ETHEL AND TAMSIN
When Ethel had read Matthew Thursby’s letter to the last word she
quietly refolded the paper and laid it on the table. The sisters were
watching her every movement intently. She wished they would speak—that
they would say something—anything. But it seemed as if they were
waiting for her to break the silence. Her eyes turned from one to the
other. In their faces she read nothing save love and compassion. Then,
with a sob in her throat, she spoke.
“And I—the child of a stranger—a nobody’s child, owe everything to you!
But for you I might have starved, or found my only home in the
workhouse! Oh! how can I ever love you half enough? But now I have
learnt this, I feel that I have no longer a right to call this place my
home. I must go out into the world and earn my living. I must strive
to——”
“Ethel!” exclaimed an austere voice, that of Miss Matilda.
There was an inflection in it which the girl had not heard for
years—not since some juvenile peccadillo had momentarily excited the
spinster’s ire. “Nothing which has occurred this morning justifies you
in adopting such a tone towards my sister and myself. You seem to
forget that what comes as news to you has been known to us from the
first. Why, then, should you assume that the mere fact of your having
learnt certain things to-day for the first time should have the effect
of abrogating arrangements which have been in existence for a longer
period than you can remember?” Miss Matilda’s style in her more
didactic moments was unconsciously modelled to some extent on that of
her favourite authors, the English essayists of the eighteenth century.
“Forgive me for speaking as I did,” pleaded Ethel, with eyes that were
blinded with tears. “But, indeed, I am so overcome by what you have
told me, and what I have just read, that I know not either what to say
or what to do.”
“There is nothing for you to do—nothing whatever,” said Miss Matilda,
still with a touch of peremptoriness.
“And perhaps, my dear, if you were to say as little as possible just
now, it might be as well,” interposed Miss Jane for the first time.
Then turning to her sister, she added: “The poor child needs a little
time to recover herself.”
“There I agree with you, and I think the best thing she can do is to go
and lie down for an hour.” Then to Ethel, with a sudden softening of
the voice, she said: “Child, child, cannot you understand that, despite
all you have learnt to-day, nothing is to be changed—that you are still
to be our niece, and we are still to be your aunts, and that everything
is to go on precisely as before? Vale View will continue to be your
home, as it has been for as long as you can remember, and you must
never again hint at such a thing as going out into the world to earn
your living, unless you wish your aunts to believe that you have ceased
to care for them.”
“And,” added Miss Jane, with one of her sweetest smiles, “that you are
tired of living under the same roof with two humdrum old women.”
What reply Ethel would have made will never be known, because at this
juncture there came a tap at the door, which was followed by the
appearance of Charlotte, the parlourmaid, carrying a salver with a card
on it. “If you please, ma’am,” said the girl, “I’ve shown the lady into
the morning-room.”
“Tell Mrs. Lucas Dexter that I and my sister will be with her almost
immediately,” answered Miss Matilda, after a glance at the card.
As the girl left the room by one door, Ethel stole softly out by
another.
The sisters looked at each other. It was a look which said, as plainly
as words could have done, “How very fortunate that we happen to be
wearing our puce lutestrings and our best caps this afternoon!”
The Hon. Mrs. Lucas Dexter was one of the great ladies of the
neighbourhood, and had never condescended to call at Vale View but
twice before, on both of which occasions she had contrived to extract a
small cheque from the sisters. Indeed, it was a peculiarity of hers
never to call upon anyone who was not quite in her own set, or whose
position in the social scale, which in small provincial centres is
marked by so many gradations, was admittedly below her own, without
making them pay for the privilege in the shape of a subscription to one
or other of the benevolent schemes in which she professed to be
interested. Those among the small gentry of St. Oswyth’s, and such of
the professional people as were tolerably well-to-do, would have been
pleased to have the Hon. Mrs. Lucas Dexter call upon them twice as
often as she did, and would have looked upon the two or three guineas
of which each of her visits depleted them as money well laid out, in so
far as it had been the means of securing her presence for a quarter of
an hour in their drawing-rooms. But there were others, to whom every
guinea was an object, who would have been glad if she had passed them
by altogether, and who groaned in spirit, while smiling a sickly smile,
when the inevitable tablets and pencil were produced, and Mrs. Dexter,
fixing her victim through her _pince-nez_, said, with that
stand-and-deliver air which few people were found bold enough to
resist: “And pray, what sum shall I have the pleasure of putting down
opposite _your_ name?”
Although Miss Matilda had advised Ethel to go and lie down awhile, the
latter had no inclination for anything of the sort. Instead, she went
in search of Tamsin, and found her in her own room, an apartment
situated between the dressing-rooms of the sisters, and having a door
which opened into each of them. Tamsin had been on board the _Pandora_,
when Ethel’s supposed mother had lost her life, and had a knowledge of
all the events connected with that far-off time. Ethel could talk to
her and question her, as she could not talk to or question her “aunts,”
and there were half-a-score things she was burning to hear about.
Tamsin was sitting in her favourite spot, on the broad, low, cushioned
window-seat of her room. She was crooning to herself one of the quaint
hymns she had learnt at her mother’s knee half a century before. She
had a short, rather dumpy figure, and very homely features. Her eyes
were at once shrewd and good-humoured, and she had a very pleasant
smile. Her still plentiful grey hair was crowned by a plain net cap,
with goffered frills, bound over the crown of the head with a broad
black ribbon. In age she was some three or four years older than her
mistresses, whose service she had entered soon after they left school,
and with whom she had remained ever since. Tamsin was famed for her
skill as a needlewoman, and this afternoon she was engaged on some fine
sewing, which it was her pride to be still able to see to do without
the aid of spectacles.
Ethel burst into the room, and before Tamsin knew what had happened,
she found herself being violently hugged.
“I know all!” exclaimed the girl. Next moment she corrected herself.
“No, not quite all, but much—a great deal. I have just been reading
Uncle Matthew’s letter, written a little while before he died, with
directions that it should be opened by me on my nineteenth birthday.
And to think that you—you dear, but artful old thing—have known all
these years everything there is in the letter, and yet have never
breathed the least hint that I was somebody altogether different from
the Ethel Thursby I have always believed myself to be!”
“The secret was not mine, dearie,” replied Tamsin, as she pulled her
cap into shape. “What would my mistresses have thought, if by as much
as a single word, I had betrayed their trust in me? No, no, it was far
better for you in every way, that you should be told nothing about
these things till you were grown up. You would only have kept on
bothering your child’s brain to no good purpose.”
“But, oh! Tamsin, to think that my aunts are not my aunts, and that I
have no more right to bear their name than the veriest beggar that
walks the streets!” There was that in her voice which told the elder
woman that her tears were very close to the surface.
“Listen, honey,” said Tamsin, as she stroked the girl’s brown hair
fondly. And thereupon, only in different words, and homelier
phraseology, she proceeded to state the case to almost the same effect
that it had been stated by Miss Matilda already. The mere fact that a
certain piece of information, hitherto, for wise reasons, kept from
her, had been told her to-day, did not and could not in the remotest
degree affect the relations which had existed for so long a time
between herself and her supposed aunts. They had chosen to adopt her as
their niece when she was an infant, and such she would continue to be
to them so long as it should please Providence to leave unsevered the
thread of their earthly existence. She, Ethel, must strive to forget
that Miss Matilda and Miss Jane were not her aunts in reality, and must
continue to regard them in precisely the same light that she had always
done.
Ethel sat awhile in silence after Tamsin had finished speaking. Then
she said: “Just now it all seems so strange and incredible to me, that
I find it almost as hard to believe as I should one of the fairy tales
I used to read when a girl. In time, no doubt, I shall get used to it,
so that it will seem as if I must have known of it all along; but that
will not be to-day, nor to-morrow.” A sigh broke from her. She sat
staring out of the window without seeing anything of that which her
eyes rested upon.
Presently she resumed: “But now that I have been told so much, I want
to know more. There are several questions, Tamsin, which I do not care
to ask my aunts, but which I don’t in the least mind asking you.”
Tamsin screwed up her mouth, but said nothing. It altogether depended
on the nature of the girl’s questions whether they would be answered by
her or no.
“First of all,” resumed Ethel, “Uncle Matthew, in his letter, states it
as his belief that the—the person who passed me off on board ship as
being her child was not in reality my mother, but he omits to give any
reason for such a belief. You were there. Can you tell me what his
reasons were, or what was your own belief in the matter?”
Tamsin’s needle stopped in the middle of a stitch. She did not reply at
once, but seemed to be considering within herself in what terms she
should answer the question.
“My belief was the same as Mr. Matthew’s,” at length she replied. “Mrs.
Vane had not been two days on board before I said to myself, ‘It’s very
strange to me if that woman is that child’s mother.’ It was not merely
that she didn’t seem to care about you, and was never so pleased as
when you were out of her sight, but from a score of different things,
each a trifle in itself, that I so judged her.”
“Was she—was she a lady?”
Tamsin shook her head. “She was not what _I_ should call a lady, and I
think I know a real lady when I see one as well as most people. She was
not at all bad-looking, but as full of vanity as a peacock. Even at
breakfast-time she always appeared in a silk or satin gown, with a lot
of jewellery about her, which is not what ladies are in the habit of
doing. Then, she used to make little slips in her talk, so that one
could form a pretty good guess that her bringing up had been nothing
particular. Her greatest delight was to flirt and carry on with the
unmarried gentlemen on board, who used to encourage her in every way
they could think of; just to make fun of her afterwards among
themselves. But, with all her faults, hers was a dreadful fate—poor
thing! To be laughing and giggling one minute, and playing off; as she
supposed, one admirer against another, and the next to be overboard in
the great black waste of waters! One wild despairing shriek came borne
to our ears, and then all was silence. Oh, it was terrible!”
There was a long pause, and then Tamsin said: “I suppose, dearie, that
Mr. Matthew in his letter told you about a certain person coming to the
ship and inquiring for his sister, and of his recognising her in a
photograph of Mrs. Vane which was shown him?”
Ethel nodded assent.
“And you would also be told how the man in question stated that his
sister had gone out as lady’s-maid only a little while before, that she
was unmarried, and that it was impossible you should be her child?”
“Uncle Matthew’s letter told me all that.”
“Then, do you think, yourself, that any further evidence is needed to
prove that, whoever else’s daughter you may be, you are not the child
of the woman who called herself Mrs. Montmorenci-Vane?”
“I suppose it must be as you say,” replied Ethel. “So that the mystery
of my birth remains as much a mystery as ever, and, after all these
years, there is very little likelihood of its ever being solved.”
“And if it has been kept from you, you may rely upon it that it has
been for the best. How can you tell from what unhappiness, from what
unknown dangers, you may have been saved? Instead of encouraging vain
dreams about a past which is locked up from you, try to reckon up by
how many blessings you are surrounded. Think what a happy girl you are,
or ought to be, in comparison with what you might have been, and——”
“Oh, you dear old Tamsin, don’t for one moment get it into your head
that I am anything but grateful and thankful from the bottom of my
heart for—for—oh, for everything!”
She had flung her arms round Tamsin’s neck, and she now cried softly on
her shoulder for a minute or two.
Presently she looked up with an April smile. “What a weak, foolish girl
you must think me,” she said. “But I have shed my last tear now for
ever so long to come. I feel as if there’s not another left for
anybody. So, now tell me this: If nobody knows whose child I am, nor
where I came from, how is it known that to-day is my nineteenth
birthday?”
“That is very easily answered. It was on the 14th of November that Mrs.
Vane brought you on board the _Pandora_. She told more than one person
that you were just six months old, so that, if she spoke the truth, you
were born sometime about the 14th of May in the same year, and that was
the date which Mr. Matthew afterwards decided should be kept as your
birthday.”
“So that, besides so many other things, I owe my birthdays to Uncle
Matthew. And what happy days they have always been! How I wish he had
lived to see the child grow up on whose head he showered so many
kindnesses! And now, Tamsin, the next thing I want to know is, who it
was that gave me the name of Ethel.”
“It was the name Mrs. Vane called you by, so, of course, there was no
thought of changing it later on; but whether it was your real name, or
only one the poor woman had taken a fancy to call you by, she alone
could have told us. But see, there goes Mrs. Lucas Dexter’s carriage!
You had better run away now, honey. The bell will be almost sure to
ring for me in a minute or two.”
It is still the same day. The early dinner is over, and Ethel is again
strolling by herself in the grounds. She feels that she wants to be
alone. As yet, she can scarcely realise the news her birthday has
brought her. As yet, it all seems so strange and incomprehensible. It
is as if an earthquake had shaken the foundations of her life, leaving
nothing stable or steadfast around her. Her aunts have said that
everything is to go on as before, that not a word is to be said to any
one. But one exception there must be—she must tell her lover—she must
have no secrets from him. Perhaps, when he learns that she is a waif, a
child of unknown parentage, and without a home other than that which
charity has afforded her, he will—— But no; not even in her inmost
thoughts will she so far wrong him as to deem him capable of that.
There is a hillock in the grounds, from the summit of which, a stretch
of high road leading to the town is visible. More than once she climbs
it to look out for her lover. At length she discerns him in the
distance and her heart begins to flutter like a frightened bird in its
cage. Presently she takes out her handkerchief, and waves it as a
signal to him. He sees it and waves his hat in return. Then she runs
down the hillock, and so times herself that at the moment he opens the
side door, which admits people on foot to the grounds of Vale View, she
is there to meet him.