“What is it, Jane?” asked Lady Eversleigh, rather impatiently, of her maid, when her knock at the door of her sitting-room in Percy Street interrupted the conversation between herself and the detective officer, a conversation intensely and painfully interesting.
“A person, ma’am, who wants to see Mr. Andrews, and will take no denial.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Larkspur; “that’s very odd: I know of nothing up at present for which they should send any one to me here. However,” and he rose as he spoke, “I suppose I had better see this person. Where is he?”
“In the hall,” replied Jane.
But Lady Eversleigh interposed to prevent Mr. Larkspur’s departure. “Pray do not go,” she said, “unless it concerns this business, unless it is news of my child. This may be something to rob me of your time and attention; and remember I alone have a right to your services.”
“Lor’ bless you, my lady,” said Mr. Larkspur, “I haven’t forgot that; and that’s just what puzzles me. There’s only one man who knows the lay I’m on, and the name I go by, and he knows I would not take anything else till I have reckoned up this; and it would be no good sending anybody after me, unless it were something in some way concerning this business.”
In an instant Lady Eversleigh was as anxious that Mr. Larkspur should see the unknown man as she had been unwilling he should do so. “Pray go to him at once,” she urged; “don’t lose a moment.”
Mr. Larkspur left the room, and Lady Eversleigh dismissed Jane Payland, and awaited his return in an agony of impatience. After the lapse of half an hour, Mr. Larkspur appeared. There were actually some slight traces of emotion in his face, and the colour had lessened considerably in his vulture-like beak. He was followed by a tall, stalwart, fine~looking man, with the unmistakeable gait and air of a sailor. As Lady Eversleigh looked at him in astonishment, Mr. Larkspur said:—
“I ain’t much of a believer in Fate in general, but there’s surely a Fate in this. My lady, this is Captain George Jernam!”
The time had passed slowly and wearily for Rosamond Jernam, and all the efforts conscientiously made by her husband’s aunt, who liked the girl better the more she saw of her, and entirely acquitted her of blame in the mysterious estrangement of the young couple, failed to make her cheerful. She was wont to roam disconsolately for hours about the secluded coast, giving free course to her sadness, and cherishing one dear secret. Rosamond was so much changed in appearance of late that Susan Jernam began to feel seriously uneasy about her. She had lost her pretty fresh colour, and her face wore a haggard, weary look; it was plain to every eye that some hidden grief was preying on her mind. Mrs. Jernam, though a quiet person, and given to the minding of her own affairs, was not quite without “cronies,” and to one of these she confided her anxiety about her niece. The confidante was a certain Mrs. Miller, a respectable person, but lower in the social scale than Mrs. Jernam. She was a widow, and lived in a tiny cottage, close to the beach at Allanbay; she kept no servant, but her trim little dwelling was always the very pink and pattern of neatness. She was of a silent, though not a morose temperament. It was generally understood that Mrs. Miller’s husband had been a seafaring man, and had been drowned many years before she went to live at Allanbay. She had no relatives, and no previous acquaintances in that quiet nook; and if she had been a little higher in the social scale, belonging to that class which requires introductions, she might have lived a life of unbroken solitude. As it was, the neighbours made friends with her by degrees, and the poor widow’s life was not an unhappy or solitary one. Mrs. Jernam had early learned the particulars of her case, and a friendship had grown up between them, of which Mrs. Miller duly acknowledged the condescension on Mrs. Jernam’s part.
Mrs. Jernam called on her humble friend one day, to bestow some small favour, and, to her surprise, found her, not alone as usual, but in the act of taking leave of a man whose appearance was by no means prepossessing, and who was apparently very much disconcerted by Mrs. Jernam’s arrival. Mrs. Jernam immediately proposed to go away and return on another occasion, but the man, who did not hear her name mentioned, said, gruffly:
“No call, ma’am, no call; I’m going away. Good-bye, Polly. Remember what you’ve got to do, and do it.” Then he turned off from the cottage~door, and was out of sight in a few moments.
Mrs. Miller stood looking at her guest, rather awkwardly, but said at length:
“Pray sit down, ma’am. That’s my brother; the only creature I have belonging to me in the world.” And here Mrs. Miller sighed, and looked as if the possession were not an unqualified advantage.
“Has he been here long?” asked Mrs. Jernam.
“No, ma’am; he only came last night, and is gone again. He came to bring me a child to take care of, and a great tax it is.”
“A child!” said Mrs. Jernam, “whose child?”
“That’s more than I can tell you, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Miller; “and more than he told me. She’s an orphan, he says, and her father was a seafaring man, like your nephew, as I’ve heard you speak of. And I’m to have the charge of her for a year, and thirty pounds — it’s handsome, I don’t deny, but he knows that I’d take good care of any child — and she’s a pretty dear, to tell the truth, as sweet a little creature as ever walked. She don’t talk very plain yet, and she says, as well as I can make it out, as her name is Gerty.”
And then Mrs. Miller asked Mrs. Jernam to walk into her little bedroom, and showed her, lying on a neat humble bed, carefully covered with a white coverlet, and in the deep sleep of childhood, the infant heiress of Raynham! If either of the women had only known at whom she was looking, as they scrutinized the child’s fair face and talked of her beauty and her innocence in tearful whispers, looking away from the sleeping form, pitifully, at a little heap of black clothes on a chair by the bed!
“I suppose she’s the child of one of my brother’s old shipmates, as rose to be better off,” said Mrs. Miller, “for she’s fretted about a captain, and cried bitter to go to him when I put her to bed.” Then the two returned to the little parlour, and talked long and earnestly about the child, about the necessity for Mrs. Miller’s now employing the services of “a girl,” and about Rosamond Jernam.
Rosamond was greatly delighted with the child left in Mrs. Miller’s care. The little girl interested her deeply, and every day she passed many hours with her, either at Mrs. Miller’s house or her own. The grace and beauty of the child were remarkable; and as, with the happy facility of childhood, she began to recover from the first feeling of strangeness and fear, the little creature was soon happy in her new, humble home. She was too young to appreciate and lament the change in her lot; and, as she was well fed, well cared for, and treated with the most caressing affection, she was perfectly happy. Rosamond began to feel hopeful under the influence of the child’s smiles and playful talk. The time must pass, she told herself, her husband must return to her, and soon there would be for them a household angel like this one, to bring peace and happiness permanently to their home.
Susan Jernam and Rosamond were much puzzled about this lovely child, Gerty Smith, as she was called. Not only her looks, but certain little ways she had, contradicted Mrs. Miller’s theory of her birth, and though they fully credited the good woman’s statement, and believed her as ignorant of the truth as themselves, they became convinced that there was some mystery about this child. Mrs. Miller had never spoken of her brother until he made his sudden and brief appearance at Allanbay; and unsuspicious and unlearned in the ways of the world as Mrs. Jernam was, she had perceived that he belonged to the doubtful classes. The truth was, that Mrs. Miller could have told them nothing about her brother beyond the general fact of his being “a bad lot.” She had heard of him only at rare intervals since he had left his father’s honest home, in his scampish, incorrigible boyhood, and ran away to sea. She had heard little good of him, and years had sometimes passed over during which she knew nothing of his fate. But even in Black Milsom — thief, murderer, villain, though he was — there was one little trace of good left. He did care a little for his sister; he did “look her up” at intervals in his career of crime; he did send her small sums of money — whence derived she had, happily, no suspicion — when he was “flush;” and he did hope “Old Polly” would never find out how bad a fellow he had been. Mrs. Miller’s nature was a very simple and confiding one, and she never speculated much upon her brother’s doings. She was pleased to have the charge of the child, and she fulfilled it to the best of her ability; but those signs and tokens of a higher station, which Susan Jernam and Rosamond recognized, were quite beyond her ken.
One morning the little household at Susan Jernam’s cottage, consisting only of the mistress and her maid, was roused by a violent knocking at the door. Mrs. Jernam was the first to open it, and to her surprise and alarm, she found Mrs. Miller standing at the door, her face expressing alarm and grief, and little Gerty, wrapped in a large woollen shawl, in her arms. Her explanation of what had occurred thus to upset her was at first incoherent enough, but by degrees Mrs. Jernam learned that Mrs. Miller had come to entreat her to take care of the child for a day or two as she was obliged to go to Plymouth at once.
“To Plymouth!” said Mrs. Jernam —“how’s that? — but come in, come in”— and they went into Mrs. Jernam’s spotlessly neat parlour, that parlour in which Valentine Jernam had been permitted to smoke, and had told his aunt all his adventures, little recking of the final one then so close upon him. In the parlour, Mrs. Miller set little Gerty down, and the child, giddy and confused with her sudden waking, and being thus carried through the chill morning air, climbed up on the trim little sofa, and curling herself into a corner of it, sat quite motionless. Then, her agitation finding vent in tears, Mrs. Miller told Susan Jernam what had befallen. It was this:—
Just as day was dawning, a dog-cart, driven by a gentleman’s servant, had come to her door — the dog-cart was now standing at a little distance from Mrs. Jernam’s house — and she had been called out by the servant, and told that he had been sent to bring her over to Plymouth, with as little delay as possible. It appeared that her brother, who had gone to Plymouth after depositing the child with her, had been run over in the street by a heavy coal-waggon, and severely injured. He had been carried to a hospital, and was for some time insensible. When he recovered his speech he was delirious, and the surgeons pronounced his case hopeless. He was now in a dying state, but conscious; and had been visited by a clergyman named Colburne, the man’s master, who had induced him to express contrition for his past life, and to make such reparation as now lay in his power. The first step towards this, as he informed Mr. Colburne, was seeing his sister. There was no time to be lost; the man’s life was fast ebbing; it was only a matter of hours; and the good clergyman, who had been with the dying man far into the night before he had succeeded in inducing him to consent to this step, hurried home, and sent his servant off to Allanbay before daybreak.
There was little delay. A few words of earnest sympathy from Mrs. Jernam, an assurance that the child should be well ............