In a handsomely furnished dining-room in a spacious and modern-looking
house about three miles outside the city of Melbourne, three
children--two girls and a boy--were standing impatiently by a wide-open
window.
"Gabrielle," said the boy, "have you any idea when the mails from
England are due?"
The boy was the taller of the three, splendidly made, with square
shoulders, great breadth of chest, and head so set on the same shoulders
that it gave to its young owner an almost regal appearance. The bright
and bold dark eyes were full of fire; the expressive lines round the
finely cut lips were both kindly and noble.
"Gabrielle, is that Carlo riding past on Jo-jo? If it is, perhaps he is
bringing our letter-bag. Father has gone to Melbourne to-day; but he
said if there were English letters he would send them out by Carlo."
"You are so impatient about England and English things, Rupert," said
little Peggy, raising a face framed in by soft flaxen hair to her big
brother. "Oh, yes, I'll run to meet Carlo, for of course you want me to,
and I'll come back again if there's any news; and if there is not, why,
I'll stay and play with my ravens, Elijah and James Grasper. Elijah is
beginning to speak so well and James Grasper is improving. If Carlo has
no letters you need not expect me back, either of you."
The little maid stepped quickly out of the open window, and ran fleet as
the wind across a beautifully kept lawn and in the direction where a
horse's quick steps were heard approaching.
Gabrielle was nearly as tall as her brother, with a stately bearing and
a grave face.
"If father does decide on taking you to Europe, Rupert, I wish to say
now that I am quite willing to stay here with Peggy. I don't want to go
to school at Melbourne. I would rather stay on here and housekeep, and
keep things nice the way our mother would have liked. If Peggy and I go
away, Belmont will have to be shut up and a great many of the servants
dismissed, and that would be silly. I am thirteen now, and I think I am
wise for my age. You will speak to father, won't you, Rupert, and ask
him to allow me to be mistress here while you are away."
"If we are away," corrected Rupert. "Ah! here comes Peggy, and the
letter-bag, and doubtless a letter. What a good child you are, Peggy
White!"
Peggy dashed the letter-bag with some force through the open window.
Rupert caught it lightly in one hand, and detaching a small key from his
watch-chain opened it. It only contained one letter, and this was
directed to himself:
"Mr. Rupert Lovel,
"Belmont,
"Near Melbourne,
"Victoria,
"Australia."
"A letter from England!" said Rupert. "And oh! Gabrielle, what do you
think? It is--yes, it is from our little Cousin Philip!"
"Let me see," said Gabrielle, peeping over her brother's shoulder.
"Poor, dear little Phil! Read aloud what he says, Rupert. I have often
thought of him lately."
Rupert smiled, sat down on the broad window-ledge, and his sister,
kneeling behind him, laid her hand affectionately on his shoulder. A
little letter, written with considerable pains and difficulty, with
rather shaky and blotted little fingers, and quite uncorrected, just, in
short, as nature had prompted it to a small, eager, and affectionate
mind, was then read aloud:
"Dear Cousin Rupert: You must please forgive the spelling and the bad
writing, and the blots (oh! I made a big one now, but I have sopped it
up). This letter is quite secret, so it won't be corrected, for mother
doesn't know that I am writing. Mother and I are in England, but she
says I am not to tell you where we are. It isn't that mother isn't
fond of you, but she has a reason, which is a great secret, for your
not knowing where we are. The reason has something to do with me. It's
something that I'm to have that I don't want and that I'd much rather
you had. It's a beautiful thing, with spiders, and rivers, and
caterpillars, and wild ponies, and ghosts, and rattling armor, and a
tower of winding stairs. Oh! I mustn't tell you any more, for perhaps
you'd guess. You are never to have it, although I'd like you to. We
are not very far from the sea, and we're going there to-morrow, and it
is there I'll post this letter. Now, I am quite determined that you
and Gabrielle and Peggy shall know that I think of you always. Mother
and me, we are in a beautiful, grand place now--very grand--and most
enormous old; and I have two little girls to play with, and I have got
a pony, and a white pup, and I am taught by a tutor, and drilled by a
drill-sergeant, and I fish and play cricket with Kitty, only I can't
play cricket much, because of my side; but, Rupert, I want to say
here, and I want you and Peggy and Gabrielle always and always to
remember, that I'd rather be living with mother in our little cottage
near Belmont, with only Betty as servant and with only Jim to clean
the boots and do the garden, for then I should be near you; and I love
you, Rupert, and Gabrielle, and Peggy, better than any one in the
world except my mother. Please tell Peggy that I don't think much of
the English spiders, but some of the caterpillars are nice; and please
tell Gabrielle that the English flowers smell very sweet, but they are
not so bright or so big as ours, and the birds sing, oh! so beautiful,
but they haven't got such gay dresses. Good-by, Rupert. Do you shoot
much? And do you ever think of me? And are you good to my little dog
Cato?
"Phil Lovel.
"P. S.--Please, I'd like to hear from you, and as mother says you are
not on no account to know where we are, will you write me a letter to
the post-office at the town where this is posted? You will see the
name of the town on the envelope, and please direct your letter:
'Master Phil Lovel,
'Post-office.
'To be called for.'
"Be sure you put 'to be called for' in big letters.
"Good-by again. Love to everybody.
Phil."
Gabrielle and Rupert read this very characteristic little epistle
without comment. When they had finished it, Rupert slipped it back into
its envelope and gave it to his sister.
"We must both write to the poor little chap," he said. "The postmark on
the envelope is Southampton. I suppose Southampton, England, will find
him." Then he added after a pause: "I wonder what queer thing Aunt Bella
is thinking about now?"
"She always was the silliest person in the world," said Gabrielle in a
tone of strong contempt. "If she were my mother I shouldn't love her. I
wonder how Phil loves her. Poor little Phil! He always was a dear little
fellow--not a bit like Aunt Bella, thank goodness!"
Rupert laughed.
"Why, Gabrielle," he said, "you can have no observation; Phil is the
image of his mother. There is nothing at all belonging to his father
about Phil except his eyes."
"And his nature," proceeded Gabrielle, "and his dear, brave little soul.
I am sure if trial came to him Phil could be a hero. What matter that he
has got Aunt Bella's uninteresting features? He has nothing more of her
in him. Oh, she always was a silly, mysterious person! Just think of her
not allowing Phil to tell us where he is!"
"My father says that there is method in Aunt Bella's silliness,"
continued Rupert. "Don't you remember how suddenly she sold her little
house at the back of our garden, Gabrielle, and how Betty found her
burning an English newspaper; and how queer and nervous and flurried she
became all of a sudden; and then how she asked father to give her that
£200 he had of hers in the bank; and how she hurried off without saying
good-by to one of us? We have not heard a word about her from that day
until now, when Phil's little letter has come."
"She never even bid mother good-by," continued Gabrielle in a pained
voice. "Mother always stood up for Aunt Bella. She never allowed us to
laugh at her or to grumble at her funny, tiresome ways."
"Did mother allow us to laugh at any one?" continued Rupert. "There was
nothing at all remarkable in our mother being kind to poor Aunt Bella,
for she was good to every one."
"But there was something strange in Aunt Bella not bidding our mother
good-by," pursued Gabrielle, "for I think she was a little fond of
mother, and mother was so weak and ill at the time. I saw tears in Aunt
Bella's eyes once after mother had been talking to her. Yes, her going
away was certainly very queer; but I have no time to talk any more about
it now. I must go to my work. Rupert, shall we ride this afternoon? This
is just the most perfect weather for riding before the great summer heat
commences."
"Yes, we'll be in summer before we know where we are," said Rupert; "it
is the 4th of November to-day. I will ride with you at three o'clock,
Gabrielle--that is, if father is not back."
The brother and sister left the room to pursue their different
vocations, and a short time afterward an old servant, with a closely
frilled cap tied with a ribbon under her chin, came into the room. She
was the identical Betty who had been Mrs. Lovel's maid-of-all-work, and
who had now transferred her services to the young people at Belmont.
Betty was old, wrinkled, and of Irish birth, and sincerely attached to
all the Lovels. She came into the room under the pretext of looking for
some needlework which Gabrielle had mislaid, but her real object was to
peer into the now open post-bag, and then to look suspiciously round the
room.
"I smell it in the air," she said, sniffing as she spoke. "As sure as
I'm Betty O'Flanigan there's news of Master Phil in the air! Was there a
letter? Oh, glory! to think as there might be a letter from my own
little master, and me not to know. Miss Gabrielle's mighty close, and no
mistake. Well, I'll go and ask her bold outright if she has bad news of
the darlint."
Betty could not find Gabrielle's lost embroidery, and perceiving that
the post-bag was absolutely empty, she pottered out of the room again
and upstairs to where her young lady was making up some accounts in a
pretty little boudoir which had belonged to her mother.
"Och, and never a bit of it can I see, Miss Gabrielle," said the old
woman as she advanced into the room; and then she began sniffing the air
again.
"What are you making that funny noise for, Betty?" said Miss Lovel,
raising her eyes from a long column of figures.
"I smell it in the air," said Betty, sniffing in an oracular manner. "I
dreamed of him three times last night, and that means tidings; and now I
smell it in the air."
"Oh! you dreamed of little Phil," said Gabrielle in a kind tone. "Yes,
we have just had a letter. Sit down there and I'll read it to you."
Betty squatted down instantly on the nearest hassock, and with her hands
under her apron and her mouth wide open prepared herself not to lose a
word.
Gabrielle read the letter from end to end, the old woman now and then
interrupting her with such exclamations as "Oh, glory! May the saints
presarve him! Well, listen to the likes of that!"
At last Gabrielle's voice ceased; then Betty hobbled to her feet, and
suddenly seizing the childish letter, not a word of which she could
read, pressed it to her lips.
"Ah! Miss Gabrielle," she said, "that mother of his meant mischief. She
meant mischief to you and yours, miss, and the sweet child has neither
part nor lot in the matter. If I was you, Miss Gabrielle, I'd ferret out
where Mrs. Lovel is hiding Master Phil. What business had she to get
into such a way about a bit of an English newspaper, and to hurry off
with the child all in a twinkling like, and to be that flustered and
nervous? And oh! Miss Gabrielle, the fuss about her clothes; and 'did
she look genteel in this?' and 'did she look quite the lady in that?'
And then the way she went off, bidding good-by to no one but me. Oh!
she's after no good; mark my words for it."
"But she can do us no harm, Betty," said Gabrielle. "Neither my father
nor Rupert is likely to be injured by a weak kind of woman like Aunt
Bella. I am sorry for little Phil; but I think you are silly to talk as
you do of Aunt Bella. Now you may take the letter away with you and kiss
it and love it as much as you like. Here comes father; he is back
earlier than usual from Melbourne, and I must speak to him."
Mr. Lovel, a tall, fine-looking man, with a strong likeness to both his
son and daughter, now came hastily into the room.
"I have indeed come back in a hurry, Gabrielle," he said. "That
advertisement has appeared in the papers again. I have had a long talk
with our business friend, Mr. Davis, and the upshot of it is that Rupert
and I sail for Europe on Saturday. This is Tuesday; so you will have
your hands pretty full in making preparations for such a sudden move, my
dear daughter."
"Is it the advertisement that appeared six months ago, father?" said
Gabrielle in an excited voice. "Mother pointed it out to you then and
you would take no notice of it."
"These things are often put into newspapers simply as a kind of hoax,
child," said the father, "and it all seemed so unlikely. However,
although I appeared to take no notice, I was not unmindful of Rupert's
interests. I went to consult with Davis, and Davis promised to make
inquiries in England. He came to me this morning with the result of his
investigations and with this advertisement in the Melbourne Times. Here
it is; it is three months old, unfortunately. It appeared three months
after the first advertisement, but Davis did not trouble me with it
until he had got news from England. The news came this morning. It is of
a satisfactory character and to the effect that the last Valentine
Lovel, of Avonsyde, in the New Forest, Hampshire, died without leaving
any male issue, and the present owners of the property are two unmarried
ladies, neither of whom is young. Now, Gabrielle, you are a wise lass
for your thirteen years, and as I have not your mother to consult with,
I am willing to rely a little bit on your judgment. You read this, my
daughter, and tell me what you make of it."
As Mr. Lovel spoke he unfolded a sheet of the Melbourne Times, and
pointing to a small paragraph in one of the advertisement columns which
was strongly underscored with a blue pencil, he handed it to Gabrielle.
"Read it aloud," he said. "They are strange words, but I should like to
hear them again."
Gabrielle, in her clear and bright voice, read as follows:
"Lovel.--If any of the lineal descendants of Rupert Lovel, of Avonsyde,
New Forest, Hampshire, who left his home on the 20th August, 1684, are
now alive and will communicate with Messrs. Baring & Baring, 128
Chancery Lane, London, they will hear of something to their advantage.
Only heirs male in direct succession need apply."
Gabrielle paused.
"Read on," said her father. "The second part of the advertisement, or
rather a second advertisement which immediately follows the first, is of
more interest."
Gabrielle continued:
"I, Griselda Lovel, and I, Katharine Lovel, of Avonsyde, New Forest,
of the county of Hampshire, England, do, according to our late
father's will, earnestly seek an heir of the issue of one Rupert
Lovel, who left Avonsyde on the 20th August, 1684, in consequence of a
quarrel between himself and his father, the then owner of Avonsyde. By
reason of this quarrel Rupert Lovel was disinherited, and the property
has continued until now in the younger branch. According to our late
father's will, we, Griselda and Katharine Lovel, wish to reëstablish
the elder branch of the family, and offer to make a direct descendant
of the said Rupert Lovel our heir, provided the said descendant be
under fifteen years of age and of sound physical health. We refuse to
receive letters or to see any claimant personally, but request to have
all communications made to us through our solicitors, Messrs. Baring &
Baring, of 128 Chancery Lane, London, E. C.
"'Tyde what may betyde,
Lovel shall dwell at Avonsyde."
Gabrielle's cheeks flushed brightly as she read.
"Oh, father!" she exclaimed, raising her eyes to the face of the tall
man who stood near her, "do you really believe a little bit in it at
last? Don't you remember how I used to pray of you to tell me traditions
of the old English home when I was a little child, and how often you
have repeated that old rhyme to me, and don't you know how mother used
to treasure the tankard with the family crest and 'Tyde what may' in
those queer, quaint English characters on it? Mother was quite excited
when the first advertisement appeared, but you said we were not to talk
or to think of it. Rupert is the rightful heir--is he not, father? Oh,
how proud I shall be to think that the old place is to belong to him!"
"I believe he is the rightful heir, Gabrielle," said her father in a
grave voice. "He is undoubtedly a lineal descendant of the Rupert Lovel
who left Avonsyde in 1684, and he also fulfills the conditions of the
old ladies' advertisement, for he is under fifteen and splendidly
strong; but it is also a fact that I cannot find some very important
letters which absolutely prove Rupert's claim. I could swear that I left
them in the old secretary in your mother's room, but they have vanished.
Davis, on the other hand, believes that I have given them to him, and
will have a strict search instituted for them. The loss of the papers
makes a flaw in my boy's claim; but I shall not delay to go to England
on that account. Davis will mail them to me as soon as ever they are
recovered; and in the mean time, Gabrielle, I will ask you to pack up
the old tankard and give it to me to take to England. There is no doubt
whatever that that tankard is the identical one which my forefather took
with him when almost empty-handed he left Avonsyde."
"I will fetch it at once," said Gabrielle. "Mother kept it in the
cupboard at the back of her bed. She always kept the tankard and our
baptismal mugs and the diamonds you gave her when first you were married
in that cupboard. I will fetch the tankard and have it cleaned, and I
will pack it for you myself."
Gabrielle ran out of the room, returning in a few moments with a
slightly battered old drinking-cup, much tarnished and of antique
pattern.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed, "and Betty shall clean it. Is that you,
Betty? Will you take this cup and polish it for me at once yourself? I
have great news to give you when you come back."
Betty took the cup and turned it round and round with a dubious air.
"It isn't worth much," she said; "but I'll clean it anyhow."
"Be careful of it, Betty," called out Gabrielle. "Whatever you may think
of it, you tiresome old woman, it is of great value to us, and
particularly to your favorite, Rupert."
Muttering to herself, Betty hobbled downstairs, and Gabrielle and her
father continued their conversation. In about half an hour the old woman
returned and presented the cup, burnished now to great brilliancy, to
her young mistress.
"I said it wasn't worth much," she repeated. "I misdoubt me if it's
silver at all."
Gabrielle turned it round in her hand; then she uttered a dismayed
exclamation.
"Father, do look! The crest is gone; the crest and the old motto,
'Betyde what may,' have absolutely vanished. It is the same cup; yes,
certainly it is the same, but where is the crest? and where is the
motto?"
Mr. Lovel took the old tankard into his hand and examined it narrowly.
"It is not the same," he said then. "The shape is almost identical, but
this is not my forefather's tankard. I believe Betty is right, and this
is not even silver; here is no crown mark. No letters, Gabrielle, and no
tankard! Well, never mind; these are but trifles. Rupert and I sail all
the same for England and the old property on Saturday."