by Annie Haynes
“I should like to show you something first.” He crossed the room and drew aside the curtain that at present concealed the Elaine. “Is that your daughter?” he asked, pointing to the central figure.
Mrs. Leparge put up her lorgnette and surveyed it critically.
“I think it is,” she said in an uncertain tone. “It is her colouring exactly, and the features are a good deal alike, but this looks older and so very sad, and Hilda was always bright and lively. Besides, you must remember, Sir Arthur, that I have not seen her for two years. She was sixteen when I placed her with Miss Chesterton to complete her education, as I was summoned abroad on important business connected with my husband’s estate. Poor darling, I little thought what a home-coming mine would be! If that is all—”
“The age is about the same, though Hilda has always thought she was nineteen,” Lady Laura said with a glance at her son, “but I think now, Arthur—”
She beckoned Mrs. Leparge to the glass doors leading into the conservatory. Inside, on the tessellated pavement, Hilda was standing with her back to them.
Mrs. Leparge looked at her for a moment.
“Oh, her hair is just the same shade as my sister Cecile’s!” She opened the door in spite of Lady Laura’s warning gesture. “Hilda, my darling Hilda!” she cried.
At the first sound of her name Hilda turned quickly, and then stood still, her hand on her heart, her breath coming and going in long palpitating gasps. As Mrs. Leparge hurried towards her she looked at her with frightened eyes, the pupils dilated by emotion.
“Are—are you my mother?” she asked faintly.
Mrs. Leparge, who had hastened forward at first with an air of assured confidence, now appeared to hesitate, her steps faltered, and, as Hilda stood waiting in an attitude of intense expectation, with a low moan Mrs. Leparge dropped into one of the seats.
“Oh, no, no, no! It is not my Hilda—it is a stranger! Oh, my child, my child, where are you?”
Startled, shocked apparently, Hilda did not move forward, but stood motionless, statue-like in her white dress, save that her lips were moving inaudibly.
Sir Arthur hurried to her.
“Hilda, I—”
Lady Laura turned to Mrs. Leparge, disappointment in every line of her face, in every inflection of her voice.
“Do I understand that you have made a mistake— that this is not your daughter?”
Mrs. Leparge’s slight form was still shaking with sobs.
“Ah, no, no! Yet she is so like, so like!” drying her eyes. “No wonder my agent made the mistake! You must forgive me, Lady Laura, for all the trouble I have given you.”
She moved as if to turn away; but Hilda, who had been listening as if frozen into stillness, taking absolutely no notice of Arthur’s attempts at consolation, now walked towards her.
“Tell me, tell me!” she cried. “Are you my mother?”
Mrs. Leparge looked at her mournfully.
“Alas, my child, you are not my Hilda! Where can she be, poor unhappy darling, I dare not think!”
Hilda caught her hands.
“Oh, look—look carefully!” she cried. “Do be quite, quite sure. I want my mother so badly, so very badly. Oh, shall I never know—will it always be like this?”
“Hilda dear,” Mavis began, while Arthur endeavoured unsuccessfully to draw the girl away.
Mrs. Leparge’s whole face quivered as Hilda clung to her.
“I wish you were my child,” she said as she took the girl in her arms. “There! There, dear, you have lost your mother and I have lost my daughter; we ought to be able to comfort one another.” She drew her to one of the garden seats and looked at the others. “She is overcome and disappointed, poor girl!” she said pitifully. “She can hardly realize that she has not found her mother; yet her disappointment can hardly be so great as mine. I think perhaps if I talk to her for a little while she will realize that. Won’t you, dear? You see, my little daughter—”
Already Hilda seemed quieter and rested more calmly in Mrs. Leparge’s arms. Lady Laura motioned Arthur and Mavis to the other end of the conservatory.
“She will be better in a few minutes,” she whispered. ‘Poor girl, it is upsetting for her!”
They stood in a little group by the door, while Mrs. Leparge still held Hilda closely and talked to her in low, caressing tones. The purport of her words did not reach them, but they saw that Hilda was gradually becoming quieter, and that though her face was pale her manner was more composed when Mrs. Leparge rose.
Mavis went softly towards them.
“Remember, it must be done and without delay,” she heard the widow say impressively, as she bent forward and kissed Hilda.
The words and the tone alike struck Mavis as a little odd.
“What is that you are recommending Hilda to do, Mrs. Leparge?” she asked in some curiosity.
The widow turned; for one instant Mavis fancied that she detected a shade of discomposure in her manner.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Hargreave. I had no idea you were there. I was just telling this poor child that she must make up her mind to cease fretting and trying to find out what is evidently concealed from her for some wise purpose and be very thankful that she has found so kind a home. She will make herself ill if she goes on this way, and that will not mend matters. Now, my dear, I must say good-bye. I hope that good news will come to us both soon.”
Hilda suffered, rather than responded to, her embrace; there was an odd passivity about her whole manner; her eyes looked dazed and her colour had for the nonce deserted her.
Mrs. Leparge glanced back longingly as she walked up the conservatory with Lady Laura.
“Poor girl! I really do not know what to say to you, Lady Laura, or how to apologize for the trouble I have caused you. I can see now that I did wrong in coming myself instead of leaving things to the inquiry office, but I can only plead a mother’s anxiety for her only child, which I am sure you can understand and sympathize with.”
“I can indeed,” Lady Laura responded as she allowed her visitor to precede her through the drawing-room door. “It does seem strange that there should be two cases so much alike.”
“Yes, does it not? But I am beginning to be terribly afraid that my own daughter is with that man, James Duncan, as he called himself. It makes me shiver when I think of her and what her fate might be.”
Mavis sat down beside Hilda.
“What was she saying to you, Hilda? It did not sound like that sort of advice, I fancied.”
Hilda looked at her with dazed, bewildered eyes.
“I—I hardly know,” she said hesitatingly. “The usual sort of thing, I think—that I ought not to fret, but to be patient and wait till it is Heaven’s will to restore me to my friends. She meant to be very kind, I am sure; but she does not understand—nobody understands how terrible it is to have only the black darkness behind one.”
“What particular bent has your mind taken this morning, may I ask?” said Arthur, seating himself beside Hilda.
Hilda did not move when he laid his hand over hers; her eyes still looked listlessly in front of her.
“I do not think I shall ever find my mother; I do not think I shall ever recover my memory,” she said hopelessly in a low monotonous tone. “Arthur, you must let me go away now. I will—”
“You will stay here,” Sir Arthur interrupted. “What did Dr. Grieve tell you the other day? It is only a matter of time, and then you will be restored to your mother and your friends. Do not talk of going away, Hilda. What should I do without you?” He raised her cold hand to his lips as he spoke.
It was the first open caress on which he had ventured in his mother’s presence, and that lady frowned.
“As for finding Hilda’s mother,” she said shortly, “I am inclined to think that she has no near relatives; it is inconceivable that if she had, some inquiry about her should not have been made before now, as Mrs. Leparge says.”
“At any rate,” Mavis interposed,” I
do not think that Hilda has had any loss in discovering that Mrs. Leparge is not related to her. I took a dislike to her at once.”
“To Mrs. Leparge!” Lady Laura echoed in surprise. “Oh, Mavis, my dear, how absurd! I thought her particularly charming.”
“I did not!” Mavis maintained stoutly. “I did not like her face one little bit; and she had such a curious sidelong way of looking at one. Never once did she meet a glance fully. Didn’t you notice it?”
“No, I did not!” replied Lady Laura tartly. “I think you are becoming very fanciful, Mavis. You should try to cure yourself of it, child; it is a very bad habit. I was feeling too sorry for the poor woman’s disappointment to criticize her. Poor thing, it is too terrible for her, after being so hopeful.”
Mavis was not to be disposed of so easily, and her brown eyes looked mutinous.
“Mrs. Leparge’s eyes were quite dry, though she put her handkerchief to them so much. I noticed them,” she said sceptically. “And I thought the way she was talking to Hilda was rather a curious one. Still it doesn’t matter; we shall not be likely to see any more of her in future.”
“No; but it is very wrong to allow oneself to be prejudiced against people by absurdities like that—things that probably exist only in your own imagination,” Lady Laura said severely.
Poor lady, she was feeling distinctly out of gear with the whole world this morning. Her hope had been that with Hilda’s belongings some barrier to her marriage with Sir Arthur might have been discovered, and, disappointed of this, it was a relief to vent her vexation upon some one.
“Garth says that that sort of thing is an instinct given us for our protection!” Mavis retorted. “He says that he has known of cases in which it has proved—”
Sir Arthur burst into a brotherly laugh.
“Oh, Garth says!” he mimicked. “But Garth is not quite such an authority to all of us as he is to you, my dear Mavis.”
Chapter Sixteen
“WELL, IT is about as queer a go as I ever heard of. I can’t see daylight in it at all yet, but one thing I am clear about, that there’s more in the affair than meets the eye—a great deal! Some of us will be surprised before we hear the last of it, I’m thinking!” Superintendent Stokes stroked his chin thoughtfully as he looked up at the Manor House. “I just wonder if it was her or not?”
Lost in thought, he remained stationary for a few minutes. The night was dark and cloudy; little scuds of rain beat in the superintendent’s face every two or three minutes; a mild westerly wind was rising and rustling the leaves.
Suddenly there was a quick step behind him, a strong hand was laid on his shoulder.
“What are you doing here, my man?”
Superintendent Stokes wrenched himself free.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Arthur!” he said as he recognized his assailant.
“Oh, is it you, Stokes? Why are you prowling about here at this time of night? I am sure I don’t know what people may be taking you for if they see you. Anyhow, you may be quite sure that they will be pretty well scared. Have you heard the latest reports—that Mary Marston haunts the shrubbery and grounds? My sister and Miss Hilda”—Arthur brought out the Christian name with some hesitation; it was distinctly awkward, he often found, to have to speak of some one without a surname—“both declare they saw her the other night. I don’t believe I could get either of them in the shrubbery after midnight for a king’s ransom.”
The superintendent nodded, still surveying the lighted windows of the house before him.
“Ay, I have heard of the ghost, Sir Arthur! I reckon there is not many in Lockford that haven’t, as far as that goes. About the young ladies, I think you are mistaken, Sir Arthur. I am pretty well sure I saw one of them not many minutes ago.”
“What, here alone in the dark!” Sir Arthur exclaimed incredulously. “You are out this time, Stokes; I am sure my sister would not venture—”
Superintendent Stokes paused a moment before speaking and scraped up the dry leaves into a little heap at his feet.
“I didn’t say it was Miss Hargreave,” he said in a deliberate tone at last, “and I didn’t say she was alone.”
There was a pause. Sir Arthur’s face was very stern.
“What do you mean, Stokes?”
The superintendent took off his cap and held up his face to the cool, damp air with a sigh of relief.
“I saw somebody out here a quarter of an hour ago, Sir Arthur, somebody talking to a young man; I am pretty sure that it was the strange young lady. I wondered at the time what she was doing out here.”
“A quarter of an hour ago!” Arthur exclaimed wrathfully. “Why, a quarter of an hour ago I was sitting with the ladies myself before I came out for a smoke, so I know that it is a mistake!”
“A quarter of an hour, more or less, I take it to be, Sir Arthur, though I did not look at my watch,” the superintendent returned stolidly. “But if she was with you it could not have been the young lady—wearing a dark dress she was, and I thought I caught the gleam of her yellow hair.”
“Miss Hilda has a long clinging white thing on to-night.”
“Seems as it couldn’t be her, then,” concluded the superintendent. “Must have been one of the maids out with her young man, I suppose. It was this business of the ghost that brought me up here, Sir Arthur. To my mind it wants looking into.”
“The business of the ghost brought you up!” echoed Sir Arthur in amazement. “Why, Stokes, you can’t mean that you put any faith in such rubbish?”
Superintendent Stokes permitted himself a short laugh.
“I can’t say as I do—not as ghosts, Sir Arthur, but they have a value of their own in a case like this disappearance of Nurse Marston.”
“I believe Nurse Marston is hiding somewhere, and coming out at night to frighten people,” Sir Arthur cried wrathfully. “Let me catch her, that is all, and I will—”
Stokes so far forgot his dignity as to emit a low whistle.
“What on earth has put that in your head, Sir Arthur? Mary Marston is not in hiding at Lockford—not alive,” he said significantly. “You can take my word for that.”
Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I am not inclined to accept the ghost theory.”
“I never believed in a ghost yet, and I don’t think that I am going to start now,” said the superintendent placidly.
“Bless you, man! What do you think then? If it was neither Mary Marston in the flesh nor in the spirit, what was it?”
“Was there anything at all, Sir Arthur?” The superintendent’s tone was oddly eager, or so the young baronet fancied.
“Oh, as to that, I do not fancy there can be any question!” he said decidedly. “My sister is not a likely person to imagine anything of the kind, and she saw her distinctly.”
“Umph! Well, it is a strange case, and I don’t know what to make of it,” said Stokes. “I should be glad to clear it up, if only for Mrs. Marston’s sake; the old woman is fretting herself to death for her daughter.”
“I have sometimes thought that she may have been persuaded into taking some long journey and lost her memory in the same sort of way as Miss Hilda has,” Sir Arthur went on meditatively.
Dark though it was, Stokes gave a quick glance towards him.
“Perhaps she may, Sir Arthur,” he assented placidly. “But about this ghost; I should like to watch for it a bit longer, if you have no objection. I have a fancy that, if I could see it, it might clear things up for me a bit.”
“Well, watch as long as you like,” Sir Arthur agreed as he walked away. “I shall be glad to hear the result if you meet with any. Good night.”
“Good night, Sir Arthur!”
Left alone, Superintendent Stokes judiciously stepped behind a clump of trees.
“I don’t suppose I could be seen—it is too dark,” he remarked inwardly. “Still, one never knows.”
He had been standing there for some little time when he caught a whiff of tobacc
o and heard footsteps on the path. They stopped short of his hiding-place, and as the Superintendent peered forth cautiously he heard a woman say:
“No, I wouldn’t come a step farther, not if it was ever so, Jim. I daren’t. I should be frightened I might see her again.”
“More silly you!” The superintendent fancied the voice was not very brave. “We’ll stay here then. Now, Minnie, I want you to promise me that as soon as this jollification is over you will be ready for me.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jim! I can’t promise!”
The superintendent, looking a little farther, fancied that the girl was crying. He had his own private disappointment too, for it seemed to him that the man before him was the one whom, but a few minutes before, he had seen talking to the girl he had taken for Hilda.
“I suppose it must have been this one all the time,” he soliloquized. “Yet I made sure it was the other. Well, well! A bit of a hint won’t do Sir Arthur any harm, anyway.”
He paid a little attention to the pair on the path; very soon he had gathered that the man was pleading for a speedy marriage, which the girl was tearfully refusing, but all this was not particularly interesting to Stokes, with his mind full of a different subject. He had allowed his fancy to travel along an obscure path, and was knitting his brows over a difficult problem he had encountered, when a sentence spoken by the girl roused him effectually from his absorption.
“I can’t do it, Jim,” Minnie was saying in a voice broken by sobs. “I can’t bring myself to it, not until we know what became of her—Nurse Marston.”
“Haven’t I told you times without number that that has got nothing to do with us where Nurse Marston went?” was the man’s reply, impatiently spoken. “You have got to let that alone and make up your mind, Minnie.”
“Ah, it is all very well, but I can’t get it out of my head that if it hadn’t been for me she might have been alive and well now.”