The Monctons Volume I Part 8

Her face was so completely concealed by the large calash and veil she wore, and, but for the stoop in the shoulders, it would have been difficult at a first glance to have determined her age.

"Is Mr. Moncton at home?" Her voice was harsh and unpleasant; it had a hissing, grating intonation, which was painful to the ear.

The moment the stranger spoke, I saw Harrison start, and turn very pale. He rose hastily from his seat and walked to a case of law-books which stood in a dark recess, and taking down a volume, continued standing with his back towards us, as if intently occupied with its contents.

This circ.u.mstance made me regard the woman with more attention. She appeared about sixty years of age. Her face was sharp, her eyes black and snake-like, while her brow was channelled into deep furrows which made you think it almost impossible that she had ever been young or handsome. Her upper lip was unusually short, and seemed to writhe with a constant sneer; and in spite of her corrugated brow, long nose, and curved chin, which bore the unmistakable marks of age, her fine teeth shone white and ghastly, when she unclosed her fleshless, thin lips. A worse, or more sinister aspect, I have seldom, during the course of my life, beheld.

In answer to her inquiry, I informed her that Mr. Moncton was at home, but particularly engaged; and had given orders for no one to be admitted to his study before noon.

With a look of bitter disappointment, she then asked to speak to Mr.

Theophilus.

"He has just left for France, and will not return for several years."

"Gone!--and I am too late," she muttered to herself. "If I cannot see the son, I _must_ and _will_ speak to the father."

"Your business, then, was with Mr. Theophilus?" said I, no longer able to restrain my curiosity; for I was dying to learn something of the strange being whose presence had given my friend Harrison's nerves such a sudden shock.

"Impertinent boy!" said she with evident displeasure. "Who taught you to catechise your elders? Go, and tell your employer that _Dinah North_ is here; and _must_ see him immediately."

As I pa.s.sed the dark nook in which Harrison was playing at hide and seek, he laid his hand upon my arm, and whispered in French, a language he spoke fluently, and in which he had been giving me lessons for some time, "My happiness is deeply concerned in yon hag's commission. Read well Moncton's countenance, and note down his words, while you deliver her message, and report your observations to me."

I looked up in his face with astonishment. His countenance was livid with excitement and agitation, and his whole frame trembled. Before I could utter a word, he had quitted the office. Amazed and bewildered, I glanced back towards the being who was the cause of this emotion, and whom I now regarded with intense interest.

She had sunk down into Harrison's vacant seat, her elbows supported on her knees, and her head resting between the palms of her hands: her face completely concealed from observation. "Dinah North," I whispered to myself; "that is a name I never heard before. Who the deuce can she be?" With a flushed cheek and hurried step, I hastened to my uncle's study to deliver her message.

I found him alone: he was seated at the table, looking over a long roll of parchment. He was much displeased at the interruption, and reproved me in a stern voice for disobeying his positive orders; and, by way of conciliation, I repeated my errand.

"Tell that woman," he cried, in a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion, "that I _will not_ see her! nor any one belonging to her."

"The mystery thickens," thought I. "What can all this mean?"

On re-entering the office, I found the old woman huddled up in her wet clothes, in the same dejected att.i.tude in which I had left her. When I addressed her, she raised her head with a fierce, menacing gesture. She evidently mistook me for Mr. Moncton, and smiled disdainfully on perceiving her error. When I repeated his answer, it was received with a bitter and derisive laugh.

"He will not see me?"

"I have given you my uncle's answer."

"_Uncle!_" she cried, with a repet.i.tion of the same horrid laugh. "By courtesy, I suppose; I was not aware that there was another shoot of that accursed tree."

I gazed upon her like one in a dream. The old woman drew a slip of paper from her bosom, bidding me convey _that_ to my _worthy_ uncle, and ask him, in her name, "whether he, or his son, _dared_ to refuse admittance to the bearer."

I took the billet from her withered hand, and once more proceeded to the study. As I pa.s.sed through the pa.s.sage, an irresistible impulse of curiosity induced me to glance at the paper, which was unsealed, and my eye fell upon the following words, traced in characters of uncommon beauty and delicacy:

"If Robert Moncton refuses to admit my claims, and to do me justice, I will expose his villainy, and his son's heartless desertion, to the world.

"A. M."

I had scarcely read the mysterious billet than I felt that I had done wrong. I was humbled and abashed in my own eyes, and the riddle appeared as difficult of solution as ever. My uncle's voice sounded as ominously in my ears as the stroke of a death-bell, as he called me sharply by name. Hastily refolding the note, I went into his study, and placed it on the table before him, with an averted glance and trembling hand. I dreaded lest his keen, clear eye should read guilt in my conscious face. Fortunately for me, he was too much agitated himself to notice my confusion. He eagerly clutched the paper, and his aspect grew dark as he perused it.

"Geoffrey," said he, and his voice, generally so clear and pa.s.sionless, sunk into a choking whisper, "Is that woman gone?"

"No, uncle, she is still there, and dares you to refuse her admittance."

I had thought Robert Moncton icy and immovable--that his blood never flowed like the blood of other men. I had deceived myself. Beneath the snow-capped mountain, the volcano conceals its hottest fires. My uncle's cold exterior was but the icy crust that hid the fierce pa.s.sions which burnt within his breast. He forgot my presence in the excitement of the moment, and the stern unfeeling eye blazed with lurid fire.

"Fool!--madman--insane idiot!" he cried, tearing the note to pieces, and trampling on the fragments in his ungovernable rage: "how have you marred your own fortune, destroyed your best hopes, and annihilated all my plans for your future advancement!"

Suddenly he became conscious of my presence, and glancing at me with his usual iron gravity, said, with an expression of haughty indifference, as if my opinion of his extraordinary conduct was matter of no importance,

"Geoffrey, go and tell that mad-woman--But no. I will go myself."

He advanced to the door, seemed again irresolute, and finally bade me show her into the study. Dinah North rose with alacrity to obey the summons, and for a person of her years, seemed to possess great activity of mind and body. I felt a secret loathing for the hag, and pitied my uncle the unpleasant conference which I was certain awaited him.

Mr. Moncton had resumed his seat in his large study chair, and he rose with such calm dignity to receive his unwelcome visitor, that his late agitation appeared a delusion of my own heated imagination.

Curiosity was one of my besetting sins. Ah, how I longed to know the substance of their discourse; for I felt a mysterious presentiment that in some way or another, my future destiny was connected with this stranger. I recalled the distress of Harrison, the dark hints he had thrown out respecting me, and his evident knowledge, not only of the old woman, but of the purport of her visit.

I was tortured with conjectures. I lingered in the pa.s.sage; but the conversation was carried on in too low a tone for me even to distinguish a solitary monosyllable; and ashamed of acting the part of a spy, I stole back with noiseless steps to my place in the office. I found George at his desk: his face was very pale, and I thought I could perceive traces of strong emotion. For some time he wrote on in silence, without asking a word about the secret that I was burning to tell. I was the first to speak and lead him to the subject.

"Do you know that horrible old woman, George?"

"Too well: she is my grandmother, and nursed me in my infancy."

"Then, what made you so anxious to avoid a recognition?"

"I did not want her to know that I was living. She believes me dead: nay more," he continued, lowering his voice to a whisper, "she thinks she murdered me." His lips quivered as he murmured, in half-smothered tones: "And she--the beautiful, the lost one--what will become of her?"

"Oh, Harrison," I cried, "do speak out; do not torture me with these dark hints. If you are a true friend, give me your whole confidence, nor let your silence give rise to painful conjectures and doubts. I have no concealments from you. Such mental reservation on your part is every thing but kind."

"I frankly acknowledge that you have just cause to suspect me," said George, with his usual sad, winning smile. "But this is not a safe place to discuss matters of vital interest to us both--matters which involve life and death. I trust to clear up the mystery one of these days, and for that purpose I am here. But tell me: how did Moncton receive this woman--this Dinah North?"

I related the scene. When I repeated the contents of the note, his calm face crimsoned with pa.s.sion, his eyes flashed, and his lips quivered with indignation.

"Yes, I thought it would come to that; unhappy, miserable Alice! how could you bestow the affections of a warm, true heart on a despicable wretch like Theophilus Moncton. The old fiend's ambition and this fatal pa.s.sion have been your ruin."

For some time he remained with his face bowed upon his hands. At length, raising his head, and turning to me with great animation, he asked if I knew any of my father's relations, besides Robert Moncton and his son?

"I was not aware that I had any other relatives."

"They are by no means a prolific race, Geoffrey. And has your insatiable curiosity never led you to make the inquiry?"

"I dared not ask my uncle. My aunt told me that, but for them, I should be alone in the world. It was a subject never discussed before me," I continued, after a long pause, in which George seemed busy with his own thoughts. "I understood that my uncle had only one brother."

"True," said George, "but he has a cousin; a man of great wealth and consequence. Did you never hear Theophilus mention Sir Alexander Moncton?"

"Never."