The Wynyards' return was after all delayed for a day or two, and this,
as will be readily understood, I did not regret, as it gave more time
for Moore's progress in convalescence. I had persuaded Mrs Bence and
Sims, though not without some difficulty, to join me in keeping back the
news of the accident from our hosts till we could tell it to them by
word of mouth.
"It would only worry them," I said, "and do no conceivable good, and
they are sure to come back the very first day possible."
And when they did arrive I felt doubly glad that I had taken this
precaution, for Mr Wynyard was looking rather tired and depressed, and
Isabel confided to me that the meeting his relative after an interval of
a great many years had--as she expressed it--"taken it out of him"
considerably, though the business matters which they had met to arrange
had all been satisfactorily concluded.
Moore's misfortune did not strike them very seriously. Mr Wynyard
never having had a son of his own, had an almost exaggerated idea of
boys' spirits and love of adventure, and thought it very lucky indeed
that Moore had got off with lesser injury than broken bones. He was
preoccupied with his own thoughts just at that time, and once satisfied
that everything had been done, and that my brother was in a fair way to
a speedy recovery, allowed, so to say, the matter to drop, never even
inquiring into the details of how it had happened, nor, rather to my
surprise, did Isabel, though it was not till long afterwards that she
confided to me the real grounds of her apparent lack of curiosity on the
subject.
Both she and her father, however, were keenly interested, as indeed
could not but have been the case, in my account of the visit I had
received from the Misses Grey, and I felt again a peculiar gratitude to
the kind-hearted ladies for the discretion and tact which had prevented
a word, or even allusion, which I could not with perfect openness repeat
to the Wynyards, as to this part of our experiences.
"They are really _very_ good," said Isabel heartily, when we were all
talking it over together. "It is just the same kind way they behaved to
the vicarage people, that time I told you of, several yours ago. Does
it not make one wish, Regina, that anything could be done for these poor
Greys towards removing the cloud that has hung over them for so long?"
"Yes, indeed," I said heartily, thinking to myself as I spoke that I had
a good deal more reason than my friend knew of for endorsing what she
said. And then again there seemed to re-echo through my brain the name
"Ernest Fitzmaurice." Was it only a coincidence, or was it possible
that there had ever been any connection between these brothers and
sisters and a member of our own family? An unhappy connection, no
doubt, possibly even a disgraceful secret of some kind, involving one
who apparently had not been the sufferer.
And now, I think, my story will best be told by passing over some
considerable interval of time with but a few words of notice.
Nothing farther occurred of any special interest during the remainder of
our stay at the Manor-house. Moore's recovery had progressed most
satisfactorily by the date of our return home, which was speedily
followed, of course, by his going back to school for the remainder of
the term, as he was practically perfectly sound again. And after full
consideration I decided that I was behaving more honourably and loyally
in not relating to any one the details of his accident, or rather of
what had led to it. There was no occasion for doing so, in which the
boy himself agreed with me, promising me faithfully to consider all that
had occurred as a closed chapter in his life.
"It is what the Greys wished," I said, by way of impressing it upon him
more forcibly, "and considering how very kindly and generously they
behaved to us, the least we can do is to respect their wishes to the
full. You must never speak of it, Moore, to any of your
school-fellows."
He repeated his promise, and I felt satisfied that he would not forget
it. He had had a lesson; all the same I was glad to know that he had
overheard nothing of the dialogue which had so impressed me myself.
One thing I did, and feeling assured of the entire purity of my motive,
I could not feel that I was wrong in this. Not many days after our
return home, when I happened to find myself alone with father, I
inquired, in as casual a tone as possible of him, if the name "Ernest"
was a family one with us.
His manner was completely free from consciousness of any kind, as he
replied after a moment or two's consideration--
"Well, no; I should scarcely call it such, though there have been one or
two of the name among us. One, by-the-bye, whose career would scarcely
add prestige to the name he bore, whatever it had been!"
"Who was he?" I said, "and what did he do?" speaking as quietly as I
could, for I had no wish, naturally, to rouse any curiosity on my
father's part.
"I scarcely know," he replied. "He was a distant cousin only, and he
has long since disappeared. I fancy he was more weak than wicked, a
tool in the hands of a thoroughly unprincipled man, but I never heard
the details, nor would they be edifying to know. What put it into your
head, Regina, to ask about the name? You are not thinking of getting up
a family chronicle, are you?"
"Oh dear no," I said lightly. "I heard the name accidentally quite, and
I just wondered if it belonged to any relation of ours;" and there, for
the time being, the matter dropped.
The summer and autumn succeeding our visit to Millflowers passed
uneventfully. One great disappointment they brought with them, and that
was the impossibility of Isabel Wynyard coming to stay with us, as we
had hoped might have been the case. I forget the special reasons for
this. I think they must have been connected with her father's being
less well than usual, for, looking back to that time as we have often
done since, it seems as if the slow failure which ended a few years
later in his death had begun to show itself that year. Soon after
Christmas, however, Mr Wynyard went to pay a visit to the Percys, and
then Isabel came to us. It was of course delightful to me to have her,
and to reverse the roles of our previous time together, for I had now
the pleasure--always, I think, a very great one--of acting hostess and
_cicerone_ of our pretty neighbourhood--pretty at all seasons, even in
midwinter, to my mind at least, in which opinion Isabel cordially
agreed.
She had been the sweetest of little hostesses; she was the most charming
of guests. Every-thing seemed to come right to her, and everybody liked
her. I think she specially loved the filing of a mother in our home,
above all a mother who had known hers.
"It must be so delightful, Regina," she said, a day or two after her
arrival, "to have some one you can always appeal to, always consult,
like Mrs Fitzmaurice, close at hand," and she gave a little sigh.
"Papa is the dearest of fathers, and since Margaret's marriage he and I
have been, as you know, everything to each other. Still, after all, a
man isn't a woman, and over and over again I long for a mother."
"But you have your sister?" I said.
"Oh yes, of course," was the reply. "The best of sisters; but it cannot
now be quite the same, no longer living together. She has her own home
and separate interests. I shouldn't feel it right to trouble her about
little things. And you can go to your mother for everything. I do so
hate responsibility, and now it seems coming upon me more and more since
father is less well than he used to be."
"I don't think," I answered, "that I have ever dreaded responsibility
very much, perhaps because, so far, I have small experience of it! But
I am likely to have to be rather `independent' before long. I don't
think you will envy me, Isabel, when I tell you that this spring I am
going up to London for a couple of months to be taken out by a cousin of
mother's, whom I scarcely know, and already feel afraid of."
Isabel looked up with startled sympathy in her eyes.
"Oh yes, indeed," she said. "I _do_ pity you, or rather I would pity
myself in your place. Why doesn't your mother take you out herself?"
Here it was my turn to sigh.
"She is not nearly strong enough," I said, "for anything of the kind. I
have always known that something of the sort was before me sooner or
later, and I don't look forward to it in the least."
"Poor Regina!" said Isabel. "In our different ways I don't think either
you or I would ever care _very_ much for what is called `society'--I
from cowardice, and you from--oh! from having so many other things that
interest you--such a delightful home, where you are made so much of, and
country things. _My_ only experience of London has been for quite a
short time together, and under Margaret's wing. But then, Regina, you
are much, much stronger-minded than I. I dare say in the end you will
really enjoy it."
"Perhaps," I allowed. "I certainly should not care to live a very
shut-up life, nor would you either, in any extreme. For instance," I
went on, with a little self-consciousness, which, if Isabel perceived,
she was clever enough to conceal that she did so, "for instance, we
don't envy those poor little Miss Greys at Grimsthorpe. By-the-bye, you
have not told me if you've heard anything of them."
I was not sorry for the opportunity of making this inquiry in an
apparently off-hand way. I was really anxious to know about the Grim
House people, and yet the feeling of our secret and the great dread of
involuntarily breaking my agreement with them, made me almost nervously
afraid of any mention of them.
"Yes," said Isabel, speaking, it seemed to me, more slowly and as it
were consideringly than her wont. "Yes, I have been going to tell you
ever since I came, but I have got to have a perhaps exaggerated dread of
gossiping about them--only, you see, you do already know all _I_ do.
Yes, we are more sorry for them than ever. The cripple one, the brother
with the angelic face, has been so ill this winter. And the other
three's poor faces have got sadder and sadder, and grimmer and grimmer,
Sunday after Sunday."
"No," I exclaimed impulsively, "not _grimmer_; at least not the sisters;
for theirs have never been grim. I think their expression is quite
sweet."
"Do you?" said Isabel. "How do--oh, I was forgetting. Of course you
saw them quite at close quarters that day they came down on a Good
Samaritan visit when Moore hurt his foot _I_ have never managed to see
them very distinctly; those old-fashioned bonnets of theirs hide them
so. But the elder brother--_he_ is grim enough, at least."
"Ye-es," I replied half-dubiously, "I suppose so." I had lost my
nervous feeling by now, and a certain curious spirit of defiance which I
have always known to be latent in me, and which, were it not kept in
check, might grow into a kind of recklessness, had been aroused by a
touch of "dryness" in Isabel's tone. I felt inclined to disagree with
her, to contradict her for the sake of doing so! So "ye-es," I
repeated. "Perhaps so, but there is more in his face than grimness and
melancholy. _I_ think there is dormant tenderness too."
"Dear me!" was Isabel's comment on this, "what good eyes you must have!
I could never have detected all that."
"I have very good eyes," I replied, "and, naturally, your talking so
much about the Greys sharpened them whenever I had a chance of using
them in that quarter."
"Good eyes, and good ears, too," I thought to myself, and with the
recollection of my eavesdropping, there awoke again the old sensation of
shame, bringing with it quick repentance for my manner to Isabel, in
which a rather ungenerous wish to remind her that her confidences had
been the origin of my curiosity, had been a motive at work. "If she
_does_ know anything about what really happened, it is just as well for
her to take some of the blame," I had thought, "and I _have_ been
faithful to her." But as usual, her gentleness still further disarmed
me.
"I am afraid," she said next, "that the poor things _have_ increasing
cause for anxiety and distress. Without cross-questioning Dr Meeke,
which of course he wouldn't allow, I could not but gather from him that
he is _very_ anxious about the younger brother. He, the lame Mr Grey,
has not been at church for weeks past."
This news saddened me. Surely our escapade had in no way brought fresh
trouble to the Grim House, even though indirectly? It might have
rendered the elder man still more anxious and uneasy, and diminished
what little cheerfulness his sisters and brother had managed to preserve
among them. For I had never wavered in my first intuition, that Mr
Grey himself was the centre of the mystery, and the words I had
overheard had deepened this impression.