“And the sort of girl friends you thought I needed! Evidently they will not be of the ultra-serious order,” I reflected, with a little secret amusement. But aloud I just laughed, and begged my godmother to believe that no girl friends she could possibly hunt up or down for me would suit me half or a quarter as well as her own charming young-hearted self. “I have Isabel Wynyard now,” I said, “and I do feel that she has made me much more like other people – other girls, I mean.”
Lady Bretton glanced at me with affectionate approval.
“I don’t think, dear,” she said, “that in my eyes there would ever have been much room for improvement or alteration for the better, though I am sure – I knew her mother a little, you know – that Isabel must be a thoroughly nice companion for you. I only hope that some day – ”
But here she stopped and hesitated.
“What?” I said, my curiosity aroused. “Do go on, dear godmother. I could never mind anything you would say.”
She laughed, but there was a little constraint in her manner.
“I was only going to – to express a hope,” she resumed, “that some day you may meet somebody as desirable for a different kind of companion as Isabel Wynyard is in her way. A commonplace thing to say, and certainly in your case there is time enough! Don’t be in a hurry about it, my dear.”
It was not for a moment or two that I took in the drift of her remark, and she laughed again, this time more heartily, at my perplexed expression. I think she was pleased to see my entire absence of self-consciousness. But when her meaning became clear to me, and I turned it over in my mind after we got home, I felt a little surprised. What could she have got into her head to cause any allusion of the kind? I could not make it out.
The next day brought some enlightenment, and not of a pleasant kind. Certainly, if the Fates had destined me to interference for good in the affairs of the Grey family, it was not to be without annoyance and discomfort to myself!
In answer to my letter to him, I heard from Clarence Payne that he had arranged to call to see me on Thursday morning. It was of course necessary to mention this to my hostess, but in my real interest, and engrossment to a certain extent, in the matter, I made the little communication with perfect freedom from embarrassment, and I was really startled at my godmother’s unmistakable surprise and disapproval.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed, “what are you thinking of, or what is this young man thinking of? It is an extraordinary thing to do!”
I stood silent for a moment, realising that on the face of it the proceeding was somewhat unconventional. But it would not be fair to let any blame for this rest on Clarence Payne.
“I am very sorry,” I said, my colour rising, “but it is not anybody’s fault but my own, if fault there is. I wrote to ask Mr Payne to come. It is entirely a matter of business – I would like to tell you all about it, but I don’t think I can. It depends on a letter I have had from father, and I am expecting another to-morrow morning, which I hope I shall be able to show you at least part of, in explanation of what I have done.”
But Lady Bretton, good as she was, was not perfect. She was irritated at the whole episode, and therefore not quite reasonable.
“I can scarcely think,” she said, “that your father can have realised what he was putting upon you. If so, he should have written to me direct. Why, the very servants will gossip about it, and no wonder, as of course, from what you say, I am not to make a third at the interview.”
It was all I could do not to begin to cry, but I controlled myself as a new and, I thought, happy idea struck me.
“I have been very thoughtless, I’m afraid,” I said penitently, “but if you understood the whole thing, and before long I hope I may be able to tell you about it, I don’t think you would be vexed with me.” I stopped short, forgetting that I had not introduced my new project.
“What is to be done?” said my godmother, still rather coldly.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, “I was just going to tell you what I think I can do. I will write to Clar – to the younger Mr Payne, I mean, and ask him to beg his father to come with him. That would put it all right, would it not?”
“It would certainly give the interview its proper character,” she allowed, “that of a purely business one. But in taking all this upon you, my dear child,” and I was glad to hear her more natural tone again, “are you quite sure that you know what you are about?”
“Yes,” I replied, decidedly, and I meant it. “Sooner or later,” I said to myself, “Mr Payne must be told everything. And if father’s letter is what I am sure it must be, ‘sooner’ will be pretty surely better than ‘later.’”
My dreams, I well remember, were not of a very tranquil nature that night. I felt distressed at having managed for the first time, during my stay with her, to annoy my kind godmother, and I felt miserable and mortified at the bare shadow of a suggestion that my writing to Clarence Payne, asking him to call, as I had done, was, to say the least, unconventional, if not unladylike. For remember, I am writing of fully thirty or forty years ago, when the position of young girls of our class was very different from what it now is – though I cannot quite allow that in every way the alteration seems to me for the better.
My correspondent had not, it is true, in the faintest degree appeared to think I had done anything unusual, but then I felt that he was a man of peculiarly chivalrous temperament. Had he thought so he would have done his best to prevent my finding it out.
“Perhaps,” I said to myself, “he looks upon me as very childish and inexperienced, and makes allowance on this account.” This idea was not a pleasant one either, but my common-sense dismissed it. “No,” I thought, “he does not think me silly, or he would not have talked to me about all this as he has done.”
But I felt very glad that I had written to ask the elder Mr Payne to come too, though my latest waking reflection was a hearty longing that I had never mixed myself up for good or bad in the Millflowers mystery.
And a strange thing happened, as if to reprove me for the mingling of selfishness in this wish.
I dreamt that as I was sitting alone in my godmother’s drawing-room waiting for my expected visitors, the door opened silently, and in came – walking slowly and with evident effort – Caryll Grey, or – a shiver went through me even in my sleep – his ghost. I saw him distinctly – more distinctly than I had ever done in my waking hours. His poor face looked very drawn and white, the gentle eyes unnaturally large and wistful.
“Miss Fitzmaurice,” I thought he said, “regret nothing. Go through with it, I beseech you, and oh! for Heaven’s sake, make him tell.”
Then the vision disappeared, and I seemed to be again alone in the room – waiting.
Whom did he mean by “him”? His brother, or the already praying-to-confess traitor? I could not say, but it did not matter. I threw my misgivings and regrets aside, resolved to do my best. And when I awoke in the morning, the impression of my dream had in no way grown fainter.
Chapter Fourteen.
“Not Jocelyn.”
It is a great comfort in life to have to do with people whose attitude of mind, whose action even, one can predicate with an amount of probability almost amounting to certainty; whom, in other words, one can “count upon” in unforeseen circumstances or complications. And when this species of confidence, of mutual trust, founded upon mutual knowledge, exists between members of the same family, it is a great link; in some ways even a stronger one than the bond of mutual affection. This I realised fully when I received my father’s letter. It was just what I had hoped for. He said frankly that he wished I could have told him more, but cordially approved of and authorised my consulting the Paynes. Furthermore, he announced his intention of setting off for Liverpool at once, giving me an address there, at which to communicate with him.
So as I sat in the drawing-room, waiting, as in my dream, I felt fully prepared for the coming interview.
Yes, it was curiously like my dream; when the door at last opened, I would scarcely have felt surprised had it been to admit the pathetic figure of Caryll Grey. But no! the visionary picture was reversed. There entered the much more substantial person of Mr Payne the elder, followed by his son. Had I felt less intent on the business in hand, I would almost have been amused at the combination of “professionalness” and friendliness in the bearing of the former as he greeted me. He was evidently brimful of curiosity and interest, which sentiments, nevertheless, were to some extent tempered by his difficulty in believing that a young girl like myself could have much of importance to communicate, and as to how far his son had thought it well to take him into his confidence I was of course in the dark.
“You wish to see me, my dear young lady?” Mr Payne, senior, began, after we had shaken hands, “and I made a point of attending to your behest at once.”
There was a kind of “remember my time is valuable,” in the words and manner, which I was quick to recognise.
“Yes,” I said. “It is very good of you to have trusted me by doing so, and I will not lose a moment. I think the best way of coming to the point is by showing you the letter I received from my father an hour ago, and after you have read it – it contains, so to say, my credentials – I will show you his former one.”
I handed him the envelope, which he received in silence, at once drawing out the sheet it contained, which he read with the greatest attention. In this letter, curiously enough, the name of Ernest Fitzmaurice was not mentioned, my father only alluding to his relative as “that unhappy man.” So a certain perplexity naturally mingled with Mr Payne’s expression of close interest and expectation, and when he had finished reading it, he held out his hand, without speaking, for the second, that is to say for the first letter, which I had already unfolded in readiness for his perusal.
And now indeed the dramatic interest of the situation rose visibly. As his eyes fell on the words, “Ernest Fitzmaurice,” I saw the colour plainly spread over his face, though he was no longer a young, and certainly not an emotional man.
Then there came a sound like a gasp, the colour receding as quickly as it had come, leaving him almost pallid.
“Ernest Fitzmaurice!” The words, though scarcely above a murmur, caught my ears at once. “Good God! the last man, the last human being one could have suspected. Can it be?”
I, though no lawyer, nor gifted with special instinct of the detective kind, had not lost any shadow of the expressions following each other on his face, nor of the words of his almost involuntary exclamations, and of course I was much better prepared than my companions for the probable incidents of the interview, and therefore to some extent at an advantage. So I waited for a moment or two while Mr Payne handed the letters to his son, and, still without addressing me, sat motionless, save for a slightly nervous tapping of his fingers on the table, his eyes fixed before him, till Clarence, with a gleam of something almost approaching triumph, laid the papers down in front of his father, with the two words only, into which, however, his tone infused a big amount of meaning —
“Well, sir?”
Then the father turned to me.
“I am so amazed,” he said, and his voice shook a little in spite of his professional self-control, “so amazed, as to what all this points to, as to feel almost stunned for the moment. May I ask you, Miss Fitzmaurice, as to what the knowledge was which, so far, I gather by these,” and he tapped the letters as he spoke, “you have had the courage and resolution to keep to yourself? And still further, how did you come by it?”
I shook my head. I had anticipated some such inquiry as the first result of his reading the letters, and I was prepared for it.
“Mr Payne,” I said earnestly, “I have thought it well out. I do not see that it is necessary for me to tell even you what you have just asked. You see I have withheld it from my own father, and he does not press it. The whole thing is, or may be, now well in train. You and he – my father, I mean – with the benefit of your advice and experience, can follow it out to the end, without my having to tell what I should be thankful to keep silent about. The information, or the knowledge, came to me accidentally. I was never intended to hear or to know what I did hear and do know. What, in point of fact, you now know yourself. If I have been able, as I think I have been, to start things, or rather to help things on in the right direction, by doing away with the difficulty that this man, Ernest Fitzmaurice, might have had in tracing – well, you know whom – I shall feel thankful and grateful for the rest of my life.”
“As to that,” was Mr Payne’s reply, “there can be no manner of doubt; whereas, but for your intervention, time of the most precious might have been lost. The whole éclaircissement, in short, delayed till, in the eyes of those chiefly concerned, it had lost its greatest value for them! But, excuse me, I still feel almost stupefied. It will take a little time for this extraordinary aspect of things to get into focus with me.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I can understand that.”
I said no more, hoping – for of course I cannot pretend that I felt no curiosity, no legitimate interest rather, in the further unfolding of the mystery – hoping that I was going to hear more. But such for the moment was not to be, though Mr Payne seemed by instinct to guess that I might be expecting him to volunteer some explanation, for his next words were in deprecation, almost in apology, for his not offering anything of the kind.
“I wish,” he said, “that I could talk the whole thing out with you. That is not yet in my power. And,” with a resumption of his friendly, less professional manner, “if I may say so, you have shown yourself such a sensible girl that I am sure you will understand the delay, though eventually it will be only due to you to hear the whole sad history.”
At this juncture, for the first time almost, Clarence spoke.
“If you have no objection, father,” he said, “it may be as well for Miss Fitzmaurice to understand that it is only of recent date that we have again been drawn into personal relations with the – Grey family. And I myself,” and he turned to me, “have only made their acquaintance within the last year or so.”
“I thought so,” was my reply, “for however carefully they have hedged themselves round, there could not but be gossip about the Grim House. The neighbours were quite aware of your first visit there!”
Mr Payne, senior, pricked up his ears at what I said.
“Indeed!” he remarked drily. But then his tone altered again. “I think I may tell you a little more, which, if you have not already suspected it, you are sure to hear through your father; that is, that ‘Grey’ is not the real name of the family.”
I bent my head in agreement; I had thought so. “And,” resumed Clarence, “the business which has taken us down, I more frequently than my father, has no connection with the old affair.” He glanced at Mr Payne, as if for acquiescence in his continuing. “Not very long ago, they – the elder brother – came into possession of a large estate, which we manage for him. Not that for many, many years past, twenty-five or thirty, I suppose – ”
“Fully twenty-five,” interposed the elder Mr Payne.
” – They have been at all poor,” continued Clarence. “And now they are really very wealthy.”
“I am glad to hear it,” I said simply. “Then, that poor Caryll can have everything that money can do to make him well, or at least to soften his suffering?”
“Yes,” Clarence replied, with emphasis on the words, “everything that money can do, but even money cannot always buy peace of mind.”
He said no more, for at that moment his father took out his watch and consulted it with a business-like air.
“Miss Fitzmaurice will excuse us, I am sure,” he said, “if we discuss practical matters in her presence.” I half rose from my seat.
“Shall I leave you?” I said; but this they at once both negatived.
“On the contrary,” said Clarence. “We shall be very much indebted to you if you will stay while we settle what is best to be done.”
“And I should very much like to hear it,” I said, seating myself again.
“The first thing, it seems to me,” the younger man continued, “is for one of us to go down to Liverpool, and at once to see Mr Fitzmaurice – your father, of course, I mean. Shall I do so, father?”
Mr Payne considered.
“You, I think, Clarence,” he said after a moment, “can do as well as, or better than I. Can you get off this afternoon?”
“Certainly,” answered his son. “I can reach Liverpool a little before midnight I think, and if in the meantime you, Miss Fitzmaurice, will write to your father, it will help on matters greatly. Please say I will go to the same hotel that he is at, so that I shall be ready for a talk with him as early as he likes to-morrow morning. And if,” now addressing Mr Payne, “I find, as I quite expect, that things are already satisfactorily in train – ” He glanced at me as he spoke, and I replied to the tacit inquiry.
“Yes,” I said, “I am sure you will find them so. My father is not one to let the grass grow under his feet in a case like this; he is too Irish!” and I smiled. “Very likely you will find that he has had the deposition – is that the word? – formally taken, and that what will fall to your share more directly will be deciding how to act towards the other side.”
“I,” said Mr Payne, “will hold myself in readiness to go down to Millflowers at a moment’s notice from you, Clarence. Perhaps it would be best for us to meet there?”
“Just what I was going to say,” replied his son. “Poor Caryll, it is to be hoped, is not in quite such a critical state as – as the new actor in the scene, but still I own to feeling desperately anxious, most unprofessionally excited,” and he smiled, “to see the thing through for the ‘Grim House’ people!”
“Is that what you call the place?” said his father. “Humph! Not a bad idea!”
“It did not originate with me,” said Clarence.
“And certainly not with me,” I said half-laughingly. “It seems to have been the local name of the place for ever so long.”
Mr Payne glanced at me. I could feel that he was – I beg pardon of his kind memory even now, dear good man, for my disrespect – I could feel that he was dying of curiosity to learn how much I know of Millflowers and its neighbourhood, and I had a slightly mischievous satisfaction in keeping him in the dark. It was a sort of tit-for-tat; for after all, my own eagerness to hear the whole story could not but be greater than his, already in possession as he was of the main facts. And as I surreptitiously peeped from behind the drawing-room curtains at the father and son, as they walked down the street together, talking eagerly, I did wish I could hear what they were saying to each other!
But I had no time to spare for any useless conjectures of this kind. There was my father to write to, and my letter must be careful and well considered; and this done, there was my godmother’s still somewhat ruffled plumage to smoothe down, for she was not yet quite her most approving and delightful self to me. And I began to realise for almost the first time in my life that I was feeling very tired – overstrained, I think, and suffering from a sort of reaction from the too great consciousness of responsibility of the last few days.
My godmother’s instincts were as quick as her sympathy was sure. She met me as I was carrying my letter downstairs, to ask her if I might have it posted at once. I had a babyish feeling that it would be a relief to know it in the safe possession of her Majesty’s post-office, till it should reach its destination the next morning.
“Certainly,” was Lady Bretton’s reply, as she took it from me. “It shall be sent off at once.”
“It is to father,” I explained. “There is no hurry, I know. He is at Liverpool.”
“At Liverpool?” she repeated, in a tone of surprise.
“Yes,” I said, “he is there on this business that I can’t tell you about, and the younger Mr Payne is to join him there to-night.”
I was glad to be able to tell her this, and I think it thoroughly satisfied her. The kindly caressing look and tone returned to her eyes and voice.
“You’re looking tired, dear,” she said, almost tenderly, “and, dear me, yes! – you leave me the day after to-morrow. I wish this annoying business had not cropped up just at the end of your visit – you were so blooming last week, before you set off to that Granville Square.”
“I am a little tired,” I said, “but I shall be all right again now. The business is out of my hands.”
“You quaint little person,” said Lady Bretton. “You and business! It seems too absurd! Now go and lie down till luncheon-time; you know I never coddle, but there are exceptions to all rules.”
I was not sorry to do as she told me; I rather suspect I fell asleep. I know that I felt quite myself again by the afternoon, and when I said good-bye to my dear hostess on Saturday, she expressed her satisfaction at seeing me looking so well.
“So they will trust you to me again, and that before very long, I hope,” were her last words.
No letters had reached me on these intervening days; none at least, except one from mother, in which, to my great delight, she said there were good hopes of father’s return home late on that same day.
“If so,” I thought to myself, “I shall soon hear all,” and in my heart I know that, though I was by no means devoid of curiosity – curiosity, too, naturally intensified by the events of the last week or two – my deepest feeling was an earnest desire to learn that the victims of a bad man’s treachery were now in the way, so far as was still possible, of having the terrible cloud removed from their lives.
“That poor Caryll,” I said, over and over again. “I can never forget his face as I saw it in my dream.”
My home-coming was very pleasant. Mother was so delighted to have me with her again, and I to be with her.
“It seems all to have been so successful,” she said. “Regina Bretton is really a godmother worth having. You are looking so well, and your dress is so pretty.” It was one of those chosen for me in London, and I felt pleased at mother’s approval.
“I am sure you will like all I have got,” I said. “Lady Bretton has such good taste, and knows so exactly where to go for everything, and just what to get.”
There was only one little damper on the satisfaction of my return, and that but a passing one. Father was not expected till very late that night, too late for me to see him. For we were old-fashioned enough in those days to think that a railway journey, of even a few hours’ duration, must be tiring, and mother made me go to bed at least an hour sooner than my usual reasonable time. And I fell asleep almost at once.
I awoke suddenly. I had, in fact, been awakened, though I did not know it, by the sound of the carriage returning from the station, whither it had gone to fetch father, and the sound of the clock striking twelve fell on my ear a minute or two later. Then, for, as I think I have said, my hearing was very quick, I heard a little bustle in the hall, and the sort of rustle and flutter through the house which tell of an arrival. Then father’s voice, and a murmur of welcome which must have been from mother, followed by a quick run up the stairs – father had the agile movements of a much younger man – and the cheery sound of voices down the corridor. Voices, whose were they? Father’s of course I distinguished at once, but whose was the second? Certainly not our immaculate butler or either of his subordinates, who would never have ventured to laugh in the august presence of their master! But I was too sleepy to trouble myself farther.
“One of the boys must have come unexpectedly,” I thought as I composed myself again. “Perhaps Dad sent for Jocelyn to help him at Liverpool, after all; he may have needed him.”
My long night’s rest left me quite ready to get up at my usual hour, and I ran down to the dining-room, anxious to learn all I could about father’s return. This would have to be gleaned in the first place from the servants no doubt, for mother was sure to be tired, and not improbably too much so to appear at breakfast. But punctual as I was, some one was there before me, standing in the window, looking out at our pretty garden, never prettier than in the spring, above all with the early morning light. A tall, well-knit figure familiar to me somehow.
