It was just before twelve o’clock next morning when Miss Merivale reached
Cadogan Mansions. She told the cabman to wait, and walked slowly up the
long flights of stone steps.
About half-way up, she met a girl coming down, with light springing steps,
buttoning a pair of shabby dogskin gloves. Her dress was shabby too, and
the little black straw hat had seen long service; but Miss Merivale only
noticed her bonnie face. It brightened the dreary staircase like a gleam
of sunshine.
It never struck her that this was the girl she had come to see. From
Pauline’s words the day before, she had pictured Rhoda Sampson as a very
different sort of girl.
The flat was at the top of the high buildings, and Miss Merivale was out
of breath by the time she reached the neat front door with the electric
bell. She had not long to wait before her ring was answered by Mrs.
Richards, a thin, careworn woman, who ushered her into the sitting-room
where Miss Desborough sat at her writing-table.
She jumped up, with her pen in her hand. “Miss Merivale, what a delightful
surprise! Is Rose with you? I was so sorry to miss you yesterday, but I
had to go to a committee meeting. I have more work on my hands just now
than I can do. Would you mind my just finishing this letter for the post?
It is very important. I shall not be five minutes.”
Miss Merivale, who had seen Clare running about the garden at Woodcote
three summers before with her hair flying, was considerably taken aback by
her extremely “grown-up” manner. She sat meekly down on the sofa and
waited for the letter to be finished.
“There, it’s done!” Clare exclaimed, after a moment or two. “Now I will
just give it to Mrs. Richards, and we can have a little talk. Pauline will
be back in half an hour,” She glanced as she spoke at a tiny clock on the
writing-table. “Then after lunch I must rush off to Southwark. I shall
find a big mothers’ meeting waiting for me. The women bring their
needlework, and I talk to them. Last week we considered Food Stuffs in
reference to young children, and this afternoon I am going to discuss
Herbert Spencer’s Theory of Education.”
“Dear me! these sound very difficult subjects for you, my dear,” said Miss
Merivale, trying to repress a laugh as she looked at Clare’s serious young
face. “They must need a great deal of preparation.”
“Yes, that is the worst of it. I haven’t time for any study. We workers
lead very busy lives, Miss Merivale. I am rushing all day from one thing
to another, feeling all the time that I ought to be doing something else.”
It suggested itself to Miss Merivale that work undertaken in that hurried
fashion must do more harm than good; but she was too eager to speak of
Rhoda Sampson to think much of anything else. “You have someone to help
you, Miss Smythe told us yesterday,” she said. “Someone who typewrites
your letters.”
“Oh, Miss Sampson? Yes, she is an energetic little thing. But she has
vexed me to-day. I particularly wanted her this afternoon, and she has
asked for a holiday. Her little cousin is ill, and she wants to take him
into the country somewhere. She has just gone. You must have met her on
the stairs.”
Miss Merivale started. “Yes, I met someone coming down. Was that Miss
Sampson? Then she is not coming back to-day? I wanted some programmes
typewritten. Could you give me her address?”
“Yes, I have it here somewhere. But she will be here on Monday. I will
speak to her, if you like I shall be glad to get her some work; for after
next week I shall not want her, though I have not told her so yet. Mother
is coming home rather sooner than we expected, and I am going back to
Desborough with her.”
“Indeed? You will be sorry to give up your work, won’t you, my dear?”
asked Miss Merivale mechanically, as she watched Clare turning over her
address-book.
“Mother has promised that I shall come back later on and stay with Aunt
Metcalfe. I shall like that better than this. One gets tired of a flat
after a time. But here is Miss Sampson’s address. Will you write to her,
or shall I tell her what you want?”
“I will go there now,” Miss Merivale said, her hand closing eagerly on the
slip of paper Clare gave her. “She has just come from Australia, Miss
Smythe said.”
“Yes; they have been in England a few months only. I know nothing more of
her. But she is a good little thing. Pauline does not like her, but
Pauline is too critical sometimes. I notice that she is strangely lacking
in sympathy towards girls of Miss Sampson’s class.”
It was a long drive from Chelsea to Acacia Road, Kentish Town. Miss
Merivale knew London very little, though she had lived near it all her
life, and the dreary, respectable streets she drove through after leaving
Oxford Street behind her oppressed her even more than Whitechapel had done
in her one visit to it with Tom, the year before, to see a loan collection
of pictures. Street after street of blank, drab-faced houses--dull,
unsmiling houses! She thought of children growing up there, wan and
joyless, like plants kept out of the sun. And then two happy-eyed boys
came running by with their satchels under their arms, while a door opened
and a woman with a smiling mother-face came out to welcome them. And Miss
Merivale confessed to herself the mistake she had been making. Where love
is, even a dull London street has its sunshine.
Acacia Road was reached at last, and the cab drew up before a small
bow-windowed house that had a card, “Apartments to Let,” over the hall
door. A little servant with a dirty apron and a merry face opened the
door, and two boys with bright red pinafores came rushing from the
sitting-room behind her.
Miss Sampson wasn’t in, but her aunt, Mrs. M’Alister, was, the smiling
servant-maid told Miss Merivale, and led the way into the front
sitting-room. The boys ran upstairs. Miss Merivale heard them shouting to
their mother that a lady wanted her, and she sat down on a chair near the
door, trembling all over.
The room was the ordinary lodging-house sitting-room; but though there was
a litter of toys on the worn carpet, it had evidently been carefully swept
and dusted that morning, and there was a brown jug filled with fresh
daffodils on the centre table. On the side table near Miss Merivale there
was a pile of books. She looked at the titles as she waited for a step on
the stairs--_The Civil Service Geography, Hamblin Smith’s Arithmetic_, one
or two French Readers, a novel by George MacDonald, and a worn edition of
Longfellow’s Poems. Miss Merivale wondered if they all belonged to Rhoda.
She was not kept waiting very long. Almost before she had finished looking
at the books she heard someone coming down the stairs, and the door opened
to admit a tall, angular woman, whose brown hair was thickly streaked with
grey. Miss Merivale found herself unable to begin at once to make the
inquiries she had come to make, and fell back on the programmes she wanted
typewritten. Mrs. M’Alister eagerly promised that Rhoda would undertake
the work. She had not a typewriter of her own, but a friend would lend the
use of hers, and Miss Merivale might rely on the work being done
punctually.
“It is very kind of Miss Desborough to recommend Rhoda,” she said in her
anxious voice. “It is difficult to get work in London, we find.”
“You have lately come from Australia, have you not?” asked Miss Merivale
gently.
Mrs. M’Alister was too simple-minded to discern the profound agitation
that lay beneath Miss Merivale’s quiet manner. And the kind voice and
kind, gentle face of her visitor led her to be more confidential than was
her wont with strangers.
“Yes, we came back just before Christmas. When my husband died, I felt I
must come home. My brothers offered to help me with the boys. Rhoda has
taken the youngest down to one of his uncles to-day. But it’s only in
Essex; she will be back to-night.”
She said the last words hurriedly, as if afraid of wearying her visitor.
She little knew how Miss Merivale was hanging on her words.
“Your niece must be a great comfort to you,” Miss Merivale said, after a
moment’s pause. “Has she always lived with you?”
“As good as always. She wasn’t five when we had her first. Her father was
our nearest neighbour; we were living up in the hills then, fifty miles
from a town. She used to stay with us for days together while her father
went off after cattle. And when he died we brought her home for good. I
haven’t a girl of my own, but I’ve never known what it is to miss one.
Rhoda’s no kith or kin to us, but she has been a daughter to me, all the
same, and a sister to the boys. We’ve had a hard fight since we came home,
for my brothers have been unfortunate lately, and are not able to help us
as they wanted to; but Rhoda hasn’t lost heart for a moment.”
Mrs. M’Alister had been drawn into making this long speech by the eager
look of interest she saw in Miss Merivale’s face; but now she stopped
short, her pale face flushing a little. She felt afraid lest Miss Merivale
might think she was asking for help.
“Then I suppose she had no relatives of her own?” asked Miss Merivale,
after a pause, in which she had been struggling for her voice.
“She had some on her mother’s side. I never heard their names. But her
father seemed certain that they would be unkind to the child, and he was
thankful when we promised to keep her. He was a queer, silent sort of man.
We never knew much about him, except that he had lived in Adelaide. But he
was mother and father both to Rhoda. He was just wrapped up in her. It was
a pretty sight to see them together.”
There were many questions Miss Merivale would have liked to ask, but she
had not the courage to. She was afraid of betraying herself. She no longer
felt any doubt about Rhoda’s parentage. James Sampson had not perished in
the bush, but had hidden himself in that lonely spot up among the hills,
where either no news of the will had reached him, or he had deliberately
refrained from communicating with England. Perhaps he thought that his
girl would be happier with the kind M’Alisters than with her rich English
relatives.
But the most probable supposition was that he had never heard of the will.
Mrs. M’Alister had said that they were living fifty miles from a town. How
easily it might have happened that the advertisements they put in the
Melbourne papers had never been seen by him.
As soon as she could she got away, after arranging that Rhoda should bring
the programmes to Woodcote one day in the following week, so that she
might talk over with her the details of some other work she wanted done.
Miss Merivale marvelled at herself for the calmness with which she settled
all this.
But when once she was in the cab her strength left her. After telling the
man to drive her to Victoria, she sank back faint and trembling. The
alternatives that lay before her seemed equally impossible. If Rhoda was
Lydia’s child, her own niece, her successor to Woodcote, how could she
leave her unacknowledged? How could she be silent about the discovery she
had made, even for a day? And as Miss Merivale thought this she stretched
her hand to the check-string, determining to drive at once to Lincoln’s
Inn to see her lawyer.
But her hand dropped at her side. All his life Tom had thought of Woodcote
as his inheritance; every stone, every blade of grass, was dear to him. He
would have to leave it, to go out into the world to fight for his living.
How could she let him go? If she was silent, no one would be likely to
guess that Rhoda was Lydia’s child. She was not mentioned by name in the
will. And she should not suffer. Ways and means of providing for her could
be found. But she could not have Woodcote. That was Tom’s. It would break
Tom’s heart to give it up.
As Miss Merivale thought of Tom her heart grew hard against Rhoda. She who
had never hated anyone felt herself in danger of hating Lydia’s little
girl. Tears burst from her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. She did not
think of wiping them away. She sat with her hands clasped on her lap,
staring miserably in front of her. What she was to do she did not know.