The simple and business-like announcement of her name by Mrs. Blight’s
young governess to Mrs. Blight’s eccentric guest, produced a sensation
as startling as unexpected to Lally. Mrs. Wroat uttered a strange
exclamation, and leaned forward on her staff, her black eyes staring
at the young girl in a piercing gaze, her hooked nose and her chin
almost meeting, and her shrivelled lips mumbling excitedly an inaudible
whisper. The old lady’s eagerness and agitation was shared by her maid,
who stared at Lally with a wondering and incredulous gaze.
“Who--who did you say you were?” demanded Mrs. Wroat, as soon as she
could speak, in cracked, hoarse tones--“_Who?_”
“I am Mrs. Blight’s governess, ma’am,” replied Lally wonderingly, and
concluding that Mrs. Wroat’s eccentricities verged upon madness.
“Yes, yes, I know,” cried the old lady impatiently, “but who are you?”
“Nobody, ma’am--only Lally Bird, the governess.”
“Ah-h!” said the old lady, in an odd, choked voice. “Lal-Lally Bird!
Lord bless my soul, Peters!”
Mrs. Wroat looked at the young governess with such a queer snap in
her eyes, and such a glow on her sallow, withered face, that Lally
involuntarily retreated a step toward the door.
“It’s the young lady, ma’am,” whispered Peters, full of amazement.
“Whatever does it mean? It’s like magic or sorcery.”
“It means that our advertisement is already answered,” returned Mrs.
Wroat grimly. “Saved the post-office orders, Peters. I believe in
advertising, Peters. We’ve just seen the benefit of it.”
Lally retreated another step toward the door.
“If you please, ma’am,” she said, in a little fluttering voice, “I will
come and play for you later--”
“No you won’t!” interrupted Mrs. Wroat. “Now you are here, you’ll stay
here till I am through with you. Do you know who I am?”
Lally brought to her support a pretty, girlish dignity which sat well
upon her round gipsy face.
“Yes, madam,” she answered; “you are Mrs. Wroat, the aunt of Mr.
Blight.”
“Wrong. I am only his uncle’s widow. Come under the chandelier.”
Lally came forward hesitatingly, and stood under the great chandelier
where a dozen wax candles burned mellowly from a forest of tall
unlighted ones. The soft glow fell upon Lally’s face and figure. She
was thin, and there was a tremulous anxiety on her features; but in
her mourning dress, with a red flush on her dark cheeks, and a bright
light in her velvety black eyes, she was very pretty, with a dark gipsy
beauty that seemed to startle Mrs. Wroat.
“The very image of poor Clara,” muttered the old lady, “and the very
image of what I was at her age. There, Peters, if you want to see how I
looked in my youth, look at that girl.”
However Mrs. Wroat might have looked in her far-past youth, she looked
now like a malignant old fairy in her gown of black velvet, and with
her cloak of scarlet velvet drawn around her shoulders. Her diamonds
were not brighter than her eyes, whose keen and piercing glances tried
to read Lally’s soul.
“Peters,” said the old lady, abruptly, “give the girl that copy of the
advertisement.”
The maid silently handed the slip of paper to Lally, who read it in
deepening amazement.
“Is this an advertisement for me, madam?” she demanded. “I am Lally
Bird. Are--are you ‘M. W.?’”
“Of ‘Mount street, London?’” finished the old lady. “Yes, I am ‘M.
W.’--Maria Wroat.”
“And you were about to advertise for _me_, madam? I--I don’t
understand. Or, is there some other Lally Bird?”
“No danger of that,” said Mrs. Wroat. “There were never two women in
this world so silly and moonstruck as your mother--never two women who
named their girls Lalla Rookh. Pah! What a name! But for fear your
mother was not the only goose in the world who married a Bird, just
answer me a few questions. What was your father’s name, and what was
his business?”
“He was a corn-chandler in the city, and his name was John Bird,”
answered Lally, quite bewildered.
“And what was your mother’s name before her marriage?”
“Clara Mulford Percy--”
Mrs. Wroat gave a queer little gasp, and her hands trembled, and she
looked at her faithful attendant in a sort of triumph.
“Do you hear that, Peters?” she whispered. “Do you hear it, I say?”
Then she added aloud, “Go on, girl. Who was your mother?”
“She was the daughter of a country gentleman who owned an estate in
Hampshire. There were several children besides my mother, but they
all died young and unmarried. The estate was entailed, and went to a
distant relative. My mother married my father against the wishes of
her friends, and was disowned by them for her misalliance.”
“And very properly too, I should say. If a girl chooses to descend
from her proper rank in society as a gentleman’s petted daughter, and
take to living in a back room behind a corn-chandler’s shop, she can’t
expect her friends to follow her,” said Mrs. Wroat, with some energy.
“And you were her only child?”
“Yes madam.”
“Any relatives living?”
“No, madam. My mother died young. My father lived to give me a good
education, and then died insolvent, leaving me dependent upon my own
exertions when I was less than sixteen years old. My father was a
tradesman, humbly born, madam, but he was a gentleman at heart--”
“So poor Clara said. Humph! So you’ve no relatives living, eh?”
“None whom I know, madam. The present holder of my grandfather’s estate
in Hampshire is my distant relative, but he knows as little of me as
I know of him. And--and,” added Lally, suddenly trembling, as if a
suspicion of the truth were dawning upon her soul, “I have a great-aunt
living in London--she was my mother’s aunt--who married a banker, and
is now a widow, if she still lives. She must be very old.”
“About my age!” said Mrs. Wroat, her eyes snapping. “Just about my age.
What was her name?”
“Her name was Maria Percy, when a girl. She was married many years
before my mother was born, and she was my mother’s god-mother. I don’t
know her married name. If I ever heard it, I have forgotten it.”
“Then I’ll tell it to you,” said the old lady. “Her present name is
Maria Wroat. Her home is in Mount street, London. And at this moment
she sits before you, taking stock of you.”
Lally grew pale, and her black eyes opened to their widest extent.
“You--you my aunt?” she ejaculated.
“So it seems, my dear. I’ve been searching for you for some time. And
so you are Clara’s child? You may kiss me if you want to, my dear.”
Lally approached the old lady with some hesitation, and bestowed a kiss
upon the proffered wrinkled cheek. Then she shrank back in a sort of
affright, wondering at her own temerity.
“Sit down,” said the old lady kindly. “I have a few questions to ask
you, and on your answers depend more than you know of. Peters, don’t
stare the poor child out of countenance. Girl, how old are you?”
“Seventeen years, ma’am.”
“And I’m eighty--one of us at the beginning, the other at the end of
life! Heigh-ho! And so you’re governess here?”
Lally replied in the affirmative.
“No wonder you look sorrowful and pale and woe-begone!” muttered Mrs.
Wroat. “To be governess of the young Blights is a horrible martyrdom.
Don’t you think so? And isn’t it martyrdom to be under the orders of
that odious, vulgar, garrulous Mrs. Blight? Hey?”
“When I came here,” said Lally agitatedly, “I had no home on earth.
I was out of money, out of clothes, and utterly friendless. And so,
madam, I am very grateful to Mrs. Blight for shelter and a home, and I
cannot consider any service that gives me these a martyrdom.”
“Grateful, eh? What have you to be grateful for?” asked the old lady
cynically. “You have shelter and food, but you earn them, I’ll be
bound. You work early and late for the pitiful sum of forty pounds a
year. That is what you get, is it not?”
“No, ma’am. I am young and inexperienced, and I needed the place so
much, so I get but twenty pounds a year.”
“Bless my soul!” cried the old lady. “Because you needed the place so
much, you get only half price! That is just like Laura Blight. How came
you to be so friendless?”
“After my father’s death,” said Lally, “I taught music in the school in
which I had been educated. The school broke up, the proprietors being
advanced in life and being able to retire from labor, and I was thrown
adrift. I was obliged to do anything I could get to do. I lived for
some weeks or months with an old woman who was seamstress to a boys’
school, and when she died I was out of work again, and came down into
Kent and worked in the hop-fields. I was so hungry--”
“Do you hear that, Peters?” interrupted the old lady, turning savagely
upon her attendant, her bright black eyes beaded with tears. “Do you
hear it, and sit there unmoved? She was hungry, while my servants flung
away the dainties from my table, and I grumbled because they could
not contrive newer delicacies to tempt my appetite. Hungry? Homeless?
Friendless? Heaven be merciful to me! Hungry! Ah-h!”
“That is all past now, madam,” said Lally softly.
“To begin again when Laura Blight chooses to send you packing! She’s
full of caprices, is Laura. You’re not sure of a place here over night,
unless her interest bids her keep you. How much money have you laid up?”
“Mrs. Blight advanced me five pounds, my first quarter’s salary, and I
have eighteen shillings remaining,” answered Lally.
“Humph. Eighteen shillings between you and the union. Look me in the
eye, Lally.”
The young girl obeyed, looking into Mrs. Wroat’s piercing eyes with a
steady, honest, unflinching gaze, although the color fluttered in and
out of her cheeks, as a bird flutters in and out of its cage.
“Have you ever done anything in your life of which you are ashamed?”
asked the old lady, in a low, sternly anxious voice.
“No, ma’am,” answered the girl truthfully, “I never have.”
“What do you think of her, Peters?” demanded Mrs. Wroat, turning to her
maid and confidant.
The woman was crying behind her handkerchief. She had hard features,
but her heart was warm and soft. She answered sobbingly:
“I think, ma’am, as you’d ought to take her and adopt her, and make her
your heiress--that’s what I think, poor, pretty dear!”
“Shows your sense, Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat. “You’re a woman of a
thousand, Peters, and I’ll double the annuity I’m going to give you.
Girl, come and sit here on the stool at my feet.”
Lally came forward and sat down as directed.
“I am alone in the world, except for my good old Peters,” said Mrs.
Wroat, with a quiver of her pointed, up-turned chin. “These people here
think only of what they can make out of me--of the fortune they hope to
inherit at my death. I am old, and very near my end. I should like to
leave my money to one of my own kindred, and to one who would really
mourn a little for me when I am gone. I’m a queer old woman, Lally,
full of notions, and so cross that any one but Peters would have given
me up long ago; but, strange as it may seem, the good soul actually
loves me. She’s been in my service five and thirty years, and she’s
more a friend to me than a servant. Now, Lally, do you think you could
ever love me? It’s odd, I own, but even a dried-up old woman like me
sometimes yearns to be loved.”
Her voice trembled, and tears brimmed over the bright black eyes, and
her sharp features were convulsed in sudden emotion. She looked at
Lally with a strange wistfulness and yearning, and Lally’s desolate,
frozen soul thawed within her, and with a great sob she sprang up and
threw her arms around her aged kinswoman, and kissed her fervently and
tenderly.
“I have no one to love,” whispered the girl, sobbing. “I would love you
if you would let me.”
A paroxysm of coughing seized upon the old lady, and Lally shrank back
affrighted into her seat. Peters patted her mistress gently on her back
and gave her water to drink, and she soon recovered, sinking back upon
her cushions, tired and panting.
“I am near the end, my dear,” she said, when she could command her
voice. “I may live weeks, or it may be months; but the time is short. I
like you, Lally, and I am going to adopt you and make you my heiress.
You shall change your name to mine, and be known as Lally Wroat, and at
my death you shall inherit my fifty thousand pounds. And all I ask of
you, Lally, is to love me a little, and try to be a daughter to me. I
never had a daughter of my own.”
Lally raised the old lady’s hand reverently to her lips.
“I am afraid all this happiness is not for me, madam,” she said
bravely. “I am not what you think me, and you may not deem me fit to
inherit your wealth. I--I have been married!”
“Peters, the girl’s head is turned.”
“No, madam, I speak the truth. I am pure in the sight of God, but I am
a disowned wife.”
“A wife--at seventeen?”
“Yes, madam. After I lost my situation as music teacher I was married
to a young gentleman, just from Oxford, where he had been educated. He
was only twenty years old, and we were married by license. He worked to
support us, having talent as an artist, and we struggled along together
until his father discovered our marriage and separated us, declaring
the marriage null and void, his son being under twenty-one years of
age. We were married in good faith; we loved each other; and Rufus was
good, although he made oath that he was of age in order to secure the
marriage license. His father threatened to prosecute him for perjury if
he did not give me up; and he gave me up.”
“And who is this precious youth?” asked Mrs. Wroat.
Lally replied by telling her story precisely as it had occurred,
excusing the conduct of her young husband as well as she could, and
displaying in every look and word how passionately she still loved him.
“So the young man is poor, but of good birth and connections, and
university bred?” commented Mrs. Wroat. “Well, Lally, my opinion is
that your husband is not free from you, but that he will have to have
recourse to law to secure his freedom. We’ll consult my London lawyer
when we get up to town, and we’ll see about the young man. I’m afraid
he’s a poor stick; but we’ll see--we’ll see. I haven’t changed my mind
about adopting you, and I shall immediately assume a guardianship over
you. You will quit Mrs. Blight’s service to-morrow. Peters, how soon
can we go back to town?”
“At the end of the week, ma’am, if you like,” responded Peters,
brightening.
“So be it then. Pack your trunk, Lally. You will finish your stay in
this house as my adopted daughter and future heiress, and to-morrow
you and Peters shall go out shopping--”
Mrs. Wroat paused, as a knock was heard at the door.
“Open the door, Peters,” commanded the old lady. “It’s Laura Blight.”
Before Peters could obey, the door opened from without, and Mrs.
Blight, her chains tinkling and her red silk gown rustling, came into
the room as airily as the rotund proportions of her figure would permit.
Her glances fell upon Lally, who was still sitting at the feet of her
great-aunt, and Mrs. Blight’s face showed her surprise and displeasure.
“I didn’t hear the piano, dear Aunt Wroat,” she exclaimed, “and I
feared my governess might not have obeyed my order and come in to you.
Miss Bird, I fear you forget your place. You are not a guest in this
house--you are merely a hired servant. If you try, like a treacherous
viper, to creep into the good graces of my poor unsuspecting relative,
I shall dismiss you in the morning. You are to play upon the piano, and
then go to your room.”
The old lady’s yellow and bony hand was stretched out and laid
caressingly on Lally’s black hair.
“I was talking to the child, Laura,” she said. “I have been hearing her
history. Don’t you remember that I’ve been trying for years to find my
niece, Clara Bird, or her children? Well, this girl is Clara’s child--”
A look of fear and anger disfigured Mrs. Blight’s face. The girl
became, upon the instant, a terror to her.
“Aunt Wroat,” said the lawyer’s wife hastily, “this girl is a mere
imposter that I took in out of charity. She has deceived you. Miss
Bird, go to your room at once. To-morrow morning you leave my house.”
“Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat quietly, “give me my purse.”
Peters brought a plethoric pocket-book from her mistress’
traveling-bag, and the old lady took out a five-pound Bank of England
note.
“Give that to Mrs. Blight, Peters,” continued the old lady calmly.
“Mrs. Blight, that is the amount you advanced to my great-niece when
she entered your service. I do not wish her to be indebted to you. And
here are twenty pounds to reimburse you for any expense I may have
put you to. I am sorry, Laura, to disappoint you,” added Mrs. Wroat,
putting her wallet in her pocket, “but you and your husband need the
lesson. I am not so deaf but that I heard every whisper you and your
husband exchanged in the drawing-room to-night. I am aware that you
consider me ‘an old cat,’ and ‘an old nuisance,’ and that you ‘would
send me to an alms-house, if it were not for my money.’ I have now only
to say to you that your heartlessness has met with its appropriate
reward. This young lady is my adopted daughter and future heiress, and
when you order a cab for her in the morning, you may let the boy come
up for my luggage also. I shall go with my adopted daughter.”