It did not occur to the girls in their inexperience to make any attempt
to find out who lived at No. 3, Grove Road. They got out of their cab at
the door of the house with a flutter of anxious and excited feeling, but
still without any thought that the stranger or strangers they were about
to see were anonymous, and that their only warrant in thus invading an
unknown house was the scrap of paper which they had brought with them as
their credentials. The house was a kind of villa, such as abound in the
suburbs, with shrubberies around it, and high hedges, and a green door,
between two smooth green lines of privet. They stood for a moment and
looked round them at the bare tree-tops rising all round against the
chilly blue sky; and the unfrequented road all overgrown with grass; and
the houses nearly hidden by these jealous hedges. The girls did not
understand this jealous privacy of suburban life, and they shivered a
little as they looked round, hearing nothing and seeing nothing. In the
morning Grove Road was alive with tradesmen’s carts, with nursery-maids
and children setting out for their walk on the heath, but in the
afternoon a dead silence fell upon it. The rooms in which the inmates
lived were on the other side, and here nothing was visible except a
blank range of windows over those green lines of hedge, broken only by
the still more absolute enclosure of the shut door. They looked at each
other, and thought of their father coming out here into the dark, into
the rain on that fatal night. They understood now how impossible it
would be for him to get either shelter or a carriage to bring him back.
“You would think there was spite in those dreadful doors,” said Grace,
“wouldn’t you, Milly? As if it would give them pleasure to shut
themselves tight and refuse all shelter; not a porch that any one could
stand under. Oh, when we used to hear of the English liking to be
private, we never thought of this!”
Milly looked at them mournfully too, and they both thought of the
different scenes they had been used to, with that comparison which it is
almost impossible for strangers not to make. Then Grace turned round
with a sudden impulse and pulled the bell, which they could hear make a
long but subdued tinkle just over the green door. But they had to wait
still for some minutes before there was any response. The moment the
deed was done, the bell rung and entrance demanded, Milly turned to her
sister with her usual “Oh!” of appeal.
“Who will you ask for?” she said.
It was a difficulty that never had occurred to them before; and in their
sense of this extraordinary deficiency they had almost fled, shyness
taking possession of them, and a sense of being altogether wrong and out
of all respectable use and wont. But, on the other hand, it was shabby
to run away, a trick not worthy of girls--a schoolboy crime. So they
stood trembling, half with cold, half with terror, and by-and-by heard
the opening of an inner door and steps approaching. If it had been a
solemn butler who had opened to them, even at that moment they would
have run away; but it was a pretty, smiling maid, with a white cap and
white apron, over whose countenance there passed an indefinable
sympathetic change as she saw first the two young faces, and then the
deep crape of their dresses. They were cheered and encouraged by this
mute sign, the freemasonry of youth and kindness.
“Is ---- at home?” said Grace falteringly.
The maid was too intent upon the aspect of the young creatures before
her to note that no name was uttered, but only a tremulous counterfeit
of sound.
“Missis is not at home, miss,” said the girl, with an air of sympathetic
regret. Then she added, “But Miss Anna is, and Mr Geoffrey, if one of
them would do.”
The girls looked at each other again with a swift mutual consultation.
“We should like to see Miss Anna, if you please,” said Grace.
And next moment they were within the house. They went along the shadowy
green passage into the hall, and through another corridor to the
drawing-room at the other side of the house, feeling as if they were in
a dream. This, then, was an English home--the first they had ever
penetrated into. It was an old house, not fresh and bright like those to
which they were accustomed; a house full of old furniture, old hangings,
old books. One or two doors were open, and they could not help glancing
in as they passed, with a spring of youthful curiosity not yet quenched.
When they got to the drawing-room they could scarcely restrain a cry of
surprise. It had three long windows opening to a garden at the other
side of the house. In front of them lay--all the world, as Grace
thought--a great blue distance, in the centre of which rose a smoke, and
a vision of distant towers and roofs--great London lying far below; and
close at hand a slope of green lawn, with further slopes beyond of
heath, and gorse, and dotted trees forming the foreground. This
wonderful panorama quite unreasonably lightened their hearts. They had a
long time to wait, but it was so full of curiosity and interest that it
did not seem long. At length they became aware of the sound of a step
coming slowly along the passages, a step accompanied by a little tap as
of a stick on the door. It kept them in tantalising expectation for a
minute--then turned aside, and there was again a pause. Finally the
little maid came again to the door and led the way into another room.
It was a smaller room, with the same extended landscape before the
window--a room very daintily furnished, lighted up with pretty china,
pictures, everything full of delicate colour and glimmers of reflection;
little mirrors hidden away in corners, shelves upon the dim walls with
dainty vases and cups, everything delicate, everything bright. They took
this in with one startled glance before their attention concentrated
upon the occupant of the room--a lady who rose slowly, supporting
herself with a stick, from a large easy-chair beside the fire. She rose
with difficulty, yet there was a sort of slow stately grace in the very
stiffness with which she moved. Was this Miss Anna? The hearts of Grace
and Milly leaped into their throats: they were awed, and dared scarcely
draw their breath. Ah, certainly this was England, the old country where
queens and princesses were possible. They almost forgot themselves, and
their trouble, and their sorrow, and all the strangeness of their
circumstances, as they gazed upon this unexpected sight.
Miss Anna was a woman about sixty, with perfectly white hair, and keen,
large, dark eyes. She was pale, but with a little evanescent colour, the
colour of weakness, as if the slight movement she had made had set the
blood in motion, and brought a faint rose tint to her cheeks; otherwise
she was like ivory finely cut, her nose a little aquiline, her forehead
softly shaded with the white, silvery lines of her hair. She was dressed
in soft satin, clinging to her in long folds, which was not the fashion
at the time, and, therefore, all the more impressive, and had on her
head a sort of lace veil, half shrouding her hair and falling over her
shoulders. Her dress had all the air of being studied and thought of,
though the faint, yellowish tinge of the lace, and the dark sheen of the
satin, wine-colour or plum-colour, were all the elements out of which
this effect was produced. But the simple girls who stood before her had
never seen anything like her, and the wonderful apparition took away
their breath. She, on her part, looked at them keenly with her
penetrating eyes--then she waved her hand towards two chairs set out in
front of her throne.
“You asked for me,” she said. “Sit down; I fear I have kept you
waiting.”
Grace and Milly were far too much excited to notice it--but, as a matter
of fact, this stately lady was excited too, and the look with which she
perused them, their faces, their mourning dresses, their whole
appearance, was unquestionably anxious--though this would have seemed to
them incredible, impossible. It was only when they sat down that they
perceived some one behind at the other end of the room--a man leaning
over a writing-table with his head turned away from them. Miss Anna sat
full in the light between the window and the fire. She repeated, with a
faint tremour of impatience, “You asked for me?”
“No,” said Grace--she would have liked to say madame, or my lady, or
something that would have shown her reverence; but was too shy, with all
her self-possession, to venture out of the beaten way. She sat down
timidly and folded her hands, and looked at her questioner with that
wistful, propitiating look, a faint smile quivering about her lips, her
eyes cast upwards with a shy but earnest appeal, which sits so prettily
upon extreme youth. “No,” she said, “indeed we did not even know your
name. We are very unfortunate girls in great trouble, and we found your
address among papa’s papers.”
“Who is your papa?”
Grace saw nothing but the old lady who gazed at her fixedly and riveted
her eyes; but Milly, who had no responsibility of speech, saw more than
her sister. She saw the man at the writing-table turn hastily round at
the sound of Grace’s voice, then rise and approach nearer. When he came
into the light she recollected that it was he who had come to them at
the hotel the day before.
“Ah,” said Grace, her mouth all quivering; “papa is----. We came over
from Canada----” Here, even she, absorbed in her story and the emotion
it occasioned, made an involuntary pause, seeing the lady start and look
over her head as if at some one behind with a curious look of alarm and
trouble. Was it only sympathy? Grace paused while you might count ten,
and then went on again--“only a fortnight since; and on Monday he died,
and left us all alone, all alone in this strange place. We thought--we
imagined that it was you he went to see the first night he was in
England----”
Here she stopped again; the lady’s mouth seemed to quiver too. “Many
people come to see me,” she said. “What was his name?”
“His name was Robert Yorke. We are his daughters; I am Grace, and this
is Milly--we are the two eldest,” said the girl, still with the same
pathetic smile about her mouth, and a look which appealed unconsciously
for help and pity.
Miss Anna eyed them all the time with eyes that seemed to pierce them
through and through. “This is a very sad story,” she said. There was a
quiver in her voice which meant real suffering, not mere pity; but her
words were not so tender as this emotion might have indicated; there was
no effusiveness of kindness in them. “You are left, then, without
friends, without resources? I feel for you very much; but I have a great
many applicants----”
Grace started to her feet, pressing her hands together almost with
violence. “Oh!” she said, “If you think we are coming to you for
charity----”
“Aunt Anna,” said the young man, coming forward, “these are the young
ladies whom I saw yesterday; if they are so kind, in their own trouble,
as to bring us some information, some clue----”
Miss Anna made him an almost imperceptible sign, in which an anxious
desire to keep him silent was mingled with the utmost intolerance of
impatience. The young man stopped short suddenly; and Milly, who was the
spectator of all, taking no other part, saw vaguely this transaction
carried on over their heads, and wondered, though she did not know what
it could mean.
But Grace perceived nothing at all: for once her perceptions were
dulled; the tears in her eyes blinded her, scalding as they were with
indignation, and the quick passionate shame with which so young a
creature is apt to feel and resent a humiliating judgment. She continued
vehemently, “We are not asking anything--we have money enough; we are
rich enough: if that is what you mean.”
“I did not mean to be unkind,” said the stately lady. “Sit down, do not
be impatient. Geoffrey, I think we can dispense with your presence.
These young ladies will be more at their ease with me alone.”
He had pressed forward, in spite of her prohibition. He was a little
like her, though not so handsome; but there was no mistaking the honest
sympathy and feeling in his eyes. Both the girls turned to him with a
conviction that here at least was a friend. A sort of faint half-smile
of recognition passed between them. “Oh, is it you?” said Grace
unawares. They seemed in this enchanted house, in this strange
audience-chamber, to have encountered at last some one of their own
species, some one who would stand by them. They looked at him with an
anxious, unspoken entreaty not to go away; and he reassured them by the
faintest movement of his head.
“I think,” he said, “it will be better if I stay.”
“I think otherwise,” said Miss Anna; but she said no more to him, and
made no further objection. “Sit down,” she said, touching the chair from
which Grace had risen, with her stick. “You must not be offended; I
meant no harm. I should not have thought any worse of you had you come
to me for help, and I don’t think any better of you for being well off.
I am sorry for you all the same. But tell me why you came to me. No,
wait a little, you can tell me presently. In the meantime, Geoffrey, you
can ring for tea.”
He did it without a word, standing before the fire contemplating the
group. The girls did not know what it all meant; but gradually it dawned
upon them with a strange sensation that they were not the principals
here, but that a veiled and hidden conflict was going on between the
two strangers, who appeared to share this luxurious home, and who were
somehow, they could not tell how, connected with themselves and their
concerns. The innocent commonplace request to ring for the tea had, they
felt, if they could but understand it, a much more serious meaning than
appeared. Geoffrey obeyed, but they felt very grateful to him that he
showed no intention of going away.
And then there was a curious pause.