CHAPTER XXXV.

HOW ELIZABETH MADE UP HER MIND.

If we could trace back the wonderful things that happen to us "by accident," or, as some pious souls believe, by the operation of a special Providence or in answer to prayer, to their remote origin, how far should we not have to go? Into the mists of antiquity, and beyond--even to the primal source whence the world was derived, and the consideration of the accident of its separation from its parent globe; nay, of the accident which separated our sun itself from the countless dust of other suns that strew the illimitable ether--still leaving the root of the matter in undiscoverable mystery. The chain of causes has no beginning for us, as the sequence of effects has no end. These considerations occurred to me just now, when I sat down, cheerful and confident, to relate how it came to pass (and what multitudinous trifles could have prevented it from coming to pass) that an extraordinary accident happened to the three Miss Kings in the course of the week following Mr. Yelverton's departure. Thinking it over, I find that I cannot relate it. It would make this chapter like the first half-dozen in the book of Chronicles, only much worse. If Mr. King had not inherited a bad temper from his great-great-grandfathers--I could get as far as that. But the task is beyond me. I give it up, and content myself with a narration of the little event (in the immeasurable chain of events) which, at this date of which I am writing--in the ephemeral summer time of these three brief little lives--loomed so large, and had such striking consequences.

It happened--or, as far as my story is concerned, it began to happen--while the steamer that carried away Mr. Yelverton was still ploughing the ocean waves, with that interesting passenger on board. Seaview Villa lay upon the headland, serene and peaceful in the sunshine of as perfect a morning as visitors to the seaside could wish to see, all its door-windows open to the south wind, and the sibilant music of the little wavelets at its feet. The occupants of the house had risen from their beds, and were pursuing the trivial round and common task of another day, with placid enjoyment of its atmospheric charms, and with no presentiment of what was to befall them. The girls went down to their bath-house before breakfast, and spent half an hour in the sunny water, diving, and floating, and playing all the pranks of childhood over again; and then they attacked a dish of fried flathead with appetites that a schoolboy might have envied. After breakfast the lawyer had to go to his office, and his guests accompanied him part of the way. On their return, Sam Dunn came to see them, with the information that his best boat, which bore the inappropriate title of "The Rose in June," was moored on the beach below, and an invitation to his young ladies to come out for a sail in her while the sea was so calm and the wind so fair. This invitation Elizabeth declined for herself; she was still wondering in which direction the right path lay--whether towards the fruition of her desires or the renunciation of all that now made life beautiful and valuable to her--and finding no solution to the problem either in meditation or prayer; and she had little inclination to waste any of the short time that remained to her for making up her mind. But to Patty and Eleanor it was irresistible. They scampered off to their bedrooms to put on their oldest frocks, hats, and boots, rushed into the kitchen to Mrs. Harris to beg for a bundle of sandwiches, and set forth on their expedition in the highest spirits--as if they had never been away from Sam Dunn and the sea, to learn life, and love, and trouble, and etiquette amongst city folks.

When they were gone, the house was very still for several hours. Elizabeth sat on the verandah, sewing and thinking, and watching the white sail of "The Rose in June" through a telescope; then she had her lunch brought to her on a white-napkined tray; after eating which in solitude she went back to her sewing, and thinking, and watching again. So four o'clock--the fateful hour--drew on. At a little before four, Mr. Brion came home, hot and dusty from his long walk, had a bath and changed his clothes, and sat down to enjoy himself in his arm-chair. Mrs. Harris brought in the afternoon tea things, with some newly-baked cakes; Elizabeth put down her work and seated herself at the table to brew the refreshing cup. Then home came Patty and Eleanor, happy and hungry, tanned and draggled, and in the gayest temper, having been sailing Sam's boat for him all the day and generally roughing it with great ardour. They were just in time for the tea and cakes, and sat down as they were, with hats tilted back on their wind-roughened heads, to regale themselves therewith.

When Patty was in the middle of her third cake, she suddenly remembered something. She plunged her hand into her pocket, and drew forth a small object. It was as if one touched the button of that wonderful electric apparatus whereby the great ships that are launched by princesses are sent gliding out of dock into the sea. "Look," she said, opening her hand carefully, "what he has given me. It is a Queensland opal. A mate of his, he says, gave it to him, but I have a terrible suspicion that the dear fellow bought it. Mates don't give such things for nothing. Is it not a beauty?"--and she held between her thumb and finger a silky-looking flattened stone, on which, when it caught the light, a strong blue sheen was visible. "I shall have it cut and made into something when we go back to town, and I shall keep it _for ever_, in memory of Sam Dunn," said Patty with enthusiasm.

And then, when they had all examined and appraised it thoroughly, she carried it to the mantelpiece, intending to place it there in safety until she went to her own room. But she had no sooner laid it down, pushing it gently up to the wall, than there was a little click and a faint rattle, and it was gone.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "what _shall_ I do? It has fallen behind the mantelpiece! I _quite_ forgot that old hole--and it is there still. Surely," she continued angrily, stamping her foot, "when Mr. Hawkins took the trouble to do all this"--and she indicated the surface of the woodwork, which had been painted in a wild and ghastly imitation of marble--"he might have taken a little more, and fixed the thing close up to the wall?"

Mr. Brion examined the mantelpiece, pushed it, shook it, peered behind it with one eye, and said that he had himself lost a valuable paper-knife in the same distressing manner, and had long intended to have the aperture closed up. "And I will get a carpenter to-morrow morning, my dear," he boldly declared, "and he shall take the whole thing to pieces and fix it again properly. Yes, I will--as well now as any other time--and we will find your opal."

Having pledged himself to which tremendous purpose, he and they finished their tea, and afterwards had their dinner, and afterwards sat on the verandah and gossiped, and afterwards went to bed--and in due time got up again--as if nothing out of the common way had happened!

In the morning Fate sent another of her humble emissaries from the township to Seaview Villa, with a bag of tools over his shoulder--tools that were keys to unlock one of her long-kept secrets. And half an hour after his arrival they found the opal, and several things besides. When, after Mrs. Harris had carefully removed the furniture and hearthrug, and spread cornsacks over the carpet, the carpenter wrenched the mantelpiece from its fastenings, such a treasure-trove was discovered in the rough hollows of the wall and floor as none of them had dreamed of. It did not look much at the first glance. There were the opal and the paper-knife, half a dozen letters (circulars and household bills of Mrs. King's), several pens and pencils, a pair of scissors, a silver fruit-knife, a teaspoon, a variety of miscellaneous trifles, such as bodkins and corks, and a vast quantity of dust. That seemed all. But, kneeling reverently to grope amongst these humble relics of the past, Elizabeth found, quite at the bottom of everything, a little card. It was an old, old card, dingy and fretted with age, and dried and curled up like a dead leaf, and it had a little picture on it that had almost faded away. She carefully wiped the dust from it with her handkerchief, and looked at it as she knelt; it was a crude and youthful water-colour drawing of an extensive Elizabethan house, with a great many gables and fluted chimney-stacks, and much exuberance of architectural fancy generally. It had been minutely outlined by a hand trained to good draughtsmanship, and then coloured much as a child would colour a newspaper print from a sixpenny paint-box, and less effectively, because there was no light and shade to go upon. It was flat and pale, like a builder's plan, only that it had some washy grass and trees about it, and a couple of dogs running a race in the foreground, which showed its more ambitious pretensions; and the whole thing had evidently been composed with the greatest care. Elizabeth, studying it attentively, and thinking that she recognised her father's hand in certain details, turned the little picture over in search of the artist's signature. And there, in a corner, written very fine and small, but with elaborate distinctness, she read these words:--"_Elizabeth Leigh, from Kingscote Yelverton, Yelverton, June_, 1847."

She stared at the legend--in which she recognised a peculiar capital K of his own invention that her father always used--with the utmost surprise, and with no idea of its tremendous significance. "Why--why!" she gasped, holding it up, "it belongs to _him_--it has Mr. Yelverton's name upon it! How in the world did it come here? What does it mean? Did he drop it here the other day? But, no, that is impossible--it was quite at the bottom--it must have been lying here for ages. Mr. Brion, _what_ does it mean?"

The old man was already stooping over her, trying to take it from her hand. "Give it to me, my dear, give it to me," he cried eagerly. "Don't tear it--oh, for God's sake, be careful!--let me see what it is first." He took it from her, read the inscription over and over and over again, and then drew a chair to the table and sat down with the card before him, his face pale, and his hands shaking. The sisters gathered round him, bewildered; Elizabeth still possessed with her first impression that the little picture was her lover's property, Eleanor scarcely aware of what was going on, and Patty--always the quickest to reach the truth--already beginning dimly to discern the secret of their discovery. The carpenter and the housekeeper stood by, open-mouthed and open-eyed; and to them the lawyer tremulously addressed himself.

"You had better go for a little while," he said; "we will put the mantelpiece up presently. Yet, stay--we have found a very important document, as I believe, and you are witnesses that we have done so. You had better examine it carefully before you go, that you may know it when you see it again." Whereupon he solemnly proceeded to print the said document upon their memories, and insisted that they should each take a copy of the words that made its chief importance, embodying it in a sort of affidavit, to which they signed their names. Then he sent them out of the room, and confronted the three sisters, in a state of great excitement. "I must see Paul," he said hurriedly. "I must have my son to help me. We must ransack that old bureau of yours--there must be more in it than we found that time when we looked for the will. Tell me, my dears, did your father let you have the run of the bureau, when he was alive?"

No, they told him; Mr. King had been extremely particular in allowing no one to go to it but himself.

"Ah," said the old man, "we must hunt it from top to bottom--we must break it into pieces, if necessary. I will telegraph to Paul. We must go to town at once, my dears, and investigate this matter--before Mr. Yelverton leaves the country."

"He will not leave the country yet," said Elizabeth. "What is it, Mr. Brion?"

"I think I see what it is," broke in Patty. "Mr. Brion thinks that father was Mr. Yelverton's uncle, who was lost so long ago. King--King--Mr. Yelverton told us the other day that they called _him_ 'King,' for short--and he was named Kingscote Yelverton, like his uncle. Mother's name was Elizabeth. I believe Mr. Brion is right And, if so--"

* * * * *

"And, if so," Patty repeated, when that wonderful, bewildering day was over, and she and her elder sister were packing for their return to Melbourne in the small hours of the next morning--"if so, we are the heiresses of all those hundreds of thousands that are supposed to belong to our cousin Kingscote. Now, Elizabeth, do you feel like depriving him of everything, and stopping his work, and leaving his poor starved costermongers to revert to their original condition--or do you not?"

"I would not take it," said Elizabeth, passionately.

"Pooh!--as if we should be allowed to choose! People can't do as they like where fortunes and lawyers are concerned. For Nelly's sake--not to speak of mine--they will insist on our claim, if we have one; and then do you suppose _he_ would keep your money? Of course not--it's a most insulting idea. Therefore the case lies in a nutshell. You will have to make up your mind quickly, Elizabeth."

"I have made up my mind," said Elizabeth, "if it is a question of which of us is most worthy to have wealth, and knows best how to use it."