“It is clear that they are the originals of Rupert’s mysterious family,” I said to myself, “but I will not come within a mile of allusion to them to him. It would not be fair. I don’t believe, to begin with, that he knows anything, and I rather suspect from his manner yesterday that he is frightened at having told me the little he did. No; I can only try my ground with Clarence, no one else,” and my spirits rose as the idea took form in my imagination of my old dreams perhaps coming true – of my acting the good fairy towards these poor people, for nearly a quarter of a century immured in their gloomy dwelling, owing to the evil machinations of – I started at the thought – a member of my own family!
“But if it be so,” I went on, “the more grounds for my trying to help if I can;” and I went down to breakfast feeling quite strung up and prepared to act upon my resolution as quickly as possible, even while realising fully that it might call for some diplomacy, as unless I saw that my motives were likely to be sympathised in by Clarence Payne, I would say and do nothing, in that direction at least.
I was met by disappointment. There was no one in the dining-room but Mrs Payne, who added to her other model qualities that of punctuality and early rising. I was, I suppose, a little late, but she greeted me most cordially.
“We have to be very regular,” she said, “as Mr Payne and my eldest son go off pointedly, though I did want Clarence to give himself a little latitude this morning after his long journey. And Felix, our baby, is due at school at nine o’clock, though he has not very far to go. And Rupert – ” she was continuing, but I am afraid I cut her short.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I could easily have hurried a little if I had known.” And I really was feeling sorry, though not from any sense of penitence, as Mrs Payne evidently supposed.
“Oh! Rupert is not down yet,” she said. “I am afraid he has got into rather lazy ways;” and she went on talking about the improvement in his health, their plans for his future, etc, without discovering that I was not giving my full attention, for my whole mind was running on the chances of a talk with Clarence, and how it was to be managed without letting him himself suspect that anything of the kind was premeditated on my part. I had not realised the difference between town and country life, between busy, and so to say, idle people. At home, or on any country visit, nothing would have been easier, but here I foresaw all sorts of difficulties, and my spirits flagged.
“You’re tired, my dear, I am afraid,” said my kind hostess, but, luckily perhaps, at that moment Rupert made his appearance. He glanced round the room, and I could not help a slight feeling of amusement at the gratification I detected in his face when he saw that his mother and I were alone.
“I may lay my account,” I thought, “to a good morning of literary confidences and aspirations, not to speak of criticism. But after all, I may turn it to some purpose. I don’t want to involve the boy in any way, but I dare say I am adroit enough to find out something from him which may help to guide me a little,” and my greeting of the young fellow was probably proportionally hearty, for his face lightened up still more, and half-way through our meal – for his mother’s breakfast was a thing of the past – he begged her to leave the care of me in his hands.
“I’m sure Miss Fitzmaurice won’t mind,” he said affably. “Will you?” he added, turning to me, to which I replied by a smile, as he expected. “Mother is fidgeting to see the housekeeper; I know her little ways so well, especially as it is Saturday, and father and Clarence, not to speak of Felix, will probably all come home to luncheon, and dinner is pretty sure to be unusually early or unusually late.”
Mrs Payne laughed, but evidently he had hit the mark, for with a word of excuse to me she left us, and Rupert busied himself with pouring out a second cup of coffee for me, and attending scrupulously to all my wants.
I saw an opening to getting a little information, and profited by it.
“What do you generally do on Saturday afternoons?” I said. “Do you go off to cricket matches or football matches, or – oh! I know what you’re going to say, that I shouldn’t jumble up seasons in that sort of way. And I do know better, but I am asking for general information. I don’t suppose you all stay at home doing nothing!”
“Well, to-day, as I happen to know,” he replied importantly, “they have designs upon you in the shape of a Spring Flower Show at the Botanical Gardens. I don’t suppose you’ll care about it, but mother is one of those people who would be miserable if she did not arrange amusement for her guests; so, my dear Miss Fitzmaurice, you will have to make the best of it.”
“I shall like it very much,” I replied. “Which of you will be going? You, I suppose?”
He hesitated.
“Well, no,” he said, “I’m afraid not. I really am rather busy just now, and – that sort of thing is a change for Clarence after his office work. So, as you won’t see much of me for the rest of the day, is it presumptuous of me to hope that will let me go over some of my work with for half-an-hour or so this morning? The library at the back of the house is really a pleasant room for a quiet talk – or, if you keep to your kind proposal of letting me read aloud to you, I should be most grateful.”
Chapter Twelve.
A Flower Show
Rupert’s proposal was just what I was hoping for. I responded most cordially, feeling half ashamed of my real motive for so doing when I saw the unmistakable gratification in his eyes. So I resolved to do my best – but a small “best” at most – to help him, especially when, on following him to the library, I saw the little preparations he had already made there for my comfort, which he was half anxious, half shy about.
The season was still early enough in the year for the weather to be very uncertain, if indeed in this so-called “temperate” zone of ours it is ever anything else. It was chilly enough to make a little fire acceptable, particularly in the large book-lined room with its heavy furniture and hangings and northern aspect. And to this my young host had seen. The flames danced merrily upwards, and a small table and eminently comfortable leathern arm-chair were drawn up at one side of the hearth.
“Now,” said Rupert, as he stooped for a footstool, – “now, Miss Fitzmaurice, make yourself thoroughly comfortable if you can, so as the better to bear the victimising before you.”
“Nonsense!” I said, laughing. “I don’t feel the least like a victim; still less, however, like a judge! I shall just think you are giving me a pleasant morning’s entertainment. But first, before we settle down, let me make a little tour of the room. New rooms, as well as new places of every kind, interest me,” and I strolled round, glancing up at the shelves, and here and there stopping to read the title of one of the well-bound, mostly venerable-looking volumes.
“It is an ugly old room,” said Rupert. “You see, my people don’t go in for modernising in any way. But still I think there is a charm about these gloomy, stately old London rooms.”
“Of course there is,” I replied, for though the new order of things as to house decoration and so on was in its earliest infancy, on that very account perhaps its crudities were already frequently visible and jarring. “I love a room which you feel has been the same for more than one generation. Whose corner is that?” I went on, as I perceived a neat, not ugly, but very business-like writing-table with chair to match, in a nook facing the book-shelves, and near one of the windows. “Yours?”
“No,” Rupert replied. “That is where Clarence writes when he has to bring work home, as sometimes happens. Mother doesn’t approve of our sitting up in our own rooms. She never has allowed it – she’s afraid of our falling asleep and setting fire to the house, though I don’t see that the risk isn’t pretty much the same downstairs as well as upstairs.”
“Oh, I don’t know that,” I said; “it would take a good deal to make these burn,” and I touched the thick woollen draperies of the window as I spoke. Half unconsciously I had moved a little nearer to the writing-table, and the postmark of a large bluish-coloured envelope caught my eyes, which, as I have said, are, or at least were, in those days very quick. It was that of “Millflowers.” I felt myself blush, though I am quite sure Rupert did not notice it; indeed the room was too dusky for him to have done so, and a feeling of annoyance went through me. “I seem fated to do mean things,” I thought. “Eavesdropping, and now reading what I have no right to see,” though, after all, the word I had noticed did no more than confirm what I was already instinctively convinced of – that the Paynes were the legal advisers of the Grimsthorpe family.
I turned back quickly towards the fireplace.
“How hard your brother must work,” I said, as I settled myself in the roomy chair.
“Yes,” Rupert replied – by this time he was arranging a sheaf or two of papers on the small table – “yes, he does, lately especially, for father’s partner died some months ago, which has given Clarence more to do, but better position too, of course.”
“Oh, indeed,” I replied, while I added to myself, “No doubt, then, he now knows the Grey affairs and secrets, so far as Mr Grey allows them to be known. For I remember Rupert telling me that two were in the mysterious family’s confidence, and that in time to come it might fall to his share to be one of the two.”
“He has some variety in his work, though,” I went on. “At least he seems to travel a good deal.”
“Now and then it happens so,” said Rupert. “This winter he has had some long journeys – some old clients of ours – not able to travel up to town. And I fancy he is rather worried – a member of the family is very ill just now.”
My heart went down. “It must be that poor Caryll,” I thought, with melancholy misgiving.
“Why, it seems nearly as bad as being a doctor,” I said, with assumed carelessness.
“Worse,” replied Rupert impressively. “You see, in nine cases out of ten a doctor doesn’t come in for family secrets as a lawyer does. That is why I shall feel it so tantalising to get hold of materials for such lovely plots.”
I could scarcely help smiling at the boyish emphasis he laid on the adjective.
“Well,” I replied, “you must do your best. Can’t you take a bit here and a bit there, and weave them together in such a way that nobody could possibly recognise the individuals or circumstances that had suggested the story?”
“Yes,” said Rupert doubtfully. “I suppose that is the sort of thing one has to do, though my instinct would rather go with idealising, so to say, or dramatising some history in its entirety.” He stopped, and seemed to be thinking, and I knew by intuition that the subject of his meditations was the Grim House, and the tragedy or tragedies connected with it. But I felt that it would be unjustifiable to lead him on to say more, and after all, I had already found out as much as I had really expected. Clarence Payne had been at Millflowers again, and fresh or additional trouble was brewing there – to himself alone would it be right to apply for details as to this. And gradually my vague plans as to how to set to work concentrated themselves into simplicity. I determined to ask Clarence, without beating about the bush, if or what he could tell me more. And then I must judge for myself – possibly even appeal to him himself to decide for me, if, on my side, I had any right to reveal or even hint at any part of the secret having come into my possession as it had done?
For the moment, courtesy and good-nature demanded that I should put my own preoccupations on one side, and give my best attention to Rupert and his literary ambitions, and I think I succeeded in gratifying him. I dare say it was better for myself not to go on planning and considering over this matter, which seemed to have seized my thoughts and imaginations in an almost inexplicable way from the very first mention of it by Isabel Wynyard at Weissbad.
So the morning passed pleasantly enough. There was nothing in any of Rupert’s stories or sketches to recall the mystery I had come to feel so strangely connected with; I imagine that he kept off any approach to this special subject for his skill on purpose. And between us we worked up one or two slighter things, not, as the event proved, unsuccessfully. Rupert’s first triumph in the literary world was the acceptance by one of the then few serials of good standing of a story we gave our best attention to that morning. Poor boy! how grateful he was, and how delighted when he was able to write to tell me of this, some weeks later!
The day turned out beautifully fine and mild, which I was glad of. For if it had been rainy, Mrs Payne’s project for the afternoon would probably have been given up, or at least would scarcely have helped my private arrangement in the direction I was hoping for.
“We might as well sit in the stiff old drawing-room all the afternoon as in a stuffy tent at a flower show,” I thought to myself, “so far as any opportunity for saying a word that everybody wouldn’t hear is concerned.”
My hostess told me that luncheon would be half-an-hour later than usual, to suit her husband and son’s convenience.
“I am so glad,” she went on, “that it is such a lovely day, quite bright and sunny,” and as she spoke, she drew down a blind with housewifely consideration for the rich old velvet carpet in the drawing-room where I had been writing since released by Rupert. “It will show off some of your pretty things to advantage, my dear, though you must take care to have something in the way of a wrap with you too, as one never knows how the weather may change at this time of year.”
And to tell the truth, my reflections when she joined me had been on similar lines – what should I wear that would be becoming and suitable, and light enough and warm enough all in one? For my apprenticeship to society, under Lady Bretton’s judicious superintendence, had not been thrown away. Nor was I indifferent to the effect I might personally have on Clarence Payne.
“I don’t want him to think me an unfinished school-girl,” I said to myself. “And he has never really seen me in the daytime. Both times he met me at Millflowers it was dusk, and all the better, as I was muffled up like an old woman.”
The result of my cogitations proved satisfactory, as far as my hostess was concerned.
“What a pretty dress!” she exclaimed admiringly, as I came downstairs all ready attired, a few minutes before luncheon-time. “That shade of blue is charming and very uncommon too, and the hat goes so well with it I suppose you always get your things from London even for the country?” Whereupon a little clothes talk followed, in the middle of which the front door opened, and Clarence let himself in with his latch-key.
I looked at him with interest – men, as well as women, sometimes impress one very differently according to even trivial circumstances – such as time of day, different dress, or so on.
Yes, there could be no doubt as to his good looks. Being dark myself, except for the blue Irish eyes, which I own to being a little proud of, I have naturally always had a predilection for fairness in others. Clarence Payne was scarcely perhaps to be described as “fair.” To begin with, notwithstanding his office life, he managed to have a pleasant touch of sunburn, always desirable to my mind in a man. He had bright, rather keen, hazel eyes, and bright hair, one may almost say, to match. The colour of the hair is now a thing of the past, but the keen yet kindly eyes are still unchanged.
Luncheon was not a very long affair that day. We soon found ourselves bowling along, though at a sober pace, in the big landau, somewhat old-fashioned but eminently comfortable, like everything belonging to the Payne household. We were a party of four, my host and hostess, Clarence and myself. But it was not dull. Mr Payne had a real gift for interesting and sympathetic conversation, and, like his elder son, a very decided touch of humour, somewhat wanting, I am afraid, in Rupert, and dear Mrs Payne had an almost equally happy gift or knack – that of never being in the way, for what she perhaps lacked in intellectual power was more than recompensed for by her never-failing fund of intuitive sympathy.
“It is really a pleasure,” said Mr Payne, as we were approaching our destination, “to get thoroughly out of the city by daylight, if but once a week.”
“Yes,” said Clarence, “every evil has its good. We shouldn’t enjoy it as much if we had more of it – of this sort of thing, I mean. But you are luckier than I, father, in some ways,” and turning to me he went on, “My father has such a wonderful capacity for throwing things off. I don’t think business matters trouble you one bit, sir, once you have left papers and letters behind you,” he continued, to Mr Payne.
The elder man laughed. He evidently looked upon this as a great compliment.
“It has been acquired, my dear boy,” he said; “I have trained myself to it, and so will you in process of time. It doesn’t come easy just at first.”
I noted these remarks, feeling that they might nerve me in good purpose for what I had in view, and when, after a few minutes spent together in admiring the great central trophy of spring flowers, supposed to be the special object of the exhibition, we separated naturally enough, and I found myself practically speaking, alone with Clarence, it did not seem “forced” for me to revert to it.
“Don’t you think,” I began, “that if one has anything on one’s mind it seems very much worse when one is physically tired?”
The words were commonplace and trite, but they did not seem to strike my companion in that light.
“Yes,” he said, “I do think so certainly, but it is rather curious that you should say it just now, for the same thought was passing through my own mind. I have been worried and anxious lately, and feeling rather envious of my father’s more placid temperament, but I dare say a great deal of it is simple over-fatigue. I have had a lot of railway travelling this week.”
And in those days there was more ground than at present for what he said. People were less inured to trains, and many of the present inventions for lessening the jar and friction were still wanting.
“Had you a long journey yesterday?” I inquired, tentatively.
He glanced at me as he replied —
“Yes, I came right through from Millflowers.”
“By the express I hope, this time, however,” I answered with a smile. “Oh, Mr Payne,” I went on, in a tone of relief, “I am so glad you have mentioned it. I am so longing to know something about the Grim – Grimsthorpe and those poor people, and I have been wondering how I could ask you, without committing any terrible breach of – etiquette, or whatever it is I should call it.”
He did not laugh or smile, but took my question in sober earnest, which I was very glad of.
“Ask me anything you like,” he said quietly. “Your doing so cannot infringe any rule, written or unwritten. As to what I may be able to answer, that is a different matter, but I know you will not misunderstand if I am unable to say much. Perhaps I may ask you a question in the first place? Have you heard anything of – the Greys lately? Your friends, their neighbours, are still at the Manor-house I suppose – they are residents there, are they not?”
“Oh dear, yes,” I replied. “The Wynyards have been at Millflowers from time immemorial. So of course they know all that any outsider can know about Grimsthorpe. But Mr Wynyard put down gossip with an iron hand – that was why Moore – my brother – and I were so grateful to Mr Grey for agreeing that nothing should be said about that – that inexcusable intrusion.”
“Your brother is only a schoolboy, when all is said and done,” said Clarence, as I momentarily hesitated.
I felt my face grow red, but I don’t think he noticed it.
“Ah!” I exclaimed, “you don’t know all – you judge too leniently. Some day perhaps,” but then I broke off abruptly. There was time enough for confessing my own foolish share in the affair; what I had to do at present was not to lose the opportunity. “I must answer your question,” I resumed. “No, I have not heard anything at all for many weeks; the Wynyards have been away, and it is not probable that Miss Wynyard had anything to tell me, though she does know that I am greatly interested in the Grim House people.”
Clarence smiled a little.
“Oh! that’s what they call the place, is it?” he said; “I had not heard it before. You see I know nothing of the neighbourhood or of what is said about them there. I go down solely on business, and never prolong my stay unnecessarily. Then,” he added, “does Miss Wynyard not know anything about the real circumstances of your brother’s accident?”
“Of course not,” I replied, with a touch of indignation. “Have you forgotten my arrangement with Mr Grey? That no one but themselves, and you of course, and Moore and I, should know about it. Why, even when the little old sisters came over so kindly the next morning, they did not hint in the very slightest degree that they had heard anything of it except from outside sources!”
But my rather sharp retort and reproachful manner only seemed to amuse my companion again.
“Yes,” he said, “I gathered as much from Miss Grey’s account of the visit. It must have been quite a little comedy in its way.”
“It was very, very kind of them,” I said, not yet quite smoothed down.
“Of course it was,” he replied, “as I think I have had the pleasure of telling you before, they are the very kindest people in the world. That is why one feels so specially for them in their troubles. But please forgive me for supposing that you took Miss Wynyard into your confidence – I spoke thoughtlessly. Then you had not even heard of poor Caryll Grey’s serious illness?”
“Oh yes, I had,” I exclaimed. “I meant to have said so, but I am afraid I’ve got a very confused way of talking.”
I glanced round half nervously, for I had a worried feeling that his father and mother would be looking for us, and wondering where we were. Clarence seemed to understand intuitively.
“There is no hurry,” he said gently, “my father and mother are perfectly happy by themselves. It is an old joke among us that they are always ready for a little bit of honeymooning. Let us sit down – it’s more comfortable when one wants to talk.”
I did so. There was a quiet corner where we were practically completely alone. I could see, and I was not sorry for it, that Clarence Payne was really interested – professionally so, I may almost say; his quick instinct had detected something more than ordinary kindly feeling or curiosity of any kind in my tone about the matter, and it made it easier for me to continue.
“Yes,” I repeated, “I did know about the younger brother’s illness, and I should like to hear more. Indeed anything that you feel you can tell me. Is he getting better? Do you think he will recover? Isabel Wynyard only told me that the doctor looked very grave when she or her father inquired about him.”
Clarence thought for a moment before replying. I waited anxiously.
“He is certainly very seriously ill,” he said at last. “But these delicate people often pull through where stronger ones snap. But – I fear there are complications which are unfavourable.”
“Do you mean,” I said eagerly, “anything connected with the whole affair? The mystery, whatever it is? For of course that there is a mystery is no secret. You said I might ask you anything,” I concluded apologetically, for it seemed to me that his face by this time grew earnest, grew increasingly so, as I went on speaking.
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, “it wasn’t that I was thinking of. You are quite right to speak openly, and yet” – and he turned and looked me fully in the face – “we are both fencing a little, Miss Fitzmaurice, I feel, after all. My impression is that you know something more than so far you have been able to allow. Tell me, is it not so? And on my side, I will confide to you that I believe Caryll Grey would have a much better chance if his mind were more at ease.”
I sat and pondered deeply.
“Yes, Mr Payne,” I replied. “Something has come to my knowledge. I cannot yet tell you how. And I am miserable at not knowing what is right to do. I feared you would say what you have just done, and I would give anything to feel justified in telling you all I know, for little as it is, it may be of enormous importance. But is one, can one ever be justified in making use of what one was not intended to hear?”
