""Where is your papa?" I asked, and she replied:
""At the Queen"s Hotel, but it is awful expensive there, and papa says we can"t afford it much longer. But mamma says we must stay till she finds some place to visit. There she is now, and that is Lord Hardy with her; they are going over to the old ruins," and she pointed to a young woman in the distance, bedizened out in white muslin and blue ribbons, with her yellow hair hanging down her back, and her big straw hat in her hand instead of on her head; and she was talking and laughing and coquetting with a short, spindle-legged chap, not much taller than herself, and looking with his light curly hair and mustache like a poodle-dog.
""Who did you say he was?" I asked, and the child answered me:
""Lord Hardy, mamma"s friend. He is very rich and very nice. He gives me lots of things, and sometimes buys us all first cla.s.s tickets, and then it is so grand. I don"t like to go second-cla.s.s, but, you see, papa is very poor."
""How, then, can he afford to stop at expensive hotels?" I asked, and she said, while a shadow came over her face:
""We couldn"t if we didn"t have one small room on the top floor, where I sleep on the lounge. I never go to _table d"hote_ but stay in my room and eat whatever mamma can slip into her pocket without the waiters seeing her. Sometimes it is not much, and then I am so hungry; but mamma will get us an invitation to visit somebody soon, and then I can eat all I want.""
The guests had listened very attentively to this recital, and none more so than Grey, who leaned eagerly forward, with quivering lips and moistened eyes, as he exclaimed:
"Poor little girl, how I wish she had some of my dinner! Why didn"t you bring her home with you, away from her wicked mother?"
Miss McPherson did not reply, for there dawned upon her suddenly a fear lest she had talked too much, and her manner changed at once, while she sank into an abstracted mood, and her eyes had in them a far-off look, as if she were seeing the child who came to her upon the sands of Aberystwyth and looked into her face with eyes she had never been able to forget, and which she could now see so plainly, though the little girl was thousands of miles away.
Dinner being over Hannah said it was time for her to go home, and Lucy accordingly ordered the sleigh to be brought to the door.
"You will come to-morrow as early as possible," Hannah said to her brother, who replied:
"Yes, immediately after breakfast, for I must go back to Boston on the afternoon train, I have an engagement for Sat.u.r.day."
"So soon?" Hannah said, in a tone of disappointment: "I hoped you would stay longer; father will be so sorry; he has antic.i.p.ated your visit so much."
"It is impossible. I have promised for Sat.u.r.day, and must keep the appointment," and Burton Jerrold leisurely sc.r.a.ped and trimmed his thumb nail, but did not explain that the appointment he must keep was with the members of his club, who gave a dinner on Sat.u.r.day.
He knew very well that he could remain in Allington until Sat.u.r.day afternoon and then reach home in time for the dinner; but the place was almost as distasteful to him as to his wife, and he gladly seized upon any pretext to shorten his stay as much as possible.
"Shall I tell father that you will come with Burton to-morrow?" Hannah asked her sister, who instantly a.s.sumed that air of invalidism which she found so convenient when anything disagreeable was suggested for her to do.
Drawing her shawl more closely about her, and glancing with a little shiver at the window, she replied:
"N-no, I hardly think I shall go out to-morrow, it will be so cold, and probably stormy; but you may expect me for a little while on Sat.u.r.day, if the day is fine."
"But _I_ shall come and stay till Monday, and I hope you have a lot of mince pies baked up. Last Thanksgiving we were in Paris, and had pea soup, and brains, and eels, and stewed celery for dinner," Grey said, as he kissed his aunt and bade her good-by.
CHAPTER VIII.
AFTER THE DINNER.
The carriage which took Hannah home also took Miss McPherson to the door of her dwelling, a large, old-fashioned New England house, with a wide hall through the center, and a square room on either side; one the drawing-room or parlor in which the ma.s.sive furniture had not been changed during the twenty years and more that Miss Betsey had lived there; the other the living room where the lady sat, and ate, and received her friends and where now a bright fire was burning in the Franklin stove, and the kettle was singing upon the hob, while a little round Swiss table was standing on the Persian rug before the fire, and on it the delicate cup and saucer, and sugar bowl, and creamer, which Miss McPherson had herself bought at Sevres years ago, when the life she looked forward to was very different from what had actually come to her.
Possibly the memory of the day when she walked through those brilliant rooms at Sevres, and bought her costly wares, softened a little her somewhat harsh, uncompromising nature, for there was a very womanly expression on her usually severe face as she sipped her favorite oolong, and gazed dreamily into the fire, where she seemed to see again the sweet face of the child who had talked to her on the sh.o.r.es of Cardigan Bay, and whose innocent prattle had by turns amused, and interested, and enraged her. And, as she gazed she thought:
"Yes, Grey was right. Why didn"t I take the little thing in my arms and bring her home with me? To think of her being hungry, when there is enough wasted in this house every day to feed her! And why did I so far forget myself as to talk as I did to-day--I, who am usually so silent with regard to my affairs! Why need I have told them that Archie"s wife was a trollop. I suppose the venom is still rankling in me for the name she called me, "Old Sour Krout!"" and Miss Betsey smiled grimly as she remembered all, the child upon the terrace had said to her that summer morning three years ago, "She is truthful, at all events," she continued, "and I like that, and wish I had her here. She would be a comfort to me, now that I am old, and the house has no young life in it, except my cats. There"s the bedroom at the end of the hall, opening from my room. She could have that, and I should be so happy fitting it up for her. I"d trim it with blue, and have hangings at the bed, and--"
Here she stopped, seized with a sudden inspiration, and summoning the housemaid, Flora, to her, she said:
"Remove the tea things and bring my writing-desk."
Flora obeyed, and her mistress was soon deep in the construction of a letter to Archibald McPherson, to whom she made the proposition that he should bring his daughter Betsey to her, or if he did not care to cross the ocean himself, that he place her under the charge of some reliable person who was coming to America and who would see her safely to Allington, or, that failing, she did not know but she would come herself for the child, so anxious was she to have her.
"I shall not try to conceal from you that I have seen her. You know that by the result. I did see her on the terrace, and saw your wife, too, and I liked the child, and want her for my own, to train as I please and to bring up to some useful occupation, so that, if necessary, she can earn her own living. There has been too much false pride in our family on account of birth and blood. The idea that because you are born a gentleman or lady you must not work is absurd. Would it not be more honorable to sweep the streets, or scour knives and pare potatoes, than to sponge one"s living out of strangers who despise you in then hearts even when inviting you to their houses? We have men, and women too, in America who do not work but get their living from others, and we call them tramps, and have them arrested as vagrants. But that is neither here nor there. I want you to give little Betsey to me, and she, at least, will never regret it. But don"t let me hope of a fortune influence you, for my will was made years ago, and not a McPherson is remembered in it.
Still, if Betsey pleases me, I may add a codicil and give her a few thousands, but don"t count upon it, or my death either. We are a long-lived race, and I am perfectly strong and well; so, if you let me have her, do it because you think it will be better for her, morally and spiritually, to be removed from the poisonous atmosphere which surrounds her. I liked her face; I liked her voice; I liked her frankness. I shall like her; so send her, and I will bear the expense; or write and say you can"t, and that will close the book.
"Your aunt, Miss BETSEY McPHERSON. Allington, Ma.s.s.
"P.S. I shall direct this to the old home in Wales, though I have no idea you are there, as I hear your wife prefers to be traveling."
The letter finished and directed, Miss Betsey sat a long time gazing dreamily into the fire and thinking of the past, the present, and the possible future, when a bright-haired child might be sitting there by her side and making her life less lonely and aimless than it was now.
Meanwhile the party at Grey"s Park had gathered around the fire in the drawing-room, and Geraldine was repeating to her sister the particulars of her presentation to the queen, shivering occasionally as she heard the sleet and snow beating against the window, for with the going down of the sun the storm had commenced again with redoubled fury, and the wind howled dismally as it swept past the corners of the house, bearing with it blinding sheets of snow and rain, and sounding some times like human sobbing as it died away in the distance.
"Is there some one crying outside, or is it the wind?" Mr. Jerrold asked, as the sobbing seemed like a wail of anguish, while there crept over him one of those indefinable presentiments which we have all felt at times and could not explain; a presentiment in his case of coming evil, whose shadow was already upon him.
"It is the wind," Grey said. "What an awful storm for Thanksgiving night!" and rising, he walked to the window just as outside there was the sound of a fast-coming vehicle, which stopped at the side piazza.
A few moments later the door of the drawing-room opened, and a servant appeared with a note, which she handed to Mr. Jerrold, saying:
"Sam Powley brought this from your sister. He says your father is very bad."
Mr. Jerrold was not greatly surprised. It seemed to him he had expected this, for the sobbing of the wind had sounded to him like his father"s voice calling to him in the storm. Taking the note from the girl, he tore it open and read:
"DEAR BROTHER: On my return home I found our father much worse, indeed, I have never seen him so bad, and he insists upon your coming to him to-night, so I have sent Sam for you, with instructions to call on his return for our clergyman, Mr. Sanford, as he wishes particularly to see him. Come at once, and _come alone_."
"HANNAH."
The words "come alone" were underscored, and Burton felt intuitively that the secret he had long suspected and which had shadowed his father"s life, was at last coming to him unsought. He was sure of it, and knew why Hannah had written "come alone." It meant that Grey must not come with him, and when the boy who had stood beside him and read the note with him, exclaimed, "Grandpa is worse; he is going to die; let us go at once," he said, very decidedly:
"No, my son, not to-night. To-morrow you shall go and stay all day, but not to-night, in this storm."
Very unwillingly Grey yielded, and saw his father depart without him.
"How is my father? How does he seem?" Mr. Jerrold asked of the boy Sam, who replied:
"I don"t know; I have not seen him. He would not even let me in this afternoon when Miss Hannah was gone. He locked the door, and I heard him working at something on the floor by his bed, as if trying to tear up the plank. He was there when Miss Hannah came home and found him. I guess he is pretty crazy. But here we are at the minister"s, I was to stop for him, you know. You will have to hold the horse. I sha"n"t be long," and reining up to the gate of the rectory Sam plunged into the snow, and wading to the door, gave a tremendous peal upon the bra.s.s knocker.
The Rev. Mr. Sanford, who had for many years been rector of the little church in Allington, was taking his evening tea with his better-half, Mrs. Martha Sanford, a little, plump, red-faced woman, with light gray eyes and yellow hair, who ruled her husband with a rod of iron, and would have ruled his parish if they had not rebelled against her. With all her faults, however, she took excellent care of her lord and master, and looked after his health as carefully as she did after his household interests; and on this particular night, because he had complained of a slight hoa.r.s.eness to which he was subject, she had at once enveloped his throat with folds of red flannel, under which was a slice of salt pork, her favorite remedy for all troubles of a bronchial nature. And, in his warmly wadded dressing-gown and padded slippers, the reverend man sat enjoying his tea and crisp slices of toast, which Mrs. Martha prepared for him herself, when the sound of the bra.s.s knocker startled them both, and made Mrs. Martha start so suddenly that the slice of bread she was toasting dropped from the fork upon the hot coals, where it was soon reduced to ashes.
"Who can be pounding like that on such a night as this?" she asked, as she hastened to open the hall-door, which admitted such a gust of wind that she came near shutting it in Sam"s face.
But the boy managed to crowd into the hall, and shaking a whole snow-bank of snow from his cap and coat, he began:
"If you please, ma"am, old Mr. Jerrold is very bad indeed, and Miss Hannah wants the minister to come right off. Mr. Burton Jerrold is out in the sleigh, waiting for him, and says he must hurry."