HOW ELIZABETH MADE UP HER MIND.
If we could trace back the wonderful things that happen to us "by
accident," or, as some pious souls believe, by the operation of a
special Providence or in answer to prayer, to their remote origin,
how far should we not have to go? Into the mists of antiquity, and
beyond--even to the primal source whence the world was derived, and
the consideration of the accident of its separation from its parent
globe; nay, of the accident which separated our sun itself from the
countless dust of other suns that strew the illimitable ether--still
leaving the root of the matter in undiscoverable mystery. The chain of
causes has no beginning for us, as the sequence of effects has no end.
These considerations occurred to me just now, when I sat down, cheerful
and confident, to relate how it came to pass (and what multitudinous
trifles could have prevented it from coming to pass) that an
extraordinary accident happened to the three Miss Kings in the course
of the week following Mr. Yelverton's departure. Thinking it over, I
find that I cannot relate it. It would make this chapter like the first
half-dozen in the book of Chronicles, only much worse. If Mr. King
had not inherited a bad temper from his great-great-grandfathers--I
could get as far as that. But the task is beyond me. I give it up,
and content myself with a narration of the little event (in the
immeasurable chain of events) which, at this date of which I am
writing--in the ephemeral summer time of these three brief little
lives--loomed so large, and had such striking consequences.
It happened--or, as far as my story is concerned, it began to
happen--while the steamer that carried away Mr. Yelverton was still
ploughing the ocean waves, with that interesting passenger on board.
Seaview Villa lay upon the headland, serene and peaceful in the
sunshine of as perfect a morning as visitors to the seaside could
wish to see, all its door-windows open to the south wind, and the
sibilant music of the little wavelets at its feet. The occupants of
the house had risen from their beds, and were pursuing the trivial
round and common task of another day, with placid enjoyment of its
atmospheric charms, and with no presentiment of what was to befall
them. The girls went down to their bath-house before breakfast, and
spent half an hour in the sunny water, diving, and floating, and
playing all the pranks of childhood over again; and then they attacked
a dish of fried flathead with appetites that a schoolboy might have
envied. After breakfast the lawyer had to go to his office, and his
guests accompanied him part of the way. On their return, Sam Dunn
came to see them, with the information that his best boat, which bore
the inappropriate title of "The Rose in June," was moored on the
beach below, and an invitation to his young ladies to come out for
a sail in her while the sea was so calm and the wind so fair. This
invitation Elizabeth declined for herself; she was still wondering in
which direction the right path lay--whether towards the fruition of
her desires or the renunciation of all that now made life beautiful
and valuable to her--and finding no solution to the problem either in
meditation or prayer; and she had little inclination to waste any of
the short time that remained to her for making up her mind. But to
Patty and Eleanor it was irresistible. They scampered off to their
bedrooms to put on their oldest frocks, hats, and boots, rushed into
the kitchen to Mrs. Harris to beg for a bundle of sandwiches, and set
forth on their expedition in the highest spirits--as if they had never
been away from Sam Dunn and the sea, to learn life, and love, and
trouble, and etiquette amongst city folks.
When they were gone, the house was very still for several hours.
Elizabeth sat on the verandah, sewing and thinking, and watching the
white sail of "The Rose in June" through a telescope; then she had her
lunch brought to her on a white-napkined tray; after eating which in
solitude she went back to her sewing, and thinking, and watching again.
So four o'clock--the fateful hour--drew on. At a little before four,
Mr. Brion came home, hot and dusty from his long walk, had a bath and
changed his clothes, and sat down to enjoy himself in his arm-chair.
Mrs. Harris brought in the afternoon tea things, with some newly-baked
cakes; Elizabeth put down her work and seated herself at the table to
brew the refreshing cup. Then home came Patty and Eleanor, happy and
hungry, tanned and draggled, and in the gayest temper, having been
sailing Sam's boat for him all the day and generally roughing it with
great ardour. They were just in time for the tea and cakes, and sat
down as they were, with hats tilted back on their wind-roughened heads,
to regale themselves therewith.
When Patty was in the middle of her third cake, she suddenly remembered
something. She plunged her hand into her pocket, and drew forth a
small object. It was as if one touched the button of that wonderful
electric apparatus whereby the great ships that are launched by
princesses are sent gliding out of dock into the sea. "Look," she said,
opening her hand carefully, "what he has given me. It is a Queensland
opal. A mate of his, he says, gave it to him, but I have a terrible
suspicion that the dear fellow bought it. Mates don't give such things
for nothing. Is it not a beauty?"--and she held between her thumb and
finger a silky-looking flattened stone, on which, when it caught the
light, a strong blue sheen was visible. "I shall have it cut and made
into something when we go back to town, and I shall keep it _for ever_,
in memory of Sam Dunn," said Patty with enthusiasm.
And then, when they had all examined and appraised it thoroughly, she
carried it to the mantelpiece, intending to place it there in safety
until she went to her own room. But she had no sooner laid it down,
pushing it gently up to the wall, than there was a little click and a
faint rattle, and it was gone.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "what _shall_ I do? It has fallen behind the
mantelpiece! I _quite_ forgot that old hole--and it is there still.
Surely," she continued angrily, stamping her foot, "when Mr. Hawkins
took the trouble to do all this"--and she indicated the surface of the
woodwork, which had been painted in a wild and ghastly imitation of
marble--"he might have taken a little more, and fixed the thing close
up to the wall?"
Mr. Brion examined the mantelpiece, pushed it, shook it, peered
behind it with one eye, and said that he had himself lost a valuable
paper-knife in the same distressing manner, and had long intended to
have the aperture closed up. "And I will get a carpenter to-morrow
morning, my dear," he boldly declared, "and he shall take the whole
thing to pieces and fix it again properly. Yes, I will--as well now as
any other time--and we will find your opal."
Having pledged himself to which tremendous purpose, he and they
finished their tea, and afterwards had their dinner, and afterwards sat
on the verandah and gossiped, and afterwards went to bed--and in due
time got up again--as if nothing out of the common way had happened!
In the morning Fate sent another of her humble emissaries from the
township to Seaview Villa, with a bag of tools over his shoulder--tools
that were keys to unlock one of her long-kept secrets. And half an
hour after his arrival they found the opal, and several things
besides. When, after Mrs. Harris had carefully removed the furniture
and hearthrug, and spread cornsacks over the carpet, the carpenter
wrenched the mantelpiece from its fastenings, such a treasure-trove
was discovered in the rough hollows of the wall and floor as none of
them had dreamed of. It did not look much at the first glance. There
were the opal and the paper-knife, half a dozen letters (circulars and
household bills of Mrs. King's), several pens and pencils, a pair of
scissors, a silver fruit-knife, a teaspoon, a variety of miscellaneous
trifles, such as bodkins and corks, and a vast quantity of dust. That
seemed all. But, kneeling reverently to grope amongst these humble
relics of the past, Elizabeth found, quite at the bottom of everything,
a little card. It was an old, old card, dingy and fretted with age,
and dried and curled up like a dead leaf, and it had a little picture
on it that had almost faded away. She carefully wiped the dust from it
with her handkerchief, and looked at it as she knelt; it was a crude
and youthful water-colour drawing of an extensive Elizabethan house,
with a great many gables and fluted chimney-stacks, and much exuberance
of architectural fancy generally. It had been minutely outlined by
a hand trained to good draughtsmanship, and then coloured much as a
child would colour a newspaper print from a sixpenny paint-box, and
less effectively, because there was no light and shade to go upon.
It was flat and pale, like a builder's plan, only that it had some
washy grass and trees about it, and a couple of dogs running a race
in the foreground, which showed its more ambitious pretensions; and
the whole thing had evidently been composed with the greatest care.
Elizabeth, studying it attentively, and thinking that she recognised
her father's hand in certain details, turned the little picture over
in search of the artist's signature. And there, in a corner, written
very fine and small, but with elaborate distinctness, she read these
words:--"_Elizabeth Leigh, from Kingscote Yelverton, Yelverton, June_,
1847."
She stared at the legend--in which she recognised a peculiar capital
K of his own invention that her father always used--with the utmost
surprise, and with no idea of its tremendous significance. "Why--why!"
she gasped, holding it up, "it belongs to _him_--it has Mr. Yelverton's
name upon it! How in the world did it come here? What does it mean?
Did he drop it here the other day? But, no, that is impossible--it was
quite at the bottom--it must have been lying here for ages. Mr. Brion,
_what_ does it mean?"
The old man was already stooping over her, trying to take it from her
hand. "Give it to me, my dear, give it to me," he cried eagerly. "Don't
tear it--oh, for God's sake, be careful!--let me see what it is first."
He took it from her, read the inscription over and over and over again,
and then drew a chair to the table and sat down with the card before
him, his face pale, and his hands shaking. The sisters gathered round
him, bewildered; Elizabeth still possessed with her first impression
that the little picture was her lover's property, Eleanor scarcely
aware of what was going on, and Patty--always the quickest to reach
the truth--already beginning dimly to discern the secret of their
discovery. The carpenter and the housekeeper stood by, open-mouthed and
open-eyed; and to them the lawyer tremulously addressed himself.
"You had better go for a little while," he said; "we will put the
mantelpiece up presently. Yet, stay--we have found a very important
document, as I believe, and you are witnesses that we have done so. You
had better examine it carefully before you go, that you may know it
when you see it again." Whereupon he solemnly proceeded to print the
said document upon their memories, and insisted that they should each
take a copy of the words that made its chief importance, embodying it
in a sort of affidavit, to which they signed their names. Then he sent
them out of the room, and confronted the three sisters, in a state of
great excitement. "I must see Paul," he said hurriedly. "I must have my
son to help me. We must ransack that old bureau of yours--there must be
more in it than we found that time when we looked for the will. Tell
me, my dears, did your father let you have the run of the bureau, when
he was alive?"
No, they told him; Mr. King had been extremely particular in allowing
no one to go to it but himself.
"Ah," said the old man, "we must hunt it from top to bottom--we must
break it into pieces, if necessary. I will telegraph to Paul. We must
go to town at once, my dears, and investigate this matter--before Mr.
Yelverton leaves the country."
"He will not leave the country yet," said Elizabeth. "What is it, Mr.
Brion?"
"I think I see what it is," broke in Patty. "Mr. Brion thinks
that father was Mr. Yelverton's uncle, who was lost so long ago.
King--King--Mr. Yelverton told us the other day that they called _him_
'King,' for short--and he was named Kingscote Yelverton, like his
uncle. Mother's name was Elizabeth. I believe Mr. Brion is right And,
if so--"
* * * * *
"And, if so," Patty repeated, when that wonderful, bewildering day
was over, and she and her elder sister were packing for their return
to Melbourne in the small hours of the next morning--"if so, we are
the heiresses of all those hundreds of thousands that are supposed
to belong to our cousin Kingscote. Now, Elizabeth, do you feel like
depriving him of everything, and stopping his work, and leaving his
poor starved costermongers to revert to their original condition--or do
you not?"
"I would not take it," said Elizabeth, passionately.
"Pooh!--as if we should be allowed to choose! People can't do as they
like where fortunes and lawyers are concerned. For Nelly's sake--not to
speak of mine--they will insist on our claim, if we have one; and then
do you suppose _he_ would keep your money? Of course not--it's a most
insulting idea. Therefore the case lies in a nutshell. You will have to
make up your mind quickly, Elizabeth."
"I have made up my mind," said Elizabeth, "if it is a question of which
of us is most worthy to have wealth, and knows best how to use it."