“You know, Madame, we consider that you’ve treated us very badly,”
began Pamela, as soon as they were inside the room.
“Have I, dear? How?” asked Audrey, trying to smile, and meanwhile
wondering who were in the rooms at the back, the shut-up rooms which
Mademoiselle Laure kept to herself. Was Mr. Candover there? And Laure?
And was it safe to converse within these walls at all?
She looked into the inner showroom, and, finding nobody there, drew
open the curtains, and placed herself in such a position that she
could see, by the big mirrors against the wall, any one who might
enter from the back part of the premises. Then she beckoned the girls
to come close to her, and sitting down on a big Chesterfield settee,
she placed herself between them and took a hand of each.
“On second thoughts,” said Pamela, “I think I won’t scold you after
all, as I meant to do, because you look worried. Aren’t you happy,
dear? What’s the matter? Is it anything you can tell us?”
And Babs, from the other side, echoed the question, as they hung round
her, and looked with their innocent young eyes into her harassed face.
“Well, yes, dears, I am a good deal worried just now. But--no, it’s
nothing I can tell you about,” said she. “Now for my crimes. Pamela,
what have I done to displease you?”
“Well, you know you promised to see----”
“Hush. Speak lower.”
“You promised to see the woman who said she was our mother, and to
write to us afterwards.”
“Yes. And I did see her.”
“But you didn’t write to us afterwards!”
There was a pause. Audrey felt the tears coming into her eyes.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I--I was very busy. You know I--I left ‘The Briars,’ and--then I met
my husband again unexpectedly--I suppose you haven’t heard of that?”
The girls clung to her, all excitement and interest.
“Oh, how beautiful for you! Tell us about it! Is he----”
They did not like to finish the question, but Audrey, holding their
fingers tightly in hers, said:--
“Yes, yes, he’s not many yards away from us at this moment.”
“Oh, how glad you must be!” They kissed her, congratulating her,
rejoicing with her, till poor Audrey, knowing the awful burden of a
secret concerning their own father which she had to bear and to keep
from them if she could, could scarcely refrain from a burst of tears.
“But you don’t look as happy as you ought!”
“He’s been ill--he’s not strong yet.”
“Never mind. He’ll be all right soon, now he’s got _you_! Will you
tell us all about it, or would you rather not just yet?”
“Hush, Pamela, don’t chatter so much. You’re making her cry,” said
Babs.
“Am I? Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to do that.”
Audrey, who did not know which was the more painful of the two,
listening to their pretty congratulations on her happiness, or to
their questions about their unknown mother, tried to control her
emotion, and said:--
“No, no, I’ve been through an exciting time this morning, seeing a
lawyer, and--and other things. Now go on, dears, tell me what you’ve
come to see me about.”
“Well, then, I must go back to the beginning,” said Pamela. “We waited
and waited to hear from you after you’d seen this lady, and then Miss
Willett heard from her, I think, for she seemed much disturbed, and
she wrote to papa. And she wouldn’t tell us what he answered, but
yesterday a lady came to Miss Willett’s and said that she was our
aunt----”
“Your aunt!” interrupted Audrey sharply.
“Yes. She said she was sent by papa to take us away to live with her
at ‘The Briars’----”
“The Briars!”
Audrey forgot her prudence, and uttered the word in a high key.
“Yes, yes, the house where you were staying.”
“Go on, go on.”
“She wanted us to go with her at once, but Miss Willett, though, as
she told us afterwards, she had heard from papa that our aunt was to
fetch us away from school, didn’t like to let us go.”
“The truth was,” put in Babs bluntly, “that Miss Willett didn’t like
the look of this aunt of ours any more than we did.”
“What was she like then?” asked Audrey quickly.
“Oh, I can’t tell you exactly what it was about her that we didn’t
like, but she was hard and cold and repellant, even though she
pretended to be delighted with us.”
“Who is this aunt? I didn’t know you had one!”
“Well, we did know just that, but we hadn’t seen her for so many years
that we’d forgotten her. She’s papa’s sister.”
“Did she speak French or English?” asked Audrey.
The girls looked surprised.
“Oh, English, of course,” said Pamela.
Who then was this fresh personage, thought Audrey?
“So Miss Willett refused to let us go, saying we were not ready at
such short notice, and our aunt went away. Then this morning Miss
Willett brought us up to town and took us to papa’s flat in Victoria
Street, but he wasn’t there. Three or four friends of his were waiting
for him, and when we had been there a little while, Babs and I asked
Miss Willett if we might get in a hansom and come here to see you. And
at last she said yes, and so we came.”
“But my dear girls, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, first we want you to tell us what you thought of the--the lady
who came to see you. Did you think”--and Pamela put her lips close to
Audrey’s ear--“she was really our mother?”
Audrey’s fingers quivered in those of the two girls.
They must know the truth sooner or later, even if, as she began to
suspect, they had not some notion of it already.
“What did Miss Willett think?” she asked evasively.
Pamela whispered again:--
“She thinks she _is_. But oh, Madame, she--she told us--that if what
the lady says is true--then--then papa has not treated her well!”
Audrey gave a sigh of relief. Gently as the words were put, there was
a suggestion in Pamela’s intelligent eyes that she knew or guessed
more than she liked to say. Audrey took the girl’s hand and pressed it
to her breast, and said in a low voice:--
“My dear, I’m afraid--very much afraid, you may find that’s true.”
Then Pamela said:--
“It’s awkward for us, isn’t it? Papa has been kind to us, but--we want
to see our mother. And--neither Miss Willett nor we like Miss
Candover. Now what are we to do? What can you do to help us? Do you
think papa would listen to you?”
“I’m _sure_ he wouldn’t,” answered Audrey with decision. “But we must
find out something about this aunt before we let her have the care of
you two girls.”
There was a pause and they all three sat, with anxiety on their faces,
while Audrey debated with herself as to the steps she ought to take.
Should she send the girls back to Miss Willett at the flat in Victoria
Street, with a note advising her to take the girls at once to Windsor
with her, and a warning not to let them go out of her custody on any
account?
Against this plan there was the fear that the “three or four friends”
spoken of by Pamela as waiting for Mr. Candover at the flat might
really be persons whom it was better that the girls should not meet.
Mr. Candover was evidently desperate, to have conceived the idea of
shooting Gerard. Might it not be that the “friends” were really
detectives waiting for an opportunity to arrest him?
The possibility was not lightly to be dismissed. And Audrey was on the
point of suggesting that she should telegraph to Miss Willett or
dispatch a messenger to ask her to meet them at Paddington station,
when her attention was attracted by the sound of a key grating in the
lock of a door, and a rapid step across the floor of the inner
showroom.
“Hush! It’s Mademoiselle Laure!” she said, having already caught sight
of the reflection of the Frenchwoman in the long mirror against the
wall.
The next moment Mademoiselle Laure appeared in the doorway between the
two rooms.
The two young girls turned towards her, and both uttered an
exclamation, while Pamela started to her feet.
“Aunt!” she cried.
Audrey turned pale, and Mademoiselle Laure, after making a feeble
attempt to retreat, remained standing without a word, with an angry
flush in her face, and her lips tightly pressed together.
Audrey had risen also.
“Mademoiselle Laure,” she said, “or Miss Candover, which am I to call
you?”
The woman came forward into the room, recovering herself and trying to
smile at the girls.
“Oh, Madame,” she said, as she advanced her face to kiss Babs, who
stood up straight and stiff, resenting the embrace, “you may call me
whichever you please. I answer to both names: to that of Laure, the
Frenchwoman, when you are Madame Rocada, the countess. To that of
Candover when you are--Mrs. Angmering.”
It was the first time that Audrey had ever heard her speak any
language but French, but after the revelations she had heard, she was
surprised at nothing.
The girls, meanwhile, were evidently uneasy and disturbed. They
remained close to Audrey, Babs in particular showing open dislike of
her aunt, who turned to the elder girl and said:--
“I’m very glad you’ve come. But how did you know I was here?”
“We didn’t know it,” answered both girls together. “We came to see
Mrs. Angmering,” added Pamela.
Mademoiselle Laure raised her eyebrows.
“Well,” she said, “it’s of no consequence, since you are here. I’ve
changed my plans since I saw you yesterday, and now I’m going to take
you to Paris with me, instead of settling down here. You will like
that, won’t you?”
But the girls instinctively drew closer together, and Pamela said:--
“We would rather not go away, out of England. All our friends are
here, you know.”
Audrey gave them a look which encouraged the girls, while it evidently
angered Mademoiselle Laure. She laughed harshly.
“What friends have you? None. You can’t count your school-friends. You
want to go into the world, to make new friends, new acquaintances. And
in Paris, with me, you will enjoy yourselves. You will have what you
call ‘a good time’. Don’t look at Madame Rocada. Answer me.”
Pamela did answer, very boldly.
“We don’t want to go away. We won’t go away. We want to see our mother
first.”
At these words their aunt, intensely astonished, seemed to lose all
self-control, and breaking out into a tempest of passion, cried:--
“Your mother! What do you know about your mother? Your mother is mad,
has been shut up in a lunatic asylum for years. She is no fit
companion for you. Your father would never allow you to see her. If
Madame Rocada has been encouraging you to ask to see her, she has done
wrong, very wrong.”
And Mademoiselle Laure turned angrily to Audrey.
“You are always making mischief, always,” she said.
But the girls took the part of their friend.
“No, she hasn’t made mischief,” cried Babs. “She’s quite right, and
whatever she says we’ll listen to. Mrs. Angmering, do you think we
ought to go away to Paris with our aunt, without knowing where she is
going to take us to?”
But at these words the storm of Mademoiselle’s rage grew so violent
that, whatever they might have thought of her as a guardian of youth
before, all doubts on the subject melted away as she clenched her
fists, and gnashed her teeth, and stamping her foot declared that they
must and should go away with her, that their father wished it, and
that they had no choice.
“You are under age, both of you,” she said, “and until you are
twenty-one, you are not able to choose for yourself. It is for your
father to choose what is best for you.”
“Well, then, let us see papa, and ask him to say whether we are
unreasonable,” said Pamela, who was as daring as she was pretty. “He
knows that it’s natural we should want to see our own mother, and even
if he and she didn’t get on well together----”
“Who has been telling you that?” snapped their aunt. “Madame Rocada, I
suppose!”
Pamela went on:--
“Even if, as I say, they quarrelled, and haven’t seen each other for
years, that’s no reason why we shouldn’t see her, now we know she’s
alive, and know too that she is as sane as we are!”
“Oh, that is saying very little!” sneered Mademoiselle Laure, who
seemed to have lost all sense of self-control, and to be crazy with
rage at the girls’ opposition to her wishes.
Audrey grew anxious to put an end to the painful scene.
“Well,” she said, “you can’t start off for Paris without any
preparation, that’s certain. Let these girls go back to Windsor with
Miss Willett----”
“They shall not go back. They have been long enough with Miss Willett,
and they are too old for school. They shall go to an hotel with
me----”
But Audrey, remembering the suggestion that the girls should go to
“The Briars” with their aunt, would not suffer this.
“No,” she said firmly, “they shall not go away from here with you,
Mademoiselle Laure, they shall not go without me; since they have come
to me I mean to take care of them.”
“You! You! What are you? A convict’s wife! A wretched tool, a keeper
of a gaming-house!” shrieked Mademoiselle Laure, beside herself with
impotent rage, as she saw the girls shrinking back from her and
clinging to Audrey.
Pamela protested indignantly.
“Don’t listen to her, Mrs. Angmering, don’t listen,” she said
passionately. “The woman is mad, and wicked too. I wouldn’t go with
her or let Babs go if she were the only person belonging to us in all
the world!”
Suddenly Mademoiselle Laure changed her tone. She seemed to realise
that she was harming her own cause by every word she spoke, and that
she must use very different methods if she wished to attain her ends.
Subsiding into outward calmness with great abruptness, she turned away
for a moment as if to consider some point, and then, addressing
Pamela, said:--
“You will have to go with me, if your father tells you to!”
Pamela turned pale, and hesitated.
“I don’t want to----” she began.
But Mademoiselle Laure cut her short.
“It is not a question of what you want, but of what you must do,” she
said sharply. “You admit your father is your proper guardian, and that
you are bound to go where he chooses?”
“Ye-es, but----”
The woman turned haughtily to Audrey.
“You can retire, Madame,” she said; “hide yourself in any corner you
please, with your husband and your friends. I am going to take these
dear girls to their father.”
Babs clung to Audrey.
“She shall go with us then,” cried she.
For one moment Mademoiselle Laure, her face dark with suppressed rage,
hesitated. Then, saying sharply:--
“Wait here then, for me--and for him,” she disappeared into the room
at the back which was called hers, and reappeared in a few seconds,
with Mr. Candover himself leaning on her arm.
All were shocked at his appearance. His head was bound up, and his
dull eyes seemed to show that he had scarcely yet fully recovered
consciousness after the blow he had received from Geoffrey’s poker and
the fall which had resulted from the blow.
As if still more than half-dazed, he tottered forward, leaning on his
sister’s arm, and stared about him and at the three ladies as if
unaware who they were.
Pamela cried out, in an awestruck voice:--
“Papa, papa! Don’t you know us, papa?”
And Babs ran forward to kiss him.
The touch of the warm young lips made him look round and say almost
mechanically:--
“Babs! Hallo, Babs!”
Then his sister spoke.
“The girls don’t want to go away with me. Will you tell them what is
your wish?”
“My wish is that you should come away with her--with us,” said he,
after a moment’s pause, as if to collect his thoughts. And then he
seemed to recover himself a little, and went on: “Yes, and we must
make haste. There is no time to be lost. We will all go together and
at once.”
“But, papa, we’re not ready. We didn’t come prepared for a journey!”
protested Pamela in great distress and alarm.
His sister whispered to him, and Mr. Candover said quickly:--
“No matter. Paris is not at the other end of the earth. Your things
can be sent on after you. Call a hansom--No, a hansom won’t hold us.
Go to the window and hail a four-wheeler, or get the porter to whistle
for one, and let us start at once. Pamela, you go with your aunt.
Babs, come with me.”
And before the frightened and almost weeping Audrey could do more than
try to intervene with faint words of entreaty, of protest, Mr.
Candover and his sister had carried the girls off before her very
eyes, and led them downstairs and out of her sight.
Audrey made a rapid step towards the door, when a loud and piercing
cry reached her ears.