance now, after she had turned her back upon them, were of the most dangerous type. They were the faces of two predatory creatures against whom she felt she had no means of defence. Either of them was capable under her very eyes of sweeping Geoff away from her for ever and ever. Never did hen look upon fox with more dismay; but Mrs Underwood was not a consistent or firm woman. She looked and trembled; but then looked again, and was touched in spite of herself. They were very young; they were in deep mourning; and they were not paying the slightest attention to Geoffrey. Perhaps that last was the most moving circumstance of all.
“Visitors of my son’s? That means, I suppose,” said Mrs Underwood, with a little gasp, yet a heroic effort, “Visitors to me?”
“I am glad you think so, Mary. It is no concern of mine,” said Miss Anna, turning pointedly away.
And then politeness compelled Mrs Underwood to offer civilities she had very little mind to. “Won’t you sit down?” she said. “Geoff, you will perhaps introduce me to your friends.”
She sighed; there was something half-ludicrous in the pathos of her tone.
“I hope we may be friends hereafter,” said Geoffrey; “but at present there is something to be settled which is more than friendship. Mother, you remember your cousin, Leonard Crosthwaite, and his sudden visit here a fortnight ago?”
“Leonard Crosthwaite?” she said the name trembling, and turned involuntarily with a frightened look to where her sister sat.
“He means,” said Miss Anna, without turning her head, “the impostor, or madman, who assumed the name of—our relation who died twenty years ago.”
“Mother, listen,” said Geoffrey. “It is a terrible story, so far as I can make it out. He went from you, to die: and these are his daughters.”
Mrs Underwood turned from one to another as her son spoke, now reading his face, now Miss Anna’s, now throwing an anxious glance at the sisters who stood together in the centre of the room, not knowing what new turn their affairs might be about to take.
At this an exclamation burst from all three at once. The girls said, “No, no!” while Mrs Underwood cried out, “Leonard’s daughters!” “No, no, no, no!” the others said.
“So far as I can see,” repeated the young man, “he is dead, and cannot tell us how it stands. These are the young ladies whom I found at the hotel to which I went in search of him—his hotel, the address he gave you. And their father came out on a wintry afternoon a fortnight ago, a Tuesday, to visit friends—old friends of whom he told them nothing. He went home drenched—you remember how it rained, mother?—and took to his bed. Now that he is dead, they found our address among his papers. This is the story, and what can you want more? It seems to me that it is clear enough!”
“But,” said Grace, “there is one great mistake you make. Our name, it is not Crosthwaite—oh, nothing like it; we never heard that name before. Papa was not a man to go by a false name. Oh, no, no; he was true in everything. There must still be some mistake.”
Miss Anna, who had turned her chair away, turned round again at this. “I told you,” she said; “this young fellow wants to prove you to be the daughters of an impostor or a madman. Of course, your father was not a man to go by a false name. Nobody would do that who was, as you say, a respectable person, a man thought well of in his own place. You know better than to think so. Of course: that is exactly what I said.”
But this support sent Grace instantly into opposition. She paused to consider, when she found herself suddenly embarrassed by this unexpected backing up. Miss Anna’s eyes fixed upon her seemed to have a baneful influence, and oppressed her soul.
“Does it make any difference to you,” she said, with the trenchant simplicity of ignorance, “what was my father’s name?”
The question was so entirely unexpected that each of the three showed its effect in a different, yet characteristic way. Miss Anna, listening with the complacency and satisfaction with which Grace’s denial of the name had filled her, received this stray shot full in her breast, and without any preparation. She wavered, drew back, contracted her features involuntarily in the effort to preserve her perfect calm. Mrs Underwood gasped as if some one had seized her by the throat. As for Geoffrey, he was the only one who replied.
“If,” he said, “you are Leonard Crosthwaite’s daughters, as I believe, it will make a great deal of difference to us all.”
“The question was addressed to me,” said Miss Anna, with a slight trembling that ran over all her person; “and it is for me to answer it. Young lady, whoever you are, if you are Leonard Crosthwaite’s daughter, which I don’t believe for a moment—I have no doubt your father was a much more respectable man: but if you are, and can prove it, you will be able to give rise to a great lawsuit, which will be fought out on both sides for years; which will cost you every penny you have, if you have anything, and ruin everybody belonging to you: besides bringing out a great many things about the family you claim to belong to, which we would all much rather keep to ourselves; and in all likelihood it would be a failure at the end. That is the true state of the case, whatever that boy may tell you—or anyone else,” she added after a moment, with a glance at her sister, “or any one else. This world is full of fools.”
“Oh, Grace, come—come away!” cried Milly in her sister’s ear.
But Grace was less easily moved. She was bewildered, and confused, and alarmed. It seemed to her that the rights of her family were in her hand, and her mind leaped to great things—far greater than this simple house and its riches. Perhaps Lenny—yes, certainly, she remembered now, though it had not occurred to her before, her father had Leonard in his name, and her boy-brother was also Leonard—might be the heir of some great property, and only she to defend his rights. Grace stood and looked at them all with a swelling of her breast, yet a dazzled dimness in her eyes, as if she were about to faint. She never had done such a thing in her life; but then she never had been in such an extraordinary strait, and with nobody to advise her. No wonder the light which she wanted so much within to clear up the way before her, should seem to fail without.
“I can’t see my way,” she said faintly. “I cannot tell what to do. Yes, Milly, we will go away; but for all that, it is not finished,” she said, turning to Miss Anna with a gleam of dim defiance in her eyes.