CHAPTER VII.

THE MESSAGE TO STAMMARS.

It was on the forenoon of a certain Saturday in May that Olive Deane found herself jogging slowly along the road that leads from Pembridge to Stammars. The morning was sunny and the road pleasant, but Olive had no eyes for anything: her own tortuous thoughts occupied her fully. Should she break as gently as possible the news she had to tell, and then give Eleanor the letter after having thus paved the way? Should she put the letter into her hand without a word, and simply wait to be questioned as to anything further that she might be supposed to know? Or--and this was the course that approved itself more fully to her--should she say nothing about the letter, but tell the news her own way, with sting and venom, and before whatever audience chance might give her an opportunity of assembling to hear it? Over and over in her mind she kept revolving these different courses, as the ramshackle old fly in which she was seated jolted and creaked its way slowly along the quiet country roads.

Lady Dudgeon, released at length from further attendance on her sick sister, was panting to get back to London for the remainder of the season. Sir Thomas, accompanied by his faithful Gerald, had come down on the Friday to fetch her ladyship. They were to stay at Stammars over the week end, but on the Monday morning the whole family would go up to town.

In due course. Miss Deane arrived at Stammars, only to find that Lady Dudgeon, accompanied by Miss Lloyd, had gone shopping to Pembridge, and that she must have passed them somewhere on the road. They would, however, so she was assured, be back in time for luncheon, so she made up her mind to await their return. Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were somewhere about, so the servant told her; but them, at present, she did not want to see. The young ladies, Sophy and Carry, had gone with their mamma, so that Miss Deane was left perforce to the evil company of her own thoughts. "Miss Lloyd, indeed!" muttered Olive, when the servant had left the room. "This is the last day that she will have a right to call herself by that name. What will her name be to-morrow? Should her ladyship have occasion to go shopping to-morrow, will she take this nameless pauper with her in her carriage? Not if Lady Dudgeon is the woman I take her to be."

After all, she had not long to wait--but little over an hour--before she saw the Dudgeon equipage rolling solemnly up the main avenue of the park. Her colourless cheeks flushed while she looked. Her heart beat painfully. The moment so long looked forward to was close at hand.

She was still undecided as to the precise mode in which her communication should be made to Eleanor. She found it impossible to make up her mind. Circumstances at the last moment would probably decide for her.

From the place where she was standing she could see the entire length of the avenue. She could see the two fat greys and the fat coachman, as they came every moment, but not yet could she see who was in the carriage behind--the carriage respecting which her ladyship had spoken in such disparaging terms to her husband, but which was still deemed good enough for country wear. Presently she saw Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy emerge from the shrubbery and go to meet the carriage. Then it stopped, and Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd alighted, and all four walked slowly towards the house. Gerald and Eleanor lingered a little behind the baronet and his wife, and to Olive's jaundiced eyes they seemed to be deep in earnest and loving conversation. In fancy she heard Pomeroy's low and tender tones and Eleanor's half-breathed replies. She set her teeth, and her lips tightened as she looked. "Before they are two hours older," she murmured under her breath, "he shall know that she is a beggar, and she shall know that her hero is nothing better than a vulgar adventurer!" And in the heat of her passion she took Matthew Kelvin's letter out of her pocket and tore it in two. "What has to be told I will tell in my own way. I have been a fool to hesitate so long."

But Olive was altogether mistaken in imagining that Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd were whispering love's sweet nothings to each other as they walked across the park. Gerald was merely giving, in animated terms, a description of the last new opera, which he had been to see a few nights previously. Eleanor hungered, but hungered in vain, for one tone of affection, for one whispered word of love. He knew that she was going away--going to leave Stammars, probably for ever--and yet he made no sign. She had long ago forgiven the deception that he had practised on her; he could hardly help seeing that she had forgiven him; and yet he still maintained the reserved and impassive demeanour that had marked him from the day of his confession in the library. Perhaps, after all, his love for her had been nothing more than a passing fancy. If such were indeed the case, if he felt that he had been mistaken, if his affection for her was not of a texture sufficiently strong to stand the wear and tear of a lifetime, then he was right to draw back while there was yet time to do so. His doing so proved one thing: that although, in the first instance, he had sought her for her wealth, and although his confession had led her to believe that he now loved her purely for herself, yet when he discovered that he had over-rated the strength of his feelings, he had retired honourably from the field, instead of staying to win her, as he might so easily have done, and with her that money which had first tempted him to follow her. To know this was only a poor sort of consolation, but it was better than none. How strange it seemed to her that she should have given her heart away to this man, given it beyond all power of recall, and yet that he should have nothing to give her in return! Was the romance of her life to have this poor and ignoble ending? It seemed so, indeed, just now. She only knew that, despite all the arguments urged by her pride, her love was still his as thoroughly as ever it had been. He was chatting to her now, as they walked up the avenue together, as any ordinary acquaintance might have done, of the new opera and the new prima donna, and yet how happy she felt to be walking by his side, how she had thrilled from head to foot when she first caught sight of him standing there with Sir Thomas! Yes, whether he loved her, or whether he hated her--her heart was still his beyond all possibility of recall.

If Eleanor had but known how much it cost Gerald to maintain this cold and reserved demeanour towards her! If she had but known how he longed to clasp her to his heart, and whisper in her ear how fondly he loved her! He often felt that not much longer would his tongue keep silence; that some moment, perhaps when he himself least intended it, the pent-up words would burst from his lips, his arms would stretch themselves forth and draw her to him, and in a few brief moments everything would be told. The task he had imposed on himself was fast becoming unbearable--would have become altogether unbearable, but that happily there seemed at last a prospect of its coming to a speedy end. He had had a letter from Marhyddoc, in which Ambrose Murray held out strong hopes of his search being brought to a successful issue. Should such really prove to be the case, then would Murray's first task be, with the proofs of his innocence in his hands, to seek the daughter whom he had hitherto refused to claim. Then would the necessity for this odious concealment come to an end; then would everything be told to Eleanor. Therefore did Gerald school himself to keep silence for a little while longer, hoping and believing that the future would compensate for everything.

Miss Deane's eager eyes watched the party of four come slowly up the avenue, and saw them at length ascend the steps and enter the house. Inside the hall Sir Thomas and Pomeroy went off together to the library, while Eleanor accompanied Lady Dudgeon to her sitting-room. Five minutes later a servant came to tell Olive that her ladyship would see her. The moment so intensely longed for had come at last. Olive's pale face grew a shade paler as she followed the servant along the passage.

Lady Dudgeon was seated at her davenport as usual. Miss Lloyd was sitting close by, finishing a sketch in water-colours. "Good morning. Miss Deane; I am pleased to see you. I hope Mr. Kelvin is no worse," said her ladyship, offering Olive two frigid fingers.

"Mr. Kelvin is no worse, madam, than he has been all along. He is still very ill--too ill to leave his room; and having something of importance to communicate, and being still too weak to write down the particulars, he has deputed me to come in his stead."

"Something of importance to communicate to me or to Sir Thomas?" asked her ladyship. Eleanor rose and was about to leave the room.

"My errand is to Miss Lloyd. It concerns her more nearly than anyone else."

"Eleanor, my love, had you not better take Miss Deane to your own room?"

Eleanor flushed a little. In her heart she had never liked Olive. She had always had a vague distrust and dread of her. How such a feeling had originated she could not have told: none the less it was there. "I have no secrets from you, Lady Dudgeon," said Eleanor. "Whatever Miss Deane may have to communicate can just as well be told here as elsewhere."

"Are you sure that you would not prefer to see her alone?"

"Quite sure."

"Then Miss Deane may as well be seated." And her ladyship dipped her pen in her inkstand, and made believe that she was about to go on with her correspondence.

Miss Deane drew a chair quietly forward and sat down. Eleanor, looking distrustfully at her, caught a momentary glance out of her black eyes, so full of malignant triumph that her heart sank within her, and a presage of coming misfortune chilled her suddenly from head to foot.

"When Mr. Jacob Lloyd died," began Olive in a low voice, ignoring Eleanor, and addressing her remarks directly to Lady Dudgeon, "he left behind him a large quantity of miscellaneous papers. Those papers were taken possession of by my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, whose intention it was to go through them, arrange them, and indorse them at his leisure. This process was interrupted by his sudden illness. During the last few days, however, feeling somewhat stronger, he has endeavoured to occupy himself with them for an hour or two now and then. Yesterday he came across a document in Mr. Lloyd's own writing of a very singular nature indeed."

She paused for a moment, as if to gather breath. Then she went on, speaking more slowly and deliberately than before, so that each word might go home to her hearers, and with her eyes still fixed on Lady Dudgeon.

"It is a document which would seem to prove conclusively that the young lady hitherto known as Miss Eleanor Lloyd was not the daughter of the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd--nor indeed any relative of his whatever, but simply the child of some unknown parents, adopted by Mr. Lloyd and his wife out of charity or compassion."

Eleanor's face by this time was whiter than Olive's. She did not speak, but sat staring "with wide-open eyes, as in a picture," and with one hand grasping the back of a chair, as if to keep herself from falling.

"Good gracious me! whatever is the woman talking about?" cried her ladyship, taking off her double eye-glass, as if to make sure that it was really Olive Deane who was sitting there.

"Mr. Lloyd, as your ladyship may remember," resumed Olive, without heeding the interruption, "died very suddenly, and without making a will. This young lady,"--indicating Eleanor by a slight inclination of the head--"has, consequently, no claim whatever to a single sixpence of Mr. Lloyd's property. She is, in fact, neither more nor less than a pauper."

At this word a little cry burst involuntarily from Eleanor. She ran to Lady Dudgeon, and sinking on one knee, buried her face in the elder lady's lap.

"Miss Deane, you forget yourself!" said Lady Dudgeon, with severity. "You forget that Miss Lloyd is my guest."

"I ask your ladyship's pardon if I have committed any offence. I was but making a simple statement of fact."

"That has yet to be proved. But, in any case, the statement was most offensively made." Then she patted Eleanor's cheek affectionately. "Keep up your spirits, my dear. Don't get downhearted. There must be a mistake somewhere. Miss Deane's story sounds far too romantic to be true."

"I believe your ladyship is sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Kelvin," said Olive, not without a touch of sternness, "to be quite aware that he is not a man who would be likely to send me to Stammars on such an errand as this unless he were perfectly sure of the facts he had to go upon. Had there been any doubt in the matter, I should not have been here to-day."

"Oh, Lady Dudgeon, it is not that I fear poverty!" cried Eleanor. "Don't think that. You know that I have never really valued the riches that were said to be mine."

"That's true enough," murmured her ladyship.

"It is the thought of having lost the dearest and kindest man that ever breathed that wrings my heart. I have lost--my father!"

"Hush, my dear--hush! Even if it should turn out that you are not Mr. Lloyd's daughter in reality, you will always have the consolation of knowing that he loved you as such. Nothing can deprive you of that." Then turning to Olive, she added: "Since Mr. Kelvin has made this very clever discovery--which, mind you, as I said before, has yet got to be proved--he is, doubtless, clever enough to have found out the person to whom Mr. Lloyd's property really does belong?"

"The heir-at-law is a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton, a nephew of Mr. Lloyd, but a person whom Mr. Kelvin has never seen."

"But a person with whom he will at once place himself in communication?"

"Undoubtedly, madam."

"Miss Lloyd's interests in this matter must not be allowed to suffer. The case appears to be one that requires the most minute and strict investigation, and I shall at once place it in the hands of Mr. Barclay."

Olive bowed.

"Mr. Kelvin will no doubt either seek an interview with Miss Lloyd, or write her full particulars, as soon as he is strong enough to do so."

"I decline to let Miss Lloyd be troubled in the affair. She is going up to town with me on Monday next. Mr. Kelvin had better communicate direct with Mr. Barclay."

Again Olive bowed.

"I will not fail to deliver your ladyship's message."

"Perhaps, after all, it's quite as well that you did not marry Captain Dayrell," said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor. "He would hardly have liked having to give up your dowry."

Eleanor rose to her feet, and stood for a few moments with her hands pressed to her temples, as though striving to realize to herself the strange tidings that had just been told her. "I have no name--no home," she said, in a dreamy way, as if communing with herself. "I can work for my living; I am not afraid of that. But--but I have lost my father, and I have no name!"

At this instant the door was opened, and in walked Sir Thomas.

"Eh--what's this?--what's this?" he said, cheerfully. "Hope I'm not intruding, as what's-his-name says in the play. Rehearsing a little comedietta, or what?"

"Run away to your room now, my dear," said Lady Dudgeon, as she rose and kissed Eleanor. "Every cloud has its silver lining. Keep up your spirits, and remember that you shall never want for a home as long as Sir Thomas and I are on this side of the grave."

Eleanor did not wait for another word, but hurried out by the opposite door as Sir Thomas came forward. Then the baronet had to be told everything, and it is needless to say how great was his surprise, which he expressed in far more voluble terms than his wife had done.

"If our Nelly ain't Jacob Lloyd's daughter, whose child is she?" he said, after he had had time to calm down a little. "Kelvin found that out, I suppose, at the same time that he found out the other."

"At present he has no clue whatever to the parentage of Miss Lloyd."

"Why, it's quite a romance! I must call and see Kelvin to-morrow, and talk it over with him myself."

"To-morrow is Sunday, Sir Thomas," said her ladyship, severely. "And on Monday morning we start for town."

"Ah, so we do," said the baronet, scratching his chin with an air of perplexity.

"I have decided to place Eleanor's interests in the hands of Mr. Barclay, so that the less you interfere personally in the matter the better."

"Quite right, my dear, quite right. But what's to become of the poor girl meanwhile?"

"For the present she will stay with us, as usual. It is too early yet to legislate for her future."

Her ladyship said this with an air that seemed to forbid further discussion. Her husband took the hint, and remarking that he had several important letters to write, he trotted back to the library.

"I am going to have a cup of chocolate in my dressing-room," said her ladyship to Olive. "Unless you are in a hurry to get back home, you may come and keep me company."

Olive was in no hurry to get back; in fact, she had something for her ladyship's private ear, and was glad of such an opportunity for telling it.

Lady Dudgeon, on her side, was actuated by a very natural desire to elicit from Miss Deane some further particulars of the strange story which she had just heard. She felt sure that there must be several interesting details, which it might not be advisable that Eleanor should be made acquainted with, but which Miss Deane could have no object in keeping from her. It was certainly not her intention to cross-question Olive--she was above doing that--a delicate hint to Miss Deane that her ladyship was willing to listen to anything she might feel disposed to tell her, ought to be sufficient to elicit any details that might hitherto have been kept in the background.

Notwithstanding the kind way in which she had spoken to Eleanor, Lady Dudgeon felt very considerably annoyed in her own mind at the thought that her pet protégée, whom she had taken everywhere and introduced to everybody, lauding her to the skies as everything that was good and beautiful, and who had, in a certain sense, as the presumed heiress of twenty thousand pounds, shed a reflected lustre on her chaperon, should turn out to be nobody knew whom, and without a sixpence to call her own. Nothing could have been more mortifying. She had liked the girl from a child, and would no doubt have continued to like her just as much had Jacob Lloyd died a bankrupt, and would probably have made a sort of humble companion of her, or would, in any case, have seen that she was properly provided for; but to have introduced the girl to all her fine friends and acquaintances on a footing of equality, and now to discover that she had no claim to the status so given her--that was indeed a bitter pill for her ladyship to swallow.

She knew well--no one better--how censorious is that Society of which she herself formed a component atom; how one of the chief conditions of its existence is that it shall revenge itself without mercy on every _faux pas_ of its votaries in which they may be found out. She knew quite well the sort of remarks that people would make. They would say that she had wilfully allowed herself to become a party to a fraud. They would say that she had done her best to pass off a portionless girl as an heiress, and, in the eyes of Society, what crime could well be more heinous than that?

It was very, very mortifying, and she could not help, in her secret heart, visiting upon Eleanor some portion of blame for what had happened. It seemed well-nigh incredible to her that the girl could have lived all these years in utter ignorance that she was not Jacob Lloyd's daughter. Of course, all these minor points would have to be inquired into and thoroughly sifted later on. Much bitterness was yet to come, but the foretaste she had of it already was very far from being to her liking.

Not a shadow of all this was discernible in her ladyship's manner as Miss Deane followed her upstairs; but Olive had a poisoned arrow in her quiver of which Lady Dudgeon knew nothing.

A cup of chocolate was brought for each of them, and Lady Dudgeon, as she sipped at hers, chatted away to her companion about Sophy and Carry, and what girls they were for wearing out their boots; about the late flower show; about Mrs. Diplock's last baby, and the state of Mr. Kelvin's health--while waiting for an opportunity to work the conversation round to the desired point. But Olive was in no mood for such man[oe]uvring. She had something to say, and she was determined to say it. A break in the flow of her ladyship's small-talk was caused by the intrusion of a servant to ask a question, and Olive seized the opportunity.

"There is one circumstance that took place while I was at Stammars," she began, "which I have sometimes thought since I ought to have mentioned to your ladyship at the time. To-day I regret more than ever that I omitted to do so."

"To what circumstance do you allude, Miss Deane?"

"Your ladyship must please to pardon the question, but did it never strike you, did you never notice, that there was some hidden understanding between Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy?"

"Good gracious. Miss Deane, whatever do you mean?"

Lady Dudgeon was surprised for the moment out of her assumed equability.

"To put the case in plain language, and it will perhaps be best to do so," said Olive, "has your ladyship never had reason to suspect that Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy were engaged to each other?"

"Impossible! such a thing is utterly impossible!" was Lady Dudgeon's emphatic reply. "I know Miss Lloyd too well to believe anything of the kind. For once, Miss Deane, your surmises have led you altogether astray."

"Possibly so; I hope so," said Olive, resignedly.

There was an awkward silence. Her ladyship fidgeted, but said nothing. Singular to say, she seemed far more put out by what Olive had just said to her than by the far more important disclosure that had been made to her half an hour previously.

"You--you mentioned some circumstance," she said at last, not without a touch of irritation. She felt as though Olive were doing her a personal injury.

"Yes; a little circumstance of which I was the accidental witness. But probably your ladyship will not think it worth while to listen to it."

"Probably it is not worth listening to, but still there can be no harm in your telling me."

"One evening, some two or three weeks before my cousin was taken ill," began Olive, "I was sitting in the bow-window of the back drawing-room. The curtains were partly drawn, and when Miss Lloyd came into the room she did not see me. She sat down at the piano and began to play: and as there was no third person present, I saw no reason for making my presence known. But after a time Mr. Pomeroy came in. He had just returned from a journey, and was evidently in search of Miss Lloyd. He hurried up to her, and, before I had time to say a word, he had folded her in his arms. Then he called her his darling, and kissed her several times."

"How dreadful--how very dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Dudgeon, with a sort of terror.

"And then----Miss Lloyd kissed him back."

Lady Dudgeon could only put down her cup of chocolate and groan.

In saying that Eleanor kissed Gerald back, Olive told a lie, a weakness that she was never guilty of unless she had some particular end to serve.

"And do you really mean to affirm, Miss Deane, that you saw these--these shocking things with your own eyes?" Lady Dudgeon contrived to say at last.

"Certainly; exactly as I have told your ladyship."

It was indeed dreadful. She had been hoodwinked and bamboozled under her own roof, and by this girl for whom she had done and sacrificed so much. Her feelings had been outraged in their tenderest point. Eleanor Lloyd was deposed from her throne for ever. What could anyone do for a person who could so far forget what was due both to herself and others?

Lady Dudgeon strove her hardest to hide from Olive the effect which her words had upon her. "Well, well, young people will be young people till the end of the chapter," she said at last, with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness.

"Mr. Pomeroy will now have an opportunity of proving the disinterestedness of his affection," said Olive, in her slow, incisive way. "He can now let the world see that it was not Miss Lloyd's money, but Miss Lloyd herself, that he fell in love with."

"What a strange person you are, Miss Deane!" her ladyship could not help saying.

Olive smiled coldly, and then rose to go.