THE VEILED STRANGER
It was only to be expected that Ethel’s thoughts should often revert to
the conversation with Lady Pell, in the course of which the latter had
advised her to ask no questions about her unknown mother at her
forthcoming interview with her father and grandfather. It was advice
which Ethel had accepted and abided by, but if she had hoped that some
mention would be made of that which she so longed to know by one or
other of those two who had so many wonderful revelations to make to
her, then was she doomed to disappointment. Neither then nor later was
the existence of any such person as her mother alluded to in her
presence.
It was the only cloud on Ethel’s happiness. If her mother were dead,
why had she not been frankly told that such was the case? If she were
still alive, could it be that all mention of her name had been
purposely omitted because she had been guilty of something which must
keep her and her daughter for ever apart? But when Ethel asked herself
this question, which she did more than once, her thoughts at once
reverted to that unknown Mrs. Clare about whom she had heard so much,
while staying at the Shrublands, who was said to be the daughter-in-law
of Sir Gilbert Clare, and to be an Italian by birth, who had lived for
a short time at Maylings, but who seemed to have suddenly left the
neighbourhood, for what reason Ethel had never been told, only a few
days prior to the arrival of Lady Pell and herself at Withington Chase.
Then came another inevitable question. “Was Mrs. Clare of Maylings my
mother?”
She had gathered from various remarks which Lady Pell had let drop from
time to time, that Sir Gilbert had had four sons in all, but that only
the eldest had lived to arrive at man’s estate. If such were the case,
and if the late tenant of Maylings were really Sir Gilbert’s
daughter-in-law, then it seemed to follow as a certainty that she could
be the wife of none other than John Alexander Clare—of the man whom
she, Ethel, now knew to be her father!
It was a startling conclusion to come to, but, under the circumstances,
none other seemed possible.
In accordance with the promise he had made Giovanna, and after
consultation with his father, John Clare wrote to a London solicitor
empowering him to wait upon Mrs. Clare and propose certain pecuniary
arrangements for her acceptance. Return of post brought a reply to the
effect that on inquiry at Mrs. Clare’s lodgings it had been found that
she was temporarily out of town and that the date of her return was
uncertain. Evidently till she should have returned nothing further
could be done in the matter.
But at this time John Clare’s wife was much nearer him that he was
aware of. The sudden appearance before her of the husband whom she had
long believed to be dead, and the astounding news of which he was the
bearer, had combined to produce in Giovanna’s mind a feeling of bitter
remorse, as regarded certain episodes of the past, to which she had
heretofore been a stranger. To know that, as a consequence of her
misdeeds, she had forfeited all a mother’s rights and privileges, that
her daughter would be taught to think of her either as of one dead, or,
if as still living, as of one the mere mention of whose name was enough
to bring the blush of shame to her cheek, was to drink deeply of the
waters of Marah.
Her thoughts did not dwell much upon her husband; she had never greatly
cared for him, and she experienced no particular wish, even had such a
thing been possible, to be reconciled to him now. It was on the image
of her unknown daughter—of her little brown-eyed Netta, stolen from her
so long ago and now grown to woman’s estate, that her mind perpetually
dwelt. Her husband had not deigned to tell her what strange chance had
brought him and their daughter together again, no more than he had
condescended to enlighten her about the facts of his own history from
the time of her desertion of him; but all that mattered nothing. The
one fact that her daughter was alive, and, so to speak, within reach of
her hand, was all that concerned her. And yet in this world they must
never meet!
Yes, an hour’s railway journey would have brought them together, and
yet were they as widely severed as if a thousand leagues of ocean
rolled between them. There was madness in the thought. Day and night it
wrought in her brain. She could neither eat nor sleep except by fits
and starts at wide-apart intervals. In a week’s time she seemed to have
aged half-a-dozen years. Her only visitor was Luigi Rispani. Sometimes
she welcomed his coming and was grateful for his company; at others she
wished him away that she might have more leisure to indulge in the long
fits of silent brooding to which she was yielding up herself more day
by day.
“Luigi _mio_,” she said to him one day, “I want you to go down to
Mapleford and make certain inquiries for me.”
“Yes, aunt, with pleasure. What is it you wish me to ascertain?”
“I want you to pick up all the information you can about my
daughter—where and how my husband found her, with whom she has been
living all these years, and the name she has been passing under,
together with any other particulars it may be possible to ascertain. If
you can, I should like you to see her, so that you may be able to
describe her to me. I would give fifty sovereigns this moment for a
photograph of her. You have a number of acquaintances in Mapleford, and
you ought to be able to bring quite a heap of information back with
you. Here are a couple of pounds for your expenses.”
Luigi pocketed the money with alacrity and departed. He turned over
several plans in his mind for obtaining the information wanted by his
aunt, and at length he decided that he would go down by an evening
train on the morrow, alight at Westwood, the station this side of
Mapleford, where there would be little risk of his being recognised,
walk from there to Elm Lodge and seek an interview with Everard Lisle.
The latter had already proved, in a way not one man out of a thousand
would have done, how well disposed he was towards him, and surely he
would scarcely refuse to furnish him with the required information. In
any case, although the task was one he by no means relished, he would
go to Lisle first of all, and get from him all that he was disposed to
give.
But, by a curious chance, the need to do so was spared him.
The following afternoon as he was turning out of Tottenham-court Road
into Oxford Street, whom should he run against but Miss Jennings, the
pretty barmaid, the drinking of whose health on her birthday, not
wisely but too often, had been the proximate cause of Luigi’s getting
into such disgrace with Sir Gilbert, since which occasion neither of
them had seen anything of each other. Miss J., who was nothing if not
self-possessed, at once stopped, smiled, and held out her hand.
“Why, Mr. Clare, of all people in the world, who would have thought of
meeting you?” said the girl.
Luigi noticed with a flutter of gratification that she still addressed
him as “Mr. Clare,” but the fact was that she did not know him by any
other name.
“You see, London is such a little village,” he smilingly replied, “that
we can’t very well help coming across everybody in it that we know. But
what brings you, Miss J., so far away from the snuggery of the _King’s
Head?_”
Then it came out that the girl was about to be married, and had come to
spend a short time with some relatives in London prior to that
important event.
“Many things have happened down Mapleford way, Mr. Clare,” she
continued volubly; “more especially at the Chase—even in the little
time since you gave us the go-by without saying a word to anybody.”
“And what has happened at the Chase?” queried Luigi, with a studied air
of indifference.
“Law! haven’t you heard? It’s in everybody’s mouth, how Sir Gilbert’s
son that was believed to have been killed years ago has come back home
from foreign parts, and how since then the old gentleman has discovered
his long-lost granddaughter. The young lady had been staying at the
Chase for some time before Sir Gilbert discovered that she was his
granddaughter. But most likely you know her, for she was there part of
the time you were. The name she went by was Miss Ethel Thursby, and——
But I see that you know her,” for Luigi had given a violent start.
“Ethel Thursby Sir Gilbert’s granddaughter!” he exclaimed. “Are you
sure of this, Miss J.?”
“Quite sure. As I said before, everybody is talking of it, but as to
how it all came about nobody seems to rightly know. Down at Mapleford
you’ll hear half-a-dozen versions of the affair in as many hours, but
in my opinion they are one and all no better than guess-work, and so
long as the few people who know the truth choose to keep their mouths
shut, which so far they seem to have done, guess-work they are likely
to remain.”
It was not till the afternoon of the following day that aunt and nephew
met. Giovanna was intensely interested in all that Luigi had to tell
her. She made him describe to her minutely what Ethel was like, and
when she found that for a short time they had sojourned together under
the same roof, she questioned him again and again about all the details
relative to her with which his memory was stored.
Then there came over her an irresistible longing to see her
daughter—just for once; just for once to gaze into her eyes, and, if it
were possible, to hear her speak. After that, she felt as if she should
not greatly care what became of her. She had settled on no plan for the
future. Whether she should remain, a lost unit, in the huge wilderness
of London, or whether she should go back to Catanzaro, where there
still lived some who were related to her, was just now a matter of no
moment. She was consumed with a great thirst, and till that should be
slaked nothing else mattered.
On the opposite side of the park of Withington Chase to that on which
Mapleford is situated, in a pleasantly wooded hollow, nestles the
obscure hamlet of Chadswell. Here in an old farmhouse a lady who gave
the name of Mrs. Lucas and her nephew engaged apartments. It was an
unusual time of year for anyone to seek country lodgings, seeing that
November was now well advanced, but that was a matter for those who
took the lodgings, and not for those who let them. The hamlet lies
about half-a-mile beyond the precincts of the Chase, and such of its
inhabitants as are desirous of going to and fro between it and
Mapleford on foot are in the habit of utilising a certain ancient right
of way across the lower end of the park, which effects a considerable
saving of distance, as compared with the high road, between the two
places.
Aunt and nephew were of course none other than Giovanna and Luigi. The
former had been brought to Chadswell by an inordinate longing to set
eyes on her daughter (she could not have taken lodgings in Mapleford or
its neighbourhood without running the risk of recognition, which, above
all things, she was desirous of avoiding), and the latter had
accompanied her at her special request. To Luigi the whole business was
insufferably dull and wearisome.
Not till the short November days were closing in did Giovanna set foot
outside her lodgings. Then, robed in black and thickly veiled, she made
her way to the park, entering it by the stile made use of by the
villagers; but instead of keeping to the public footpath, she turned
sharply to the left in a straight line for the Hall. At such a season
and such an hour there was no one to note her movements, and not till
she reached the belt of shrubbery, intersected by numerous walks, which
sheltered the house on two of its sides, did she deem it needful to
exercise a little more circumspection. Luigi had given her to
understand that Ethel was addicted to rambling about the grounds alone
(in reality, he had known her too short a time to justify him in making
any such statement), and her hope was that she might chance to
encounter her while thus engaged.
And encounter her Giovanna did one dusky afternoon after she had been
haunting the precincts of the Chase for more than a week. It was not in
what was termed the shrubbery, but in the spinney that they met. News
had been brought to the Hall that Dulcie Rigg was lying ill at the
Tower, and after luncheon Ethel had walked across to inquire after the
sick woman and make sure that she had all she needed. It was while on
her way back that she came face to face with her mother.
Ethel could not help feeling somewhat startled when thus suddenly
confronted by the figure of a tall stranger clothed from head to foot
in funereal black. The stranger came to a halt full in front of her,
and the path being of the narrowest Ethel could not but do the same. It
seemed to her that through the interstices of the veil two eyes of a
strangely penetrative quality were eagerly scanning every feature of
her face.
“If I mistake not, you are Miss Ethel Clare, till lately known as Miss
Ethel Thursby,” said the veiled woman in a low rich voice, which yet
had in it a tone that thrilled the girl, she knew not why.
“That is my name,” replied Ethel with questioning eyes.
“I have come far to see you and speak with you,” went on the other.
“Not that I wish to detain you more than a very few minutes,” she
hastened to add. Then she paused, as hesitating what to say next. “My
excuse for seeking you out and accosting you,” she presently resumed,
“must be that many, very many years ago I knew your mother.”
“Oh!” came in a low startled cry from Ethel’s lips.
“You do not remember your mother?” said the stranger interrogatively.
Ethel shook her head sadly, while tears gathered in her eyes.
“I have heard something of your strange story, of how you and your
father have been brought together again after having been separated for
so long a time. But tell me this; does your father ever speak to you
about your mother? nay, has he ever so much as mentioned her name in
your presence?”
Ethel hesitated a moment, then she said proudly, “I am at a loss to
know why you, a stranger, should put such questions to me.”
The stranger sighed; to the girl it sounded like the sigh of an
overwrought heart.
“I do not ask them as one having a right to do so, but simply because I
knew and loved your mother when she and I were young together, and
because I remember you, an infant, lying in her arms.”
“If my father does not speak to me of her,” said Ethel softly, “it is
probably because she is dead.” Then with a little catch of her breath,
she added, “But you, who were her friend, doubtless know far more about
her than I can tell you; indeed, I can tell you nothing.”
The stranger’s bosom was rising and falling as if with some hardly
suppressed emotion.
“Yes,” she presently said, “I think my friend of long ago must be dead;
not that I speak as one who knows; and it must be to spare your
feelings that your father never mentions her name. But you will
sometimes think of her with kindly affection, will you not?”
“Yes—yes—that I will not fail to do,” said Ethel in a voice which was
hardly more than a whisper.
“It is all you _can_ do. And now I will detain you no longer. Let me
kiss you once; don’t refuse me that, and then I will go!
As she spoke she lifted her veil, revealing to Ethel a countenance of
noble proportions, but worn and white as that of one newly-risen from a
bed of sickness, illumined by two eyes of midnight blackness, out of
which there looked at her a soul so anguished and fraught with a sort
of dumb despair, that the girl involuntarily recoiled a step. But only
for an instant; the next both her hands went out to those of the other
and she felt herself drawn forward, close—so close that she could feel
the other’s heart-beats against her bosom. Then the beautiful pallid
face was bent to hers, and soft kisses, a dozen or more, such as those
a mother bestows on her sleeping infant, were showered on the lips, the
eyes and the brow of the astonished girl, interspersed with
half-whispered exclamations in a language strange to Ethel, but which
sounded far more soft and musical than her own.
Then suddenly she felt herself released—it was all over in a minute at
the most—except that her hands were still imprisoned. For a space of
some half-dozen seconds the stranger’s eyes seemed to be drinking in
her every lineament, as though she would fain fix them for ever in her
memory. Then she suddenly lifted the girl’s hands to her lips,
imprinted on them two passionate kisses and dropped them abruptly.
“Farewell for ever,” she said. “Remember me in your prayers.”
As the last word left her lips, the veil fell like a shroud over the
ivory-white face and anguished eyes, and almost before Ethel realised
it she was alone.
It was late when Giovanna got back to her lodgings—so late that Luigi
was becoming seriously uneasy about her. It had been raining heavily
since seven o’clock, and when she did arrive her garments were
saturated. She vouchsafed no explanation, and Luigi knew better than to
ask her for any. But he could not help looking at her, for two large
hectic spots burnt in her cheeks, and her eyes shone with a strange
feverish light in which there was yet a far-away look as though her
mind were otherwhere, and she was only half-conscious of the hour and
her surroundings.
“Good gracious, aunt, you are wet through!” exclaimed Luigi after
watching her for a few moments. “You will catch your death of cold.”
She came to herself, as it were, with a start.
“It is nothing, I never take cold,” she said. “All the same, I feel
rather tired and will say goodnight at once, if you don’t mind. I am
sorry if I have kept you up.” Then laying a hand affectionately on his
shoulder, she added: “I have seen her, Luigi _mio_, I have talked with
her, my arms have held her, my lips have touched hers! I am very, very
happy.”
Next mornings when she failed to come down at her usual hour, Luigi
sent the girl of the house to call her; but she was beyond the reach of
any earthly voice. She had died in her sleep peacefully and without a
sound.
“Disease of the heart of long standing, accelerated by cerebral
excitement,” was the verdict of Dr. Mallory.