A Rich Man's Relatives Volume III Part 13

"You mean that it was Ralph? I have often suspected that; but it seemed so merciless and inhuman a thing to do, that I have blushed for shame at my suspicions, even when alone, and cast the thought behind me. Poor wretch! Look at him now!--shamed and dishonoured--run away to the States--afraid to show his face in Canada! Martha and the boy are to be pitied in belonging to him, for they are good; but they do not know him, and no one will be ruffian enough to enlighten them. Martha is back at St. Euphrase again. Susan had a letter from her to-day. The house there is settled on her, it seems, and she wants to give it up to the creditors, but Ralph says she must not, and that before long he will be on his feet again, and pay everybody."

"I fear Ralph meant worse than merely to set the child aside, and it is no thanks to his intentions if he has not innocent blood on his hands."

"Hush! George. It is right you should tell me the facts, but do not draw inferences. Judge not."

"My dear, I judge no one; but I have seen the squaw. She tells me she was ordered to make away--to bury. The very box, which was to have been used, was produced in court--produced as it had been dug out from under the kitchen floor, and you may fancy how my heart died within me at the sight; but when the box was opened, it was found to be empty, and the squaw has told me that when she came to look at our angel, she found it was impossible to obey the inhuman command. She buried the empty box and carried the child away. She speaks of a road with trees, and a valley with a broad river, and says that she laid the baby upon the stoop of a house before going down the hill. She says she recollects the house perfectly. A police sergeant, who seems to have charge of the case, says he believes it must be near St. Euphrase, and the sheriff has allowed me to take him and his prisoner there to-morrow. I have ordered a carriage, and we will endeavour to take her over the old ground."

"Something will come of it, George, I feel sure. Take me with you, dearest; it will be maddening to live through the interminable hours between now and your return. Let me come with you."

"There will not be room, dear. A squaw out of jail would not be pleasant company in a carriage. They are not over tidy, remember. For myself, I shall sit with the driver."

"Then I shall take the early train to St. Euphrase, and go to Judith's. Be sure you come to me as early as ever you can, I shall be faint with impatience."

CHAPTER XVI.

BETSEY AS GOOD FAIRY.

When Mary Selby and her sister Susan arrived at the Rectory of St.

Euphrase, next morning, the family mind was already excited by other news; so much so, that, notwithstanding this was the first visit Judith's sisters had ever paid, and it was unexpected, they were received precisely as if they had dropped in from the next street, and their coming were an every-day occurrence. The family capacity for surprise had been forestalled.

"Only think!" cried Betsey, the irrepressible; "young Jordan has been here--Randolph, you know. _I_ know him quite well; was at a party at their house, when I stayed with you last winter--knew him a little, before then, but not much. Well, he tells Uncle Dionysius here--that's not here, exactly, but in the study--that he ran away with Miss Rouget, the seignior's daughter. Stuck-up looking thing she is. No complexion to speak of; a snub nose. Yes, indeed, Aunt Judy, it is a snub. _Nez retrousse_, is it? That's because she's Miss Rouget de La Hache, and a kind of a somebody; though folks do say they've lost their money all the same--like better folks who make less moan. But, anyhow, Randolph ran away with her--fixed a fire-escape on to her bedroom window, and down she came, bag and baggage, in the dead of the night; and everybody in the house fast asleep. They went to New York, and were married before a squire, and now they have come home, and are staying with Mrs. Jordan, at The Willows. And they are going to be married all over again, from the beginning--twice over again, I should say, for he has just been speaking to Uncle Dionysius, and now he has gone to the Roman Catholic priest, with a letter from an archbishop, and no less, bidding him raise no difficulties, but just do it. Think of that! Is it not impressive? The same two people to be three times married, and always to one another! I suppose there will be no getting out of that, anyhow, as long as they live. If even they were to go to Chicago, I suppose it would take three divorce suits to separate them.

They can only dissolve one marriage at a time, so I have heard. What do _you_ think. Miss Susan?"

"I never was married, my dear. I have suffered too much from neuralgia for some years back to be able to think of marrying, or anything else."

"Well! That's not me, now. If I was to have neuralgy, I'd want a man to take care of me, all the more, 'pears to me. I'm 'takin' steps,'

as uncle there says, to get the man right off; and then the neuralgy may come if it wants to, I can't help it."

Both visitors' eyes were fixed on the speaker. The recollections of their own youth furnished no such amazing expression of maidenly opinion. Betsey coloured a little, coughed, and began once more, while her uncle and aunt, taught by experience, sat silent, waiting till she should talk herself out of breath.

"The fact is, Mrs. Selby, I'm to be married immediately; as soon, that is, as I can get ready, and that depends mostly on Mademoiselle Ciseau. She'll have to make my gown, and she says she's over head and ears in orders, between so many deaths and all the marriages; for you know Matildy Stanley's going to marry--more proper if she'd be making her soul, at her time of life, than thinking of sich--and that chit Muriel--set her up--she's to be married the same day as her aunt, though they ain't no kin at all, nohow, to one another, and Matildy knows it. I call it going before their Maker with a lie in their right hand--goin' to church to be married, and tellin' such a story."

"But who are the bridegrooms, Betsey?"

"Me? I'm going to marry Mr. Joe Webb--Squire Webb, I should say, it sounds more respectful--justice of the peace, and the handsomest fellow round here about. But never mind the men, just for one minute.

Everybody knows there must be a man to make a wedding, and any kind does quite well; but think of a poor girl married without a gown, or the wrong kind of one. How people would talk! You bein' from the city, will be able to give me an idea. Here are a lot of _swatches_ the storekeeper got me from Montreal, and every one has the price marked on to it. White satin? Oh, yes, it's pretty and stylish; but I see by 'G.o.dey's Magazine' the upper crust ain't as partial to marryin' in white as they used to be; and white satin would not be much use afterwards for apple-paring bees, and sich; that's the form our gaiety takes mostly in the country round here. Yellow? Well, I did read not long ago about a _recherche_ nuptials, somewhere, and the bride was dressed to represent a sunflower--poetical fancy, wasn't it? Yes, yellow's a good colour--easily seen--but it soils just as bad as white, or worse, for one can say _ecru_ for dirty white, but what can be said for soiled yellow? Just nothing, for everybody sees it's gone dirty.

"Brown? and navy blue? I guess one of these would be the best. You like the blue, eh? Well, now, that's strange, for to me the brown looks a deal the best. I could be married in my travelling dress, with a bonnet trimmed with white roses and peac.o.c.k's feathers--I seem to see it in my mind's eye. Sweet and rather distinguished--but it would be better with the brown, would it not, than with the blue? Now, do really give me your candid opinion, Mrs. Selby; you have everything about you at home in such good taste."

Betsey got out of breath at last, and rose to take away her _swatches_, and there was an opening for the visitors to explain the cause of their unlooked for advent. Both Judith and her husband were kind and sympathizing, and both were shocked beyond measure at the part which Ralph had played in the transaction. For Martha's sake, however, and for the credit of the family, the subject was dropped when Betsey returned to the room, she being a known blab of the most flagrant kind.

Mary succeeded in restraining her impatience for tidings of her husband's success within bounds, for several hours; but after the one o'clock dinner it grew stronger than her will, and would not be controlled.

"By which way are they most likely to reach the village, Judith? I feel myself fretting into a fever as I sit. I must be up and doing, or I shall lose my senses. Betsey, my dear, will you not come out with me? We will walk in the direction we are most likely to meet them. It will bring me the news a minute or two sooner, and it soothes me to feel I am doing. You will tell me about your own plans, too, dear. It is good for me to listen to other people's concerns, if only to distract me from my own."

Betsey was nothing loth. She was good-natured, at least, if not endowed with all the other virtues. They walked through the village, and up the turnpike road coming from the east. Mary, notwithstanding her weakness, was so urged forward by impatience that Betsey, scarce able to keep up with her, was soon out of breath, and quite unable to make the interesting confidences she had intended.

"Is not that a carriage coming this way? I see two men on the driving-box, and one of them is George. Oh! the time is come. Lend me your arm, Betsey, dear, to steady me. I am getting faint. If this is another disappointment, how shall I bear it?"

The carriage drew near. One look in George's face told all.

Hopelessness had settled on it; he looked utterly cast down. He alighted as his wife drew near, and the afflicted ones embraced in silent wretchedness, as they had done many a time before. The story of the expedition did not take long to tell.

The squaw was able to point out the way she had taken all across the Reservation, with circ.u.mstantial details, which made it impossible to doubt the accuracy of her recollection, and argued a hopeful termination to their search. On gaining the public road they entered the carriage, and still the squaw went on recognizing salient objects on either hand, and finally, at a forking of the road, where there stood a house, she cried out, that there was the place. It corresponded perfectly to her previous descriptions. They alighted, and the sergeant knocked at the door. A woman opened it, and when asked by the officer how long she had lived there, answered, after many repet.i.tions of the question and much explanation, and disavowing that she understood English, twenty years. "Then you will remember,"

the policeman said, "if one summer night, many years ago, you found an infant lying at your door?" She answered that babies were never left there. She was a respectable woman, who had brought up a family of her own, and that the proper place to leave outcast children was a convent, or the priest's house.

Her hearing appeared so bad, her knowledge of English so slight, she seemed so cross, so deaf, and so stupid, that they could draw nothing from her but the disavowal of any knowledge of a child having been left there, which, however, was what they chiefly wanted to know, and they came away disappointed. The priest of the village might be able to make some inquiries, and they were now on their way to find him; but there was little to be expected after so many years.

"Where was this house with the woman?" asked Betsey, with awakened interest. "Not the first house we shall come to going up the hill?"

"Yes," said Selby, "that is the place."

"Well, then--but surely it cannot be!--that is the house Bruneau lives in--the Stanleys' man. His wife confessed to me and Aunt Judy, only last winter, that she found a baby at her door one summer night, many years ago, and carried it up to the door of the big house, where my cousins took it in and adopted it. But, from the way she spoke of Muriel's parentage, it can be no relation of yours, dear Mrs. Selby.

She said it was--but I can't say what she said."

"If you please, miss," cried the sergeant, who had been listening, "will you be so kind as to walk back with us. As you know the woman, she will speak different to you from what she did to us. I feel noways sure that she was not lying when I questioned her, now you put the notion in my head."

Again there came knocking to Annette's door. Again she opened it, and looked as if she fain would have run away at sight of the policeman before her.

"Annette," said Betsey, "did you not tell me that you carried that baby you found on your stoop up to Miss Stanley's door and left it?"

"I know it," answered Annette, and covering her face with her ap.r.o.n, fled back into the interior of her house. They could hear her mount the little stair, and bang to a door, but they saw her no more. In truth, from the time she had unburdened her feelings to the rector's lady, a new misgiving oppressed her mind. Could English women be trusted to keep a promise, and they heretics? What would the Miss Stanleys say, first of her conduct towards themselves in foisting that particular child on them, and next in divulging the story, to the discredit of their adopted niece? And now the story was out, and there was a minister of the law come to take her.

CHAPTER XVII.

AT LAST.

Miss Stanley sat in the dining-room making up her accounts. She sat at a table by the window, with her bills and account books spread in order before her, and her pen in her hand, waiting to begin--waiting till the wandering thoughts would come back from their wool-gathering, and settle down to work. Once and again she advanced so far as to dip her pen in the ink, but the figures did not come, the page before her continued white, the ink dried up in her pen. With her elbow on the table, her cheek upon her hand, she went on thinking--thinking about her household, though not about her accounts. She had been head of the family so long, had steered and directed it so many years, and they had been so happy together; and now, it made her head whirl to think of the changes that were coming to pa.s.s. In the drawing-room, at that moment, was Muriel with her Gerald--a pair of children, and as unthinkingly happy. Their clear laughter penetrated through closed doors, and she heard it where she sat. Matilda was in the morning-room with Considine, as utterly content, if less obstreperously merry than her niece. And Penelope sat alone.

The moisture gathered in her eyes as she thought, but promptly was brushed away as a disloyalty, for if "dear Tilly" had come to love another more, she was very sure she continued to love her aging sister none the less. And yet it did seem hard to see that other come in between. Since her sister had been a very little girl, she had been to her a mother, watching over and caring for her till they grew to be companions and friends. They had been all the world to one another, and while, with a mother's inconsistency, she had wondered at the blindness of the men, who did not come and marry her sister, she knew that if they had, she would have hated them for their success. And now, after all danger seemed over, when they had settled down to grow old together, when even their adopted daughter was old enough to marry the man, the devastating man, had come--broken in, to disturb the repose of their virginal paradise in the hour of coming twilight, and end the pensive sweetness of their lives.

Yet, and the thought constrained her to admit that it was far from being the worst thing possible which had befallen, she had extorted from her intending brother that he should not take her sister quite away. He was to live with her, and she with them. The house at St.

Euphrase was to be hers--Penelope's--and they were to be her inmates.

Considine would take a house in town, where she should live with them; and all three parties to the arrangement had professed they saw no reason why they should not always live together. "Yet, why would those two marry at all?" she thought; "surely the season when birds select their mates was past for them. From the things which Considine spoke of as remembering he must be positively old; and Tilly, her precious Tilly"--a new-born candour forced her to admit it now, though she had not thought of it before--"was no longer young. Why could they not live on as friends, as they had been doing? when Considine's company had really added flavour to their spinster lives. What would people say?" Penelope imagined, like the rest of us, that "people" care. It is a fancy which sticks most pertinaciously, despite its lack of reason. Why will we not judge "people" by ourselves? And is it not true that long before our neighbours have grown accustomed to their affairs themselves they have become a twice-told tale to us? We shrug our shoulders and pa.s.s on, seeking a new diversion somewhere else.

Whatever we may do which pleases ourselves, "people" will cease to trouble their heads about it long before the nine days are over.

The fear of this notoriety, however, was a tonic thought to Penelope.

Instinctively she bridled to think that any should presume to criticise a transaction in _her_ family, and at once she ranged herself in spirit on her sister's side, and began to defend her. "'A man,'" she thought, "'is no older than he feels.' What eminent person is it who has written that? It is certainly true of Considine. See how erect he carries himself! How cheerful he is! and strong. His hair is white, but as thick as ever. He rides, and swims, and walks, like an active man of forty. And 'a woman is as young as she looks.' That is true of our Tilly. How well she wears! Who would fancy she was one age with Louisa Martindale? And yet I believe she is. What impertinence it will be if any one presumes to say a word!"

After that turn to her reflections, Penelope felt positively refreshed, and able to pull herself together. The pen was dipped in the ink once more, the bills taken up one by one, and the column of figures extended itself steadily down the page. But her industry was interrupted ere long. The parlour-maid appeared in some confusion.

What was she to do? She had standing orders not do disturb her mistress when closeted in the dining-room, and she had been told an hour ago to show no one into the drawing-room or the parlour, and there were a lady and a gentleman and a policeman, and some more, asking to see Miss Stanley.