How It All Came Round Part 2

Mrs. Home sighed, and the bright look left her face. Her husband perceived the change.

"That is not all you have got to tell me," he said.

"No, it is only leading up to what I want to tell you. It is what has set me thinking so hard all day that I can keep it to myself no longer.

Angus, prepare for a surprise; that beautiful young lady, who bears the same name I bore before I was married--is--is--she is my near relation."

"Your near relation, Charlotte? But I never knew you had any near relations."

"No, dear, I never told you; my mother thought it best that you should not know. She only spoke to me of them when she was dying. She was sorry afterwards that she had even done that; she begged of me, unless great necessity arose, not to say anything to you. It is only because it seems to me the necessity has really come that I speak of what gave my mother such pain to mention."

"Yes, dear, you have wealthy relations. I don't know that it matters very greatly. But go on."

"There is more than that, Angus, but I will try to tell you all. You know how poor I was when you found me, and gave me your love and yourself."

"We were both poor, Lottie; so much so that we thought two hundred a year, which was what we had to begin housekeeping on, quite riches."

"Yes, Angus; well, I had been poor all my life, I could never do what rich girls did, I was so accustomed to wearing shabby dresses, and eating plain food, and doing without the amus.e.m.e.nts which seem to come naturally into the lives of most young girls, that I had ceased to miss them. I was sent to a rather good school, and had lessons in music and painting, and I sometimes wondered how my mother had money even to give me these. Then I met you, and we were married. It was just after our little Harold was born that my mother died."

"Yes, you went down into Hertfords.h.i.+re; you were away for six weeks."

"I took Harold with me; mother was so proud of him. Whenever she had an easy moment, she used to like to have him placed on her knee. She told me then that she had a little son older than I, who died, and that our Harold reminded her of him. One night, I remember so well, I was sitting up with her. She had been going through great pain, but towards the morning she was easier. She was more inclined, however, to talk than to sleep. She began again speaking about the likeness between our Harold and my little brother who died.

"'I shall give you little Edgar's christening robe for Harold,' she said. 'I never could bear to part with it before but I don't mind his having it. Open my wardrobe, Charlotte, and you will find it folded away in a blue paper, in the small wooden box.'

"I did so, and took out a costly thing, yellow, it is true, with age, but half covered with most valuable lace.

"'Why, mother,' I exclaimed, 'how did you ever get such a valuable dress as this? Why, this lace would be cheap at a guinea a yard!'

"'It cost a great deal more than that,' replied mother, stroking down the soft lace and muslin with her thin fingers; 'but we were rich then, Lottie.'

"'Rich!' I said, 'rich! I never, never thought that you and I had anything to say to money, mother.'

"'You don't remember your father, child?'

"'No, mother,' I said; 'how could I? I was only two years old when he died.'

"Mother was silent after that, and I think she went into a doze, but my curiosity and wonder were excited, and I could not help seeking to know more.

"'I never knew that we were rich,' I said again the next day. 'Why did you never tell me before? The next best thing to enjoying riches would be to hear about them.'

"'I did not want to make you discontented, Lottie. I thought what you had never known or thought of you would never miss. I feared, my dear, to make you discontented.'

"'But I have thought of money,' I owned, 'I have thought of it lately a great deal. When I look at Angus I long to get him every luxury, and I want my little Harold to grow up surrounded by those things which help to develop a fine and refined character.

"'But they don't, Lottie; they don't indeed,' answered my dear dying mother. 'Riches bring a snare--they debase the character, they don't enn.o.ble it.'

"'Mother,' I said, 'I see plainly that you are well acquainted with this subject. You will tell me, mother, what you know?'

"'Yes,' replied my mother; 'it won't do you the least good; but as I have said so much to you I may as well tell the rest.'

"Then, Angus, my mother told me the following story; it is not very long.

"She was an orphan and a governess when my father found her and married her--she was my father's second wife. She was much younger than he--he had grown-up sons--two grown-up sons at the time of his marriage; and they were very deeply offended at his thinking of a second marriage. So indignant were they that my father and they came to quite an open quarrel, and mother said that during the five years that my father lived she never saw either of her stepsons until just at the close. She was very happy as my father's wife; he loved her dearly, and as he had plenty of money she wanted for nothing. My father was an old man, as I have said, and he was tired of fuss, and also of much society; so though they were so rich mother lived rather a lonely life--in a large and beautiful place in Hertfords.h.i.+re. She said the place was called the Hermitage, and was one of the largest and best in the neighborhood. At last my father fell ill, very ill, and the doctors said he must die.

Then for the first time there came hastening back to the Hermitage the two elder sons--their names were John and Jasper--the eldest John, my mother said, was very handsome, and very kind and courteous to her. He was a married man, and he told mother that he had a little daughter much about my age, who was also called Charlotte. My father and his two sons seemed quite reconciled in these last days, and they spent most of their time with him. On the evening, however, before he died, he had mother and me with him alone. I sat on the bed, a little baby child of two, and my father held mother's hand. He told mother how much he loved her, and he spoke a very little about money matters.

"'John will make it all right for you, Daisy,' he said. 'John knows all about my wishes with regard to you and little Charlotte. I should like this little Charlotte and his to be friends; they are both called after my own mother, the best woman I ever met. You will bring up little Charlotte with every comfort and refinement, dear wife.'

"The next day my father died, and John and Jasper went to London. They did not even wait for the funeral, though Jasper came back for it. John, he told mother, was kept by the sudden dangerous illness of his wife.

Jasper said that John felt our father's death most dreadfully. Mother had liked John, who was always very civil to her, but she could not bear Jasper: she said he seemed a cleverer man than his brother, but she never could get over a feeling of distrust towards him. The will was never read to my mother, but Jasper came back again from London to tell her of its contents, and then judge of her surprise--her name was not even mentioned, neither her name nor mine. She had been married without settlements, and every farthing of all my father's great wealth was left to his two sons, John and Jasper. Jasper expressed great surprise; he even said it was a monstrously unfair thing of his father to do, and that certainly he and his brother would try to rectify it in a measure.

He then went back to London, and mother was left alone in the great empty house. She said she felt quite stunned, and was just then in such grief for my father that she scarcely heeded the fact that she was left penniless. Two days afterwards a lawyer from London came down to see her. He came with a message from her two stepsons. They were much concerned for her, and they were willing to help her. They would allow her, between them, as long as she lived the interest on three thousand pounds--on one condition. The condition was this: she was never to claim the very least relations.h.i.+p with them; she was to bring up her daughter as a stranger to them. They had never approved of their father's marrying her; they would allow her the money on condition that all connection between them be completely dropped. The day it was renewed by either mother or daughter, on that day the interest on the three thousand pounds would cease to be paid. My mother was too young, too completely inexperienced, and too bowed down with grief, to make the least objection. Only one faint protest did she make. 'My husband said,'

she faltered, 'on the very last day of his life, he said that he wished my little Charlotte and that other Charlotte in London to be friends.'

But the lawyer only shook his head. On this point his clients were firm.

'All communication between the families must cease.'

"That is the story, Angus," continued Charlotte Home, suddenly changing her voice, and allowing her eyes, which had been lowered during her brief recital, to rise to her husband's face. "My dear mother died a day or two afterwards. She died regretting having to own even what she did, and begging me not to think unkindly of my father, and not to unsettle your mind by telling you what could do no good whatever.

"'I do not think unkindly of my father, mother,' I answered, 'and I will not trouble my husband's mind, at least, not yet, never, perhaps, unless fitting opportunity arises. But I know what I think, mother--what, indeed, I know. That was not my father's real will; my brothers John and Jasper have cheated you. Of this I am very sure.'

"Mother, though she was so weak and dying, got quite a color into her cheeks when I said this. 'No, no,' she said, 'don't harbor such a thought in your heart--my darling, my darling. Indeed it is utterly impossible. It was a real, real will. I heard it read, and your brothers, they were gentlemen. Don't let so base a thought of them dwell in your heart. It is, I know it is, impossible.'

"I said no more to trouble my dear mother and shortly afterwards she died. That is six years ago."

CHAPTER IV.

TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT.

After the story was finished the husband and wife sat for a long time side by side, in absolute silence. Both pairs of eyes were fixed on the glowing embers in the fire; the wife's reflected back both the lights and the shadows; they were troubled eyes, troubled with possible joy, troubled also with the dark feelings of anger. The husband's, on the contrary, were calm and steady. No strong hope was visiting them, but despair, even disquietude, seemed miles away. Presently the wife's small nervous fingers were stretched out to meet her husband's, his closed over them, he turned his head, met her anxious face, smiled and spoke.

"So it seems on the cards that you might have been rich, Lottie. Well, it was unjust of your father not to have made some provision for your mother and you, but--but--he has long been dead, the whole thing is over. Let it pa.s.s."

"Angus! do you know what I should like?" asked his wife.

"No. What?"

"I should like to meet those two men, John and Jasper Harman, face to face, and ask them without the least preamble or preparation, what they have done with my father's real will?"

"Dear Lottie, you must get this strange idea out of your head. It is not right of you to harbor such thoughts of any men."

"I should like to look so hard at them," continued Charlotte, scarcely heeding her husband's words. "I know their eyes would flinch, they would be startled, they would betray themselves. Angus, I can't help it, the conviction that is over me is too strong to be silenced. For years, ever since my mother told me that story, I have felt that we have been wronged, nay, robbed of our own. But when I entered that house to-day and found myself face with my half-brother's daughter, when I found myself in the house that I had been forbidden to enter, I felt--I knew, that a great wrong had been committed. My father! Why should I think ill of my father, Angus? Is it likely that he would have made no provision for my mother whom he loved, or for me? Is it likely that he would have left everything he possessed to the two sons with whom he had so bitterly quarrelled, that for years they had not even met? Is it likely? Angus, you are a just man, and you will own to the truth. Is it likely, that with his almost dying breath, he should have a.s.sured my mother that all was settled that she could bring me up well, in comfort and luxury, that Charlotte Harman and I should be friends? No, Angus! I believe my father; he was a good and just man always; and, even if he was not, dying men don't tell lies."

"I grant that it seems unlikely, Lottie; but then, on the other hand, what do you accuse these men of? Why, of no less a crime than forging a will, of suppressing the real will, and bringing forward one of their own manufacture. Why, my dear wife, such an act of villainy would be not only difficult, but, I should say, impossible."

"I don't know _how_ it was done, Angus, but something was done, of that I am sure, and what that thing was I shall live, please G.o.d, to find out."

"Then you--you, a clergyman's wife--the wife of a man who lives to proclaim peace on earth, good-will to men, you go into your brother's house as a spy!"