CHAPTER XXII.
CHARLIE’S REPORT.
IT was far from an easy achievement to get her safely conveyed up the stairs. She turned round and delivered addresses to them in most lively and oratorical Italian, eloquent on the subject of her sufferings by the way; she was disposed to be out of temper when no one answered her but Charlie, and fairly wound up, and stimulated with Miss Anastasia’s capon and Mrs Atheling’s wine, was not half so much disposed to be sent off to bed as her entertainers were to send her. These entertainers were in the oddest state of amaze and excitement possible. It was beginning to draw near the wintry morning of another day, and this strange figure in the strange dress, which did not look half so pretty in its actual reality, and upon this hard-featured peasant woman, as it did in pictures and romance—the voluble foreign tongue of which they did not know a word—the emphatic gestures; the change in the appearance of Charlie, and the entire suddenness of the whole scene, confused the minds of the lookers-on. Then a pale face in a white cap, a little shrinking white-robed figure, trembling and anxious, was perceptible to Mrs Atheling at the top of the stair, looking down upon it with terror. So Mamma peremptorily sent Charlie back beside Miss Anastasia, and resumed into her own hands the management of affairs. Under her guidance the woman and the boy were comfortably disposed of, no one being able to speak a word to them, in the room which had been Charlie’s. Rachel was comforted and sent back to bed, and then Mrs Atheling turned suddenly upon her own girls. “My dears,” said Mamma, “you are not wanted down stairs. I don’t suppose Papa and I are wanted either; Miss Anastasia must talk over her business with Charlie—it is not our business you know, Marian, my darling; go to sleep.”
“Go to sleep!—people cannot go to sleep just when they choose at five o’clock in the morning, mamma!” cried the aggrieved and indignant Marian; but Agnes, though quite as curious as her sister, was wise enough to lend her assistance in the cause of subordination. Marian was under very strong temptation. She thought she could almost like to steal down in the dark and listen; but honour, we are glad to say, prevailed over curiosity, and sleep over both. When her pretty young head touched the pillow, there was no eavesdropping possible to Marian; and in the entirest privacy and silence, after all this tumult, in the presence of Mamma and Mr Atheling, and addressing himself to Miss Anastasia, Charlie told his tale. He took out his pocket-book from his pocket—the same old-fashioned big pocket-book which he had carried away with him, and gave his evidences one by one into Miss Anastasia’s hands as he spoke.
But the old lady’s fingers trembled: she had restrained herself as well as she could, feeling it only just that he should be welcomed by his own, and even half diverted out of her anxiety by the excited Tyrolese; but now her restrained feelings rushed back upon her heart. The papers rustled in her hand; she did not hear him as he began, in order, and deliberately, his report. “Information! I cannot receive information, I am too far gone for that,” cried the old lady, with a hysterical break in her voice. “Give me no facts, Charlie, Charlie!—I am not able to put them together—tell me once in a word—is it true?”
“It is true,” said Charlie, eagerly—“not only true, but proved—certain, so clear that nobody can deny it. Listen, Miss Rivers, I could be content to go by myself with these evidences in my hand, before any court in England, against the ablest pleader that ever held a brief. Don’t mind the proofs to-night; trust my assurance, as you trusted me. It is true to the letter, to the word, everything that you supposed. Giulietta was his wife. Louis is his lawful son.”
Miss Anastasia did not say a word; she bowed down her face upon her hands—that face over which an ashy paleness came slowly stealing like a cloud. Mrs Atheling hastened forward, thinking she was about to faint, but was put aside by a gesture. Then the colour came back, and Miss Anastasia rose up, herself again, with all her old energy.
“You are perfectly right, young Atheling—quite right—as you have always been,” said Miss Rivers; “and, of course, you have told me in your letters the most part of what you could tell me now. But your boy is born for the law, Will Atheling,” she said, turning suddenly to Charlie’s pleased and admiring father. “He wrote to me as if I were a lawyer instead of a woman: all facts and no opinion; that was scant measure for me. Shake hands, boy. I’ll see everything in the morning, and then we’ll think of beginning the campaign. I have it in my head already—please Heaven! Charlie, we’ll chase them from the field.”
So saying, Miss Anastasia marched with an exultant and jubilant step, following Mrs Atheling up the narrow stairs. She was considerably shaken out of her usual composure—swells of great triumph, suddenly calmed by the motion of a moved heart, passed over the spirit of this brave old gentlewoman like sun and wind; and her self-appointed charge of the rights of her father’s children, who might have been her own children so far as age was concerned, had a very singular effect upon her. Mrs Atheling did not linger a minute longer than she could help with her distinguished guest. She was proud of Miss Anastasia, but far prouder of Charlie,—Charlie, who had been a boy a little while ago, but who had come back a man.
“Come here and sit down, mother,” said Charlie; “now we’re by ourselves, if you will not tell the girls, I’ll tell you everything. First, there’s the marriage. That she belonged to the family I wrote of—the family Remori—I got at after a long time. She was an only daughter, and had no one to look after her. I have a certificate of the marriage, and a witness coming who was present—old Doctor Serrano—one of your patriots who is always in mischief; besides that, what do you think is my evidence for the marriage?”
“Indeed, Charlie, I could not guess,” cried Mrs Atheling.
“There’s a kind of tomb near the town, a thing as like the mausoleum at Winterbourne as possible, and quite as ugly. There is this good in ugliness,” said Charlie, “that one remarks it, especially in Italy. I thought no one but an Englishman could have put up such an affair as that, and I could not make out one way or another who it belonged to, or what it was. The priests are very strong out there. They would not let a heretic lie in consecrated ground, and no one cared to go near this grave, if it was a grave. They wouldn’t allow even that. You know what the Winterbourne tomb is—a great open canopied affair, with that vast flat stone below. There was a flat stone in the other one too, not half so big, and it looked to me as if it would lift easily enough. So what do you think I did? I made friends with some wild fellows about, and got hold of one young Englishman, and as soon as it was dark we got picks and tools and went off to the grave.”
“Oh, Charlie!” Mrs Atheling turned very pale.
“After a lot of work we got it open,” said Charlie, going on with great zest and animation. “Then the young fellow and I got down into the vault—a regular vault, where there had been a lamp suspended. It, I suppose, had gone out many a year ago; and there we found upon the two coffin-lids—well, it’s very pitiful, mother, it is indeed—but we wanted it for evidence—on one of the coffins was this inscription:—‘Giulietta Rivers, Lady Winterbourne, née Remori, died January 1822, aged twenty years.’ If it had been a diamond mine it would not have given so much pleasure to me.”
“Pleasure! oh Charlie!” cried Mrs Atheling faintly.
“But they might say you put it there, Charlie, and that it was not true,” said Mr Atheling, who rather piqued himself upon his caution.
“That was what I had the other young fellow for,” said Charlie quietly; “and that was what made me quite sure she belonged to the Remoris; it was easy enough after that—and I want only one link now, that is, to make sure of their identity. Father, do you remember anything about the children when they came to the Hall?”
Mr Atheling shook his head. “Your aunt Bridget, if she had been alive, would have been sure to know,” said Mamma meditatively; “but Louis found out some old servant lately that had been about Winterbourne long ago.”
“Louis! does he know?” cried Charlie.
“He is doing something on his own account, inquiring everything he can about Lord Winterbourne. He does not know, but guesses every possible kind of thing, except the truth,” said Mr Atheling; “how long he may be of lighting upon that, it is impossible to say.”
“Now Charlie, my dear boy, you can ask all about Louis to-morrow,” said Mrs Atheling. “Louis! Dear me, William, to think of us calling him Louis, and treating him like any common young man, and he Lord Winterbourne all the time! and all through Charlie!—and oh, my Marian! when I think of it all, it bewilders me! But, Charlie, my dear, you must not be fatigued too much. Do not ask him any more questions to-night, papa; consider how important his health is; he must lie down directly. I’ll make him all comfortable; and, William, do you go to the parlour—bid him good-night.”
Papa obeyed, as dutiful papas are wont to obey, and Charlie laughed, but submitted, as his mother, with her own kind unwearying hands, arranged for him the sofa in the best room; for the Tyrolese and Miss Anastasia occupied all the available bedrooms in the house. Then she bade him good-night, drawing back his dark elf-locks, and kissing his forehead tenderly, and with a certain respect for the big boy who was a boy no longer; and then the good mother went away to arrange her husband similarly on the other sofa, and to take possession, last of all, of the easy-chair. “I can sleep in the day if I am disposed,” said Mrs Atheling, who never was disposed for any such indulgence; and she leaned back in the big chair, with a mind disturbed and glowing, agitated with grand fancies. Marian! was it possible? But then, Agnes—after all, what a maze of splendid uncertainty it was!