Nearly the whole of Fan's remaining time before going to Kingston was passed at Dawson Place. Her happiness was perfect, like the sunshine she had found resting on that dear spot on her return to it, pure, without stain of cloud. For into Mary's vexed heart something new seemed to have come, something strange to her nature, a novel meekness, a sweetness that did not sour, so that their harmony continued unbroken to the end. And, oddly enough, or not oddly perhaps, since she was not “logical,” she seemed now greatly to sympathise with Fan's growing anxiety about the lost Constance. Not one trace of the petty jealous feeling which had caused so much trouble in the past remained; she was heartily ashamed of it now, and was filled with remorse when she recalled her former unkind and capricious behaviour.
At length Fan went on her visit, not without a pang of regret at parting so soon again, even for a short time, from the friend she had recovered. She was anxious to hear that “strange story” about her father which the lawyer had promised to relate; apart from that, she did not anticipate much pleasure from her stay at Kingston.
The Travers' house was at a little distance from the town, and stood well back on the road, screened from sight by trees and a high brick wall. It was a large, low, old-fashioned, rambling house, purchased by its owner many years before, when he had a numerous family with him, and required plenty of house-room; but its principal charm to Fan was the garden, covering about four acres of ground, well stocked with a great variety of shrubs and flowers, and containing some trees of noble growth.
Mrs. Travers was not many years younger than her husband; and yet she did not look old, although her health was far from good, her more youthful appearance being due to a false front of glossy chestnut-coloured hair, an occasional visit to the rouge-pot, and other artificial means used by civilised ladies to mitigate the ravages of time. In other things also she offered a striking contrast to her husband, being short and stout, or fat; she was also a dressy dame, and burdened her podgy fingers and broad bosom with too much gold and too many precious stones—yellow, blue, and red; and her silk dresses were also too bright-hued for a lady of her years and figure. Her favourite strong blues and purples would have struck painfully on the refined colour-sense of an aesthete. On the other hand, to balance these pardonable defects, she was kind-hearted; not at all artificial in her manner and conversation, or unduly puffed up with her position, as one might have expected her to be from her appearance; and, to put her chief merit last, she reverenced her husband, and believed that in all things—except, perhaps, in those small matters sacred to femininity, which concerned her personal adornment—“he knew best.” She was consequently prepared to extend a warm welcome to her young visitor, and, for her husband's sake, to do as much to make her visit pleasant as if she had been the lawful daughter of her husband's late friend and client, Colonel Eden.
Nevertheless, after the days she had spent with Mary, Fan did not find Mrs. Travers' society exhilarating. The lady had given up walking, except a very little in the garden, but on most days she went out for carriage exercise in the morning, after Mr. Travers had gone to town. At two o'clock the ladies would lunch, after which Fan would be alone until the five o'clock tea, when her hostess would reappear in a gay dress, and a lovely carmine bloom on her cheeks—the result of her refreshing noonday slumbers. After tea they would spend an hour together in the garden talking and reading. Mrs. Travers, having bad eyesight, accepted Fan's offer to read to her. She read nothing but periodicals—short social sketches, smart paragraphs, jokes, and occasionally a tale, if very short, so that Fan found her task a very light one. She had The World, Truth, The Whitehall Review, The Queen and The Lady's Pictorial every week; and in the last-named paper Fan read out a little sketch—one of a series called “Eastern Idylls”—which she liked better than anything else for its graceful style and delicate pathos. So much did it please her, that she looked up the back numbers of the paper, and read all the sketches in them, each relating some little domestic East End incident or tale, pathetic or humorous, or both, with scenes and characters lightly drawn, yet with such skilful touches, and put so clearly before the mind, that it was impossible not to believe that these pictures were from life.
At half-past six Mr. Travers would return from town, and at seven they dined, sitting long at table; and afterwards, if there were friends, there would be a rubber of whist. It was a quiet almost sleepy existence, and Fan began to look forward with a little impatience to the end of her fortnight, when she would be able to return to her friend. For Mary's last words had been, “I shall not leave London without you.” But she first wished to hear the “strange story” Mr. Travers had promised to tell, but about which he had spoken no word since her arrival. Every day she was reminded of it, for in the dining-room was the portrait of her father, painted, life-size, by a Royal Academician, and showing a gentleman aged about thirty-five years, with a handsome oval face, grey eyes, thin straight nose, and hair and well-trimmed moustache and Vandyke beard of a deep golden brown, the moustache not altogether hiding the pleasant, somewhat voluptuous mouth. And it seemed to Fan when she looked at it and the grey eyes gazed back into hers, and the pleasant lips seemed to smile on her, that she had never seen among living men a more beautiful and lovable face.
The sixth day of her visit was Sunday. Mr. Travers breakfasted alone with her, his wife not having risen yet, and after breakfast he asked her if she wished to go to church.
“Not unless you are going or wish me to go,” returned Fan.
“Then, Miss Eden, let us stay at home, and have a morning to ourselves in the garden. We have not yet had much time to talk, as I am generally rather tired in the evenings. And besides, what I wish to talk to you about is one of my secrets, and it could not be mentioned before another.”
They were out in the garden sitting in the shade, when he surprised her by saying, “Are you at all superstitious, Miss Eden?”
“I am not quite sure that I understand you,” replied Fan, with a little hesitation. “Do you mean religious, Mr. Travers?”
“Well, no, not exactly. But superstition is undoubtedly a word of many meanings, and some people give it a very wide one, as your question implies. I used the word in a more restricted sense—in the sense in which we say that believers in dreams, presentiments, and apparitions are superstitious. My belief was—I am not sure whether I can say is—that your father was infected with superstitions of this kind. But I must tell you the whole story, and then you will understand what I mean when I say that it is a strange one. He was one of several children; and, by the way, that reminds me that—but let that pass.”
“Do you mean—have I—has my brother many relations—uncles, aunts, and cousins, Mr. Travers?” said Fan, a little eagerly.
“Well,” he answered, smiling a little and stroking his chin, “yes. Your half-brother's mother had two married sisters, both with large families; but I do not think that Mr. Arthur Eden is intimate with them. I think I have heard him say as much.”
Fan, noting that he cautiously confined himself to her brother's relations on the mother's side, grew red, and secretly resolved never to ask such a question again, even of Arthur.
The other continued: “Being one of several children, and not the eldest, his income was a small one for a young man of rather expensive habits and in the army. He was in difficulties on several occasions, and it was at that period that our acquaintance ripened into a very close friendship—as warm a friendship as can exist between two men living totally different lives, moving in different social worlds, and with a considerable difference in their ages.
“When about thirty-eight years old he married a lady with a considerable fortune, which was not in any way settled on herself, and consequently became his. It was not a happy marriage, and after the birth of their son—their only child—and Mrs. Eden not being in good health, she went to live at Winchester, where she had relations and where her son was educated; and for several years husband and wife lived apart. His wife died about fourteen years after her marriage, and, I am glad to say, he was with her during her last illness, but afterwards he returned to his old life in London, and went very much into society. Finally his health failed; and when he discovered that his malady, although a slow, was an incurable one, his habits and disposition changed, and he grew morbid, I think—possibly from brooding too much on his condition.
“Up to this time he had paid no attention to religion; now it became the sole subject of his thoughts. He attended a ritualistic church in the neighbourhood of Oxford Street, and gave up the house he had occupied before, and took another only a few doors removed from the church, so as to be able to attend all the services, one of which was held daily at a very early hour of the morning. In this church, confession and penances, and other things in which the ritualists imitate the Roman Catholics, are in use, and the vicar, or priest as he is called, gained a great influence over Colonel Eden's mind.
“He had at this time entirely given up going into society, but his intimacy with me, which had lasted so many years, continued to the end. Shortly before he died, and about three years and a half to four years ago, he told me that he had had a strange dream, which he persisted in regarding as of the supernatural order. This dream came to him on three consecutive nights, and after several conversations with his priest and confessor on the subject, and being encouraged by him in the belief that it was something more than a mere wandering of the disordered fancy, he consulted me about it. It was then that for the first time he told me the story of Margaret Affleck, a girl in a humble position in life who had engaged his affections some fourteen years before, and from whom he had parted after a few months' acquaintance. He assured me that he had all but forgotten this affair; that when parting from her he had given her some money as a compensation for the trouble he had brought on her; while, on her side, she had told him that she would not be disgraced, but that she would marry a young man in her own class, who was willing and anxious to take her.
“At all events, during those fourteen years he had never seen nor heard anything of her. Then comes the dream. He dreamt that he was in the church for early matins, and that he heard a voice calling 'Father, father!' to him, and on looking round saw a poor girl in ragged clothes, and with a pale, exceedingly sad face, and that he had no sooner looked on her than he knew that she was his child, and the child of Margaret Affleck. She was crying piteously, and wringing her hands and imploring him to deliver her from her misery; and in his struggling efforts to go to her he woke.
“This dream, as I said, returned to him night after night, and so preyed on his mind that he interpreted it as a command from some Superior Power to seek out this lost child and save her. I tried my best to argue him out of his delusion, for I was convinced that it was nothing more; but seeing him so determined, and so fully persuaded in his own mind that unless he made atonement his sins would not be forgiven, I gave way, and had inquiries made in various directions. I advertised for Margaret Affleck; for I could not, of course, advertise for a child of whose existence there was not any evidence. But though we advertised a great many times both in the London and Norfolk papers—Colonel Eden remembered that the girl belonged to Norfolk—we could not find the right person. Colonel Eden, however, still clung to the belief that the daughter he believed in would eventually be found, and he even contemplated adding a clause to his will, in which everything was left unconditionally to his son, to make provision for her. This intention was not carried out, but shortly before his death he told me that he had left a sealed letter for his son, who was abroad at the time, informing him of the dream, or revelation, and asking him to continue the search, and to provide generously for the child when she should be found. He never for a moment seemed to doubt that she would be found; but his belief was that we would find in her not, my dear girl, one like yourself—fresh and unsullied as the flower in your hand, beautiful in spirit as in person.”
“What did he believe you would find? Will you please tell me, Mr. Travers?” said Fan, a tremor in her voice.
“He believed when he had that dream that you were in the lowest depths of poverty—in misery, and exposed to all the dangers and temptations which surround a destitute young girl, motherless perhaps, and friendless, and homeless, in London. Dear child, I cannot tell you all or what he feared,” he finished, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder.
There were tears in her eyes, and she averted her face to hide the rush of crimson to her cheeks.
Mr. Travers continued: “The news of Colonel Eden's death reached Arthur in Mexico, and he came home at once. He showed me the letter I have mentioned, and asked me to advise him what to do. But from the first he had taken the same view of the matter which I had taken, and which I suppose that ninety-nine men out of every hundred would take, and I must say that he did not do much to find the girl, nor was there anything to be done after our advertisements had failed. The rest of the story you know, Miss Eden. When I last saw your brother I told him that after making your acquaintance, if I found you what he had painted, I should in all probability tell you this story, and he made no objection. I fear it has given you pain, still it was best that you should know it. And perhaps now you will not think that your brother was wrong in opening his heart to me.”
“No, I think he was right, and I am very, very grateful to you for telling me about my father.” After a while she continued: “But, Mr. Travers, I hardly know what to say about the dream. I have heard and read of such things, and—I was just what he imagined—just like the girl he saw in his dream. And when my life was so miserable, if I had known where to find him—if mother could have told me—I should have gone to him to ask him to save me. But—how can I say it? Don't you think, Mr. Travers, that if dreams and warnings were sent to us—if good spirits could let us know things in that way and tell us what to do, that it would happen oftener? ... There are always so many in distress and danger, and sometimes so little is needed to save one—a few pence, a few kind words—and yet how many fall, how many die! Even in the Regent's Canal how many poor women throw their lives away—and nothing saves them.... I am not glad to hear that it was a dream that first made my father wish to find mother—and me. I should have preferred to hear that he thought of her—of us, before he fell into such bad health, and when he was strong and happy.... Do you think his dream was sent from heaven, Mr. Travers?”
“I am not prepared to express an opinion as to that, Miss Eden,” he replied, with a grave smile. “But I have been listening to your words with great interest and a little surprise. Most young ladies, I fancy, would have been deeply impressed with such a narrative, and they would readily and gladly have adopted the view that some supernatural agency had been concerned in the matter. You, strange to say, do not seem to look on yourself as a special favourite of the powers above, and think that others have as much right as yourself to be rescued miraculously from perils and sufferings. Well—you have not a romantic mind, Miss Eden.”
“No, I don't think I have—I have had the same thing said to me two or three times before,” replied Fan naïvely. “But I wish you would tell me more about my father when he was healthy and happy. Was he really as handsome as he looks in the portrait? It seems so life-like that when I am looking at it I can hardly realise that he is not somewhere living on the earth, that I shall never hold his hand and hear his voice.”
The old lawyer was quite ready to gratify her curiosity on the point, and told her a great deal about her father's life. “There is one thing I omitted to mention before,” he said at the end. “Your brother would gladly do anything in his power to make you happy; at the same time he wishes you to understand that in providing for you he is only carrying out his father's intentions, and that you will owe it to your father, and not to him.”
“But I shall still feel the same gratitude to my brother, Mr. Travers.”
“Well, no harm can come of that, and—we cannot help our feelings. Just now it is your brother's fancy to leave you in ignorance of the amount of your income, which I think you will find sufficient. For a year or so you have as it were carte blanche to do what you like in the way of spending, and if you should exceed your income by fifty or a hundred pounds I don't think anything alarming will happen. And now, Miss Eden, is there nothing I can do for you? Nothing you would like to ask my advice about?”
“Oh yes, thank you, there is one thing,” and she told him all about her friend Constance, and her anxiety to find her.
Mr. Travers made a note of the matter. “There will be no difficulty in finding them,” he said. “I shall have inquiries made to-morrow. I hope,” he added with a smile, “you are not going to become a convert to Mr. Merton Chance's doctrines.”
“Oh no,” she replied laughing. “My only wish is to find Mrs. Chance. Mrs. Churton once said, when she was a little vexed with me, that it was like pouring water on a duck's back to give me religious instruction. I am sure that if Mr. Chance ever speaks to me about his new beliefs I shall have my feathers well oiled.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Travers had been keeping the luncheon back, and watching them engaged in that long conversation from her seat at the window. The good woman had been the wife of her husband for a great many years, but she had not yet outlived that natural belief that a wife has to “know everything” her husband knows; and she had guessed that those two were discussing secret matters which they had no intention of imparting to her. A woman has a faculty about such things which corresponds to scent in the terrier; the little mystery is there—the small rodent lurks behind the wainscot; she is consumed with a desire to get at it—to worry its life out; and if it refuse to leave its hiding-place she cannot rest and be satisfied. It was her nature; and though she asked no questions, knowing that her husband was not to be caught in that way, he did not fail to remark the slight frost which had fallen on her manner and her polite and distant tone towards their guest. Well aware of the cause, and too old to be annoyed, it only gave him a little secret amusement. He had warned the girl, and that was enough. The little chill would pass off in time, and no harm would result.
It did not pass off quickly, however, but lasted three or four days, during which time Mrs. Travers was somewhat distant in her manner, and declined Fan's offer to read to her; and Fan remarked the change, but was at a loss to account for it. But one day, after lunch, when they rose from the table, she said, “Oh, Mrs. Travers, do you know that the Pic. is in the drawing-room? I have been anxiously waiting since Saturday to know what the last 'Eastern Idyll' is about.”
“And why have you not read it, Miss Eden?” said the other, a little stiffly.
“I thought that you would perhaps let me read it to you—I did not wish to read it first.”
The good woman smiled and consented. Her sight was not good, and the sketches were always printed in a painfully small type; and besides, they seemed different to her when the girl read them; her low musical voice, so clear and penetrating, yet pathetic, had seemed to interpret the writer's feeling so well. And so the frost melted, and she became more kind and friendly than ever.
Mr. Travers, much to his own surprise, failed to discover Fan's lost friends. One thing he had done was to send a clerk to the office of the paper with the singular title to ask for Mr. Chance's address. The answer he received from a not over-polite gentleman he met there was, “We don't know nothing about Mr. Merton Chance in this horfice, and don't want to, nether.”
Mr. Travers had to confess that he could not find Merton Chance.
Before Fan's visit came to an end, the Travers gave a dinner to some of their Kingston friends and neighbours. The hour was seven, and all the guests, save one, arrived at the right time, and after fifteen minutes' grace had been allowed, Mrs. Travers discovered to her dismay that they would sit down thirteen at table. She was superstitious, in the restricted sense in which her husband used the word, and was plainly distressed. Two or three of the ladies, including Fan, who were in the secret, were discussing this grave matter with her.
“I shall not dine, Mrs. Travers; do please let me stop out!” said Fan.
“No, my dear Miss Eden, I couldn't think of such a thing,” said Mrs. Travers.
Then another lady offered to eat her dinner standing, for so long as they did not sit down thirteen “it would be all right,” she said. But it was one of those unfortunate remarks which sound personal, the obliging lady being very tall and slender, while her short and stout hostess did not look much higher when standing than when seated.
“It is really too bad of him!” was her sole remark.
“Is he nice?” asked another lady.
“Not very, I think, if he makes us sit down thirteen, and leaves Miss Eden with no one to take her in. But you can judge for yourself, for here he is—I am so glad!”
The late guest advancing to them was now shaking hands with his hostess, and apologising for being the last to arrive; while Fan, who had suddenly turned very pale, shrank back as if anxious to avoid being seen by him. It was Captain Horton, not much changed in appearance, but thinner and somewhat care-worn and jaded. Mrs. Travers at once proceeded to introduce him to Fan, and asked him to take her in to dinner, and being preoccupied she did not notice the girl's altered and painfully distressed appearance. He bowed and offered his arm, but he started perceptibly when first glancing at her face. Fan, barely resting her fingers on his sleeve, moved on by his side, her eyes cast down, as they followed the other guests, both keeping silence. At the table, their neighbours on either side being deeply engaged in conversation with their respective partners, Captain Horton found himself placed in an exceedingly trying position, but until he had finished his soup, which he ate but did not taste, he made no attempt to speak. The name of Eden mystified him, and more than once his eyes wandered to that portrait hanging on the wall opposite to where he was sitting, to find its grey eyes watching him; yet he had no doubt in his mind that the young lady by his side was the girl he had known at Dawson Place as Fan Affleck. At length, to avoid attracting attention, he felt compelled to say something, and made some commonplace remarks about the weather—its excessive heat and dryness; it had not been so hot for years. “At noon in the City to-day,” he said, “the thermometer marked eighty-nine degrees in the shade.”
Fan's monosyllabic replies were scarcely audible; she was very pale, and kept her eyes religiously fixed on the table before her. At length she ventured to glance at him, and could not help noticing, in spite of her distress, that he seemed as ill at ease as herself. He crumbled his bread to powder on the cloth, and when he raised his glass to drink, which he did often enough to fill up the time, his hand shook so as almost to spill his wine. Seeing him so nervous, she began to experience a kind of pity for him—some such complex feeling as a very humane person might have for a reptile he has been taught to loathe and fear when seeing it in pain—and at length surprised him by asking if he lived in Kingston. He replied that he usually spent the summer months there for the sake of the boating; and then, as if afraid that they would drop into silence again, he put the same question to her. Fan replied that she was only staying for a few days with her friends the Travers. A few vapid remarks about Kingston and the river was all they could find to say after that, and it was an immense relief when the ladies at length rose and left the room.
Mrs. Travers led the way through the drawing-room to the garden, but when all her guests, except Fan, who came last, had passed out, she came back to speak alone to the girl.
“I am afraid you are not feeling well, my dear,” she said. “You look as pale as a ghost, and I noticed that you scarcely ate anything at dinner, and were very silent.
“Please don't think anything of it, Mrs. Travers. I feel quite well now—perhaps it was the heat.”
“It was hot, but it never seems like dinner unless we have the gas lighted and draw the curtains.”
“I suppose I must have seemed very stupid to—the gentleman who took me in,” remarked Fan. “Can you tell me something about him, Mrs. Travers? Is he a friend of yours and Mr. Travers?”
“Are you really interested in him, Miss Eden?” said the other, with a disconcerting smile.
The girl's face flushed painfully. After a little reflection she said:
“I was so silent at table, hardly answering a word when he spoke—perhaps he thought me very strange and shy.” She paused, blushing again at her own disingenuousness. “I must have felt nervous, or frightened, at something in him. Do you know him well—is he a bad man, Mrs. Travers?”
“My dear child, what a shocking thing to say—and of a gentleman you have scarcely spoken to! You shall hear his whole biography, since you are so curious about him. We have known him a long time: he is a nephew of an old friend of ours—Mr. George Horton, a stockbroker, very wealthy. Captain Horton had a small fortune left to him, but he ran through with it, and so—had to leave the army. He was a sporting man, and had the misfortune to lose; that, I think, is the worst that can be said of him. About two years ago he went to his uncle and begged to be taken on in the office; he was sick of an idle life, he said. His uncle did not believe that he would do any good in the City, but consented to give him a trial. Since then he has been as much absorbed in the business as if he had been in it all his life. His uncle thinks him wonderfully clever, and I dare say will make him a partner in the firm before very long. And now, my dear Miss Eden, you must get rid of that fancy about him, because it is wrong; and later in the evening when you hear him sing—you are so fond of music!—you will like him as much as we do.”
After this little discourse the good woman took her station at a table in the garden to pour out the coffee.
But there was a tumult in the girl's heart, a strange feeling she could not analyse. It was not fear—she feared him no longer; nor hate, since, as she had said, her happiness had taken from her the power to hate anyone; yet it was strong as these, importunate, and its object was clear to her soul, but how to give it expression she knew not.
The hum of conversation suddenly grew loud in the dining-room; the gentlemen had finished their wine, if not their discussion; they had risen, and were about to join the ladies in the garden. The impulse in her was so strong that it was an anguish, and she could not resist it. Coming to the side of her hostess, she spoke hesitatingly:
“Mrs. Travers, when they come out, I must talk to him—to Captain Horton, I mean, and—and try to do away with the bad impression I must have made. He must think me so shy and silent. Will it seem strange if I should ask him to go with me round the garden to see the roses?”
“Strange! no, indeed,” returned the other with a little laugh. “He will be very glad to look at the roses with you, I should think.”
Fan kept her place by the table when the gentlemen came out. Captain Horton's eyes studiously avoided her face.
“Mrs. Travers,” he said, taking a cup of coffee from her hand, “I hope you will not think worse of me than you already do if I leave you at once. Unfortunately for me, I have an appointment which must be kept.”
“Oh that is really too bad of you,” said the lady. “We were anticipating so much pleasure from your singing this evening. And here is Miss Eden just waiting to take you round the garden to show you our roses—perhaps you can spare ten minutes to see them?”
He glanced at the girl's pale, troubled face.
“I shall be very pleased to look at the roses with Miss Eden,” he returned, setting down his cup with a somewhat unsteady hand.
His voice, however, expressed no pleasure, but only surprise, and while speaking he anxiously consulted his watch. Fan came round to his side at once, and together they moved towards the lower end of the grounds.
“Do you admire flowers?” She spoke mechanically.
“Yes, I do.”
After an interval she spoke again.
“Mr. Travers takes great pride in his roses. They are very lovely.”
He made no reply.
Then at last, in a kind of despair, she added:
“But it was not to show you the roses that I asked you to come with me.”
He inclined his head slightly, but said nothing.
“You remember me—do you not?” she asked after a while.
He considered the question for a few moments, then answered, “Yes, Miss Eden.”
“Perhaps it surprised you to hear me called by that name. It was my father's name, and I have now taken it in obedience to my brother's wish.”
At this mention of father and brother he involuntarily glanced at her face—that same pure delicate face to which he had once brought so terrified a look and a pallor as of death.
For some minutes more they paced the walks at the end of the garden in silence, he waiting for her to speak, she unable to say anything.
“Allow me to remind you,” he said at length, looking again at his watch, “that I am a little pressed for time. I understood, or imagined, that you had something to say to me—not about roses.”
“I am so sorry—I can say nothing,” she murmured in reply. Then after an interval, with an effort, “But perhaps it will be the same if you know what I came out for—if you can guess.”
“Perhaps I can guess only too well,” he returned bitterly. “You were kindly going to warn me that you intend bringing some damning accusation against me to the Travers. You need not have troubled yourself about it; you might have spared yourself, and me, the misery of this interview. It surprised me very much to meet you here, as I had no desire to cross your path. I shall not enter this house again, and Kingston will soon see the last of me. It would have been better, I think—more maidenly, if you will allow me to say so—to have met me as a perfect stranger and made no sign.”
“I could not do that,” she answered, with a ring of pain in her voice. “You speak angrily, and take it for granted that I am going to do you some injury. Oh, what a mistake you are making! Nothing would ever induce me to breathe one word to the Travers, nor to anyone, of what I know of you.”
He looked surprised and relieved. “Then, in heaven's name, why not try and forget all about it? You have friends and relations now, and seem to have made the best of your opportunities. Is there anything to be gained by stirring up the past?”
“I do not know. I thought so, but perhaps I was wrong.”
He looked at her again, openly, and with growing interest. He had hated her memory, had cursed her a thousand times, for having come between him and the woman he wanted to marry; but it made a wonderful difference in his feelings towards her just at present to find that she was not his enemy. “Will you sit down here, Miss Eden,” he said, speaking now not only without animosity but gently, “and let me hear what you wished to say? I beg your pardon for the injustice I did you a minute ago, but I am still in the dark as to your motive in seeking this interview.”
She sat down on a garden seat, under the shade of a wide-branching lime; he a little apart. But she could say nothing, albeit so much was in her heart, and her impulse had been so strong; so far as her power to express that strange emotion went, in the dark he would have to remain. She could not say to him—it was a feeling, not a thought—that her clear soul had taken some turbidness that was foreign to it from his; that when she forgot the past and his existence it settled and left her pure again; she could not say—the thought existed without form in her mind—that it would have been better if he had never been born because he had offended; but that just because the offence had been against herself, something of the guilt seemed to attach itself to her, causing her to know remorse and shrink from herself; that it was somehow in his power—he having performed this miracle—to deliver her.
From time to time her companion glanced at her pale face; he did not press her to speak, he could see that she was powerless; but he was thinking of many things, and it was borne in on him that if he could bring about a change in her feelings towards him, it might be well for him—not in any spiritual sense; he was only thinking of Mary and his passion for her, which had never filled his heart until the moment of that separation which had promised to be eternal. In a vague way he comprehended something of the feeling that was in the girl's heart; for it was plain that to be near him was unspeakably painful to her, and yet—strange contradiction!—she had now put herself in his way. He dropped a few tentative words that seemed to express regret for the past, and when he remarked that she listened eagerly, and waited for more, he knew that he was on safe and profitable ground. Safe, and how easy to walk on! At a moment's notice he had accepted this new, apparently unsuitable part, and its strange passion at once grew familiar to him, and could be expressed easily. Perhaps he even deceived himself, for a few minutes or for half an hour while the process of deceiving another lasted, that he had actually felt as he said—that his changed manner of life had resulted from this feeling. “If I have not known remorse,” he said, “I pity the poor fellows who do.” And much more he said, speaking not fluently, but brokenly, with intervals of silence, as if something that had long remained hidden had at last been wrung from him.
All this time Fan had said nothing, nor did she speak when he had finished his story. Nor did he wish it; the strange trouble and pallor had passed away, and there was a tender light in her eyes that was better than speech.
They rose and moved slowly towards the house. The drawing-room was lighted, and the guests were now gathering there to listen to a lady at the piano singing. They could hear her plainly enough, for her voice, said to be soprano, was exceedingly shrill, and she was singing, Tell me, my heart—a difficult thing, all flourishes, and she rendered it like an automaton lark with its internal machinery gone wrong.
“Shall we go in?” said Fan.
“Yes, Miss Eden, if you wish; but don't you think we can hear this song best where we are? I find it hard to ask you a question I have had in my mind for some minutes, but I must ask it. Are you still with Miss Starbrow?”
“Oh, no; we separated a long time ago, and for very long—nearly eighteen months—I never heard from her.”
“I hope you will not think it an impertinent question; but—there must have been some very serious reason to have kept you apart so long?”
“No, scarcely that. I have always felt the same towards her. She did so much for me. It was only a misunderstanding.”
“And now?”
“Now I am so glad to say that it is all over, and that she is my dearest friend.”
“And is she still living at Dawson Place—and single?”
“Yes.” But after a few moments she said, “You had one question more to ask, Captain Horton, had you not?”
“Yes,” he returned. “You must know what it is.”
“But it is hard to answer. She mentioned your name once—lately; but her feelings are just as bitter against you.”
“I could not expect it to be otherwise,” he returned, and they walked on towards the house.
Before they reached it Mrs. Travers appeared to them. “Still looking at the roses?” she said with a laugh. “How fond of flowers you two must be! Can you spare us another ten minutes before keeping your appointment, Captain Horton, and sing us one of your songs?”
“As many as you like, Mrs. Travers,” he returned. “You see, after going to see the roses it was too late to keep the appointment. And I am very glad it was, for I have had a very pleasant conversation with Miss Eden, about flowers, and the beauties of Kingston, and of the Stock Exchange, and a dozen things besides.”
Fan, sitting a little apart and beside the open window, listened with a strange pleasure to that fine baritone voice which she now heard again after so long a time, and wondered to herself whether it would ever again be joined with Mary's in that rich harmony to which she had so often listened standing on the stairs.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before Captain Horton found an opportunity to speak to her again. “Miss Eden,” he said, dropping into a seat next to her, “I am anxious to say one—no, two things, before leaving you. One is that I know that after this evening I shall be a happier man. The other is this: if I should ever be able to serve you in any way—if you could ever bring yourself to ask my assistance in any way, it would give me a great happiness. But perhaps it is a happiness I have no right to expect.”
Before he had finished speaking her wish to find Constance, and Mr. Travers' failure, came to her mind, and she eagerly caught at his offer.
“I am so glad you did not leave me before saying this,” she replied. “You can help me in something now, I think.”
“How glad I am to hear you say that, Miss Eden! I am entirely at your service; tell me what I can do for you.”
She told him about the marriage of his former friend, Merton Chance, with Constance, and about their disappearance, and her anxiety to find her friend.
Captain Horton, after hearing all the particulars, promised to write to her on her return to Quebec Street to let her know the result of the inquiries he would begin making on the morrow.
Two days later Fan returned to her apartments, and shortly after arriving there received a letter from Captain Horton, giving her an account of what he had been doing for her since their memorable meeting at Kingston. He had gone to work in a very systematic way, enlisting the services of a number of clergymen and other philanthropic workers at the East End to make inquiries for him; and it would be strange, he concluded, if the Chances escaped being discovered, unless they had quitted that part of London.
A few days later, about the middle of August, came a second letter, which made Fan's heart leap with joy. Captain Horton had found out that the Chances were living at Mile End, but did not know their address yet. He had come across a gentleman—a curate without a curacy, a kind of Christian free-lance—who lived in that neighbourhood and knew the persons sought for intimately, but declined to give their address or to say anything about them; but he had consented to meet Miss Eden at Captain Horton's office in the City and speak to her; and the meeting had been arranged to take place at two o'clock on the following day. Fan took care to be at the office punctually at two.
“Our friend has not yet arrived,” said Captain Horton, after giving her a chair in the office, “but we can look for him soon, I think, as he did not seem like a person who would fail to keep an engagement. He is a very good fellow, I have heard, but seemed rather to resent being questioned about his mysterious friends, and was very reticent. Ah, here he is.”
“Mr. Northcott!” exclaimed Fan, starting up with a face full of joy; for it was he, looking older, and with a pale, care-worn face, which, together with his somewhat rusty clerical coat and hat, seemed to show that the world had not gone well with him since he had left Eyethorne.
“Miss Affleck—if I had only imagined that it was you! How glad I am to meet you once more! How glad Mrs. Chance will be to hear from you,” he said, taking her hand.
“But I wish to see her, Mr. Northcott—I must see her,” said Fan; and the curate at once offered to conduct her to her friend's home at Mile End.
Leaving the office, they took a cab and set out for their destination; but during the drive Fan had little chance of hearing any details concerning her friend's life; for what with the noise of the streets and the rattling of the cab, it was scarcely possible to hear a word; and whenever there came a quieter interval the curate wished to hear how Fan had passed her time, and why she had been addressed as Miss Eden.
At length they got to their journey's end, the cab, for some reason, being dismissed at some distance from the house they had come to visit. It was one in a row of small, mean-looking tenements containing two floors each, and facing other houses of the same description on the opposite side of the narrow macadamised road, which, with the loose stones and other rubbish in it, presented a dirty, ill-kept appearance. At the tenth or eleventh house in the row Mr. Northcott stopped and knocked lightly at the low front door, warped and blistered by the sun which poured its intolerable heat full upon it.
A woman opened the door and greeted the curate with a smile; then casting a surprised look at his companion, stood aside to let them pass into the narrow, dark, stuffy hallway. “He'll be sleeping just now,” said the woman, pointing up the stairs. “You can just go quietly up. She'll be there by herself doing of her writing.”
“We must go up softly then,” he said, turning to Fan. “Poor Chance is very ill, and sleeps principally in the daytime. That's why I got rid of the cab some distance from the house.”
He led the way up the narrow creaking stairs to a door on the first landing standing partly open; before it hung a wet chintz curtain, preventing their seeing into the room. Her conductor tapped lightly on the doorframe, and presently the wet curtain was moved aside by Constance, who greeted her visitor with a glad smile while giving him her hand, but the darkness of the small landing, which had no light from above, prevented her from seeing Fan for some moments.
“Harold—at last!” she said, her hand still resting in his. “I have waited two days for you; but I was resolved not to send the manuscript till you had read it.” Then she caught sight of Fan, standing a little behind him, and started back, a look of the greatest astonishment coming into her face.
“I have brought you an old friend, Constance,” said the curate, stepping aside.
“Fan—my darling Fan!” she exclaimed, but still in a subdued voice, and in a moment the two friends were locked in a long and close embrace.
“Constance—what a change! Let me look at your dear face again. Oh, how unkind of you to keep your address from me all this time!”
The other raised her face, and for some moments they gazed into each other's eyes, wet with tears. She was indeed changed; and that rich brown tint, which had looked so beautiful, and made her so different from others, had quite faded from her pale thin face, so that she no longer looked like the Constance Churton of the old days. Even her hair had been affected by trouble and bad health; it was combed out and hanging loose on her back, and Fan noticed that the fine bronze glint had gone out of the heavy brown tresses like joy or hope from a darkened life. She was wearing a very simple cotton wrapper, and though evidently made of the very cheapest kind of stuff, it had faded almost white with many washings. Altogether it was plain to see that the Chances were very poor; and yet the expression on her friend's altered face was not a desponding one.
“You must forgive me for not writing, dearest Fan,” she said at length. “There would have been things to tell which could not be told without pain. It was wrong—cowardly in me to keep silence, I know. And it grieved me to think that you too might be in trouble and want.” Then, after surveying Fan's costume for some moments, she added with a smile. “But that was a false fear, I hope.”
“Yes, dear. At any rate, for some time past I have had everything I could wish for, and dear friends to care for me. But that is a very long story, Constance, and I am anxious to hear how your husband is.”
All this time the curate had been standing patiently by; he now took his departure, after arranging to return to see Fan as far west as the City on her way home at six o'clock in the evening.
Constance raised the wet curtain and led Fan into the sitting-room. It was small and mean enough, with a very low ceiling, dingy, discoloured wall-paper, and a few articles of furniture such as one sees in a working-man's lodging. Near the front window stood a small deal table, on which were pens, ink, and a pile of closely-written sheets of paper, showing how Constance had been employed. The two doors—one by which they had entered, and another leading to the bedroom—also the window, were open, and before them all wet pieces of chintz were hanging. This was done to mitigate the intense heat, Constance explained; the sun shining directly down on the slates made the low-roofed rooms like an oven, and the quickly evaporating moisture created a momentary coolness. Merton was asleep in the second room; his nights, she said, were so bad that he generally fell asleep during the day; he had not risen yet, and her whole study was to keep the rooms cool and quiet while he rested.
Fan took off her hat and settled down to have a long talk with her friend.
“Fan, dear,” said the other, after returning from the bedroom to make sure that Merton still slept, “we must talk in as low a tone as possible, I mean without whispering. And we have so much to say to each other.”
“Yes, indeed; I am dying to hear all about your life since you vanished from Notting Hill.”
“But, Fan, my curiosity about your life is still greater—and no wonder! I have been constantly thinking about you—crying, too, sometimes—imagining all sorts of painful things—that you were destitute and friendless, perhaps, in this cruel London. And now here you are, I don't know how, like a vision of the West End, with that subtle perfume about you, and looking more beautiful than I have ever seen you, except on that one occasion; do you remember?—on that first evening in the orchard at dear old Eyethorne. Look at my dress, Fan, my second best! But how much more did it astound me to hear Harold—I call Mr. Northcott by his Christian name now—addressing you as Miss Eden when he left. What does it all mean? If he had called you Mrs. Eden I might have guessed what wonderful things had happened to you.”
Fan was prepared for this. There were some things not to be revealed; she remembered that Mary had looked into her very soul when she had heard the strange story, and her quick apprehension and knowledge of human nature had no doubt supplied the links that were missing in it. Now by anticipation she had prepared a narrative which would run smoothly, and began it without further delay; and for half an hour Constance listened with intense interest, only interrupting to bestow a kiss and whisper a tender consoling word when her friend was at last compelled, with faltering speech, to confess that she was no legitimate child of her father.
“Oh, Fan, I am so glad that this has happened to you. So much more glad than if I had myself experienced some great good fortune. And your brother—oh, how nobly he has acted—how much you must love and admire him! I remember that evening so well when you met him; I thought then that I had never seen anyone with so charming a manner. And there was something so melodious and sympathetic in his voice; how strange that it never struck me as being like yours, and that he was like you in his eyes, and so many things!”
“But tell me about yourself, Constance.”
“I could put it all in twenty words, but that would not be fair, and would not satisfy you. Since our marriage we have simply been drifting down the current, getting poorer and poorer, and also moving about from place to place—I mean since you lost sight of us. And at last it was impossible for us to go any lower, for we were destitute, and—it will shock you to hear it—obliged even to pledge our clothes to buy bread.”
“And you would not write to me, Constance, nor even to your mother! I know that, because I wrote to her to ask for your address, and she replied that she did not know it, that I knew more about your movements in London than she did.”
“I could not write to you, Fan, knowing that you barely had enough to keep yourself, and that it would only have distressed you. Nor could I write to them at home. Those poor fields they have to live on are mortgaged almost up to their value, and after paying interest they have little left for expenses in the house. Besides, Fan, we had already received help from Mr. Eden and other friends, and it had proved worse than useless. It only seemed to have the effect of making us less able to help ourselves.”
“And your husband—was he not earning something with his lecturing and the articles he wrote?”
“Not with the lecturing, as you call it. With the articles, yes, but very little. They were political articles, you know, and were printed in socialistic papers, and not many of them were paid for. But after a while all his enthusiasm died out; he could not go on with it, and was not prepared with anything else. He grew to hate the whole thing at last, and was a little too candid with his former friends when he told them that they were a living proof of the judgment Carlyle had passed on his countrymen. It was hardly safe for him to walk about the streets among the people who had begun to expect great things from him. It is a dreadful thing to say, but it is the simple truth, that our next move would have been to the workhouse. And just then his illness began. He was out all night and met with some accident; it was a pouring wet night, and he was brought home in the morning bruised and injured, soaking wet, and the result was a fever and cough, which turned to something like consumption. He has suffered terribly, and I have sometimes despaired of his life; but he is better now, I think—I hope. Only this dreadful heat we are having keeps him so weak. You can't imagine how anxiously we are looking forward to a change in the weather; the cool days will so refresh him when they come.”
“But, Constance, you haven't told me yet how you escaped what you were fearing when he first fell ill.”
The other looked up, tears starting in her eyes, and a glow of warm colour coming into her pale cheeks. “Oh, Fan,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion, “have you not yet guessed who came to us in our darkest hour and saved us from worse things than we had already known? Yes; Mr. Northcott, a poor unemployed clergyman, without any private income, struggling for his own subsistence, and frequently in bad health; but no rich and powerful man could have given us such help and comfort. How can I tell it all to you? He found us out after we left Norland Square. He had left Eyethorne shortly after we did, but not before he had heard from mother about my marriage, and my husband's name. He introduced himself to Merton one evening at a socialistic meeting, and after that he occasionally came to see us, and he and Merton had endless arguments, for he was not a socialist. But they became great friends, and he was always trying to persuade my husband to turn his talents to other things. He wished Merton to try his hand at little descriptive and character sketches, interspersed with incidents partly true and partly fictitious. He said that I would be able to help; and one day he related a little incident, minutely describing the actors in it, and begged us to write it out in the way he suggested, but unfortunately the idea never took with Merton. He thought it too trivial; or else he could not work. So I tried my hand alone at it; and Harold saw what I had done, and asked me to rewrite it, and make some alterations which he suggested. Then he sent me a rough sketch he had written and asked me to work it up in the same way as the first; and when I had finished it I sent him the two papers together. Shortly afterwards, when Merton was ill and I was at my wits' end, Harold came to say that he had sold the sketches to the editor of the Lady's Pictorial, who liked them so much that he wished to have more from the same hand. Imagine how glad I was to get the cheque Harold had brought me! But about the other sketches asked for, I told him that I could not write them because I had no materials. He had supplied me with incidents, characters, and descriptions of localities for the first time, and I could not go about to find fresh matter for myself. He said that he had thought of that, and that he was prepared to supply me with as much material as I required. He would give me facts, and my fancy would do the rest. He only laughed at the idea that I would be sucking his brains and depriving him of his own means of subsistence. He was always about among the poor, he said, and talking to people of all descriptions, and hearing and seeing things well worth being told in print, but he was without the special kind of talent and style of writing necessary to give literary form to such matter. His tastes lay in other directions, and the only writing he could do was of a very different kind. Then I gladly consented, and Merton was pleased also, and promised to help; but—poor fellow—he has not had the strength to do anything yet.”
“Oh, Constance, how glad I am to hear this. But is it not terribly trying for you to do so much work in this close hot room, and attend to your husband at the same time? And you get no proper rest at night, I suppose. Is it not making you ill?”
“No, dear; it comes easier every week, and has made me better, I think. The heat is very trying, I must say; and I can only write when Merton is asleep, generally in the early part of the day. But do you know, Fan, that in spite of our poverty and my great and constant anxiety about Merton's health, I feel some happiness in my heart now. If I possessed a morbid mind or conscience I should probably call myself heartless for being able to feel happiness at such a time—happiness and pride at my success. But I am not morbid, thank goodness, or at war with my own nature—with the better part of my nature, I might say. And it is so sweet—oh, Fan, how unutterably sweet it is, to feel that I am doing something for him and for myself, that my life is not being wasted, that my brains are beginning to bear fruit at last!”
“I wonder whether I have ever seen any of your sketches, Constance? I have read some things, and cried and laughed over them, in the Pictorial, called 'Eastern Idylls.'”
“Yes, Fan, that is the title of my sketches. How strange that you should have seen them! How glad I am!”
Fan related the circumstances; then Constance paid another visit to the bedroom to listen to the invalid's breathing. Returning, she presently resumed, “Fan, is it not wonderful that we should experience such goodness from one who after all was no more than an acquaintance, and who has so little of life's good things? He has never offered to help us even with one shilling in money, and that only shows his delicacy. Had he been ever so rich and given us help in money there would have been a sting in it. And yet look how much more than money he gives us—how much time he spends, and what trouble he takes to keep me supplied with fresh matter for my writings. I'm sure he goes about with eyes and ears open to all he sees and hears more for our sakes than for his own. Is it not wonderful, Fan?”
“Yes; it is very sweet, but not strange, I think,” said Fan, smiling; and after reflecting a few moments she was just about to add: “He has always loved you, since he knew you at Eyethorne, and he would do anything for you.”
But at that moment Constance half turned her head to listen, and so the perilous words were not spoken. “Consideration like an angel came,” and before the other turned to her to resume the conversation, Fan looked back on what she had just escaped with a feeling like that of the mariner who sees the half-hidden rock only after he has safely passed it.
They talked on for half an hour longer, when a low moan, followed by a fit of coughing in the adjoining room, made Constance start up and go to her husband. She returned in a few minutes, but only to say that she would be absent some time assisting Merton to dress; then giving Fan the proof of the last “Idyll” she had sent to the paper to read, she again left the room.