GRACEDIEU, DERBYSHIRE.
When Edith Grace came into the little sitting-room in Grimsby Street,
the morning after her flight from Eltham House, she found her
grandmother had not yet appeared. She went to Mrs. Grace's door and
asked if she might bring the old woman her breakfast. To her question
she received a blithe answer that Mrs. Grace would be ready in a
minute. The girl came back to the room where the breakfast was laid
and sat down to wait. The old woman always presided, and sat with her
face to the window. She liked to see as much sunlight and cheerfulness
as came into Grimsby Street. On the table were two plates, two cups,
eggs, rashers, and a loaf of bread. By the side of Mrs. Grace's plate
a letter. It was a frugal-looking breakfast for middle-class people,
but much, more elegantly appointed than one would expect to find in a
Grimsby Street lodging-house. The cutlery, linen, silver and china
were bright and clean and excellent. There were no delicacies or
luxuries on the table, but the adjuncts of the viands were such as no
lady need take exception to.
Edith was dressed in a perfectly plain black gown, one she had got for
her duties as companion. She had a trace of colour at the best of
times. This morning she looked pale and listless. She had slept little
during the night. She had lain awake, alternately reviewing the
extraordinary events of the day before, and trying to discover some
means by which in her future search of employment she might insure
herself against repeating her recent experience.
Up to this she knew little or nothing of the world. Her father, a
barrister, had died when she was young. Her mother had been dead since
her childhood. She had spent seven years at a boarding school, during
which time she had come home for the holidays to find her
grandmother's position gradually declining, until from a fine house in
Bloomsbury the old woman was reduced to poor lodgings in Grimsby
Street, where the two had lived together since Edith left school,
three years ago. The money left her by her father had been more than
enough to pay the fees of the "select seminary for young ladies" where
she had spent those seven years.
While at school she had kept much apart from the other boarders, and
had made no friends, for she knew all the girls she met at Miss
Graham's had homes much better than she could hope to possess after
her grandmother had been compelled to leave Russell Square.
Edith did not care to take any of her school-fellows into the secret
of their decaying fortunes. She was too proud to pretend to be their
equal in wealth, and too sensitive to allow them to know how poor she
was. She was the quietest, most silent, most reserved girl in all the
school. The majority of those around her were the daughters of City
men. Her father had been a barrister. He had never soiled his fingers
with business. He had been a gentleman by the consecration of
generations of forefathers who had never chaffered across a counter,
never been in trade; and she was a lady. She did not despise those
around her for their wealth or unfortunate origin. She simply kept
herself to herself, and made no friends. She was kind and considerate
to all, and polite almost to painfulness, but she would let no one
near her. Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply
perfect, if she only had a heart.
But, alas! the girl had a heart, and what is worse still, a heart very
hard to possess in seeming peace in a young breast confronted with a
decaying fortunes.
Her school-fellows said she ought to be a queen. By this they meant
that she was, by her appearance and manners, suited to statelinesses,
and splendours, and pageants. They conceived a queen to be above the
common nature of our kind. To be free from the aches and pains of
feeling. To be superior to the bemeaning littlenesses of life. To be
incapable of joy or suffering which does not involve the triumph or
the ruin of a state.
From the moment of her father's death she knew she must expect to be
poor, poor far below any depth she would have been likely to know, if
he had lived a dozen years longer. Young as she then was, she felt
within herself a love of all the beautiful things that money can buy.
She loved rich and exquisite flowers, and dainty fabrics, and
sparkling stones, and gleaming metals, and fine odours, and stately
pictures, and glories of lamps and melody. As she grew older, her love
of these things would, she told herself, increase. To what purpose? To
the torture of desire denied; for with such splendour she could hold
no converse. She was poor, and she should always be poor. What was to
be done? Beat down, stamp out these tastes, teach herself to rise
above them. Deny herself.
In time she should leave school and be a woman. She should, when she
left school, be a young woman, and a young woman of no ordinary
personal attractions. She knew this as fully as she knew that the
perfume of the tuberose is sweet, by the evidence of one of her
senses. How should it be with her, then? All these other girls around
her would marry, she never. For who would come wooing her? Some other
lodger in Grimsby Street! A City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser,
or a furniture dealer, or a man who contracted for the supply of
suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a white cap, or the
son and heir of a tailor! She had no moderation of power to
discriminate between any of these. They were all preposterously
impossible lovers, and there were no others left! No thing was
degrading even to fancy. There was only one way of meeting this aspect
of her poverty--she should never marry. That was easy enough. Nothing
could be easier than to keep all men at as great a distance as she
kept the cabman, or the young man who sold her the double elephant
paper for drawing, or the telegraph clerk. No man should, to her dying
day, ever say anything to her beyond the mere business words necessary
to their meeting. Thus she should be as strong in this way as she was
now in her indifference to diamonds or the opera. People said girls
were weak, but girls could be as strong as men, stronger than men, if
they only made up their minds not to long for pretty, or fine, or
interesting objects.
In the latter class Edith supposed lovers would find their place.
She should be strong because she should be self-contained. She should
be content because she should be undesiring. She should be independent
because she should form no ties of any kind. Her position should be
completely unassailable.
So she did not allow herself to display any particular affection for
any one of her schoolmates. She was uniformly kind, and gentle, and
polite. But she was too poor to love anyone, for it would rend her
heart to be separated from one she loved, and she could run no risk of
breaking her heart about her poverty when her poverty did not step in
to separate her from one on whom she settled her affections.
So for the three years she had lived at home with her grandmother she
comported herself with strict exclusiveness. No young man out of the
formidable list of possible suitors she had allowed to a young girl
with her means had approached her to tell a tale of love, and towards
all whom she met she sought to pass for a retiring shadow.
But her first advent into the world had brought an alarming, a
horrible awakening.
The discipline of denial to which she had inured herself prepared her
for the loss of her modest competency. Up to the time of leaving
school, she had regarded her income as sure as the coming of the
planets into the constellations. Soon after leaving Miss Graham's
doubts began to arise in her mind. When at length the blow came, and
she learned she was penniless, no giant despair crushed her. She
simply bowed to the inevitable, without going to the trouble of even
affecting indifference. The money or income had been hers, and was
gone. To lose an income was an unmixed evil, but it ought to affect
her less than others, for had she not cultivated self-abnegation? Was
she not used to desire little or nothing, and was not the step between
asking for little next to that of working for the necessaries of life,
for the things indispensable? She should now have to go forth and earn
her bread, for she could not think of encroaching on the little left
to her grandmother. She was young, and healthy, and accomplished, as
far as Miss Graham's select seminary for young ladies at Streatham
could make a receptive pupil accomplished.
Up to this she had allowed herself only one luxury, a deep, and quiet,
and romantic love, the love for her kind-hearted old grandmother. That
need not even now be put away, could not, indeed, be put away, but it
might and must be dissimulated. Or, anyway, it might and must remain
undemonstrative, for to show much affection to her grandmother would
be to enhance the pain of the old woman at the parting.
Hence she steeled herself, and prepared for the separation with
seeming indifference, which only made the desolation seem to Mrs.
Grace more complete, more like death, and freed it from the torture of
struggling with a living and cruel force.
When Edith Grace saw Oscar Leigh, and arranged to go as companion to
his mother, although she shrank naturally from his objectionable
manner and unhappy appearance, she was better pleased than if he had
belonged to the ordinary mould of man. His deformities made him seem a
being proper to a new condition of life, a condition of life in which
his very unusualness would enable her to preserve and even increase
the feeling of reserve, and being apart from the world, cultivated by
her with such success at Miss Graham's and at home. He was so much out
of the common, he need not be taken into account at all. His
unhandsome appearance would be no more to her than the unhandsomeness
of this street in which she, who dreamed of parks and palaces, and the
Alhambra of Granada, lived. No doubt to look at him was to feel
unpleasant, but the endurance of unpleasant sights was not very much
harder, if so hard, as doing without pleasing sights, and she had
taught herself to abstain from longing after gratifying the eyes. The
system of self-denial which she had imposed upon herself with so much
success needed only a little extension to cover endurance of the
undesirable. She was strong, fortified at every point. This system of
hers was the whole secret of getting through life scatheless. It
afforded an armour nothing could pierce. It made her superior to
fate--absolutely superior to fate.
She had built for herself a tower of strength. She lived in a virgin
fortress.
In thinking over at Miss Graham's the possible suitors a young lady
who lodged in Grimsby Street might have, she had allowed as likely a
City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser, or a man who contracted for
the supply of suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a
white cap, or the son and heir of a tailor. With such, she had some
kind of acquaintance, either personal or by strong hearsay. Often in
amused reverie, she passed these candidates for the hand of an
imaginary young lady before her view. The young men were invariably in
their Sunday best when they came a-wooing. There was a dandified air,
an air of coxcombry, about them which amused her. They were, of
course, dandies only after their kind; not like Lord Byron in his
Childe Harold days, or the dandy officers for whom the great Duke of
Wellington prayed so devoutly. They wore gloves of a sort, and flowers
in their button-holes. They carried canes in genteel imitation of the
beaux of old. Their hair was arranged with much precision and nicety.
Their figures were good. They were stalwart and valorous, not, indeed,
in the grand way, but as of their kind. They made displays, as
displays may be made in reasonable conduct, of their physical graces
and alertness. They carried themselves with the heroic air, without
the inartistic stiffness of soldiers of the rank and file. Their
features were well proportioned and agreeable, and they wore smiles of
bland confidence and alluring archness. They looked their approbation
of this imaginary young lady, but their good manners, their awe, never
allowed them to do anything more than strut like harmless peacocks
before the object of their admiration.
When the girl was alone and in good spirits, she often laughed aloud
at these phantom suitors of this imaginary young lady lodger in
Grimsby Street. She did not look on them with the pity of disdain. She
regarded them as actors in a play. She summoned them for her amusement
and dismissed them without emotion, without even thanks for the
entertainment which they had afforded her.
On stepping out of the world of dreams into the world of reality what
had happened?
This man, this deformed, odious little man, whose bread she was to eat
for hire and whose money she was to take for services under his roof,
had paid her attentions! forced his hateful attentions upon her!
attempted to kiss her after an acquaintance of a few hours!
Good Heavens! Had she, Edith Grace, lived to see that day? Had it come
to this with her? Had she fallen so low? Had she suffered such
degradation and lived?
It was not the young lady lodger in Grimsby Street of her imagination,
who had been compelled to listen to the ridiculous suits of the clerk,
and the caterer, and the carpet-beater, and the baker, and the tailor
of her fancy, but she herself, Edith Grace, who had had love offered
to her by this miserable creature who was her master also!
Yet she had lived through it, and the house, Eltham House, had not
fallen down on them, nor had the ground opened and swallowed them, and
neither her grandmother herself nor Leigh seemed to realise the
enormity of the crime!
Even if she had been the young lady of her imagination, and the young
men of her fancy had taken flesh and done this thing, it would be
unendurable degradation. What had occurred had been endured, although
to reason a thing infinitely less seemed unendurable! In pity's name,
had all that had taken place happened to her, Edith Grace?
Thoughts in part such as these had haunted the dark hours and early
morning of the young girl. What wonder she was wakeful. Then she had
to consider the future. Turn which way she might, the prospect was not
cheerful. The necessity for her seeking her own living was as
imperative as ever. She could not live at home in idleness without
absolutely depriving her grandmother of the comforts of life. All her
own money had vanished into thin air, and so much of Mrs. Grace's that
there would be barely enough for her mere comfort. When Edith arranged
to go to Eltham House Mrs. Grace had given the landlady notice that
she should no longer require the second bed-room. It was doubtful if
even the sitting-room could be retained, and if the old woman had to
content herself with a bed-room and the "use" of a sitting-room (which
no lodger ever used except to eat in), the poor old woman would mope
and pine and, in all likelihood, sicken and break down. This
consideration, being one not of her own, Edith allowed to trouble her
deeply. For herself she had no pity, but she could not forbear weeping
in the security of her own room when she thought of her grandmother
suffering absolute poverty in old age. No wonder the girl looked pale
and worn.
She was standing at the window absorbed in thought, when Mrs. Grace
glided into the room and took the girl in her arms before Edith was
aware of her presence.
"Thank God, you are here once more, my darling. To see you makes even
this place look like home. Oh, what a miserable time it was to me
while my child was away. It seemed an age. Short as it was, it seemed
an age, darling. Of one thing, Edy, I am quite certain, that no matter
what is to become of us we shall never be separated again, never,
darling, never. That is, if you are not too proud or too nice to be
satisfied with what will satisfy your old grandmother."
It was only in moments of great emotion that Mrs. Grace called her
grand-daughter by the affectionate pet name, Edy. The girl's name was
Edith, and she looked all Edith could mean, and deserved the full
stateliness of the name. But this morning the old woman's heart was
overflowing upon the lost one who had returned. The heart of the
blameless prodigal was so disturbed and softened that it became human,
and all Edith could say or do was to fall upon the bosom of the old
woman, and with her young, soft, moist lips, kiss the dry lips of the
other and cry out:
"Oh, mother! oh, mother!" and burst into tears.
Mrs. Grace calling the young girl Edy was not by any means common, but
Edith's weeping in a scene was without any parallel. It frightened the
grandmother. What she, the passionless, the collected, the just Edith
in tears! This was very serious, very serious indeed. The affair of
Eltham House must have had a much greater effect upon the child than
anything which had hitherto occurred, for Mrs. Grace could remember no
other manifestation exactly so sudden and so vehement.
"There child, there!" cried the old woman, caressing the bent,
shapely, smooth head against her breast. She durst not say any more.
She was afraid of checking this outburst of feeling, afraid of saying
something which would not be in harmony with the feelings of this
troubled young heart.
So the girl sobbed her long-pent torrent of chaotic feeling away, the
old woman stroking softly the dark glossy hair with one hand and
pressing the head to her bosom with the other.
In a little while Edith recovered her composure, and stealing out of
her grandmother's arms, turned towards the window to conceal her red
and tear-stained face. The old woman went and busied herself at the
table, re-arranging what was quite in order, and making changes that
were no improvement. At last she sat down and saw the letter awaiting
her close to her plate. She took it up anxiously, hoping it might
prove the means of introducing some new subject between them.
Mrs. Grace was no slave to that foolish modern habit of tearing and
rending a letter open the minute one sees it, as though it were a
long-lost enemy. Most of the few letters she received were pleasant.
She liked to savour the good things that came by the post before she
bolted them. To one who knows how to enjoy this self-denial of delay,
the few moments before a letter addressed in unknown or partly
remembered handwriting are more precious than the coarse pleasures of
realization. While the seal is unbroken one holds the key of an
intensely provoking mystery. Once the envelope is removed the mystery
is explained, and no mystery ever yet improved upon explanation. The
writing of this letter was unknown to Mrs. Grace. She could make
nothing of it. She turned the back, she could make nothing of that
either. She was expecting a letter from her solicitor, Mr. James
Burrows. This was not from him. He had the bad taste to print his name
on the back of the envelope, a vandalism which paralyzed all power of
speculation at once, and was more coldly and brutally disenchanting
than the habit of writing the name of the sender on the left-hand
corner of the face, for this external signature had often the merit of
being illegible. The writing on the face of this was in a business,
clerkly hand. The thing was a circular, no doubt.
"Edy," she said, "here is a letter. I have not my glasses with me.
Will you read it to me, dear?"
The girl turned round, took the letter and went back to the
window--for a better light.
"From whom is it?" asked Mrs. Grace, when she saw Edith break the
envelope.
"It is signed Bernard Coutch," answered the girl in a low voice.
"Bernard Coutch--Bernard Coutch. I do not know anyone of that name.
Are you quite sure the address is right?"
"Quite sure, mother. 'Mrs. Grace, 28, Grimsby Street.'"
"Well, go on, child. Let us hear what this Mr. Coutch has to say.
Breakfast must wait. Nothing grows cold in such lovely weather. I hope
this Mr. Coutch has good news."
"Dear Madam,
"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks
ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of
Gracedieu----"
"Stop," said Mrs. Grace, "where is the letter dated from?"
"Castleton, Derbyshire," answered the girl with some awakening of
interest in her voice and manner.
"Wait a minute, Edith." The old woman rose excitedly and came to the
window. "I must tell you, dear, that when first Mr. Burrows wrote me
to say the bank had failed, and that your money and mine were gone, I
went to him, as you know, and got no hope of ever saving anything out
of the bank. But I did not tell you then, for I was ashamed of being
so weak as to mention the matter to Mr. Burrows, that I told him all I
knew of the history of the Graces of Gracedieu, and of the old story
of mysterious money going to the runaway Kate Grace, of a hundred and
twenty or thirty years ago. I asked him to make what inquiry he could,
and let me know any news he might pick up. I was foolish enough to
imagine, dear, that something might come to you out of the property of
the rich Graces if we only knew where they are, if there are any. Now
go on, dear."
Edith re-commenced the letter:--
"Dear Madam,
"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks
ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of
Gracedieu, near this place. He requested, with a view to saving time,
that I should forward you the result of my inquiries.
"I regret to say that I have not been able to find out much. Gracedieu
is a small residence about a couple of miles from this. No property of
any extent is or was, as far as I can ascertain, attached to the
place. In the middle of the last century the Graces lived in this
town, and dealt, I believe, in wool. The family were in comfortable
circumstances, and one of the daughters, a lady of great beauty,
attracted the attention of all who lived in the town, or saw her in
passing through. She disappeared and was, so the story goes, never
afterwards heard of here. It was rumoured she married a very handsome
and rich young foreign nobleman who had been on a visit in the
neighbourhood, but nothing is known for certain of her fate.
"Some years after the disappearance of the young lady, Mr. Grace
seemed to come suddenly into a large amount of money; for he gave up
the wool business, bought a few acres of land, and built a house for
himself a couple of miles out of the town, and called his place
Gracedieu. From the name of the house it was assumed the gentleman the
young Miss Grace had married was a French nobleman. Why this was
supposed from the name is not clear, except that the name is French.
It is, however, a common name enough in England. I know two other
Gracedieus. About a hundred years ago the Graces left Gracedieu for
ever, and went to reside, it is believed, in London. Absolutely
nothing else is known of them in this neighbourhood, and even this
much would not be remembered only for the romantic disappearance of
Miss Kate Grace, the rumour she was married, and the sudden influx of
wealth upon the family.
"The land attached to Gracedieu in the time of the builder of the
house was about five acres. The family, as far as is known, never held
any other property here.
"If you desire it, search, involving considerable expense, can be made
in the records of the town and parish and county, but I understand
from Mr. Burrows that no expense is to be incurred without hearing
further from you or him.
"Yours faithfully,
"Bernard Coutch."
The girl turned away from the window, dropped the letter to the floor,
and said in a listless voice, looking, with eyes that did not see
external things, at the old woman, "Mother you ought to be glad you
are not one of the family of Grace."
"Why, child, why?"
"We are an accursed race."
"My child! my child, what folly you talk. There is no disgrace in
marriage, no disgrace in this. There was no shame in this, and who
knows but the mysterious man who ran away with the beautiful Kate long
ago, and married her, may now be a great man in France. He was a
nobleman then and honours are things that grow, dear. If we could only
find out the title he had. I suppose we could if we tried."
The girl shook her head. "Where there is no disgrace, mother, there is
no secrecy about such things. I thought the Graces went further back
than that."
"What! Do you want them to go back to Noah or Adam? Why this is four
or five generations! How many of the best titled houses in England go
back so far? Nonsense, child, I wish we knew what the French title
is."
"So there really was no family of Grace of Gracedieu after all. That
is if this account is true. And there was no estate, mother, and there
can be no money. I am very, very sorry for you, mother."
"For me, child! Why for me? I don't want anything, pet. I have enough
for my darling and myself, more than enough. I did not make these
inquiries on my own account, but it was on yours that I asked Mr.
Burrows to find out for me. Anyway, dear, no harm has been done. Come
pet, breakfast must be getting cold even this warm morning. How
delightful it is to be able to breakfast with the window open. Tea is
such a luxury this warm weather."
It was the only luxury on that table tasted by either woman that
morning. The food went away untouched.
When the landlady saw the unbroken food, she said to her daughter, "I
know the poor ladies are sorely troubled by their losses in that
shameful bank. There's one thing I can't make out about our corrupt
nature. The people who are troubled by something wrong with their
bodies eat and drink more than is good for them by way of trying to
coax themselves to break their fast, and them that are troubled in
their minds don't eat anything at all. The matter seems upside down
somehow."