by Ellen Wood
“Don’t tell it me!” she passionately interrupted. “Do not tell me that I am only your second wife.”
He went over to her, praying her to be calm, speaking of the bitter feeling of shame which had ever since clung to him.
“Did you divorce her?”
“No, no; you do not understand me, Eliza. She died before anything could be done; the ship was wrecked.”
“Were there any children?” she asked in a hard whisper.
“One; a baby of a year old. He was drowned with his mother.”
Mrs. Hamlyn folded her hands one over the other, and leaned back in her chair. “Why did you deceive me?”
“My will was good to deceive you for ever,” he confessed with emotion. “I hate that past episode in my life; hate to think of it: I wish I could blot it out of remembrance. But for Pratt I should not have told you now.”
“Oh, he said you ought to tell me?”
“He did: and blamed me for not having told you already.”
“Have you any more secrets of the past that you are keeping from me?”
“None. Not one. You may take my honour upon it, Eliza. And now let us — —”
She had started forward in her chair; a red flush darkening her pale cheeks. “Philip! Philip! am I legally married? Did you describe yourself as a bachelor in the license?”
“No, as a widower. I got the license in London, you know.”
“And no one read it?”
“No one save he who married us: Robert Grame, and I don’t suppose he noticed it.”
Robert Grame! The flush on Eliza’s cheeks grew deeper.
“Did you love her?”
“I suppose I thought so when I married her. It did not take long to disenchant me,” he added with a harsh laugh.
“What was her Christian name?”
“Dolly. Dora, I believe, by register. My dear wife, I have told you all. In compassion to me let us drop the subject, now and for ever.”
Was Eliza Hamlyn — sitting there with pale, compressed lips, sullen eyes, and hands interlocked in pain — already beginning to reap the fruit she had sown as Eliza Monk by her rebellious marriage? Perhaps so. But not as she would have to reap it later on.
Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn spent nearly all that year in travelling. In September they came to Peacock’s Range, taking it furnished for a term of old Mr. and Mrs. Peveril, who had not yet come back to it. It stood midway, as may be remembered, between Church Leet and Church Dykely, so that Eliza was close to her old home. Late in October a little boy was born: it would be hard to say which was the prouder of him, Philip Hamlyn or his wife.
“What would you like his name to be?” Philip asked her one day.
“I should like it to be Walter,” said Mrs. Hamlyn.
“Walter!”
“Yes. I like the name to begin with, but I once had a dear little brother named Walter, just a year younger than I. He died before we came home to England. Have you any objection to the name?”
“Oh, no, no objection,” he slowly said. “I was only thinking whether you would have any. It was the name given to my first child.”
“That can make no possible difference — it was not my child,” was her haughty answer. So the baby was named Walter James; the latter name also chosen by Eliza, because it had been old Mr. Monk’s.
In the following spring Mr. Hamlyn had to go to the West Indies. Eliza remained at home; and during this time she became reconciled to her father.
Hubert brought it about. For Hubert lived yet. But he was a mere shadow and had to take entirely to the house, and soon to his room. Eliza came to see him, again and again; and finally over Hubert’s sofa peace was made — for Captain Monk loved her still, just as he had loved Katherine, for all her rebellion.
Hubert lingered on to the summer. And then, on a calm evening, when one of the glorious sunsets that he had so loved to look upon was illumining the western sky, opening up to his dying view, as he had once said, the very portals of Heaven, he passed peacefully away to his rest.
II
The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox. That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume — who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again — and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence — a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency in London.
One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and then looked about her.
“There!” she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation, “I have to cross the street! and how am I to do it?”
Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to crossing them alone. She did it, however, after a few false starts, and so turned down a quiet side street and rang the bell of a house in it. A slatternly girl answered the ring.
“Governess-agent — Mrs. Moffit? Oh, yes; first-floor front,” said she crustily, and disappeared.
The young lady found her way upstairs alone. Mrs. Moffit sat in state in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily dispensed joy or despair to her applicants. Several opened letters and copies of the daily journals lay on the table.
“Well?” cried she, laying down her pen, “what for you?”
“I am here by your appointment, made with me a week ago,” said the young lady. “This is Thursday.”
“What name?” cried Mrs. Moffit sharply, turning over rapidly the leaves of a ledger.
“Miss West. If you remember, I — —”
“Oh, yes, child, my memory’s good enough,” was the tart interruption. “But with so many applicants it’s impossible to be certain as to faces. Registered names we can’t mistake.”
Mrs. Moffit read her notes — taken down a week ago. “Miss West. Educated in first-class school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India.”
“But — —”
“You do not wish to go into a school again?” spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was about to say.
“Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say,” replied the young lady, smiling.
“And you wish for a good salary?”
“If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing.”
“Or else I have — let me see — two — three situations on my books. Very comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year, the other twelve.”
The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement. “Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them.”
Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. “I received a letter this morning from the country — a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit — and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman — —”
“Oh, yes; my father was — —”
“Yes, yes, I remember — I’ve got it down; don’t worry me,” impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. “So far you might suit: but in other respects — I hardly know what to think.”
“But why?” asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.
“Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking.”
The girl’s blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.
“Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!”
/> “That’s as people may think,” was the significant answer. “Some families will not take a pretty governess — afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. ‘Thoroughly competent’ — reading from the letter— ‘a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.’”
“And will you not recommend me?” pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. “Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best.”
“Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,” decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl’s gentle respect — with which she did not get treated by all her clients. “Suppose you come here again on Monday next?”
The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned — no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.
But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. “Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West,” she wrote, “who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there.” What Miss West had said to her was this: “My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India.” Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.
This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.
“The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman,” spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. “She is rather young — about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate.”
“Had good references with her, I suppose?” said the Captain.
“Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up.”
“Who was her father, do you say? — a military man?”
“Colonel William West,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. “He went to India with his regiment and died there.”
“I’ll refer to the army-list,” said the Captain; “daresay it’s all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I’ll know the reason why.”
The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.
In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.
Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father’s growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.
“Papa,” she said, with impassioned fervour, “he ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne.”
Captain Monk simply stared in answer.
“He lies in the direct succession; he has your own blood in his veins. Papa, you ought to see it.”
Certainly the gallant sailor’s manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue — that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall — and stood in silence.
“Don’t you see it, papa?”
“Look here, Eliza: we’ll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma’s son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said. Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more.”
Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.
She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.
“This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma,” exclaimed Mrs. Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.
“I hope it is,” said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. “Oh, yes, that’s an Evesham fly — and a ramshackle thing it appears.”
“I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,” remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.
Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. “Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?”
The young man laughed in good humour. “Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza? — a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can’t see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves.”
“And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school.”
“But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza,” spoke Mrs. Carradyne.
“Then — —”
“Miss West, ma’am,” interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.
“Dear me, how very young!” was Mrs. Carradyne’s first thought. “And what a lovely face!”
She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones. That’s what the Squire tells us.
Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.
“Are you my new governess?”
The young lady smiled and said she believed so.
“Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?”
The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.
And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar — as if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing
, soft, dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.
III
Months passed away, and Miss West was domesticated in her new home. It was not all sunshine. Mrs. Carradyne, ever considerate, strove to render things agreeable; but there were sources of annoyance over which she had no control. Kate, when she chose, could be verily a little elf, a demon; as Mrs. Hamlyn often put it, “a diablesse.” And she, that lady herself, invariably treated the governess with a sort of cool, indifferent contempt; and she was more often at Leet Hall than away from it. The Captain, too, gave way to fits of temper that simply terrified Miss West. Reared in the quiet atmosphere of a well-trained school, she had never met with temper such as this.
On the other hand — yes, on the other hand, she had an easy place of it, generous living, was regarded as a lady, and — she had learnt to love Harry Carradyne for weal or for woe.
But not — please take notice — not unsolicited. Tacitly, at any rate. If Mr. Harry’s speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry’s tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers. Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind: or there would have blown up a storm.
Spring was to bring its events; but first of all it must be said that during the winter little Walter Hamlyn was taken ill at Leet Hall when staying there with his mother. The malady turned out to be gastric fever, and Mr. Speck was in constant attendance. For the few days that the child lay in danger, Eliza was almost wild. The progress to convalescence was very slow, lasting many weeks; and during that time Captain Monk, being much with the little fellow, grew to be fond of him with an unreasonable affection.
“I’m not sure but I shall leave Leet Hall to him after all,” he suddenly observed to Eliza one day, not noticing that Harry Carradyne was standing in the recess of the window. “Halloa! are you there, Harry? Well, it can’t be helped. You heard what I said?”