CHAPTER V
"A WOMAN OF NO NAME."
One day when Maud was sitting alone in the library by the fire reading, a servant entered with word a lady who declined giving any name wished to see Miss Midharst. She was, the servant said, a thin, tall, old lady, dressed in black.
No ladies called at the Castle. What could this woman want? Maud wondered. Who could she be? A tall, thin, old lady, dressed in black. Had she asked by name for Miss Midharst?
"Yes; she said she wanted to see Miss Midharst. I asked her would Mrs. Grant do, and she said No, she wanted to see Miss Midharst alone."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
Who could it be? The last person who had asked to see her and declined to give a name was William. (She would write to William to-day and tell him what she thought. It was a strange thing for her to have to write to him. But she did not know what to do. William was her only friend. She was afraid to speak to Mrs. Grant about it. If she mentioned the matter to Mrs. Grant, no one could tell but it might get back to Mr. Grey's ears, and that would never do. Never.) Ah, the servant is waiting yet.
"Where is the lady?"
"In the hall-room, madame."
"Tell her I will come to her at once."
Maud rose slowly and put down her book. As she moved along the corridors, she thought:
"This is most unpleasant, it is terrible. My father is not yet two months dead, and Mr. Grey's manner frightens me. At first I did not notice it, but now – now I can have no doubt. He has not said anything plain yet, but he can mean nothing else. He calls me Maud, and not Miss Midharst. He takes my hand, too, when we are alone, and looks in my eyes and frightens me. His eyes are queer. When he is looking at me he seems suddenly to forget who I am, or where he is. It is only within the past week I noticed this; and yesterday he looked at me with those awful eyes, and begged me to be good to him and come, for God's sake, and take the thing away from the dark passages and the doorways. Then he asked me if I smelt blood, and burst out laughing, and said all this was part of a play he was writing. Judas Iscariot, the hero of his play! What a horrible thought!"
She reached the hall-room. It had long ago been used by the family as a breakfast-parlour when few guests were at the Castle; for many years it had been made a waiting-room.
Maud opened the door and entered. The day was cold, and she directed her glance first towards the fire. No one was there, but she saw standing with her back to the window a tall, thin, old woman.
The stranger did not move. She fixed her eyes on Maud, and stood staring at the girl.
Maud moved slowly and timidly up the room. When within a couple of yards of the other she said:
"I am Miss Midharst. You wish to see me. Will you not take a chair near the fire?"
"Yes, I wanted to see you. I want to see you."
She did not move. Her voice was firm and hard, with a tone of menace in it.
"I – I cannot recall your face, and the servant did not bring your name."
"We never met before. The servant did not bring you any name, for I have none. I am a woman of no name."
"A woman with no name!" cried Maud, with a feeble attempt at a smile. There was no provocation for smiles in the words or manner of the unknown, and Maud felt uneasy.
"Yes; I once had an honourable name, and was connected with honourable people who bore it. But that name was dishonoured by one who owned it, and the name died. My name would not live dishonoured." The voice was firm and hard still, and the original pose unbroken.
"I am sorry for that," murmured Maud, not knowing anything else to say. What a contrast between this unknown visitor and the former! And yet, although a strong contrast appeared, there was a subtler similarity.
"And I am sorry for you."
Maud started and repeated: "Sorry for me! Why are you sorry for me?"
"Because you are young. I used once, until lately, to think it a privilege to be young; now I consider it a privilege to be very old or dead."
Maud felt more and more uncomfortable. This was not a cheerful way of looking at things. Maud had quite enough unpleasant matters to occupy her mind, and she was quite unstrung. What business had this woman with her? She would try. She spoke somewhat tremulously:
"Can I be of any use to you?"
"No. Nor can I be of much to you."
"To me!" said Maud in surprise. "I hope no one has been asking you to do anything unreasonable for me. Of course, as I did not know you until now, and never heard your name, you will excuse my not thanking you for what you may have done for me."
"I have done nothing for you but evil."
"Evil! I assure you you must be mistaken. No one has done me harm, as far as I know."
"But there may be evil you do not know of, and I may have been the innocent cause of it."
"But if you were innocent you must not trouble yourself about it; and besides, whatever the harm was, it has not hurt me, so that you must make your mind easy."
"The evil may be done, and yet unfelt, and may be felt later on, and the evil may not be done yet."
"I do not clearly understand you."
"I do not intend you should. I do not know why I have spoken so much. I cannot say more. I have merely called to deliver into your hands a parcel of some consequence. The contents of this parcel is yours. I said I cannot do much for you. I can do no more than give you this. You must promise me not to open this parcel until to-morrow morning. You need not be afraid of it. The things in it are good things. You promise?" The woman held out her hand with a small parcel in it.
"Yes," answered Maud, taking the parcel.
At that moment the door opened, and a voice said:
"I beg your pardon, Miss Midharst; I did not know there was anyone here."
Maud turned round, and saw Henry Walter Grey smiling and bowing in the doorway. With the handle of the door still in his hand, he took a backward step, when the old woman said:
"Come in. I have finished with Miss Midharst."
At the sound of the voice Grey sprang back a step, thrust his head forward, and uttered a low cry of surprise and pain.
Maud moved towards him, saying:
"Are you ill, Mr. Grey? Are you ill?"
His face was shrivelled and his mouth hung open.
Before Maud could take another step the hand of the old woman was on her shoulder, and the voice of the old woman was in her ear, firm and hard as before:
"Remember your promise! Good-bye."
With erect head, bright eyes, and a quick step, the stranger walked to the door, on the outside of which Grey stood paralysed. He bowed and groaned as she approached, and as she passed him he crouched against the wall.
She swept by him without looking at him, turned the corner of the corridor and passed out of sight.
Maud, transfixed with amazement, stood where the old woman had arrested her.
When the stranger had disappeared, Grey made a prodigious effort, shook himself, assumed a sickly smile, and straightened his figure.
The action of the banker dissolved the stupefaction of the girl, and she moved rapidly towards the door to escape. Just as she reached it the manner of the man suddenly changed. His face became dark and threatening, and he bounded into the doorway, barring the exit and crying:
"Stop! I must speak with you before you leave the room!"
The girl recoiled in terror, and began with "Mr. Grey!" in a tone of fear and expostulation.
"Go back. I say I must speak with you before you leave this room!"
She struggled with herself for a moment, and then summoned courage enough to begin with:
"By what right, Mr. Grey – "
"By any right or by any wrong you must speak with me. Do I look like a child, or a fool, or a woman?"
His manner was vehement and over-powering. For an instant she resolved to defy him, but by a powerful sweep of his arm he indicated that denial was out of the question. With a palpitating heart and confused head she stepped back into the room.
He followed her and locked the door. When she heard him do this her strength gave way altogether, and she sank on a chair.
He walked up and down the room some time before he spoke.
"Tell me, what did that wretched woman say to you? What was her business with you? What brought her here?"
"She told me she had wronged me innocently."
"How?"
"She would not say."
"What do you mean, girl? Do you dare to tell me she said she had wronged you and did not tell you how?" He drew up in front of her chair.
"Yes."
"Is that a lie?"
"Is what a lie?"
"Have you, girl, told me a lie?"
"Mr. Grey, I – "
"Girl, I will have no pretty sentiments! I am talking business now. Such business as you never even heard of. You may not know the results hanging on your words. Did that wretched woman tell you the injuries she had done you?"
"She did not." Maud felt she should faint.
"Listen to me now, girl: this is business. Attach ten thousand times more value to the answers you are going to make me than to any other answers you gave in all your life. My question is: What names did she mention?"
"None. She mentioned no name."
"Absolutely and literally no name?"
"She mentioned no name."
"Not even her own?"
"Not even her own."
"But you know, of course, who she is?"
"I never saw her before. I do not know who she is."
"The servants know her name."
"Jordan told me a lady wished to see me in private. He did not know her name."
"Are you sure of all this?"
"Yes."
"What was her business with you?"
"She left me that packet on the table."
"Did she say nothing about it?"
"That it contained something of mine, and that I was not to open it until to-morrow morning."
"Is that all?"
"That is all."
"Swear it to me."
"Mr. Grey!"
"I know; but swear all the same."
"I will not."
"Then you have been lying."
"I have not. How dare you say such a thing, Mr. Grey!"
"Well, there, Maud, dear Maud, let us drop the comedy. I am afraid I have carried it too far already. You know really who the poor creature is?"
"I have told you I do not."
"She is a harmless old woman who is mad on religion, and goes about doing this kind of thing, and leaving bundles of tracts like this." He took up the parcel off the table. "She must not be allowed in here again. I will give orders that she shall not be admitted. And now can you guess the reason for my comedy?"
"I cannot."
"It was, dear Maud, because I heard to-day there is some chance of the will being disputed, and I wanted to try how you would go through the ordeal of a severe cross-examination. And I must say, anything to equal my Maud's admirable coolness I never saw. You did not for a moment fancy I was in earnest?"
"I don't know what I thought. I was greatly frightened."
"Well, I admit I did go too far. But it was in your own interest, dear Maud – in your own interest. You are all right again, dear Maud?"
He took her hand in his.
"I feel a little nervous and hysterical. Please open the door and let me go."
"Certainly; it was carrying the joke too far to lock the door; but I was borne away by the spirit of the thing. You will forgive me."
"Oh, yes."
"Well, dear Maud, good-bye now. You are leaving your parcel of tracts behind you. Never mind; I'll read them for you."
When she had left the room he took up the parcel, dropped it into his pocket, and started at once for the city.
That day Maud wrote to her cousin, Sir William Midharst. The concluding paragraph of her letter ran thus:
"I do not know what is the matter with Mr. Grey; his manner terrifies me. If you can, come back at once."
CHAPTER VI
PENNILESS
As Grey drove home he thought: "Was ever man so lucky as I! She did not denounce me. She did not give her name. She did not mention mine. She did not tell the nature of the injury she had been the innocent cause of, and I was in time to prevent surprise being aroused by the contents of that packet. Was ever man so lucky as I!
"I think I half convinced Maud the scene between her and me was a rehearsal. If I have not, I am sure to be able to do so later on. Maud had no suspicion that woman was my mother; and if she had she could in no way trace my manner to the presence of my mother. Even if she discovers later on it was my mother, I shall be able to find out some back door, some means of escape. It is time enough to say good-day to the devil when you meet him; so I will not waste time in providing for what may never arise.
"This parcel is money, of course. It is a large slice out of the sales of the annuity, house, and furniture. I don't know what the gross sum was, but I should not be surprised if she left half of it with Maud. Let me see."
He cut the cord, and opened out the parcel. There were two or three folds of brown paper; then came a bundle of notes, and in the middle one note doubled up, and in this innermost note four sovereigns, seven shillings, and a fourpenny-piece. There were seven one thousand pound notes, three one hundred, and eight tens, making seven thousand three hundred and eighty pounds in notes, and four pounds seven shillings and fourpence in coin; in all, seven thousand three hundred and eighty-four pounds, seven shillings and fourpence.
Grey knit his brows, counted the money over again, twisted the gold and silver inquisitively through his fingers, and uttered an exclamation of dissatisfaction.
"Of course," he thought, "they could have traced these notes to her as easily as though her name was written on the back of each. I can now cut off their history as long as I like. I cannot understand how she got so much for the lot. Double this would be a thing far above my estimate. At the very outside I don't think the three things were worth more than ten thousand. It might have gone to eleven thousand. I should not have thought so much, certainly not a penny more. This would be about two-thirds of eleven thousand – a trifle more than two-thirds. Can this woman have given Maud two-thirds of what the property brought, and left herself with short of four thousand pounds, when she may live ten or a dozen years yet? Monstrous!
"My mother, upwards of seventy years of age, with a bankrupt son and four thousand pounds – a hundred and fifty pounds a year! Monstrous! I'll go to Evans and find out the facts of the case, and relieve myself of this heavy suspicion."
He drove to Evans's. The solicitor was in an outer office among his clerks. Grey was too impatient to wait until they could reach the private room, and too cautious to allow Evans to answer his question aloud. He took up a sheet of paper and wrote on it:
"What were the net proceeds of my mother's sale?"
He handed this to Evans.
The solicitor wrote some figures, and returned the paper to Grey.
The banker turned down the side of paper with the figures, and went to the window. With his back to the attorney and clerks he read the figures. The paper fell from his hand. He raised his face against the thin winter light. He folded his arms tightly across his chest. A convulsive movement began at the shoulders and descended throughout his body. He swayed to and fro violently.
Evans raised his head, and saw something was wrong. He stole softly behind the banker, and placed his hand on the other's arm.
"Come this way. Come to my private room," whispered the solicitor gently.
Grey moved away mechanically. Even with the attorney's assistance he walked unsteadily.
When he had reached the private room Evans pressed Grey into a chair, locked the door, and said:
"Rest a while. Rest a while, and then tell me."
Grey rose to his feet laboriously, as if his joints were frozen. He placed a hand on each shoulder of Evans, and said, in a heavy husky voice:
"Evans – my God! Evans – do you know what has happened?"
"No."
"My mother, upwards of seventy years of age, has left Daneford and gone I don't know where; and she has not a roof to cover her, a meal to eat, or a shilling in her pocket."
The sum Evans had written on that piece of paper was seven thousand three hundred and eighty-four pounds, seven shillings and fourpence.
"Evans, she hasn't kept a copper. By this time she may be without a shilling."
Half an hour elapsed before Grey found himself able to command himself sufficiently to face the public eye.
Evans offered to do anything in his power. He undertook to find Mrs. Grey and ascertain her condition; but Grey refused all help. He felt perfectly convinced his mother would allow nothing to be done for her by him. If she beggared herself to pay some of the stolen money, it was not likely she would accept money from him who had committed the theft.
When he left Evans's office he walked slowly and sadly towards the Bank. It was now dusk. He went to his private-room, and, flinging himself into a chair, sat long gazing at the fire.
He had, he had fancied, banished all thought of his mother from his mind for ever. He had flattered himself he had cast off all his old affection, so that it might be no longer a stumbling-stone in the path of his ambition. But this horrible discovery of the old woman's absolute destitution could not be resisted.
His mother a homeless wanderer among strange people in the winter time! Unendurable thought! She to whom he had looked up with love and reverence all his life, who had soothed and cheered him in the little griefs of his boyhood and the trials of his manhood, now without a fireside of her own!
He had himself never known what poverty, actual poverty, was; but he had heard and read of it, and had come in contact with it as a man connected with the treasurership held by him. There were people in the world at this moment who were hungry and had not a penny to buy bread. Had not a penny such as this.
He had taken a coin out of his pocket, and now held it in his left hand. He was bent forward; his right elbow rested on his knee; his head drooped over the left palm, in which lay the coin.
People who starved for want of such a coin as this! Under privation it was the children and the old people succumbed first. People of middle life like him lived through sieges and famines when the young and the old died.
To think of people being hungry for want of such a coin as this!
He had seen the old hungry. As president of the Coal Fund he had visited poor old people. He had seen their dropped jaws, their dim eyes, their feeble gait, their degraded humanity. He had seen women, old women who had once occupied comfortable positions, hobbling along the frozen streets with tickets for coal in their hands, while boys followed jeering at them. He had heard these respectable old women utter words of gratitude so humiliating to themselves, that he had felt to listen was more the punishment of a crime than the reward of a humane action.
Once at a Christmas-time he went to see a poor widow on behalf of whom application had been made to the fund. Her husband had been a well-to-do tradesman of Daneford. He found the poor creature in a most pitiable plight. She had nothing but a bundle of straw for a bed, and the ragged remains of an old patchwork counterpane. There were two broken chairs, a delf cup, and no saucer. This was a full inventory of the widow's goods. The old woman said she did not feel hunger half so much as cold. She was used to hunger all the year round, now and then; but the winter cold was terrible. When hungry and cold, you were tortured from within and without. For twelve months she had not tasted hot meat, and for six months neither eggs nor butter. Sprats were then three-halfpence for two pounds, and bread three-halfpence a pound. Two pounds of sprats, two pounds of bread, and the use of a neighbour's fire, carried her over two days very nicely, but that came to fourpence-halfpenny; and when she had paid eighteenpence a week for the room, it was not easy to find fourpence-halfpenny every two days for living. In coming away he gave her half-a-sovereign. She threw herself down on her knees to him, and thanked him and Providence that she should now have warm stockings and taste meat once more before she died. That thin old woman had thrown herself on her knees to him because she was hungry and cold, and he had given her half-a-sovereign! Thrown herself on her knees to him! When he came home he told Bee, and Bee had wept and sent the old woman clothes. He told his mother, too, about this old woman, and his mother had gone to see her and sat with her, and never lost sight of her until the poor woman died.
What changes since then! Bee had gone, and his mother was a pauper fugitive.
His stately keen-minded mother a penniless fugitive! Intolerable! There must be some mistake. Fancy for a moment his proud high-spirited mother being obliged to stoop and accept help! Fancy such a thing, she who had always had a full larder and purse at the service of royal generosity! The mere idea was preposterous on the face of it. And yet there were the figures of Evans. His mother prostrate at the feet of a stranger, thanking him for food!
"Oh, God, who is our master, and who is the master of our joys and our woes, afflict me with what Thou wilt, but take away that vision! Take away that vision from before my eyes! Give me all other pains but that sight, the result of my misdoings."
He had risen, and was praying with all the might of his soul, his face and hands thrown up, and the tones of terrible beseeching in his voice.
Suddenly he sank to his knees and drew his arms swiftly and strongly across his eyes; swaying his body to and fro, he moaned out in piteous entreaty:
"Oh, God of mercy, show mercy to me, and turn away from me my mother's eyes!"
There was a knock at the door.
He staggered feebly to his feet, and took a few hasty inspirations before asking:
"Who's there?"
"I, sir."
"What do you want?"
"The mail is going out, sir."
"Well?"
"Have you any letters to go?"
"No, Doughty."
"But there's the Castle bag, sir. I want the letters out of that."
"True; thank you for reminding me of them." He opened the door. "Here is the key." He handed it through the door, adding: "I am most particularly engaged. Let no one come to me."
He retired from the door feebly. He went back to the fire and sat down.
In half an hour he rang his bell. The porter entered.
"Are the letters posted?"
"Yes, sir."
"All gone?"
"Yes, sir."
"That will do." To himself he thought with his hand on his brow: "I forgot something about the Castle letters. I forget still what it was. I should have – I remember now. Well, it does not make much difference."