Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 69

"If you please, sir, are you Mr. Hamlyn?" asked the child, going forward with hesitating steps. "Are you my papa?"

Every drop of blood seemed to leave Philip Hamlyn's face and fly to his heart. He could not speak, and looked white as a ghost.

"Who are you? What is your name?" imperiously demanded Philip's wife.

"It is Walter Hamlyn," replied the lad, in clear, pretty tones.

And now it was Mrs. Hamlyn's turn to look white. Walter Hamlyn?--the name of her own dear son! when she had expected him to say Sam Smith, or John Jones! What insolence some people had!

"Where do you come from, boy? Who sent you here?" she reiterated.

"I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold, and was in bed all last week."

Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his heart that the earth would open and engulf him. "Eliza, my love, allow me to deal with this matter," he said, his voice taking a low, tender, considerate tone. "I will question the boy in another room. Some mistake, I reckon."

"No, Philip, you must put your questions before me," she said, resolute in her anger. "What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however disreputable it may be."

"I dare not tell you," he gasped; "it is not--I fear--the disreputable thing you may be fancying."

"Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman 'papa'?" she pa.s.sionately demanded of the child.

"Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before because of not wishing to part from me."

Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. "Where were you born?"

"At Calcutta; that's in India. Mamma brought me home in the _Clipper of the Seas_, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in it, though papa thought so."

The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the whole truth now, staggered in terror.

"Philip! Philip! is it true? Was it _this_ you feared?"

He made a motion of a.s.sent and covered his face. "Heaven knows I would rather have died."

He stood back against the window-curtains, that they might shade his pain. She fell into a chair and wished he _had_ died, years before.

But what was to be the end of it all? Though Eliza Hamlyn went straight out and despatched that syren of the golden hair with a poison-tipped bodkin (and possibly her will might be good to do it), it could not make things any the better for herself.

III

New Year's Night at Leet Hall, and the banquet in full swing--but not, as usual, New Year's Eve.

Captain Monk headed his table, the parson, Robert Grame, at his right hand, Harry Carradyne on his left. Whether it might be that the world, even that out-of-the-way part of it, Church Leet, was improving in manners and morals; or whether the Captain himself was changing: certain it was that the board was not the free board it used to be. Mrs.

Carradyne herself might have sat at it now, and never once blushed by as much as the pink of a seash.e.l.l.

It was known that the chimes were to play this year; and, when midnight was close at hand, Captain Monk volunteered a statement which astonished his hearers. Rimmer, the butler, had come into the room to open the windows.

"I am getting tired of the chimes, and all people have not liked them,"

spoke the Captain in slow, distinct tones. "I have made up my mind to do away with them, and you will hear them to-night, gentlemen, for the last time."

"_Really_, Uncle G.o.dfrey!" cried Harry Carradyne, in most intense surprise.

"I hope they'll bring us no ill-luck to-night!" continued Captain Monk as a grim joke, disregarding Harry's remark. "Perhaps they will, though, out of sheer spite, knowing they'll never have another chance of it.

Well, well, they're welcome. Fill your gla.s.ses, gentlemen."

Rimmer was throwing up the windows. In another minute the church clock boomed out the first stroke of twelve, and the room fell into a dead silence. With the last stroke the Captain rose, gla.s.s in hand.

"A happy New Year to you, gentlemen! A happy New Year to us all. May it bring to us health and prosperity!"

"And G.o.d's blessing," reverently added Robert Grame aloud, as if to remedy an omission.

Ring, ring, ring! Ah, there it came, the soft harmony of the chimes, stealing up through the midnight air. Not quite as loudly heard perhaps, as usual, for there was no wind to waft it, but in tones wondrously clear and sweet. Never had the strains of "The Bay of Biscay" brought to the ear more charming melody. How soothing it was to those enrapt listeners; seeming to tell of peace.

But soon another sound arose to mingle with it. A harsh, grating sound, like the noise of wheels pa.s.sing over gravel. Heads were lifted; glances expressed surprise. With the last strains of the chimes dying away in the distance, a carriage of some kind galloped up to the hall door.

Eliza Hamlyn alighted from it--with her child and its nurse. As quickly as she could make opportunity after that scene enacted in her breakfast-room in London in the morning, that is, as soon as her husband's back was turned, she had quitted the house with the maid and child, to take the train for home, bringing with her--it was what she phrased it--her shameful tale.

A tale that distressed Mrs. Carradyne to sickness. A tale that so abjectly terrified Captain Monk, when it was imparted to him on Tuesday morning, as to take every atom of fierceness out of his composition.

"Not Hamlyn's wife!" he gasped. "Eliza!"

"No, not his wife," she retorted, a great deal too angry herself to be anything but fierce and fiery. "That other woman, that false first wife of his, was not drowned, as was set forth, and she has come to claim him with their son."

"His wife; their son," muttered the Captain as if he were bewildered.

"Then what are you?--what is your son? Oh, my poor Eliza."

"Yes, what are we? Papa, I will bring him to answer for it before his country's tribunal--if there be law in the land."

No one spoke to this. It may have occurred to them to remember that Mr. Hamlyn could not legally be punished for what he did in innocence.

Captain Monk opened the gla.s.s doors and walked on to the terrace, as if the air of the room were oppressive. Eliza went out after him.

"Papa," she said, "there now exists all the more reason for your making my darling _your_ heir. Let it be settled without delay. He must succeed to Leet Hall."

Captain Monk looked at his daughter as if not understanding her. "No, no, no," he said. "My child, you forget; trouble must be obscuring your faculties. None but a _legal_ descendant of the Monks could be allowed to have Leet Hall. Besides, apart from this, it is already settled. I have seen for some little time now how unjust it would be to supplant Harry Carradyne."

"Is _he_ to be your heir? Is it so ordered?"

"Irrevocably. I have told him so this morning."

"What am I to do?" she wailed in bitter despair. "Papa, what is to become of me--and of my unoffending child?"

"I don't know: I wish I did know. It will be a cruel blight upon us all.

You will have to live it down, Eliza. Ah, child, if you and Katherine had only listened to me, and not made those rebellious marriages!"

He turned away as he spoke in the direction of the church, to see that his orders were being executed there. Harry Carradyne ran after him.

The clock was striking midday as they entered the churchyard.

Yes, the workmen were at their work--taking down the bells.