Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Oh, the ‘mad’ Trevelyans, we call them! Then he is really a connection of my friend. Their grandfathers were cousins, I believe. What is this one’s first name?”

  “Randolph, I believe. I’ve never made an ascent in a balloon. I should really like to know whether it’s a new sensation worth trying. Do you mind telling me how it struck you, the first time you rose above a cloud?”

  “Cosy,” Lady Dorothy answered without hesitation— “distinctly cosy! There’s never any tiresome wind in a balloon, you know, as there is on a yacht, to blow you about. It goes along with you, and it’s so amusing to travel very fast and yet not feel that you are moving at all. And there’s always some excitement when you come down, for it’s never twice alike, and of course bones are only bones after all, and you always may break one or two. I suppose that’s where the sport comes in.”

  At this moment a distant peal of thunder was heard above the general conversation. Lady Dorothy looked at her host, as if expecting him to say something in answer to her explanations; but his expression had changed, and he seemed suddenly preoccupied.

  “I’m glad we’re not in the balloon now,” she said. “The gale is going to end in a regular thunderstorm!”

  Mr. Steele was speaking to the butler in a low voice. “Have those curtains drawn closer,” Lady Dorothy heard him say, “and be quick as you can with the rest of the dinner!”

  It was clear that either he, or some of his guests, were nervous about thunder and lightning. A second peal, much nearer than the first, made the windows rattle. The conversation, which had already dropped to a lower key, now ceased altogether, and a sort of embarrassed silence followed, while most of the diners glanced nervously round the room and towards the tall windows. Mr. Steele looked as if he were bracing himself to meet an unexpected danger; his brows were knitted, his stern mouth was tightly shut, and he was evidently scanning the faces of his guests with anxiety.

  “Do you often have bad thunderstorms here?” Lady Dorothy asked, to attract his attention and break the silence.

  “Seldom,” he answered abstractedly, and not looking at her. “Most of my guests dislike them very much.”

  “How very odd!”

  She glanced down the table, and saw the nice-looking Mr. Trevelyan leaning far back in his chair, his eyes half closed and his face very white.

  Mr. Steele made an attempt to revive the conversation, talking in loud tones to the whole table about a lawn tennis tournament, for which he said there would be a number of pretty prizes.

  Bob Trevelyan was eating steadily, and took no interest in what was going on.

  Suddenly he felt that the benevolent old gentleman was plucking at his sleeve very quietly. He turned, and saw that his neighbour was earnestly gazing at him. At that moment a third peal rang out, and the glasses on the table trembled.

  “Did he tell you who I am?” asked the old gentleman in an undertone, and bending his head towards the master of the house.

  “I beg your pardon: no — I don’t think I was introduced,” Bob answered.

  “He would have told you that I am Mr. Simpson; and so I was,” said the greyhaired man. “But that,” he added in low and tragic tones, “was by another mother. I am the Dowager Empress of China, and I am here incognito, disguised as a man.”

  “What in the world do you mean?” asked Trevelyan, very much taken aback.

  “It is a sad story, and a long one.” The old gentleman shook his head mysteriously. “They thought I took too active a part in politics. Possibly I did, but at the time of the Boxer riots many outrageous doings were unjustly traced to me. I give you my solemn assurance, on the word of an empress, that I did not order the attack on the Legations! Do you believe me, or not?”

  He gazed at Bob with fixed eyes, but Trevelyan could only stare back in blank surprise.

  “They brought me here in tea chests,” he continued earnestly, “disguised as a Chinese idol. It was a terrible humiliation. The Empress-mother in Pekin, who gives audiences, is a painted doll with a gramophone inside her, which quite accounts for her remarkably accurate memory.”

  Mr. Steele overheard this singular statement. “Really, Mr. Simpson,” he said in stern tones, “I must beg you not to poke fun at Mr. Trevelyan.”

  “Trevelyan!” cried the nice-looking man at the other end, bending forward in his chair to see Bob’s face. “Did you say Trevelyan?”

  “Yes,” Bob answered, also leaning forward— “that’s my name. Why?”

  “It’s mine too,” answered the other excitedly. “Are you Dorset or Lincolnshire?”

  “Dorsetshire,” Bob answered promptly.

  Every one was listening now, and Mr. Steele seemed very anxious, to judge by his face.

  “If you were a Lincolnshire Trevelyan I’d break your neck directly after dinner,” observed the nice-looking man, and he suddenly grew calm again, and seemed to take no further interest in Bob.

  The latter began to understand; and when the Empress of China suddenly dissolved in tears and repeated that hers was a very, very sad story, he had no doubts left as to where he and his friends were.

  At this point the Rev. Mr. Weede pointed a thin finger at Lady Dorothy, and addressed the company in pulpit tones. “Providence,” he said, “in its inscrutable wisdom, has been pleased to afflict our dear sister with the delusion that she entered these consecrated precincts in a balloon. The prayers of the congregation are requested for—”

  “Mr. Weede,” cried Mr. Steele in ringing tones, “I must insist that you do not indulge in jests unworthy of a gentleman and not befitting your doth!”

  The young golfing clergyman smiled blandly, quite unabashed, and answered in a single syllable, sharp and clear— “Fore!”

  At this wholly unexpected and irrelevant retort, Anne Trevelyan broke into a laugh.

  “One to the parson!” observed Jocelyn in an undertone.

  Things might have ended then, but at this moment an old gentleman with a very beautiful white beard and smooth snowy hair began to sing to himself a music-hall song of forty years ago in a thin and quavering tenor voice:

  “Up in a balloon, boys, up in a balloon, All among the little stars, sailing round the moon!”

  “Silence!” roared Mr. Steele from the head of the table.

  The old gentleman broke down under the rebuke, and began to weep piteously.

  “I know my voice isn’t what it was,’ he whined, between his sobs— “when I used to sing the late Mr. Gladstone to sleep, after his great speeches—’ Lullaby baby, on the tree-top.’”

  He began to sing again, through his tears.

  Mr. Steele struck the table with his fist.

  “Stop that immediately!” he shouted. “Lady Dorothy — Miss Trevelyan,” he continued, in the silence that followed, “I don’t know what you must think! The thunderstorm is to blame—”

  At that moment the howling squall broke open the window at the other end of the room, and a clap of thunder followed instantly. The shaded candles on the table were almost all out, and only a few electric lights illuminated the scene of indescribable panic and confusion that followed a second later.

  “Fire! Fire! Save the child!” yelled old Randolph Trevelyan above the noise.

  Chairs were overturned, shrieks of laughter and wailing sobs filled the air, men rushed wildly hither and thither, falling over each other and rolling on the floor; the dismal, long-drawn howl of a famished wolf pierced the babel of sounds, and a heavy man, running round the room on all fours, stumbled against Lady Dorothy’s feet, and lay there in a heap, suddenly silent. But still above all the rest rang Randolph Trevelyan’s despairing yells:— “Save the child! Save the child! I’ll give you ten thousand pounds if you can save the child!”

  Bob Trevelyan had Lady Dorothy fast by the wrist. Jocelyn held Anne Trevelyan by the waist close against him, and she did not feel at all frightened; but it is true that she was naturally courageous.

  “I believe we’re in a mad-house!” crie
d Lady Dorothy; but only Bob heard her through the noise, and she laughed rather nervously.

  “Come along!” Trevelyan called out to Jocelyn.

  They made for the nearest door at once. Mr. Steele had picked up the young man who thought he was a wolf, and was holding him firmly. The numerous servants, who were trained men, were already leading the most noisy of the party towards another door. Old Trevelyan’s wild yells rent the air as he was carried off: “The child! The child!”

  None of the four aeronauts ever forgot the cry, repeated in heart-rending tones, almost without a break. They heard it after they had left the dining-room, but when they had got to the foot of the staircase it ceased suddenly.

  They reached their rooms, high up in the new wing. Each of the young girls had one to herself, and the two men were to sleep in the third. But in their haste they all four rushed into the last; Bob turned up the electric light and Jocelyn locked the door.

  “A lunatic asylum!” laughed Anne. “Of all places to come down in! You told me it was,” she added, speaking to Jocelyn, “but it seemed so absurd that I couldn’t believe it.”

  “And our cousin Randolph is the showpiece, poor chap,” said Bob.

  Lady Dorothy and Jocelyn looked at him, expecting more.

  “What happened to his child?” asked Dorothy.

  “I was going to ask the same question,” said Jocelyn.

  “It was burnt to death. It’s rather an awful story, and I don’t wonder he went mad. I believe he had only been married two or three years when it happened. He was in the Carabineers, I believe; at all events they went to India as soon as they were married, and it was while they were there that his father died and he came into the estate. But he did not mean to leave the service, and he sent his wife to England with the little baby, six months before the regiment was ordered home. Half an hour before he got to his place, when he came home himself, the house took fire, and his wife and child were burnt to death. He went mad then and there, and there was nothing to be done but to lock him up.”

  “How awful!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I shall never forget his voice.”

  The four were silent, and as nothing happened Jocelyn unlocked the door and opened it a little. In the distance sounds of footsteps could still be heard in the passages, and the opening and shutting of a door now and then, and voices from different directions, but that was all. The patients who occupied the nearest rooms were either already locked in, or were of a quieter sort and had been allowed to stay downstairs.

  Jocelyn was just going to shut the door again, when Mrs. Williams appeared. He admitted her, and she looked round quietly before speaking.

  “Of course, you must have understood where you are,” she said gravely. “This is a private asylum — Dr. Steele’s Sanatorium. The patients who are considered harmless play games and dine together, and the Doctor takes none who are already violent or have shown homicidal or suicidal tendencies. It is a very exclusive establishment, especially for gentlemen of position and means. I may say that I was housekeeper at the late Duke of Barchester’s before I came here. The Doctor wishes me to say how sorry he is that there was trouble just this evening. Lunatics don’t mind anything so much as a thunderstorm, and thunder and lightning just drive them out of their poor senses, such as they are, which isn’t much to boast of. There’s that poor Mr. Weede, for instance, such a quiet gentleman, and a Christian soul if ever there was one. They never knew he was at all queer till one day, while he was preaching, he just stopped a minute and called out ‘Fore!’ as the gentlemen do when they play; and then he went on preaching about golf being the only salvation for sinners’ souls, till the congregation all ran out and the sexton and policeman got him into a cab, still preaching.”

  “Something like a sermon, that,” observed Jocelyn stolidly.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Williams gravely; “they say he was at it for more than half an hour, and hadn’t half finished when they took him away. But I came to say,” she went on, speaking to Bob Trevelyan, “that the Doctor would like to speak to you alone, sir, if you don’t mind. He will come to your room, or see you in his study, as you prefer, but he is very anxious to see you.”

  “It must be about cousin Randolph,” Bob said, glancing at his sister. “I’ll go to the Doctor’s study, Mrs. Williams, if you’ll show me the way.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ll be back directly,” she added, “to see that the ladies have everything quite comfortable for the night.”

  Trevelyan followed the housekeeper through many passages and down a good many stairs, till she brought him to the door of Dr. Steele’s study and knocked, and then opened the door for him to go in.

  The Doctor was standing before the fire; when he saw Bob he came forward and moved a comfortable chair into position while he spoke.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, “but I am so placed that I think it is my duty to ask your advice in a very important matter.”

  Trevelyan smiled pleasantly, and sat down.

  “If it’s my advice you want, I warn you that I’m not thought clever,” he said. “Unless it’s about balloons.”

  Dr. Steele’s face was very grave, and he paid no attention to what Bob said.

  “I understood at dinner that you were a distant cousin of Sir Randolph Trevelyan’s,” he said. “I am sorry to say that he is just dead.”

  “Dead! How awfully sudden!”

  The poor man’s despairing cry still rang in Bob’s ears.

  “He had an aneurism of the heart,” Dr. Steele explained, “and this last attack killed him. He fell dead as he reached the door of his room. I have two good physicians in residence here, and they came at once. He was quite dead.”

  “I’m exceedingly sorry to hear it,” Bob said gravely; “but I don’t quite see how I can be of use. I’m not his heir. There are several of the Lincolnshire people alive.”

  “Precisely. But do you know his story?”

  “Of course. His wife and child were burnt to death, and he went mad.”

  “That is not the point,” answered Dr. Steele. “They found the mother’s body, or what was left of it, but they found no trace of the child.”

  “Poor little thing! It was probably burnt to ashes. There was nothing to find!”

  “I’m not sure. There is a possibility that it may have been kidnapped, for you may remember that the house was found to have been set on fire by thieves, who got away with a large quantity of valuables in the confusion, and afterwards wrote to the family, offering to produce the child for a ransom of five thousand pounds. Sir Randolph had been in India and had not seen the baby for many months, and he was already in an asylum, and much worse than when you saw him this evening, before the thunderstorm. Babies a year old are very much alike, he could not have recognised his daughter, a large estate was involved, and a lunatic’s evidence is worth nothing, of course. The relations declared that none of them had ever seen the infant, and as a recognition was out of the question, their counsel advised them to pay no attention to the blackmailers. Thieves would be quite capable of producing a child as the heir, and of keeping some hold on it, in order to extract more blackmail when it grew up. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly. I’m inclined to think that the heirs did right, though it was to their own future advantage.”

  “No doubt. But within the last few weeks the situation has changed. I am morally persuaded that Sir Randolph’s daughter is alive and well, and that at the present moment, since her father is dead, she is the sole heir to the great Lincolnshire estate.”

  “By Jove!” cried Bob. “That’s interesting. Of course I’ll help her to get her own in any way I can! Where is she? And how are you sure she’s the right baby?”

  “It’s just a common criminal story. The baby had a nurse, of course, and she was no better than she should be. The leader of the gang that burnt and robbed the house had begun operations by establishing himself in the village as a travelling photographer with a van. He had a pro
per license for the van, and took very good photographs, and he got permission from Lady Trevelyan to make a series of views of the park and the house. By way of strengthening his position he made love to the nurse, and she became his accomplice, and shared the profits afterwards. But she was soft-hearted about children, and insisted that the baby should not run any risk. She handed it over to the photographer-burglar just before the house was set on fire. That’s the story.”

  “How do you know it’s true?”

  “Simple enough. Being a born criminal, she afterwards committed other crimes, and was at last caught and sent to penal servitude. And now she is dying of cancer, and has ‘experienced religion,’ as those people call it, and has confessed the whole story to the chaplain, who has written about it to me. For she had always kept track of Sir Randolph, and knew that he had been brought here some years ago.”

  “But what proof is there that she is telling the truth?”

  “This. Before she parted with the baby, she broke a sixpence in two, sewed half of it into the baby’s clothes and kept the other half.”

  “But the clothes must have disappeared long ago!”

  “No: — they didn’t. When the thieves found that they could not get any ransom, they left the baby on the doorstep of an old bachelor in Kensington, who took care of it and ultimately adopted it. I suppose he is a sentimental person, for he kept the clothes in which he found the child, and, what is more, he has now discovered the half-sixpence sewn up in the little frock, just where the dying woman says it was.”

  “Jolly good luck for the girl! Where is she?”

  “She goes by the name of Ellen Scott, and is governess in Colonel Follitt’s family here in Yorkshire.”

  “Miss Scott! Why, I saw her at King’s Follitt a month ago! And young Follitt, who is with us, is one of the Colonel’s younger sons. He can tell you all about her.”

  “It’s a singular coincidence, to say the least,” answered Dr. Steele, “but I know more about Miss Scott at present than she knows herself. In communicating with her adoptive father I have begged him not to let her know anything till all is quite certain; but it will be impossible to conceal the facts from her any longer, since Sir Randolph is dead. The relations, who believe themselves the heirs, must be informed that his daughter has been found and will claim the estate. They must know that as soon as they know of his death, and I cannot put off writing to them.”