Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every point. I had never
seen that enamel locket before. Yet I divined at once that she had worn
it under her clothes--as indeed she had, day and night for how many
years! I felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or unhappily,
if only I might have a romance and a locket like that.
"He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago," she said, her voice
quivering a little.
I knew well that lovers always did part. They invariably severed,
"severed for years." I was not the least surprised to hear he was gone,
for I was already learning "In the Gloaming," and trilled it forth in a
thin, throaty voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what hers
had been at my age.
"Why were you parted?" I asked.
"He had not any money, and he had his way to make. And he had an uncle
out there who wanted him to go to him. It was a good opening, though he
would not have taken it if it had not been for me, for though he was so
fond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind of life,
sheep and things. He cared so much for books and poetry. And your Uncle
Thomas was very much against my marrying at that time, in fact, he
positively forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle Thomas
had become more dependent on me than he was quite aware until there was
a question of my leaving him. Men are like that, my love. They need a
woman all the time to look after them, and listen to their talk, and
keep vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender father. He
said he could not bear the thought of his only daughter roughing it in
Australia. He said he would withdraw his opposition if--if--Bob (Bob was
his name) came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in comfort in
England."
"And he never did?"
"He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. At
twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is really
necessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to win
me."
I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so
far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand in
silence, and she went on:
"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though
he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five
years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his
uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him.
He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was
terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against
my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very
high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not
allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so
distressed that I had thoughts--I actually contemplated running away to
Australia?"
"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious
solution of the difficulty.
"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that
of course I could not leave him."
"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for granted
that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend
who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout
the spirits of the principal eloper.
"_Now!_" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured
her sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago,
when you were a toddling baby."
"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now," I said with
clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and
Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy's
happiness.
"And is he still--still----?" I ventured.
"I don't know whether he is still--free. I have not heard from him for
fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He
is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have
ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve
years ago."
To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt
Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.
"When she died," said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before,
and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never
quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this
ring." She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. "She said
she had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me.
It had been her own engagement ring."
"Why don't you wear it on your engaged finger?"
"I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom was
constantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. He
is a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business,
I'm told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand."
By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility.
"I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I have
not remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will be
twenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else
_now_, Colonel Stoddart or any one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is
your Uncle Thomas, but I don't think they have ever _quite_ understood
what I feel about Mr. Kingston."
An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner.
Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at the
Venetian mirror.
"Your Uncle Thomas is awake," she said, "and is ready to be read to. He
never likes being kept waiting."
This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell
rang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it.