Princess Puck

Bella’s baby was born in January, and Theresa went to Greys’ for the event. Indeed she went there a good deal before the event, for, if the truth must be known, life in London with Bill and Polly was not entirely successful. Two women who have each had a home of their own do not always get on when they come to share one between them. Bella wrote in November inviting Theresa to come to her, and Polly urged the acceptance of the invitation with unnecessary warmth. Theresa hesitated a while as to her duty and then finally accepted it and went. “And a good thing too,” Polly said frankly.

She said this to Bill when they were at tea on the afternoon Theresa left. Polly sat at her ease with her feet on the fender and her tea-cup on the hob; she liked this position, and she liked the table drawn on to the hearth-rug so that she could sit between it and the fire. Theresa did not approve of such things; she did not exactly say so, but she looked it, and when she set the tea-things she never pulled the table up.

“It’s all very well, Bill,” Polly went on to say. “Theresa may be a very nice person,—I dare say she is, but she does not do here, and if she is going to live here she will have to alter a good deal.”

“She will settle down in time.”

Polly had her doubts about that and expressed them; she also expressed a hope that Theresa would stay with Bella while the settling process went on. “The longer she stays there the better,” she concluded. “Perhaps if she is there long enough and Gilchrist Harborough sees her often enough, he may marry her and take her to Wood Hall where she could be as elegant as she pleased without interfering with me.”

Bill laughed. “You are in rather a hurry,” she observed. “Theresa has only been a widow six months, and Gilchrist has not by any means got Wood Hall yet. You finish things off rather too quickly.”

“I wish somebody else would,” and Polly turned up her gown to preserve it from the fire.

“Don’t be too hard on T.,” Bill said rather sadly. “I don’t believe she is more particular than she used to be; she always was,—well, you used to call it ladylike.”

Polly ignored her own past attitude with regard to Theresa and only remarked: “I could be ladylike if someone else did the dirty work. I should like to be ladylike; but some people can’t have what they wish in this world; they have to work that others may.”

“Poor old Polly! I’m so sorry you have had to do the stoves lately. That place on my finger is nearly well, and I believe I shall be able to do them again to-morrow.”

“I’m not grumbling about you,” Polly said magnanimously.

“What is the use of grumbling about anything?” Bill asked. “It may let off steam, but I believe it rusts the pipes. Don’t let’s talk about Theresa; let us talk about hats.”

Millinery was a subject of perennial interest to Polly, but to-night she refused to discuss it. “I don’t know anything about hats,” she said; “how should I? I haven’t seen anything but these four walls since I don’t know when.”

“Why not go to Regent Street to-morrow afternoon?” Bill suggested. “My finger is really quite well, so I can do the work and you have not been out for ages; take an omnibus to Oxford Circus and go and look at all the shops.”

This was Polly’s favourite recreation and invariable panacea for dulness, but she still refused to be cheered. “What is the use?” she said. “I shall only see a hat I want and can’t afford.”

“You will see some new way of trimming up your old one,” Bill assured her; and though Polly persisted that she would not go, when the afternoon came she changed her mind and went.

It was during Polly’s absence that the great news came to Bill. Mr. Dane brought it; he had come to town for a few days on business, he said, probably on her business. At all events it was fortunate that his coming to town was at this time, for he was able to bring the news to Bill in person. Of course Polly received a formal intimation; Polly always received formal intimations and requests from the lawyers as did Mr. Dane; she was the guardian of the plaintiff, a person of importance, and he was a great factor in the case, more especially as the lawyers were his lawyers and the money his money. But Bill was only the “infant,” so she was not greatly troubled with intimations and consultations; and she, in the first instance, was not the person to be formally acquainted with the decision of the court. Nevertheless she was the person to whom Mr. Dane came, even before Polly had received her legal information and while that lady was out looking at the bonnet-shops in Regent Street.

It was four o’clock when Mr. Dane came. Bill had no idea of seeing him when she went to answer his knock; and the sight of him standing on the doorstep in the November dusk was so unexpected that she forgot in her delight to wonder why he had come. She led him to the kitchen, their living-room now, and gave him Polly’s shabby old arm-chair. She never thought of apologising; it was the best she had to offer and so needed no apology; moreover he was her friend and would expect none.

“Well, Princess,” he said at last,—at first it had not seemed possible to speak of his errand—“what do you think brings me here to-day?”

Bill looked at him doubtfully for a moment. “I have something to tell you,” he went on, and then her whole face became illuminated with understanding. “Oh, Monseigneur!” she said, clasping her hands with an eagerness begotten half of hope, half of fear.

“Yes, my child,” he said gently, “yes, you have won. That which Roger Corby gave as a price for wrong is paid back a hundred fold; and you, you little Bill, are an heiress in your own right.”

Bill gave a great gasp. “Thank God,” she said, “it is in time! Thank God, thank Him, very, very much!” And there followed a pause; perhaps she thanked the God who always seemed so close to her. When she spoke again it was in hushed tones. “It seems very wonderful,” she said. “And,—and I owe it to you!”

But Mr. Dane did not think she owed it all to him; perhaps he shared Mr. Stevens’s opinion and thought she was the stuff that wins under any circumstances. As for the particular circumstances of this case he set them aside, and when she persisted, her voice quivering with emotion as she recounted all he had done, he still set them aside. “It seems a great thing to do, does it?” he said at last. “Ah, you are young; things look different when you are young. I am old and I have lived much and loved much, and outlived much too perhaps, and to me,”—and he put a tender hand on the glowing hair—“to me it does not seem such a very great thing to do for the child of my past, the daughter of consolation to me.”

Then she said no more, but she kissed him with tears in her eyes. Afterwards they talked of this fortune, and what it would mean, and the debt that Bill thought she owed to the Harboroughs—to Peter Harborough, shot, to hide whose death the price which was the foundation of her fortune had been paid—to Kit Harborough, whose rival through an act of hers had learned the claim that he had made,—and to the old man, last of the Harboroughs of Gurnett, who slept in the little churchyard among the ferns where Roger Corby lay.

It was past five o’clock before Polly returned. Mr. Dane had left only a little while before, and she must have almost passed him at the end of the street, though, if she did, she failed to recognise him. She did not notice anything particularly until she reached her own house, and was surprised to see there were no lights at any of the windows. Miss Scrivens, who now occupied the drawing-room, must have fallen asleep and forgotten to ring for the lamp; and Polly decided with some satisfaction that Bill for once had followed her instructions and not taken the light until it was rung for. With a gratified feeling at this unusual display of obedience she let herself in and went up-stairs; while she was up-stairs the drawing-room bell rang sharply and Bill went to answer it. She was still attending to the lamp, or the lady, when Polly entered the kitchen and found to her surprise that the tea-tray was not set.

“What has the girl been doing?” she muttered as she went to the dresser. She was reaching up to get a jug from a high hook when there came a dancing step behind her and, before she could look round, Bill’s arms were thrown round her neck from behind and Bill’s strong hands took hers prisoner.

“Polly!” she exclaimed, possessing herself of the jug and then twisting Polly round. “Polly, dear old Polly! It has come at last! You shall have the finest hat in all Regent Street even if it’s a salad of roses with a cockatoo rampant on the top! You shall have it and we will drive all the way in a hansom cab to buy it!”

“Bill! What is the matter with the girl? Bill, put down that jug and tell me what you mean!”

“I mean,”—but Bill did not put down the jug, she filled it with milk instead—“I am going to get Miss Scrivens’s tea,” she said. “I ought to have got it before only I have been hindered this afternoon, and I’m crazy I think. But, oh, Polly! I’ve got it, got it at last; the money I mean, or at least as good as got it, it is going to be mine. I expect you will have to do things and sign things first, but the case is decided for us and it is all as good as mine already!”

“My dear Bill!” Polly was momentarily overwhelmed by the news, then she recovered herself and fetched a tin of sardines from the cupboard. “Oh, well,” she said, “if that’s the case we can afford to have a relish with our tea.”