“Me to have dinner wid mamma to-day! Me have pudding!”
“That you shall, my sweetest; and everything that’s good,” assented his mother.
In came Japhet at this juncture. “There’s a little boy in the hall, sir, asking to see you,” said he to his master. “He–”
“Oh, we shall have plenty of boys here to-day, asking for a new year’s gift,” interposed Mrs. Hamlyn, rather impatiently. “Send him a shilling, Philip.”
“It’s not a poor boy, ma’am,” answered Japhet, “but a little gentleman: six or seven years old, he looks. He says he particularly wants to see master.”
Philip Hamlyn smiled. “Particularly wants a shilling, I expect. Send him in, Japhet.”
The lad came in. A well-dressed beautiful boy, refined in looks and demeanour, bearing in his face a strange likeness to Mr. Hamlyn. He looked about timidly.
Eliza, struck with the resemblance, gazed at him. Her husband spoke. “What do you want with me, my lad?”
“If you please, sir, are you Mr. Hamlyn?” asked the child, going forward with hesitating steps. “Are you my papa?”
Every drop of blood seemed to leave Philip Hamlyn’s face and fly to his heart. He could not speak, and looked white as a ghost.
“Who are you? What is your name?” imperiously demanded Philip’s wife.
“It is Walter Hamlyn,” replied the lad, in clear, pretty tones.
And now it was Mrs. Hamlyn’s turn to look white. Walter Hamlyn?—the name of her own dear son! when she had expected him to say Sam Smith, or John Jones! What insolence some people had!
“Where do you come from, boy? Who sent you here?” she reiterated.
“I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold, and was in bed all last week.”
Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his heart that the earth would open and engulf him. “Eliza, my love, allow me to deal with this matter,” he said, his voice taking a low, tender, considerate tone. “I will question the boy in another room. Some mistake, I reckon.”
“No, Philip, you must put your questions before me,” she said, resolute in her anger. “What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however disreputable it may be.”
“I dare not tell you,” he gasped; “it is not—I fear—the disreputable thing you may be fancying.”
“Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman ‘papa’?” she passionately demanded of the child.
“Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before because of not wishing to part from me.”
Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. “Where were you born?”
“At Calcutta; that’s in India. Mamma brought me home in the Clipper of the Seas, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in it, though papa thought so.”
The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the whole truth now, staggered in terror.
“Philip! Philip! is it true? Was it this you feared?”
He made a motion of assent and covered his face. “Heaven knows I would rather have died.”
He stood back against the window-curtains, that they might shade his pain. She fell into a chair and wished he had died, years before.
But what was to be the end of it all? Though Eliza Hamlyn went straight out and despatched that syren of the golden hair with a poison-tipped bodkin (and possibly her will might be good to do it), it could not make things any the better for herself.
III
New Year’s Night at Leet Hall, and the banquet in full swing—but not, as usual, New Year’s Eve.
Captain Monk headed his table, the parson, Robert Grame, at his right hand, Harry Carradyne on his left. Whether it might be that the world, even that out-of-the-way part of it, Church Leet, was improving in manners and morals; or whether the Captain himself was changing: certain it was that the board was not the free board it used to be. Mrs. Carradyne herself might have sat at it now, and never once blushed by as much as the pink of a seashell.
It was known that the chimes were to play this year; and, when midnight was close at hand, Captain Monk volunteered a statement which astonished his hearers. Rimmer, the butler, had come into the room to open the windows.
“I am getting tired of the chimes, and all people have not liked them,” spoke the Captain in slow, distinct tones. “I have made up my mind to do away with them, and you will hear them to-night, gentlemen, for the last time.”
“Really, Uncle Godfrey!” cried Harry Carradyne, in most intense surprise.
“I hope they’ll bring us no ill-luck to-night!” continued Captain Monk as a grim joke, disregarding Harry’s remark. “Perhaps they will, though, out of sheer spite, knowing they’ll never have another chance of it. Well, well, they’re welcome. Fill your glasses, gentlemen.”
Rimmer was throwing up the windows. In another minute the church clock boomed out the first stroke of twelve, and the room fell into a dead silence. With the last stroke the Captain rose, glass in hand.
“A happy New Year to you, gentlemen! A happy New Year to us all. May it bring to us health and prosperity!”
“And God’s blessing,” reverently added Robert Grame aloud, as if to remedy an omission.
Ring, ring, ring! Ah, there it came, the soft harmony of the chimes, stealing up through the midnight air. Not quite as loudly heard perhaps, as usual, for there was no wind to waft it, but in tones wondrously clear and sweet. Never had the strains of “The Bay of Biscay” brought to the ear more charming melody. How soothing it was to those enrapt listeners; seeming to tell of peace.
But soon another sound arose to mingle with it. A harsh, grating sound, like the noise of wheels passing over gravel. Heads were lifted; glances expressed surprise. With the last strains of the chimes dying away in the distance, a carriage of some kind galloped up to the hall door.
Eliza Hamlyn alighted from it—with her child and its nurse. As quickly as she could make opportunity after that scene enacted in her breakfast-room in London in the morning, that is, as soon as her husband’s back was turned, she had quitted the house with the maid and child, to take the train for home, bringing with her—it was what she phrased it—her shameful tale.
A tale that distressed Mrs. Carradyne to sickness. A tale that so abjectly terrified Captain Monk, when it was imparted to him on Tuesday morning, as to take every atom of fierceness out of his composition.
“Not Hamlyn’s wife!” he gasped. “Eliza!”
“No, not his wife,” she retorted, a great deal too angry herself to be anything but fierce and fiery. “That other woman, that false first wife of his, was not drowned, as was set forth, and she has come to claim him with their son.”
“His wife; their son,” muttered the Captain as if he were bewildered. “Then what are you?—what is your son? Oh, my poor Eliza.”
“Yes, what are we? Papa, I will bring him to answer for it before his country’s tribunal—if there be law in the land.”
No one spoke to this. It may have occurred to them to remember that Mr. Hamlyn could not legally be punished for what he did in innocence. Captain Monk opened the glass doors and walked on to the terrace, as if the air of the room were oppressive. Eliza went out after him.
“Papa,” she said, “there now exists all the more reason for your making my darling your heir. Let it be settled without delay. He must succeed to Leet Hall.”
Captain Monk looked at his daughter as if not understanding her. “No, no, no,” he said. “My child, you forget; trouble must be obscuring your faculties. None but a legal descendant of the Monks could be allowed to have Leet Hall. Besides, apart from this, it is already settled. I have seen for some little time now how unjust it would be to supplant Harry Carradyne.”
“Is he to be your heir? Is it so ordered?”
“Irrevocably. I have told him so this morning.”
“What am I to do?” she wailed in bitter despair. “Papa, what is to become of me—and of my unoffending child?”
“I don’t know: I wish I did know. It will be a cruel blight upon us all. You will have to live it down, Eliza. Ah, child, if you and Katherine had only listened to me, and not made those rebellious marriages!”
He turned away as he spoke in the direction of the church, to see that his orders were being executed there. Harry Carradyne ran after him. The clock was striking midday as they entered the churchyard.
Yes, the workmen were at their work—taking down the bells.
“If the time were to come over again, Harry,” began Captain Monk as they were walking homeward, he leaning upon his nephew’s arm, “I wouldn’t have them put up. They don’t seem to have brought luck somehow, as the parish has been free to say. Not but that it must be utter nonsense.”
“Well, no, they don’t, uncle,” assented Harry.
“As one grows in years, one gets to look at things differently, lad. Actions that seemed laudable enough when one’s blood was young and hot, crop up again then, wearing another aspect. But for those chimes, poor West would not have died as he did. I have had him upon my mind a good bit lately.”
Surely Captain Monk was wonderfully changing! And he was leaning heavily upon Harry’s arm.
“Are you tired, uncle? Would you like to sit down on this bench and rest?”
“No, I’m not tired. It’s West I’m thinking about. He lies on my mind sadly. And I never did anything for the wife or child to atone to them! It’s too late now—and has been this many a year.”
Harry Carradyne’s heart began to beat a little. Should he say what he had been hoping to say sometime? He might never have a better opportunity than this.
“Uncle Godfrey,” he spoke in low tones, “would you—would you like to see Mr. West’s daughter? His wife has been dead a long while; but—would you like to see her—Alice?”
“Ay,” fervently spoke the old man. “If she be in the land of the living, bring her to me. I’ll tell her how sorry I am, and how I would undo the past if I could. And I’ll ask her if she’ll be to me as a daughter.”
So then Harry Carradyne told him all. It was Alice West who was already under his roof, and who, fate and fortune permitting, Heaven permitting, would sometime be Alice Carradyne.
Down sat Captain Monk on a bench of his own accord. Tears rose to his eyes. The sudden revulsion of feeling was great: and truly he was a changed man.
“You spoke of Heaven, Harry. I shall begin to think it has forgiven me. Let us be thankful.”
But Captain Monk found he had more to thank Heaven for ere many minutes had elapsed. As Harry Carradyne sat by him in silence, marvelling at the change, yet knowing that the grievous blow which was making havoc of Eliza had effected the completeness of the subduing, he caught sight of an approaching fly. Another fly from the railway station at Evesham.
“How dare you come here, you villain!” shouted Captain Monk, rising in threatening anger, as the fly’s inmate called to the driver to stop and began to get out of it. “Are you not ashamed to show your face to me, after the evil you have inflicted upon my daughter?”
Philip Hamlyn, smiling kindly and calmly, caught Captain Monk’s lifted hands. “No evil, sir,” he said, soothingly. “It was all a mistake. Eliza is my true and lawful wife.”
“Eh? What’s that?” said the Captain quite in a whisper, his lips trembling.
Quietly Philip Hamlyn explained. He had taken the previous day to investigate the matter, and had followed his wife down by a night train. His first wife was dead. She had been drowned in the Clipper of the Seas, as was supposed. The child was saved, with his nurse: the only two passengers who were saved. The nurse made her way to a place in the south of France, where, as she knew, her late mistress’s sister lived, Mrs. O’Connett, formerly Miss Sophia Pratt. Mrs. O’Connett, a young widow, had just lost her only child, a boy about the age of the little one rescued from the cruel seas. She seized on him with feverish avidity, adopted him as her own, quitted the place for another Anglo-French town where she was not previously known, taught the child to call her “Mamma,” and had never let it transpire that the boy was not hers. But now, after the lapse of a few years, Mrs. O’Connett was on the eve of marriage with an Irish Major. To him she told the truth; and, as he did not want to marry the child as well as herself, he persuaded her to return him to his father. Mrs. O’Connett brought the child to London, ascertained Mr. Hamlyn’s address, and all about him, and watched about to speak to him, alone if possible, unknown to his wife. Remembering what had been the behaviour of the child’s mother, she was by no means sure of a good reception from Philip himself, or what adverse influence might be brought to bear by the new ties he had formed. Mrs. O’Connett had the same remarkable and lovely hair that her sister had had, whom she very much resembled; she had also a talent for underhand ways.
That was the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O’Connett, and had brought down the good tidings.
Of all the curious sights this record has afforded, perhaps the most surprising was to see Captain Monk pass his arm lovingly within that of Philip Hamlyn and march off with him to Leet Hall as if he were a prize to be coveted. “Here he is, Eliza,” said he; “he has come to cheer both you and me.”
For once in her life Eliza Hamlyn was subdued to meekness. She kissed her husband and shed happy tears. She was his lawful wife, and the little one was his lawful child. True, there was an elder son; but, compared with what had been feared, that was a slight evil.
“We must make them true brothers, Eliza,” whispered Philip Hamlyn. “They shall share alike all I have and all I leave behind me. And our own little one must be called James in future.”
“And you and I will be good friends from henceforth,” cried Captain Monk warmly, clasping Philip Hamlyn’s ready hand. “I have been to blame in more ways than one, giving the reins unduly to my arbitrary temper. It seems to me, however, that life holds enough of real angles for us without creating any for ourselves.”
And surely it did seem, as Mrs. Carradyne would have liked to point out aloud, that those chimes had been fraught with messages of evil. For had not all these blessings set in with their removal?—even in the very hour that their fate was sealed!
Harry Carradyne had drawn his uncle from the room; he now came in again, bringing Alice West. Her face was a picture of agitation, for she had been made known to Captain Monk. Harry led her up to Mrs. Hamlyn, with a beaming smile and a whisper.
“Eliza, as we seem to be going in generally for amenities, won’t you give just a little corner of your heart to her? We owe her some reparation for the past. It is her father who lies in that grave at the north end of the churchyard.”
Eliza started. “Her father! Poor George West her father?”
“Even so.”
Just a moment’s struggle with her rebellious spirit and Mrs. Hamlyn stooped to kiss the trembling girl. “Yes, Alice, we do owe you reparation amongst us, and we must try to make it,” she said heartily. “I see how it is: you will reign here with Harry; and I think he will be able, after all, to let us keep Peacock’s Range.”
There came a grand wedding, Captain Monk himself giving Alice away. But Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn did not retain Peacock’s Range; they and their boys, the two Walters, had to look out for another local residence; for Mrs. Carradyne retired to Peacock’s Range herself. Now that Leet Hall had a young mistress, she deemed it policy to quit it; though it should have as much of her as it pleased as a visitor. And Captain Godfrey Monk made himself happier in these peaceful days than he had ever been in his stormy ones.
And that’s the history. If I had to begin it again, I don’t think I should write it; for I have had to take its details from other people—chiefly from the Squire and old Mr. Sterling, of the Court. There’s nothing of mine in it, so to say, and it has been only a bother.
And those unfortunate chimes have nearly passed out of memory with the lapse of years. The “Silent Chimes” they are always called when, by chance, allusion is made to them, and will be so called for ever.