Маргарет Олифант
The Two Marys
CHAPTER VI
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.
CHAPTER VII
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.
