A pretty little fair-haired pale-cheeked girl, daintily but simply dressed, came in and made her curtsey very prettily, and replied nicely to Lord Northmoor"s good-natured greeting and information that Michael had sent her a basket of primroses and a cowslip ball, which she would find in the hall.
"What do you say, Cea?" said Bertha, anxious to demonstrate her manners.
"Thank you, my lord, and Master Michael," she uttered, but she was evidently preoccupied with what she had to tell Miss Morton. "Oh"m, there was such a nasty man here! And he wanted me, and said he was my father, but he wasn"t. He was the same man that gave Master Mite and me the bull"s-eyes when we were naughty and Louisa went away."
"Are you sure, Cea?" both exclaimed, but to the child of six the very eagerness of the question brought a certain confusion, and though more gently Lord Northmoor asked her to describe him, she could not do it, and indeed she had been only five when the encounter had taken place. The urgency of the inquiry somehow seemed to dispose her to cry, as if she thought she had been naughty, and she had to be dismissed to the cowslip ball.
"If the child is right, that man cannot be her father at all," said Lord Northmoor. "That man"s name is Rattler, and he is well known at Westhaven."
"Should you know him?"
"I never saw him, but I could soon find those who have done so."
"If we could only prove it! Oh, what a relief it would be! I dare not even send the child to school--as I meant to do, Northmoor, for indeed we don"t spoil her--for fear she should be kidnapped; and I don"t know if the school-board officer won"t be after her, and I can"t give as a reason "for fear she should be stolen by her father.""
"Not exactly. It ought to be settled once for all. Perhaps the child will tell more when you have her alone."
"Is not Rattler only too like a nickname, or is he a native of Westhaven?"
This Lord Northmoor thought he could find out, but the dinner was hardly over before a message came that the man Jones had called again.
"Perhaps I had better see him alone," said the guest, and Bertha was only too glad to accept the offer, so he proceeded to the little room opening into the hall, where interviews with tradesfolk or pet.i.tioners were held.
The man had a blue jersey, a cap, and an evidently sailor air, or rather that of the coasting, lower stamp of seaman; but he was tall, rather handsome, and younger-looking than would have been expected of Cea"s father. He looked somewhat taken aback by the appearance of a gentleman, but he stood his ground.
"So I understand that you have been making demands upon Miss Morton,"
Lord Northmoor began.
"Well, sir, my lord, a father has his feelings. There is a situation offered me in Canada, and I intend to take the little girl with me."
"Oh, indeed!" And there was a pause.
"Or if the lady has taken a fancy to her, I"d not baulk her for a sum down of twenty or five-and-twenty, once for all."
"Oh, indeed!" again; then "What do you say is the child"s name?"
"Jones, my lord."
"Her Christian name, I mean?"
He scratched his head. "Cissy, my lord--Celia--Cecilia. Blest if I"m sure!" as he watched the expression of the questioner. "You see, the women has such fine names, and she was always called Baby when her poor mother was alive."
"Where was she baptized?"
"Well, you see, my lord, the women-folk does all that, and I was at sea; and by and by I comes home to find my poor wife dead, and the little one gone."
"I suppose you are aware that you can have no legal claim to the child without full proof of her belonging to you--the certificate of your marriage and a copy of the register of her birth?"
The man was scarcely withheld from imprecations upon the work that was made about it, when Miss Morton had been quite satisfied on a poor fellow"s word.
"Yes, ladies may be satisfied for a time, but legally more than your word is required, and you will remember that unless you can bring full proof that this is your child, there is such a thing as prosecution for obtaining money on false pretences."
"And how is a poor fellow to get the fees for them register clerks and that?" said the man, in a tone waxing insolent.
"I will be answerable for the fees, if you will tell me where the certificates are to be applied for."
"Well, how is a cove to know what the women did when he was at sea? She died at Rotherhithe, anyway, so the child will be registered there."
"And the marriage? You were not at sea then, I suppose?"
But the man averred that there were so many churches that there was no telling one from another, and with a knowing look declared that the gals were so keen after a man that they put up the banns and hauled him where they would.
He was at last got rid of, undertaking to bring the proofs of his paternity, without which Lord Northmoor made it clear to him that he was to expect neither child nor money.
"I greatly doubt whether you will see any more of him," said Lord Northmoor when describing the interview.
"Oh, Frank," cried Bertha, calling him thus for the first time, "I do not know how to thank you enough. You have done me an infinite kindness."
"Do not thank me yet," he answered, "for though I do not in the least believe that this fellow is the child"s father, he may find his way to the certificates or get them forged; and it would be well to trace what has become of the real Jones, as well as to make out about this Rattler.
Is it true that the wife died at Rotherhithe?"
"Quite true, poor thing. I believe they had lived there since the marriage."
"I will run down there if you can give me the address, and see if I can make out anything about her husband, and see whether any one can speak to his ident.i.ty with this man."
"You are a man of gold! To think of your taking all this trouble!"
"I only hope I may succeed. It is a return to old habits of hunting up evidence."
Bertha was able to give the address of the lodging-house where poor Mrs.
Jones had died, and the next morning produced another doc.u.ment, which had been shut up in the Bible that had been rescued for the child, namely the marriage lines of David Jones and Lucy Smith at the parish church of the last Lord Northmoor"s residence in town.
To expect a clergyman or clerk to remember the appearance of a bridegroom eight years ago was too much, even if they were the same who had officiated; but Bertha undertook to try, and likewise to consult a former fellow-servant of poor Lucy, who was supposed to have abetted her unfortunate courtship. Frank, after despatching a letter of inquiry to his sister-in-law about "Sam Rattler," set forth by train and river steamer for Rotherhithe.
When they met again in the evening, Bertha had only made out from the fellow-servant that the stoker was rather small, and had a reddish beard and hair, wherewith Cea"s complexion corresponded.
The Rotherhithe discoveries had gone farther. Lord Northmoor had penetrated to the doleful den where the poor woman had died, and no wonder! for it seemed, as Bertha had warned him, a nest of fever and horrible smells. The landlady remembered her death, which had been made memorable by Miss Morton"s visits; but knew not whence she had come, though, stimulated by half-a-crown, she mentioned a small grocery shop where more might be learnt. There the woman did recollect Mrs. Jones as a very decent lady, and likewise her being in better lodgings until deserted by her husband, the scamp, who had gone off in an Australian steamer.
At these lodgings the inquiry resulted in the discovery of the name of the steamer; and there was still time to look up the agent and the date approximately enough to obtain the list of the crew, with David Jones among them. It further appeared that this same David Jones had fallen overboard and been drowned, but as he had not entered himself as a married man, his wife had remained in ignorance of his fate. It was, however, perfectly clear that the little girl was an orphan, and that Bertha might be quite undisturbed in the possession of her.
And thus Lord Northmoor came home a good deal f.a.gged, and shocked by the interior he had seen at Rotherhithe, but quite triumphant.
Bertha was delighted, and declared herself eternally grateful to him; and she could not but entertain the hope that the _soi-disant_ parent would make another application, in which case she was quite prepared to give him into custody; and she proceeded to reckon up the number of times that he had applied to her, and the amount that he had extracted, wondering at herself for not having asked for proofs, but owning that she had been afraid of being thus compelled to give up the child to perdition.
The applications had all been within the last year, so that the man had probably learnt from Louisa Hall, the nursery-maid, that Cea was the child of a deserted wife.
A letter from Mrs. Morton gave some of the antecedents of Sam Rattler, as learnt from Mrs. Hall, the charwoman, whose great dread he was. His real surname was Jones, and he was probably a Samuel Jones whose name Lord Northmoor had noted as a boy on board David"s ship. He belonged to a decent family in a country village, but had run away to sea, and was known at Westhaven by this nickname. He had a brother settled in Canada, who had lately written to propose to him a berth on one of the Ontario steamers, and it was poor Mrs. Hall"s dread that her daughter should accompany him, though happily want of money prevented it. As to his appearance, as to which there had been special inquiries, he was a tall fine-looking man, with a black beard, and half the girls at Westhaven were fools enough to be after him.