CHAPTER XII.

MRS. MORTOMLEY BREAKS THE NEWS.

Mrs. Werner, clad in the deepest of mourning, in the most unbecoming of caps, sat in that small room where Dolly had overheard Mr. Werner's utterances concerning her husband. Her cousin had been closeted with her for nearly an hour. Faithfully he agreed with Mrs. Mortomley that he would break the news of the dead man's embarrassments to his widow, and, indeed, it was plain no time ought to be lost in acquainting Mrs. Werner with the actual state of her finances.

"She has ordered mourning for the whole household," observed Lord Darsham, "and she has intimated her wish that a milliner should go to Dassell to see the children's dresses are properly made. Now, with every wish--"

"I comprehend, my Lord, and have already countermanded her orders, or, at least, have requested that their execution may be delayed."

Something in the tone of her voice, something in the stress she laid on the words my lord, struck the person she addressed with a sense of uneasiness.

"Good Heavens! Mrs. Mortomley, you don't suppose I grudge Leonora this small expense. You do not think so meanly of me as that, I hope. But, still, with an execution in the house I cannot imagine that Leonora--"

"If Leonora knew how she is situated," Mrs. Mortomley again interrupted, "she would clothe herself in sackcloth; she would have all her coloured dresses dyed black rather than incur one penny of needless expense, and she ought to know, and you ought to tell her."

Which Lord Darsham finally agreed to do, and then left the revelation to Mrs. Mortomley.

"She must be told, and at once," thought Dolly, as she dragged wearily up the staircase, to find Mrs. Werner sitting in her widow's weeds, all alone.

"Lenny," she began, "I want to speak to you very seriously. I think you ought to go back to Dassell without any unnecessary delay."

Mrs. Werner half rose from her seat.

"Are any of the children ill," she asked, "or is it my mother?"

"Your mother is well as far as I know," answered Mrs. Mortomley, "and so are the children; but there are evils almost as hard to bear as illness, and--"

"You know, Dolly, I can bear anything better than suspense," said Mrs. Werner.

"I know nothing of the kind," was the reply. "My own impression is, you or any woman could endure suspense better than bad news, and my news is bad."

"What is it like?"

"It is very like a change of fortune," answered Mrs. Mortomley. "Did it never occur to you, Lenny, that of late you have been living at a tremendous rate?"

"I was aware we spent a considerable sum of money," said Mrs. Werner; "but Mr. Werner wished it; and his business was good, and--"

"My dear," interrupted Dolly, "his business, poor man, was not good. He was forced to keep up an appearance in order to preserve his credit, and he was far from being rich when he died."

"You are not in earnest?" asked Mrs. Werner, an expression of horror coming into her face, for which her friend knew too well how to account; then added, "Oh! Dolly, tell me the worst at once?"

"I do not know either the best or the worst myself yet," was the answer. "Only of one thing I am certain, that you and the children are not left so well off as we might have hoped would be the case."

"That was what Charley came to tell me a little while since," remarked Mrs. Werner.

"Yes, his heart failed him as mine would have done, Leonora, but I felt you ought to know."

"Dolly, do you think this had anything to do with his death?" asked Mrs. Werner, so suddenly that the question taking Dolly unprepared she stood mute, unable to answer.

"You _do_ think so then?" said Mrs. Werner.

"I only think, remember, Leonora. God alone knows."

"Leave me," entreated the miserable woman. "I will try to bear it, but, oh! leave me to bear it alone."

Dolly crept down to the drawing-room, where Lord Darsham anxiously awaited her return.

"Have you told her?" he asked. "Has she decided on her future plans?"

"I have told her as much as I can tell her at present," was the reply. "When she has recovered a little from the shock, she will form her plans, no doubt. Meantime, my Lord, I think I could help you, and Leonora too, if you would tell me your plans with regard to your cousin and her family."

"Before I answer your question, will you answer one of mine? What have I done, Mrs. Mortomley, that your tone and manner have changed towards me so utterly? You are misjudging me in some way. You fancy because Leonora is poor, I shall not be so willing to help her as if she had been left well-dowered. Is it not so?"

"'Conscience makes cowards of us all,'" remarked Dolly, with a bitter little laugh. "It is you who have changed. Poverty and money; these two things are the touchstones of love, esteem, friendship. Have I not seen it? Do I not know it? I was wrong to expect a miracle; but I did hope for better things from you."

"And what have I done to forfeit your good opinion?" he asked. "Could a brother have taken more responsibility upon himself than I have done? I would have paid out that fellow downstairs, but you advised me not to part with money which might be useful to Leonora. Have not I told you I will see to her and the children? Is it not merely to save her annoyance I urge the necessity for her departure from this wretched house? Surely, you are hard to please?"

"I am not at all hard to please, and you know that," she answered. "When first you heard of Mr. Werner's reverses, you were goodness itself; you were as utterly unworldly and disinterested as--well, as my own husband is.

"But you had not then stood face to face with that ruin which overtakes a commercial man. A loss of income; the reduction of a household; having to live frugally, and dress plainly; these things never seem terrible to friends and acquaintances who are not called upon to practise such economy in their own persons. What has tried you is just what tries every one who is privileged to see the process by which men, unable to meet their engagements, are stripped of everything they possess.

"That man in possession horrified you almost as much as he did Williams. Being brought into contact with Mr. Forde disgusted you. Lord Darsham began to wonder with how much of this sort of thing he might become connected, and, though quite willing to do his duty, he could not avoid thinking duty a very unpleasant necessity."

"You are exhaustive, Mrs. Mortomley."

"It is a subject I have studied," she said. "Do you suppose any human being could pass through all this, as I have done, and come out innocent and believing. The bulk of friends I class under two heads:--those who know, and those who do not know what ruin means. The first simply turn their backs on the ruined man altogether; the second ask him to dinner, or to stay with them for a week, a fortnight, or a month."

"I am not going to ask my cousin to dinner, neither do I intend to turn my back on her," he remarked, unable, angry though he was, to avoid smiling at Dolly's sweeping assertions.

"No, but what are you about to do for her; what are you able and willing to do for her? If you mean--supposing she is utterly beggared--to say, I will allow you so much a year certain, say so to her soon. If, on the other hand, you are uncertain as to what you can do in the future, let her think if there be any way in which she can help herself, and assist her to the best of your ability. You would be doing her a greater kindness to leave her to let lodgings or keep a school, than to make her a pensioner on your--kindness shall we say?--for an uncertain income."

Lord Darsham took a turn or two up and down the room, then he said,

"You hit hard, but you hit fair. I will consider what I ought to do, and can do; and then--"

"It will not cost you much," she observed as he paused. "A woman may care for these things," with a gesture she indicated the furniture and appointments of that stately room. "Most women, I suppose, do like pretty and costly surroundings, but if she be a woman like Leonora she can give them all up when she knows it is right she should. You cannot imagine how much we can do with a little when necessary. Do you recollect sending Leonora a hundred pounds last Christmas?"

"I do, and she gave it away, and I was angry with her in consequence."

"She gave it to me," said Dolly boldly, though her face flushed a little as she made the confession. "And do you know what I did with it? I started a business--a colour manufactory--and we are living on the profits of that factory now, and when my dear husband gets strong again, I shall be able to begin and pay that hundred pounds back to Leonora."

"She won't take a penny of it," he exclaimed.

"Yes she will," answered Mrs. Mortomley, "because we understand each other, Leonora and I! Shall I ever forget that Christmas Eve! I had five sovereigns between us and nothing. A husband making nothing, and ill, and obliged to go up each day to see the trustee of his Estate. I was miserable. I was lonely. I was wishing I had been brought up to work of any kind, so that I might earn a few shillings a week, when Leonora came,--Leonora in her silks and furs, with her dear kind face; and she would make me take your cheque, and I declare, when I opened and looked at it, after she drove away, I felt as if it and she had come straight from God."

"Dolly," he said, "had I only known--"

"You might have brought me more," she went on; "but you could never have brought it in the same way. She knew all; she had seen the bailiffs at Homewood; she had seen friend after friend desert us; she had seen insults heaped on our heads; she had seen her own husband turn against mine when misfortunes overtook us; but it made no difference with her, and for that reason I shall stand between Leonora and trouble so long as I am able."

It was inconsequent language; but Lord Darsham knew well enough what she meant by it. He had felt that if being mixed up with business and Mr. Werner's affairs, and Mrs. Werner's adversity, included executions for debt, and interviews with such men as Mr. Forde, and taking the sole charge of his cousin and her children for life, then indeed he had become involved in an affair much more disagreeable and of considerably greater magnitude than could prove pleasant, and he had felt compassion for himself at being placed in such a situation.

But Dolly, the Dolly he remembered when she was but a tiny bit of a child--in the days in which his cousin Leonora called her Sunbeam--had put the matter in its true light before him.

If he was going to do anything for his cousin, he ought to do it efficiently. Dolly, as he himself said, hit hard; but she did hit fairly. As she put it, he was free to do or he was free to leave undone; but he was not free to allow Leonora to feel his kindness a burden, her position insecure.

No, Dolly was right; the matter ought to be put on a proper footing. It would never do for him to pay this, that, and the other, and in his heart feel Mrs. Werner, whom he once wished to marry, was spending too much money. Even in that matter of dress, Dolly's common sense had stepped in to the rescue.

"Mrs. Mortomley," he said at length, "will you go with Leonora to Dassell, and when I have arranged affairs here so far as they are capable of arrangement, I can follow you and we shall be able together to decide on our future plans?"

"I should not like to go," Dolly answered; "but if she and you wish it I will go."

As it proved, however, nothing on earth was further from Leonora's desires.

"I cannot return to Dassell yet," she said to her friend. "Mamma's questions would kill me. Dolly, will you take me home with you, to-morrow?"

"Aye, that I will, darling," answered the brave little woman, utterly regardless of ways and means in her anxiety to pleasure that distracted heart.

"Stay with me for a little while, please," whispered Mrs. Werner. She was afraid, now she had once looked upon the face of her trouble, of being left to contemplate it through the darksome hours of the summer night.

"I am going to sleep on the sofa, and if you want me at any hour or minute you have but to say 'Dolly.'"

Next morning a curious discovery was made. Mrs. Werner's jewellery, which she never took with her to Dassell, had all disappeared.

This led to an investigation of the contents of the plate closet, which seemed extremely short of silver, but this Williams explained by stating that when the family went to Brighton the previous winter, his master had for greater security removed the bulk of the plate to his bankers.

These matters were not mentioned to Mrs. Werner, but they filled Lord Darsham with a terrible uneasiness.

He felt thankful that his cousin was leaving that huge town house which lawyers and auctioneers, and bankruptcy messengers, were soon to fill with their pervading presence.

"May I come and see you, Mrs. Mortomley?" he asked, as he bade her good-bye at the Great Eastern terminus.

"Certainly," she answered. "Our cottage is a small one, but, as the Americans say, it opens into all out of doors."

He retained her hand for a moment, looked earnestly in her face as she said this, then the train was off, and, she smiling at him, bowed and kissed her finger in acknowledgment of his uplifted hat.

They were gone, and he walked slowly out of the station full of a fancy her words had conjured up.