"YOU ARE MY OWN SISTER'S CHILD."
"She has totally disappeared, and, of course, her disappearance makes
Cousin Arthur more sure than ever that she is guilty; and oh! Rupert,
it is just a horrid tangle, and I wish you had come home sooner."
"So do I." Rupert, standing by the fireplace in Cicely's boudoir in
Bramwell Castle, looked kindly down at his cousin; "but it is really a
piece of good luck that I am here now. I expected to have to spend
some weeks in Naples, but it turned out that young Jack had given us
all a causeless scare. He hadn't got typhoid, only rather a good
spurious imitation of it, and he is doing perfectly well. So, having
wiped off an old score with him, I came away."
"Wiped off an old score?" Cicely looked mystified.
"Yes; young ass! He played a low-down practical joke upon me a few
weeks ago; and I am glad to say he was convalescent enough to be able
to receive the piece of my mind which I offered him before I left
Naples." Rupert laughed rather grimly; then said quickly: "However,
Layton and his practical joke are immaterial now. Tell me about Miss
Moore. You say Sir Arthur accuses her of stealing? It sounds a
preposterous notion."
"My dear Rupert, Cousin Arthur is nothing if not preposterous, and the
worst of it is, that this time he has some sort of method in his
madness. It seems perfectly obvious, that Christina was wearing a
pendant that had belonged to Cousin Ellen; and they accuse her of
having stolen it." Cicely next proceeded to tell in full the story of
the accusation and its results, and Rupert listened in silence, until
she had finished. Then he said slowly--
"But no girl in her senses would flaunt a stolen thing in the faces of
the people from whom she stole it. Common sense might have told Sir
Arthur that elementary fact."
"He doesn't know the meaning of common sense," Cicely exclaimed. "He
made up his mind Christina was the young woman who was in the train,
and stole the pendant from Cousin Ellen's bag, and you might as well
try to shake Mont Blanc down, as alter Cousin Arthur's fixed
convictions. He frightened Christina out of her wits with threats of
the police, and she ran away."
"Pity she did that," Rupert said tersely. "She would have been wiser
to face it out; and I can't believe she can be guilty. It is
impossible to connect guilt with her." As he spoke, he saw a mental
picture of a low, fire-lit room, a girlish face uplifted to his in the
dancing light of the flames, sweet eyes full of sympathy, a mouth just
curved into a smile, that made him think vaguely of the way his mother
had smiled at him, though the girl herself was such a bit of a thing,
and so young. "I can't think of her as guilty," he repeated.
"Of course you can't," Cicely said impatiently. "I should as soon
believe I was a thief myself, as believe Christina to be one. Don't
imagine I doubt her. I never doubted her for a moment. Only--I wish
she hadn't gone away; and I wish I knew where she had gone."
Rupert's face grew grave.
"Has she any friends or relations to whom she would be likely to go?"
"I am afraid not. You know she was rather a waif and stray, when I
first engaged her as Baba's nurse. You were doubtful then about my
wisdom in taking her with practically no references. But she has been
invaluable with Baba; and I have learnt to care for her, too. She is
such a dear soul!"
"A restful soul," Rupert said dreamily; and, as Cicely stared at him in
surprise, a little look of embarrassment crossed his face. "I saw her
at Graystone, when I went to call upon Baba," he said, trying to speak
lightly, because of the surprise in Cicely's glance; "she seemed to be
just the sort of restful, cheery nurse you would want for a child."
"Yes," Cicely answered, wondering why Rupert's first dreamy words "a
restful soul," seemed to have no connection with the latter part of his
sentence.
"She suits Baba admirably. The poor baby is utterly woebegone without
her. Baba calls Christina her pretty lady; and she has been crying her
small heart out over her loss."
"Miss Moore went away on Christmas night, you say?"
"Yes; two nights ago. She took nothing with her in the way of luggage.
She must have walked to the station. She went to Hansley. We have
discovered that much, and she sat all night in the waiting-room,
because there was no train till the early morning."
"Then you know to what place she booked?" Rupert questioned.
"She booked to Torne Junction; beyond there we cannot trace her.
Cousin Arthur ramped all yesterday, and talked a great deal of
bombastic nonsense. To-day, to my great relief, he and Cousin Ellen
departed. But he still threatens the police. I am only hoping he may
let the police question lapse for a day or two; he is very busy hunting
down a derelict brother-in-law."
"My dear Cicely, what do you mean--a derelict brother-in-law?"
"I know nothing about the poor thing," Cicely spread out her hands, and
laughed. "Cousin Arthur takes it for granted that I have his family
history at my finger ends, and I can't remember that John ever told me
whether Cousin Arthur ever had a brother-in-law. But the dear old man
throws out mysterious hints about the derelict, who has evidently done
something terrible, and he sighs and groans over his poor sister, the
derelict's wife, but I don't know what has happened to either the
sister or her husband. Meanwhile----"
"Meanwhile, we have no right to let a young girl like Miss Moore lose
herself or get into difficulties, if we can possibly prevent it,"
Rupert said. "Her running away was an undoubted blunder, but it is our
business to find her, and try to set things straight. The difficulty
is to know where to begin to look for her. Scotland Yard suggests
itself as the place to which in common sense one should apply for help."
"I don't want publicity and fuss if it can be avoided," Cicely said
doubtfully. "Cousin Arthur's rigid sense of justice, makes him declare
with unwavering obstinacy that it is a case for the police, the whole
police, and nothing but the police. But being an ordinary silly,
fluffy, little woman, I have the ordinary woman's horror of the law."
"You are so entirely typical of the silly, fluffy woman," Rupert said
drily, but looking at his cousin with affectionate, laughing eyes.
"However, without bringing the majesty of the law to bear upon the
theft, or rather supposed theft--for I don't myself believe in
it--there is no reason why Scotland Yard should not help us to find
Miss Moore. Perhaps I can induce Sir Arthur to hold his hand for the
present about the accusation against her. He must be amenable to----"
The sentence was broken off short, as the door opened, and a footman
entered and handed a telegram to his mistress.
"For Cousin Arthur," she said, glancing from the orange-coloured
envelope to Rupert. "I wonder whether I had better just open it, or
have it re-telegraphed straight on to him?"
"Open it, I should think," Rupert answered carelessly; "it may be some
trivial matter which you can answer," and acting upon his words, Cicely
drew out the pink paper from its orange cover, and read the lines
written upon it; read them slowly, and with a puzzled frown, that
changed suddenly to an expression of delight.
"What an extraordinary coincidence. You need not wait, James. I will
send the answer down to the telegraph boy in a few minutes. Look at
this, Rupert," she went on, as the footman left the room. "Isn't it
extraordinary that this telegram should have come in the very middle of
our conversation?"
Rupert took the flimsy paper from her hand, and as he read the words,
his cousin saw an extraordinary change flash over his face--a dusky
colour mounted to his forehead, a strange brightness leapt to his eyes;
and, having read the words to himself, he read them aloud--
"Come here at once. Wire to post office, Graystone; and any train
shall be met. Christina Moore with me. Have made important
discovery.--MARGARET STANFORTH."
"At last," he murmured under his breath, as with curious deliberation
he folded up the telegram, and handed it back to Cicely. "At last I
have found her."
The low-spoken words reached Cicely's ears, and she stared at her
cousin's transformed face, saying almost involuntarily--
"But--Rupert--I can't understand. Are you really so pleased to have
found Christina?"
Rupert looked at her with a sudden confusion in his glance.
"Did I speak my thoughts aloud?" he said; "look here, Cicely, I am
afraid I was not thinking of Miss Moore at that moment, though I am
glad, very glad, to hear she is safe. And she is in such good hands,
too," he added softly, the light in his eyes making Cicely realise all
at once that there was a Rupert she had never known, besides the Rupert
who had always been so steadfast a rock upon which to lean.
"It isn't fair to have said so much, and not to say more," he added
quickly. "This lady who telegraphs--Margaret Stanforth--is--a friend
of mine, a most noble and dear friend. I--had lost sight of her,
and--I am glad to know where she is." Although the words were bald to
the point of coldness, Cicely saw that the usually self-controlled man
was deeply stirred by an emotion that almost overmastered him, and she
tactfully refrained from directly answering his words, saying only--
"I am very glad Christina is in such good hands. I must telegraph this
message on to Cousin Arthur at once. It is evidently most important."
"Evidently," Rupert replied absently, but he roused himself to re-write
the telegram for Cicely; and, only when it had been despatched, did he
turn to her and say--
"I wonder whether it would be wrong of me to take advantage of the
information this telegram has given me; whether I might go to
Graystone, too?"
"But, you see, there is no actual address on the message," Cicely
answered, her quicker woman's wit having discovered the omission.
"Graystone post office is mentioned, but it is obvious that for some
reason the lady's own address has been left out. I--don't feel that I
can give any advice when I know none of the circumstances, but--it
seems like taking an unfair advantage to--to act on this telegram,
which you are not supposed to have seen at all."
"And some fools in this world declare a woman has no sense of honour,"
Rupert exclaimed with a short laugh. "You can give me points about
honour, that's certain. Of course, you are right," he laughed again, a
rueful, rather bitter little laugh. "I can't go and hunt her out on
the strength of a telegram I was never meant to see. But, my God! it
is hard to keep away." He turned from Cicely, and, putting his arms
upon the mantelpiece, leant his head upon them for a moment--only for a
moment--then he straightened himself, and said quietly--
"After all, I have got to forget this telegram, ignore it, and make
myself feel that things are 'as they were.'"
"I am so sorry, Rupert," Cicely said gently, answering the look on his
face rather than his actual speech. "Is there nothing anybody can do
for you?"
"You dear and kind little person," he answered. "No, there is nothing.
Mrs. Stanforth is my friend, the best friend man ever had, and if, just
now, she finds it best that there should be silence between us, I am
ready to accept her decision. Only silence is--the very devil," he
ended, with again a rueful laugh.
* * * * *
That telegram to Sir Arthur Congreve would have been despatched on the
previous day, but for Margaret's sudden and startling collapse during
her conversation with Christina. The girl's mention of the pendant
which she asserted had been given her by her mother; and, the sight of
the pendant itself, had produced in the elder woman a terrible
excitement, which had ended in her sinking back amongst her pillows in
a dead faint. The words she had spoken before she became unconscious,
had seemed to Christina like the incoherent ramblings of a delirious
person, and in the alarm caused by Margaret's unconsciousness, she had
set them aside, and to all intents and purposes forgotten them.
Indeed, so little importance had she attached to them, that when Dr.
Fergusson came to see his patient, Christina only accounted for
Margaret's sudden collapse, by the long and interesting conversation in
which they had been engaged, and she added in accents of self-reproach--
"I think I ought not to have come here at all, and certainly I ought
not to have shown her how upset and frightened I was."
"Your coming, and even the telling of your story, ought not to be
enough to account for Mrs. Stanforth's collapsing in this way," the
doctor answered, a puzzled look in his eyes. "She is such a singularly
sane, well-balanced woman, that one feels there must have been
something quite unusual to account for her fainting so suddenly. As
far as you know, she had no shock?"
"No; none," Christina replied. "I mean, I know of no shock. I was
just sitting by her bed, telling her about Sir Arthur and his
accusation, and she was very much interested, and asked if I had the
pendant with me. And directly she saw it, she got quite white, and she
said something I could not understand, about the initials over the
emerald; and then, all at once, she dropped back and was unconscious in
a few seconds."
Fergusson looked keenly at the speaker.
"Mrs. Stanforth had never seen this pendant before?"
"No; never," it was Christina's turn to look puzzled. "I had never
seen her until the day she came out to the gate to ask me to fetch a
doctor. To all intents and purposes she and I are strangers."
"It seems rather incomprehensible, like a good many things connected
with this house," Fergusson said, under his breath. He and Christina
stood in what was evidently the drawing-room of the house--a long low
room, furnished with the rather heavy and uninteresting furniture of
the early Victorian period, the light-coloured chintzes on the chairs
and sofas, and the pale grey of the walls, giving the only relief to
the dinginess of the apartment.
"I am not more inquisitive than the rest of mankind," Fergusson went
on, his eyes glancing round the room into which he had never before
penetrated, "but I confess this establishment and its mistress do
arouse my curiosity. However, her affairs are no affair of ours," he
wound up briskly, "and my business now is to make her----" he broke off
abruptly, and looked keenly at Christina, a great sadness in his eyes.
"No, I can't say 'make her well'; there is no hope of that; but I've
got to make her better."
"Do you mean," Christina asked; "do you mean--that she--can't--get
really well?"
Fergusson shook his head. "She is worn out; something has worn her
out; whether a long strain, or a great sorrow, I cannot say. But she
has no more resisting power; she has come to the end of it all. And
she is too ill now to be able to right herself again."
"It seems so dreadful," Christina whispered.
"So much in life seems so dreadful," he answered kindly; "but when some
day we learn the reason for all that made things so impossible to
understand, we shall know that the pattern has been worked out exactly
right, by Hands far more skilful than ours. We can see only such a
little bit of the pattern now. By and by we shall see the whole."
"Mrs. Stanforth is asking for the young lady," Elizabeth's voice
sounded from the door. "She seems more like herself now; and she wants
the young lady to come to her at once."
The doctor and Christina moved quickly away together to the bedroom,
where Margaret lay with her face towards the door, her dark eyes full
of wistful eagerness. Christina thought she had never seen anyone who
looked so fragile, so ethereal; it seemed to the girl as though a
breath might have power to blow her away. Yet her voice was curiously
strong, and the eagerness in her eyes was apparent, too, in her voice.
"It was stupid of me to faint," she said, putting out her hands to the
girl. "I expect I am not very strong, and all that suddenly flashed
upon me when you showed me the pendant, came as a great shock."
"When I showed you the pendant?" Christina repeated, and there was
unfeigned surprise in her glance. "But did you know; had you seen----"
"Yes--I think--I know all about the pendant," came the slow reply;
"though I am not sure that I have actually seen it before--I think I
know all about it. I believe I can clear up the mystery that has
puzzled Arthur--Sir Arthur--and I hope I can prove to him that you are
not a thief."
"But--how strange," Christina faltered, whilst Dr. Fergusson, standing
at the end of the bed, looked intently at his patient, wondering
whether by any possibility she could be wandering, and deciding that
her eyes and manner were too sane and quiet, to allow such a
possibility to be considered.
"Not really strange"; a smile illuminated the beautiful face in the
bed; "in real life these coincidences happen oftener than people think,
and I only wonder I was so foolish as not to see the truth before."
"What truth?" Christina asked, feeling more than ever puzzled.
"Why--my dear--that you and I have a real tie to one another. I
think--no, I am almost sure--that you are my own sister's child."
"Oh!" It was the only word that Christina could utter for a long, long
moment; then she exclaimed under her breath, "But--how could such a
wonderful thing be true? Why do you think it is possible? Could I
really, really belong to you? _Oh!_" She spoke breathlessly, her
colour coming and going, her eyes bright, and Margaret smiled again.
"I believe you could really belong to me," she said, "and it was that
beautiful pendant of yours which gave me the clue, which made me
realise why I had so constantly felt as if I must have known you
before. I am sure your mother was my dear elder sister; and there is
so much in you like her--little ways of looking and speaking, little
gestures--oh! I don't know why I did not see long ago that you must be
Helen's daughter."
"Mother's name was Helen," the girl said, "and she often talked to me
about her lovely sister, but she always spoke of her as Peg."
"That name makes me remember myself as very young indeed," Margaret
answered tremulously, her eyes suddenly misty with tears. "When I was
just a wild girl with my hair all down my back, Helen called me Peg.
And Arthur always thought a nickname rather _infra dig_."
"Arthur?" Christina said quickly.
"Yes, Arthur, my brother Arthur. Ah! I forgot. You do not understand
the wheels within wheels of all this strange discovery. Sir Arthur
Congreve is my brother, and----"
"Your brother?" Christina's tone rang with amazement, and the doctor
started.
"My brother; and if my surmises are correct, which I am sure they are,
he is your uncle."
"How funny," Christina said, a little twinkle in her eyes; "and he very
nearly handed his own niece over to the police--if it is all really
true. Only it seems like some sort of wonderful fairy tale, that
couldn't possibly be true."
"How do you account for the pendant which, according to Sir Arthur,
belongs to his wife, Lady Congreve, being in Miss Moore's possession,"
Fergusson here put in. "I do not doubt Miss Moore for an instant--not
for a single instant--but why was Sir Arthur so sure she was wearing
his wife's jewel?"
"Because the pendant Miss Moore wears, is an exact replica of the one
belonging to Lady Congreve," Margaret answered composedly; "but I do
not suppose either Arthur or his wife have the least idea that the
pendant was ever copied."
"Copied?" Christina echoed.
"Yes. The pendant belonging to Arthur's wife, is an heirloom in our
family, passing always to the wife of the eldest son. But Helen, your
mother, dear--I am quite sure she was your mother--was the eldest of we
three. Helen first, next Arthur, and then me. I was the baby. And
because Helen was her firstborn and, I think, her favourite child, our
mother had the family pendant copied for her after she went away. The
initials are the initials of an ancestor of ours to whom the pendant
belonged. A.V.C.--Amabel Veronica Congreve."
"But my mother never saw her own mother, or any of her people, after
she first left them," Christina said. "They were angry with her for
marrying my father. She never saw them again."
"No, she never saw them again. Both she and I--married against their
wishes, and after I--left my old home, I never went back to it any
more. But I think our mother's heart must have yearned over Helen, for
she had that pendant copied, just as I said, and she sent it to Helen.
She told me so herself. I did not leave home till three years later
than Helen."
"Then your mother and Mrs. Moore corresponded?" Dr. Fergusson asked.
"No, not quite that. My father was terribly angry at Helen's marriage,
as he was afterwards about mine. But Helen wrote to my mother when her
baby was born, and it was then that the pendant was copied and sent.
No one but I knew that my mother had had it done; my father was a very
stern man. He would have been terribly angry with my mother if he had
known of this, and she told no one but me. Arthur never knew."
"The whole thing seems to be growing clearer and clearer," Fergusson
said slowly, "and you will be able to make it plain to Sir Arthur."
A shiver ran through Margaret's frame.
"It means--that I must see--Arthur," she said; and for the first time
since she had begun speaking, her voice shook. "I must see him, and
tell him all the story of the pendant--all--the real necessity for
hiding is over," she added under her breath; "it is only cowardice to
avoid Arthur now."
"There is one thing that puzzles me,"; the doctor left his post at the
foot of the bed, and, coming to his patient's side, laid a finger on
her wrist. "I do not want you to worry yourself now, with any more
thoughts and questionings. Only answer me this one thing. If you knew
your sister's married name, why did you never connect Miss Moore with
her?"
"I did not know her real name," was the reply; "she married a singer.
She met him in town. I was a young girl at home in the country, and I
never saw him. In the singing world he was known as Signor Donaldo;
and we only knew of him by that name."
"My father's name was Donald," Christina exclaimed. "And I knew that
once he had sung, but before I can remember anything he had lost his
voice; he played the organ in the village church, and he taught music,
too, and singing as well. But he was never called anything but Moore.
I never knew him by any other name. Mother has often told me he could
not bear to remember the time when he had a beautiful voice; and I
think he must have dropped his singing name, when he lost his voice."
"And he and Helen--were happy?" The words seemed to break
involuntarily from Margaret's lips.
"I think father and mother never stopped being lovers," Christina
answered simply. "They were just the whole world to one another, just
the whole whole world."