The girls were now as eager to go away as they had been to come; they
would scarcely wait for the cab which was sent for, and they paid very
little attention to the anxious civilities of Mrs Underwood and
Geoffrey, who conducted them to the door and put them into the carriage,
making every kind of wistful endeavour to obliterate the impression made
upon their minds by the other member of the family. Grace and Milly were
in too great haste to consult each other, to compare notes, and to
realise this strange new complication in their lives, to have their ears
open to Mrs Underwood’s apologies.
“You must not mind Anna,” she said in an undertone, as she led them into
the hall, with its dark oaken furniture and scanty light, out of the
warm and softened brightness of Miss Anna’s room. “She has always been
used to having her own way; she cannot bear to be contradicted. When she
takes anything into her head it is so difficult to convince her; oh, she
is a great deal cleverer than I am, that is true; but she will not be
convinced when she has taken a thing into her head.”
This little explanatory stream of talk seemed to flow round them as they
went to the door, but they paid very little attention to it. They
scarcely heard Mrs Underwood’s promise to go and see them at their hotel
next day; and they submitted with a little surprise rather than accepted
with any pleasure her offer of kindness, when she took each in
succession by the hand and kissed her, with a mixture of nervous
timidity and affection. “If it is so, we are relations,” she said almost
under her breath; “and if it is not so, my poor dears, my poor children,
my heart bleeds for you all the same.” The water trembling in her eyes
and the quaver of her voice showed the good woman’s sincerity; but the
girls were scarcely moved by it, so full were their minds of this
discovery, which they did not understand. As for Geoffrey, he said
nothing at all; he shut the door of the cab and lingered for a moment
looking at them wistfully, but that was all. There was in his face a
pained consciousness of the difference between his own position and
theirs. He, with his home behind him, and all the long-established
household gods which had protected him all his life; while the other
two, so much younger, feebler, and less able to shift for themselves,
had nothing but the cold foreign shelter of a hotel to go back upon. He
stood bareheaded in the rain, which, to complete the resemblance with
their father’s visit to this place, began to drizzle down continuously
out of the dim persistent skies; and his face was the last thing they
saw, gazing compassionately after them as they disappeared into the
darkness. They were too much preoccupied even to notice this--at least
Grace was too much preoccupied. Milly for her part saw him very well,
but said nothing. Her mind too was full of other thoughts--yet not so
full but that she could remark this quietly to herself.
But though they thus left Grove Road in great excitement they were not
disappointed. If they had found themselves simply mistaken, and that
nothing was known there of their father or his visit, they would have
fallen from an eminence of hope, which in present circumstances they had
by no means lost. Had they been received with kind indulgence as
strangers, rousing no hostile or any other kind of feeling, but simply a
little surprise, they would have been cruelly disappointed; but the
excitement of seeing themselves regarded with alarm as dangerous
intruders, so important as to be perilous to family peace, flattered
them in the most subtle way. As they went slowly down the hill, jolting
over the stones, their hearts were fluttered by a sense of dignity which
they had never felt before. They laid their girlish heads together as
they had been longing to do since ever they set foot in that strange
enchanted place. What could it be? what solemn inheritance, what great
fortune, to justify the panic which they had seen by movements beneath
all the glitter and bravado of Miss Anna’s words? Between that exciting
and wonderful idea and the associations with their father of which the
darkling road seemed full, their minds were transported altogether out
of their own trouble and raised into an atmosphere of high interest and
responsibility. It would depend, they thought, upon how they now behaved
whether their whole position might be changed. They were well off
enough; there was no want in their house, nor had they any reason to
suppose that their father’s death would leave them destitute. But there
was a great difference between that state of ordinary and commonplace
comfort, and this dazzling probability. It might have been a vacant
principality, almost a throne, from the way in which Grace and Milly
contemplated it. They felt as if their former life had been stopped, and
that something new, altogether unrealised and unrealisable, awaited them
in the future. “If we only knew what to do; if we could only decide on
what is best,” Grace said. That was the difficulty now. This morning
there had seemed nothing before them but a patient, melancholy waiting
for their mother’s sad letter, and the news of her arrangements for
their return to her; now they thought no longer of the voyage home or of
anything connected with it, but of what to do and say as representatives
of their father, and heads, so to speak, of the family, working on
their behalf. “It will change everything,” Grace said again
thoughtfully. “Instead of all of us being alike, Lenny--Lenny will be
the heir. That is one thing that gives a likelihood to it,” she added,
sinking her voice as if the cab-driver might perhaps hear and report the
matter. “His name, Milly! I never thought of it till a few minutes ago.
Lenny; of course he is Leonard; and when you think of it, papa had
Leonard in his name too.”
“I thought of it directly,” said Milly, with a little satisfaction.
Grace, in her excitement, threw her arms round her sister. “It is you
who ought to be the first of us two,” said Grace admiringly. “It is true
that I am the eldest--but so many things occur to you that never come
into my head.”
“It is because I have the time to think while you are talking,” Milly
said with modesty; but she was not displeased with this testimony to her
superior insight. She added, with a little awe: “Gracie, I wonder if
_that_--is our real name?”
This was a question that took away the breath of both. They looked at
each other almost with an inclination to laugh, then stopped short and
mutually contemplated the impulse with horror. “It is dreadful,” said
Milly, “isn’t it, to have a false name?”
“I don’t know,” said Grace, who had been so indignant an hour ago at the
suggestion; “it cannot be so very dreadful if papa did it. He must have
had his reasons for taking another name. There are reasons that account
for everything.” Her momentary humility had disappeared by this time,
and she felt equal to explaining all mysteries to her sister in her
usual way. “He must have been wronged somehow when he left home. I
suspect that Miss Anna, Milly; I am sure she is at the bottom of
everything. She must have told lies of him, or invented stories; and
then perhaps he was disinherited, and the money given to her. It would
not be money; it would be lands or an estate--perhaps a fine old house.”
Then they paused and looked at each other for a moment. “If that was how
it was, and we got it back, mamma would certainly have to come home
_then_.”
“But it could not be for all of us; it would only be for Lenny,” said
Milly doubtfully.
“Lenny is only fifteen; he would not be of age for ever so long. And
then it is always stipulated,” said Grace, “that when people have
estates, what is called a great stake in the country, they should be
educated in the country and made to understand it.” Insensibly she drew
herself up, holding her head higher at the thought--“Mamma would not
like it; but she would do what was best for Lenny----”
“Then I suppose--” Milly said, and now in spite of herself the smallest
little laugh, instantly repented of, burst from her. She looked at her
sister in great alarm, with a portentously serious countenance. “I
suppose,” she repeated, as if, instead of something ridiculous, this had
been the most solemn suggestion in the world, “that Lenny--will be the
one of us that will be important now.”
So full was Grace of the seriousness of this thought, that she replied,
without taking any notice of that guilty laugh, only by an inclination
of her head: “We will have to learn all about the English laws, and how
things are managed, for Lenny’s sake,” she said seriously. “He will be a
magistrate, you know, and most likely in Parliament; and he will be
rather behind by losing so much time in Canada. We will have to coach
him up.”
“Oh but, Gracie, I don’t know things myself; I never was able to do
that.”
“I must begin directly,” said Grace with a little sigh--the sigh of the
self-devoted. “It was such a business--don’t you remember, Milly?--to
coach him for school; and England--England is a great deal more
difficult. I think I must begin Greek directly, and law--or he will
never know his lessons. I hope mamma will see that it is her duty,
Milly, to come at once,” she added still more seriously. Milly for one
second was inclined to laugh again at the portentous and preposterous
importance of her young brother, but then she recollected herself, and
the tears filled her eyes.
“Oh, poor mamma!” she cried, “poor mamma! to come now!”
This turned once more the current of their thoughts. But when they got
back to their hotel the argument was resumed: for it soon became an
argument maintained with great heat on one side, with an unimaginable
gentle obstinacy on the other. Milly, who never went against her
sister’s will, was for once in opposition, and though she was not strong
enough to subdue Grace, she did not yield to her.
They had begun languidly and mournfully to arrange their father’s papers
in the morning. Now Grace betook herself to this pursuit with passion.
She found nothing: some fragments of torn letters, torn up into very
small pieces, on one of which the name of “Anna” occurred, lay in the
bottom of his dressing bag; but Grace was not sufficiently skilled in
the art of detection to join them together as a more experienced
investigator might have done. And it revolted her to pry into what the
dead man had thus wished to conceal. In all his other stores there was
not a word which even suggested any information. He had scrawled, “3
Grove Road,” on a page of his blotting-paper, and twice over in other
places, as if afraid of forgetting it. When she came to a little diary
he had kept she paused with a sensation of awe. She had seen it a
hundred times--had seen it lying open, and knew that no special sanctity
was attributed to it. It was nothing but a little record of events and
engagements; but when the hand is still that has scribbled these
careless memoranda, how strangely their character changes! She took it
to where Milly sat, and placed herself on the sofa beside her. “I cannot
read this by myself,” she said.
“Oh, why should we read it at all, Grace? If papa had wanted us to know
he would have told us.”
“Hush! even papa shall not make me suffer injustice!” cried the excited
girl. But when the little book was opened it gave but the scantiest
information. There was one entry since the landing in England, and no
more; and this was all it contained:--
“Same name in directory, at old address; to go first thing and inquire.”
Grace gave a little cry when she read this; it seemed to her to tell all
she wanted--and yet it told nothing. “It is quite clear,” she cried in
her mistaken little triumph. Milly looked at it too with all the feeling
that it was an important revelation. Then they cried a little over the
foolish little events of the voyage, all set down there, with that
strange unconsciousness of what was coming, which makes death so doubly
terrible to the survivors. If he had but known, surely he would have put
something in that little record to console, to elevate, to calm the
survivors, to whom his every word was so soon to be sacred! But he did
not know, and put down nothing except “Wind so-and-so; a little fog in
the morning. Captain’s birthday; champagne at dinner,” and such other
trifles. They folded it carefully away in paper and sealed it, with an
ache at their hearts. Oh, if he had but known! and so told them
something, left them some information, if it had only been a task to do!
“But there is something to do!” Grace cried; “this that he began; and I
will never, never give it up till Lenny has his rights! He is papa’s
heir.”