 First Scene, Chapter 11 of No Name. The sun sank lower. The western breeze floated cool and fresh into the house. As the evening advanced, the cheerful ring of the village clock came nearer and nearer. Field and flower garden felt the influence of the hour, and shed their sweetest fragrance. The birds and Norse aviary sunned themselves in the evening stillness, and sang their farewell gratitude to the dying day. Staggered in its progress for a time only, the pitiless routine of the house went horribly on its daily way. The panic-stricken servants took their blind refuge in the duties proper to the hour. The footmen softly laid the table for dinner. The maid sat waiting in senseless doubt with the hot water jugs for the bedrooms range nearer in their customary row. The gardener, who had been ordered to come to his master, with vouchers for money that he had paid in excess of his instructions, said his character was dear to him, and left the vouchers at his appointed time. Custom that never yields, and death that never spares, met on the wreck of human happiness, and death gave way. Heavily the thunder clouds of affliction had gathered over the house. Heavily, but not at their darkest yet. At five that evening, the shock of the calamity had struck its blow. Before another hour had passed, the disclosure of the husband's sudden death was followed by the suspense of the wife's mortal peril. She lay helpless on her widowed bed, her own life and the life of her unborn child, trembling in the balance. But one mind still held possession of its resources, but one guiding spirit now moved helpfully in the house of mourning. If Miss Garth's early days had been passed as calmly and as happily as her later life at Coomeraven, she might have sunk under the cruel necessities of the time. But the governess's youth had been tried in the ordeal of family affliction, and she met her terrible duties with the steady courage of a woman who had learned to suffer. Alone she had faced the trial of telling the daughters that they were fatherless. Alone she now struggled to sustain them, when the dreadful certainty of their bereavement was at last impressed on their minds. Her least anxiety was for the elder sister. The agony of Nora's grief had forced its way outward to the natural relief of tears. It was not so with Magdalene. Tearless and speechless, she sat in the room where the revelation of her father's death had first reached her. Her face, unnaturally petrified by the sterile sorrow of old age, a white, changeless blank, fearful to look at. Nothing roused, nothing melted her. She only said, Don't speak to me, don't touch me, let me bear it by myself, and fell silent again. The first great grief which had darkened the sister's lives had, as it seemed, changed their everyday characters already. The twilight fell and faded, and the summer night came brightly. And as the first carefully shaded light was kindled in the sick room, the physician who had been summoned from Bristol arrived to consult with the medical attendant of the family. He could give no comfort. He could only say, We must try and hope. The shock which struck her, when she overheard the news of her husband's death, has prostrated her strength at the time when she needed it most. No effort to preserve her shall be neglected. I will stay here for the night. He opened one of the windows to emit more air as he spoke. The view overlooked the drive in front of the house and the road outside. Little groups of people were standing before the lodge gates looking in. If those persons make any noise, said the doctor, they must be warned away. There was no need to warn them. They were only the laborers who had worked on the dead man's property, and here and there some women and children from the village. They were all thinking of him, some talking of him, and it quickened their sluggish minds to look at his house. The gentle folks thereabouts were mostly kind to them, the men said, but none like him. The women whispered to each other of his comforting ways when he came into their cottages. He was a cheerful man, poor soul, and thoughtful of us too. He never came in and stared at mealtimes. The rest of them helped us and scolded us. All he ever said was, better luck next time. So they stood and talked to him, and looked at his house and grounds, and moved off clumsily by twos and threes, with the dim scents that the sight of his pleasant face would never comfort them again. The dullest head among them knew, that night, that the hard ways of poverty would be all the harder to walk on, now he was gone. A little later, news was brought to the bed chamber door that old Mr. Clare had come alone to the house, and was waiting in the hall below to hear what the physician said. Miss Garth was not able to go down to him herself, she sent a message. He said to the servant, I'll come and ask again, in two hours' time, and went out slowly. Unlike other men in all things else, the sudden death of his old friend had produced no discernable change in him. The feeling implied in the errand of inquiry that had brought him to the house was the one betrayal of human sympathy which escaped the rugged, impenetrable old man. He came again when the two hours had expired, and this time Miss Garth saw him. They shook hands in silence. She waited. She nerfed herself to hear him speak of his lost friend. No. He never mentioned the dreadful accident. He never alluded to the dreadful death. He said these words, is she better or worse, and said no more. Was the tribute of his grief for the husband sternly suppressed under the expression of his anxiety for the wife? The nature of the man, unplyably antagonistic to the world and the world's customs, might justify some such interpretation of his conduct as this. He repeated his question, is she better or worse? Miss Garth answered him, no better. If there is any change, it is a change for the worse. They spoke those words at the window of the morning room which opened on the garden. Mr. Clare paused after hearing the reply to his inquiry, stepped out onto the walk, then turned on a sudden and spoke again. Has the doctor given her up? He asked. He has not concealed from us that she is in danger. We can only pray for her. The old man laid his hand on Miss Garth's arm as she answered him, and looked at her attentively in the face. You believe in prayer? He said. Miss Garth drew sorrowfully back from him. You might have spared me that question, sir, at such a time as this. He took no notice of her answer. His eyes were still fastened on her face. Pray, he said. Pray as you never prayed before, for the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone's life. He left her. His voice and manner implied some unutterable dread of the future which his words had not confessed. Miss Garth followed him through the garden and called to him. He heard her, but he never turned back. He quickened his pace as if he desired to avoid her. She watched him across the lawn in the warm summer moonlight. She saw his white, withered hands, saw them suddenly against the black background of the shrubbery, raised and wrung above his head. They dropped. The trees shrouded him in darkness. He was gone. Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman with the burden on her mind of one anxiety more. It was then past eleven o'clock. Some little time had elapsed since she had seen the sisters and spoken to them. The inquiries she addressed to one of the female servants only elicited the information that they were both in their rooms. She delayed her return to the mother's bedside to say marching words of comfort to the daughters before she left them for the night. Nora's room was the nearest. She softly opened the door and looked in. The kneeling figure by the bedside told her that God's help had found the fatherless daughter in her affliction. Grateful tears gathered in her eyes as she looked. She softly closed the door and went on to Magdalen's room. There doubts stayed her feet at the fold, and she waited for a moment before going in. A sound in the room caught her ear. The monotonous rustling of a woman's dress, now distant, now near. Passing without cessation from end to end over the floor. A sound which told her that Magdalen was pacing to and fro in the secrecy of her own chamber. Miss Garth knocked. The rustling ceased. The door was opened, and the sad young face confronted her, locked in its cold despair. The large light eyes looked mechanically into hers, as vacant and as tearless as ever. That look wrung the heart of the faithful woman, who had trained her and loved her from a child. She took Magdalen tenderly in her arms. Oh, my love, she said. No tears yet. Oh, if I could see you as I have seen Nora, speak to me, Magdalen. Try, if you can speak to me." She tried and spoke. Nora, she said, feels no remorse. He was not serving Nora's interest when he went to his death. He was serving mine. With that terrible answer she put her cold lips to Miss Garth's cheek. Let me bear it by myself, she said, and gently closed the door. Again Miss Garth waited at the threshold, and again the sound of the rustling dress passed to and fro, now far, now near, to and fro with a cruel mechanical regularity that chilled the warmest sympathy and daunted the boldest hope. The night passed. It had been agreed if no change for the better itself by the morning, that the London physician whom Mrs. Van Stone had consulted some months since should be summoned to the house on the next day. No change for the better appeared, and the physician was sent for. As the morning advanced, Frank came to make inquiries from the cottage. Had Mr. Clare entrusted to his son the duty which he had personally performed on the previous day, through reluctance to Miss Garth again after what he had said to her? It might be so. Frank could throw no light on the subject. He was not in his father's confidence. He looked pale and bewildered. His first inquiries after Magdalene showed how his weak nature had been shaken by the catastrophe. He was not capable of framing his own questions. The words faltered on his lips, and the ready tears came into his eyes. Miss Garth's heart warmed to him for the first time. Grief has this that is noble in it. It accepts all sympathy come once it may. She encouraged the lad by a few kind words and took his hand at parting. Before noon, Frank returned with a second message. His father desired to know whether Mr. Pendrell was not expected at Coombe Raven on that day. If the lawyer's arrival was looked for, Frank was directed to be in attendance at the station, and to take him to the cottage, where a bed would be placed at his disposal. This message took Miss Garth by surprise. It showed that Mr. Clare had been made acquainted with his dead friend's purpose of sending for Mr. Pendrell. Was the old man's thoughtful offer of hospitality another indirect expression of the natural human distress which he perversely concealed? Or was he aware of some secret necessity for Mr. Pendrell's presence of which the bereaved family had been kept in total ignorance? Miss Garth was too heart-sick and hopeless to dwell on either question. She told Frank that Mr. Pendrell had been expected at three o'clock, and sent him back with her thanks. Shortly after his departure, such anxieties on Magdalene's account as her mind was now able to feel were relieved by better news than her last night's experience had inclined her to hope for. Nor's influence had been exerted to rouse her sister, and Nor's patient sympathy had set the prison's grief free. Magdalene had suffered severely, suffered inevitably with such a nature as hers, in the effort that relieved her. The healing tears had not come gently. They had burst from her with torturing, passionate vehemence. But Nor had never left her till the struggle was over, and the calm had come. These better tidings encouraged Miss Garth to withdraw to her own room, and to take the rest which she needed sorely. Worn out in body and mind, she slept from sheer exhaustion, slept heavily and dreamless for some hours. It was between three and four in the afternoon when she was roused by one of the female servants. The woman had a note in her hand, a note left by Mr. Clare the Younger, with a message desiring that it might be delivered to Miss Garth immediately. The name written in the lower corner of the envelope was William Pendrell. The lawyer had arrived. Miss Garth opened the note, after a few first sentences of sympathy and condolence, the writer announced his arrival at Mr. Clare's, and then proceeded, apparently in his professional capacity, to make a very startling request. If, he wrote, any change for the better in Mrs. Vanstone should take place, whether it is only an improvement for the time, or whether it is the permanent improvement for which we all hope, in either case, I entreat you to let me know of it immediately. It is of the last importance that I should see her, in the event of her gaining strength enough to give me her attention for five minutes, and of her being able, at the expiration of that time, to sign her name. May I beg that you will communicate my request, in the strictest confidence, to the medical men in attendance. They will understand, and you will understand, the vital importance I attach to this interview, when I tell you that I have arranged to defer to it all other business claims on me, and that I hold myself in readiness to obey your summons at any hour of the day or night. In those terms the letter ended. Miss Garth read it twice over. At the second reading, the request which the lawyer now addressed to her, and the farewell words which had escaped Mr. Clare's lips the day before, connected themselves vaguely in her mind. There was some other serious interest in suspense, known to Mr. Pendrell, and known to Mr. Clare, besides the first and foremost interest of Mrs. Vanstone's recovery. Whom did it affect? The children? Were they threatened by some new calamity which their mother's signature might avert? What did it mean? Did it mean that Mr. Vanstone had died without leaving a will? In her distress and confusion of mind Miss Garth was incapable of reasoning with herself, as she might have reasoned at a happier time. She hastened to the anti-chamber of Mrs. Vanstone's room, and after explaining Mr. Pendrell's position toward the family, placed his letter in the hands of the medical men. They both answered without hesitation to the same purpose. Mrs. Vanstone's condition rendered any such interview as the lawyer desired a total impossibility. If she rallied from her present prostration, Miss Garth should be at once informed of the improvement. In the meantime, the answer to Mr. Pendrell might be conveyed in one word. Impossible. You see what importance Mr. Pendrell attaches to the interview, said Miss Garth. Yes, both the doctors saw it. My mind is lost and confused, gentlemen, in this dreadful suspense. Can you either of you guess why the signature is wanted, or what's the object of the interview may be? I have only seen Mr. Pendrell when he has come here on former visits. I have no claim to justify me in questioning him. Will you look at the letter again? Do you think it implies that Mr. Vanstone has never made a will? I think it can hardly imply that, said one of the doctors. But even supposing Mr. Vanstone to have died in test-stage, the law takes due care of the interests of his widow and his children. Would it do so, interpose the other medical man, if the property happened to be in land? I am not sure in that case. Do you happen to know, Miss Garth, whether Mr. Vanstone's property was in money or in land? In money, replied Miss Garth. I have heard him say so on more than one occasion. Then I can relieve your mind by speaking from my own experience. The law, if he has died in test-stage, gives a third of his property to his widow, and divides the rest equally among his children. But if Mrs. Vanstone should die, or pursue the doctor, completing the question which Miss Garth had not the heart to conclude for herself. I believe I am right in telling you that the property would, as a matter of legal course, go to the children. Whatever necessity there may be for the interview which Mr. Pendrell requests, I can see no reason for connecting it with the question of Mr. Vanstone to presume in test-stage. But, by all means, put the question for the satisfaction of your own mind to Mr. Pendrell himself. Miss Garth withdrew to take the course which the doctor advised. After communicating to Mr. Pendrell the medical decision which, thus far, refused him the interview that he sought, she added a brief statement of the legal question she had put to the doctors, and hinted delicately at her natural anxiety to be informed of the motives which had led the lawyer to make his request. The answer she received was guarded in the room. It did not impress her with a favorable opinion of Mr. Pendrell. He confirmed the doctor's interpretation of the law in general terms only, expressed his intention of waiting at the cottage in the hope that a change for the better might yet enable Mrs. Vanstone to see him, and closed his letter without the slightest explanation of his motives, and without a word of reference to the question of the existence or the non-existence of Mr. Vanstone's will. The marked caution of the lawyer's reply dwelt uneasily on Miss Garth's mind, until the long expected event of the day recalled all her thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone's account. Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He watched long by the bedside of the suffering woman. He remained longer still in consultation with his medical brethren. He went back again to the sick room, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to communicate to her the opinion at which he had arrived. When he called out into the anti-chamber for the second time, he silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face, and the last faint hope died on her before he opened his lips. I must speak the hard truth, he said gently. All that can be done has been done. The next four and twenty hours at most will end your suspense. If nature makes no effort in that time, I grieve to say it. You must prepare yourself for the worst. Those words said all. They were prophetic of the end. The night passed, and she lived through it. The next day came, and she lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the tidings of her husband's death had dealt the mortal blow. When the hour came round again, the mercy of God let her go to him in the better world. Her daughters were kneeling at the bedside as her spirit passed away. She left them unconscious of their presence, mercifully and happily insensible to the pang of the last farewell. Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane, and the sunset was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, the light of the frail little life, faint and feeble from the first, flickered and went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay that night on the same bed. The angel of death had done his awful bidding, and the two sisters were left alone in the world. CHAPTER XII. Earlier than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third of July, Mr. Clair appeared at the door of his cottage, and stepped out into the little strip of garden attached to his residence. After he had taken a few turns backward and forward alone, he was joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man whose personal appearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind, whose inexpressive face and conventionally quiet manner presented nothing that attracted approval and nothing that inspired dislike. This was Mr. Pendrell. This was the man on whose lips hung the future of the orphans at Cume Raven. The time is getting on, he said, looking toward the shrubbery as he joined Mr. Clair. My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o'clock. It only wants ten minutes of the hour. Are you to see her alone? asked Mr. Clair. I left Miss Garth to decide, after warning her, first of all, that the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of very serious nature. And has she decided? She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment and repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters, the elder of the two shrinks, and who can wonder at it, from any discussion connected with the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the funeral. The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the subject. As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister's example. My interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone, and it is a very great relief to me to know it. He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed habitual to him. Mr. Clair stopped and looked at his guest attentively. You are almost as old as I am, sir, he said. Has all your long experience with the lawyer not hardened you yet? I never knew how little it had hardened me, replied Mr. Pendrell quietly, until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral. I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their parents to the grave. I think their presence made the closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly painful and doubly touching. You saw how the great concourse of people were moved by it, and they were in ignorance of the truth. They knew nothing of the cruel necessity which takes me to the house this morning. The sense of that necessity, and the sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty toward them most painfully, shook me as a man of my years and my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present or any suspense in the future. I have not recovered it this morning. I hardly feel sure of myself yet. A man's composure, when he is a man like you, comes with the necessity for it, said Mr. Clare. You must have had duties to perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning. Mr. Pendrell shook his head. Many duties are serious. Many stories more romantic. No duty so trying. No story so hopeless as this. With those words they parted. Mr. Pendrell left the garden for the shrubbery path which led to Coombe Raven. Mr. Clare returned to the cottage. On reaching the passage he looked through the open door of his little parlor and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness with his head resting wearily on his hand. I've had an answer from your employers in London, said Mr. Clare. In consideration of what has happened they will allow the offer they made you to stand over for another month. Frank changed colour and rose nervously from his chair. Are my prospects altered? he asked. Are Mr. Van Stone's plans for me not to be carried out? He told Magdalene his will had provided for her. She repeated his words to me. She said I ought to know all that his goodness and generosity had done for both of us. How can his death make a change? Has anything happened? Wait till Mr. Pendrell comes back from Coombe Raven, said his father. Question him. Don't question me. The ready tears rose in Frank's eyes. You won't be hard on me, he pleaded faintly. You won't expect me to go back to London without seeing Magdalene first. Mr. Clare looked thoughtfully at his son and considered a little before he replied. You may dry your eyes, he said. You shall see Magdalene before you go back. He left the room after making that reply and withdrew to his study. The books lay ready to his hand as usual. He opened one of them and set himself to read in the customary manner. But his attention wandered, and his eyes strayed away from time to time to the empty chair opposite. The chair in which his old friend and gossip had sat and wrangled with him good-humoredly for many and many a year passed. After a struggle with himself he closed the book. Damn the chair, he said. It will talk of him, and I must listen. He reached down his pipe from the wall and mechanically filled it with tobacco. His hand shook, his eyes wandered back to the old place, and a heavy sigh came from him unwillingly. That empty chair was the only earthly argument for which he had no answer. His heart owned its defeat and moistened his eyes in spite of him. He has got the better of me at last, said the rugged old man. There is one weak place left in me still, and he has found it. Meanwhile, Mr. Pendrell entered the shrubbery and followed the path which led to the lonely garden and the desolate house. He was met at the door by the man-servant, who was apparently waiting in expectation of his arrival. I have an appointment with Miss Garth. Is she ready to see me? Quite ready, sir. Is she alone? Yes, sir. In the room which was Mr. Van Stone's study? In that room, sir. The servant opened the door, and Mr. Pendrell went in. The governor stood alone at the study window. The morning was oppressively hot, and she threw up the lower sash to admit more air into the room as Mr. Pendrell entered it. They bowed to each other with a formal politeness, which betrayed on either side an uneasy sense of restraint. Mr. Pendrell was one of the many men who appeared superficially to the worst advantage under the influence of strong mental agitation which it is necessary for them to control. Miss Garth, on her side, had not forgotten the ungraciously guarded terms in which the lawyer had replied to her letter, and the natural anxiety which she had felt on the subject of the interview was not relieved by any favorable opinion of the man who sought it. As they confronted each other in the silence of the summer's morning, both dressed in black, Miss Garth's hard features gaunt and haggard with grief, the lawyer's cold, colorless face, void of all marked expression, suggestive of a business embarrassment, and of nothing more. It would have been hard to find two persons less attractive externally to any ordinary sympathies than the two who had now met together, the one to tell, the other to hear, the secrets of the dead. I am sincerely sorry, Miss Garth, to intrude on you at such a time as this, but circumstances, as I have already explained, leave me no other choice. Will you take a seat, Mr. Pendrell? You wish to see me in this room, I believe? Only in this room because Mr. Van Stone's papers are kept here, and I may find it necessary to refer to some of them. After that formal interchange of question and answer, they sat down on either side of a table placed close under the window. One waited to speak, the other waited to bear. There was a momentary silence. Mr. Pendrell broke it by referring to the young ladies with the customary expressions of sympathy. Miss Garth answered him with the same ceremony in the same conventional tone. There was a second pause of silence. The humming of flies among the evergreen shrubs under the window penetrated drowsily into the room, and the tramp of a heavy-footed cart-horse plodding along the high road beyond the garden was as plainly audible in the stillness as if it had been night. The lawyer roused his flagging resolution and spoke to the purpose when he spoke next. You have some reason, Miss Garth, he began, to feel not quite satisfied with my past conduct toward you, in one particular. During Mrs. Van Stone's fatal illness you addressed a letter to me, making certain inquiries, which, while she lived, it was impossible for me to answer. Her deplorable death releases me from the restraint which I had imposed on myself, and permits, or more properly, obliges me to speak. You shall know what serious reasons I had for waiting day and night in the hope of obtaining that interview, which unhappily never took place. And in justice to Mr. Van Stone's memory, your own eyes shall inform you that he made his will. He rose, unlocked a little iron safe in the corner of the room, and returned to the table with some folded sheets of paper, which he spread open under Miss Garth's eyes. When she had read the first words, in the name of God Amen, he turned the sheet, and pointed to the end of the next page. She saw the well-known signature, Andrew Van Stone. She saw the customary attestations of the two witnesses, and the date of the document, reverting to a period of more than five years since. Having thus convinced her of the formality of the will, the lawyer interposed before she could question him, and addressed her in these words. I must not deceive you, he said. I have my own reasons for producing this document. What reasons, sir? You shall hear them. When you are in possession of the truth, these pages may help to preserve your respect for Mr. Van Stone's memory. Miss Garth started back in her chair. What do you mean? she asked, with a stern straightforwardness. He took no heed of the question. He went on as if she had not interrupted him. I have a second reason, he continued, for showing you the will. If I can prevail on you to read certain clauses in it, under my superintendence, you will make your own discovery of the circumstances which I am here to disclose. Circumstances so painful that I hardly know how to communicate them to you with my own lips. Miss Garth looked him steadfastly in the face. Circumstances, sir, which affect the dead parents or the living children. Which affect the dead and the living both, answered the lawyer. Circumstances, I grieve to say, which involve the future of Mr. Van Stone's unhappy daughters. Wait! said Miss Garth. Wait a little. She pushed her gray hair back from her temples and struggled with the sickness of heart, the dreadful fateness of terror, which would have overpowered a younger or less resolute woman. Her eyes, dim with watching, weary with grief, searched the lawyer's unfathomable face. His unhappy daughters. She repeated to herself vacantly. He talks as if there was some worse calamity than the calamity which has made them orphans. She paused once more and rallied her sinking courage. I will not make your hard duty, sir, more painful to you than I can help, she resumed. Show me the place in the will. Let me read it and know the worst. Mr. Pendrell turned back to the first page and pointed to a certain place in the cramped lines of writing. Begin here, he said. She tried to begin. She tried to follow his finger, as she had followed it already to the signatures and the dates. But her senses seemed to share the confusion of her mind. The words mingled together and the lines swam before her eyes. I can't follow you, she said. You must tell it or read it to me." She pushed her chair back from the table and tried to collect herself. Stop! she exclaimed as the lawyer, with visible hesitation and reluctance, took the papers in his own hand. One question first. Does his will provide for his children? His will provided for them when he made it. When he made it? Something of her natural bluntness broke out in her manner as she repeated the answer. Does it provide for them now? It does not. She snatched the will from his hand and threw it into a corner of the room. You mean well, she said. You wish to spare me, but you are wasting your time and my strength. If the will is useless, there let it lie. Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendle. Tell it plainly, tell it instantly, in your own words. He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal. There was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot. I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth. Do you remember the Fourth of March? Her attention wandered again. A thought seemed to have struck her at the moment when he spoke. Instead of answering his inquiry, she put a question of her own. Let me break the news to myself, she said. Let me anticipate you, if I can. His useless will, the terms in which you speak of his daughters, the doubt you seem to feel of my continued respect for his memory, have opened a new view to me. Mr. Van Stone has died a ruined man. Is that what you had to tell me? Far from it. Mr. Van Stone has died, leaving a fortune of more than eighty thousand pounds, a fortune invested in excellent securities. He lived up to his income, but never beyond it, and all his debts added together would not reach two hundred pounds. If he had died a ruined man, I should have felt deeply for his children, but I should not have hesitated to tell you the truth, as I am hesitating now. Let me repeat a question which escaped you, I think, when I first put it. Carry your mind back to the spring of this year. Do you remember the Fourth of March? Miss Garth shook her head. My memory for dates is bad at the best of times, she said. I am too confused to exert it at a moment's notice. Can you put your question in no other form? He put it in this form. Do you remember any domestic event in the spring of the present year which appeared to affect Mr. Van Stone more seriously than usual? Miss Garth leaned forward in her chair, and looked eagerly at Mr. Pendrell across the table. The journey to London, she exclaimed. I distrusted the journey to London from the first. Yes, I remember Mr. Van Stone receiving a letter. I remember his reading it, and looking so altered from himself that he startled us all. Did you notice any apparent understanding between Mr. and Mrs. Van Stone on the subject of that letter? Yes, I did. One of the girls, it was Magdalene, mentioned the postmark, someplace in America. It all comes back to me, Mr. Pendrell. Mrs. Van Stone looked excited and anxious the moment she heard the place named. They went to London together the next day. They explained nothing to their daughters, nothing to me. Mrs. Van Stone said the journey was for family affairs. I suspected something wrong. I couldn't tell what. Mrs. Van Stone wrote to me from London, saying that her object was to consult a physician on the state of her health, and not to alarm her daughters by telling them. Something in the letter rather hurt me at the time. I thought there might be some other motive that she was keeping from me. Did I do her wrong? You did her no wrong. There was a motive which she was keeping from you. In revealing that motive, I revealed the painful secret which brings me to this house, all that I could do to prepare you I have done. Let me now tell the truth in the plainest and fewest words, when Mr. and Mrs. Van Stone left Coombraven in the March of the present year. Before he could complete the sentence, a sudden movement of Miss Garce interrupted him. She started violently and looked round toward the window. Only the wind among the leaves, she said faintly. My nerves are so shaken, the least thing startles me. Speak out for God's sake! When Mr. and Mrs. Van Stone left this house, tell me in plain words, why did they go to London? In plain words, Mr. Penjal told her. They went to London to be married. With that answer he placed a slip of paper on the table. It was the marriage certificate of the dead parents, and the date it bore was March the 20th, 1846. Miss Garce neither moved nor spoke. The certificate lay beneath her unnoticed. She sat with her eyes rooted on the lawyer's face. Her mind stunned. Her senses helpless. He saw that all his efforts to break the shock of the discovery had been efforts made in vain. He felt the vital importance of rousing her, and firmly and distinctly repeated the fatal words. They went to London to be married. He said, Try to rouse yourself. Try to realize the plain fact first. The explanation shall come afterward. Miss Garce, I speak the miserable truth. In the spring of this year they left home. They lived in London for a fortnight, in the strictest retirement. They were married by license at the end of that time. There is a copy of the certificate, which I myself obtained on Monday last. Read the date of the marriage for yourself. It is Friday, the 20th of March, the March of this present year. As he pointed to the certificate, that faint breath of air among the shrubs beneath the window which had startled Miss Garce stirred the leaves once more. He heard it himself this time and turned his face so as to let the breeze play upon it. No breeze came. No breath of air that was strong enough for him to feel floated into the room. Miss Garce roused herself mechanically and read the certificate. It seemed to produce no distinct impression on her. She laid it on one side in a lost bewildered manner. Twelve years, she said, in low hopeless tones. Twelve quiet, happy years I lived with this family. Mrs. Vanstone was my friend. My dear, valued friend. My sister I might almost say. I can't believe it. Bear with me a little, sir. I can't believe it yet. I shall help you to believe it when I tell you more, said Mr. Pendrell. You will understand me better when I take you back to the time of Mr. Vanstone's early life. I won't ask for your attention just yet. Let us wait a little until you recover yourself. They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his pocket, referred to them attentively, and put them back again. Can you listen to me now? he asked kindly. She bowed her head in answer. Mr. Pendrell considered with himself for a moment. I must caution you on one point, he said. If the aspect of Mr. Vanstone's character, which I am now about to present to you, seems, in some respects, a devarience with your later experience. Bear in mind that when you first knew him twelve years since, he was a man of forty, and that when I first knew him, he was a lad of nineteen. His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable past. CHAPTER XIII. The fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him, the lawyer began, was part and part only of the inheritance which fell to him on his father's death. Mr. Vanstone the Elder was a manufacturer in the north of England. He married early in life, and the children of the marriage were either six or seven in number. I am not certain which. The eldest son, still living, and now an old man turned seventy. Secondly, Selena, the eldest daughter, who married an afterlife, and who died ten or eleven years ago. After those two came other sons and daughters, whose early deaths make it unnecessary to mention them particularly. The last, and by many years the youngest of the children, was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the act of pursuit of his profession, and in succeeding to his business, I also succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones as the family solicitor. At that time Andrew had just started in life by entering the army. After little more than a year of home service, he was ordered out with his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England, he left his father and his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. I need not detain you by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I need only tell you that the elder Mr. Vanstone, with many excellent qualities, was a man of fierce and intractable temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance, under circumstances which might have justly irritated a father of far milder character, and he declared, in the most positive terms, that he would never see Michael's face again. In defiance of my entreaties and of the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will which provided for Michael's share in the paternal inheritance. Such was the family position when the younger son left home for Canada. Some months after Andrew's arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who came, or said she came, from one of the southern states of America. She obtained an immediate influence over him, and she used it to the basest purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man in later life. You can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of his youth. It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the story. He was just twenty-one. He was blindly devoted to a worthless woman, and she let him on with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw back. In one word, he committed to the fatal error of his life. He married her. She had been wise enough in her own interest to dread the influence of his brother officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret. She could do this, but she could not provide against the results of accident. Hardly three months had passed when a chance disclosure exposed the life she had led before her marriage, but one alternative was left to her husband, the alternative of instantly separating from her. The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy, for a boy in disposition he still was, may be judged by the event which followed the exposure. One of Andrew's superior officers, a certain Major Kirk, if I remember right, found him in his quarters, writing to his father a confession of the disgraceful truth with a loaded pistol by his side. That officer saved the lad's life from his own hand, and hushed up the scandalous affair by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal one, and the wife's misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual allowance was secured to her, on condition that she return to the place from which she had come, that she never appeared in England, and that she ceased to use her husband's name. Other stipulations were added to these. She accepted them all, and measures were privately taken to have her well looked after in the place of her retreat. What a life she led there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on her I cannot say. I can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came to England, that she never annoyed Mr. Van Stone, and that the annual allowance was paid her through a local agent in America, to the day of her death. All that she wanted in marrying him was money, and money she got. In the meantime, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing would induce him to face his brother officers after what had happened. He sold out and returned to England. The first intelligence which reached him on his return was the intelligence of his father's death. He came to my office in London before going home, and there learned from my lips how the family quarrel had ended. The will which Mr. Van Stone the elder had destroyed in my presence had not been, so far as I know, replaced by another. When I was sent for, in the usual course on his death, I fully expected that the law would be left to make the customary division among his widow and his children. To my surprise, a will appeared among his papers, correctly drawn and executed, and dated about a week after the period when the first will had been destroyed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose against his eldest son, and had applied to a stranger for the professional assistance, which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask for at my hands. It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in detail. There were the widow and three surviving children to be provided for. The widow received a life interest only in a portion of the testator's property. The remaining portion was divided between Andrew and Selena, two-thirds to the brother, one-third to the sister. On the mother's death, the money from which her income had been derived was to go to Andrew and Selena in the same relative proportions as before, 5,000 pounds having been first deducted from the sum and paid to Michael, as the sole legacy left by the implacable father to his eldest son. Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled by the will, stood thus. Before the mother's death, Andrew had 70,000 pounds, Selena had 35,000 pounds, Michael had nothing. After the mother's death, Michael had 5,000 pounds, to set against Andrew's inheritance, augmented to 100,000, and Selena's inheritance increased to 50,000. Do not suppose that I am dwelling unnecessarily on this part of the subject. Every word I now speak bears on interest still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr. Van Stone's daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in mind the terrible inequality of Michael's inheritance and Andrew's inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear, not over yet. Andrew's first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to tell him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He had once proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder brother. But there was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter from Michael was waiting for him at my office when he came there, and that letter charged him with being the original cause of estrangement between his father and his elder brother. The efforts which he had made, bluntly and unconsciously I own, but with the purest and kindest intentions, as I know, to compose the quarrel before leaving home, were perverted by the vilest misconstruction to support an accusation of treachery and falsehood, which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt, what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn before his generous intentions toward his brother took effect, the mere fact of their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgement of the justice of Michael's charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the most forebearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words could make it. Michael had inherited his father's temper, unredeemed by his father's better qualities. His second letter reiterated the charges contained in the first, and declared that he would only accept the offered division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew's part. I next wrote to the mother to use her influence. She was herself aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest in her husband's property. She sided resolutely with Michael, and she stigmatized Andrew's proposal as an attempt to bribe her eldest son into withdrawing a charge against his brother, which that brother knew to be true. After this last repulse, nothing more could be done. Michael withdrew to the continent, and his mother followed him there. She lived long enough and saved money enough out of her income to add considerably at her death to her elder son's five thousand pounds. He had previously still further improved his pecuniary position by an advantageous marriage, and he is now passing the close of his days either in France or Switzerland, a widower with one son. We shall return to him shortly. In the meantime, I need only tell you that Andrew and Michael never again met, never again communicated, even by writing. To all intents and purposes, they were dead to each other, from those early days to the present time. You can now estimate what Andrew's position was when he left his profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, he was alone in the world. His future destroyed at the fair outset of life. His mother and brother estranged from him. His sister lately married, with interests and hopes in which he had no share. Men of firmer mental caliber might have found refuge from such a situation as this in an absorbing intellectual pursuit. He was not capable of the effort. All the strength of his character lay in the affections he had wasted. His place in the world was that quiet place at home, with wife and children to make his life happy, which he had lost for ever. To look back was more than he dare. To look forward was more than he could. In sheer despair, he let his own impetuous youth drive him on and cast himself into the lowest dissipations of a London life. A woman's falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman's love saved him at the outset of his downward career. Let us not speak of her harshly, for we laid her with him yesterday in the grave. You, who only knew Mrs. Vanstone in later life, when illness and sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form no adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when she was a girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met her. I had tried to rescue him, for one night at least, from degrading associates and degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go with me to a ball given by one of the great city companies. There they met. She produced a strong impression on him the moment he saw her. To me, as to him, she was a total stranger. An introduction to her, obtained in the customary manner, informed him that she was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The rest he discovered from herself. They were partners in the dance, unobserved in that crowded ballroom all through the evening. Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhappy at home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in life. They were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of her. It was her first ball. It was the first time she had ever met with a man who had the breeding, the manners, and the conversation of a gentleman. Are these excuses for her which I have no right to make? If we have any human feeling for human weakness, surely not. The meeting of that night decided their future. When other meetings had followed, when the confession of her love had escaped her, he took the one course of all others, took it innocently and unconsciously, which was most dangerous to them both. His frankness and his sense of honor forbade him to deceive her. He opened his heart and told her the truth. She was a generous, impulsive girl. She had no home ties strong enough to plead with her. She was passionately fond of him, and he had made that appeal to her pity which, to the eternal honor of women, is the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly, that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his rescue hung on her decision. She decided, and saved him. Let me not be misunderstood. Let me not be accused of trifling with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning. I will only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which must have ended in his early death. It is the truth that she restored him to that happy home existence which you remember so tenderly, which he remembered so gratefully that on the day when he was free, he made her his wife. Let strict morality claim its right and condemn her early fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose indeed if Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her, if Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice of her whole life. A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which have happened within your own experience. I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Van Ston was now placed could lead in the end to but one result, to a disclosure more or less inevitable of the truth. Attempts were made to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake's family, and as a matter of course those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny of her father and her friends. What might have happened if her relatives had been what is termed respectable, I cannot pretend to say. As it was, they were people who could, in the common phrase, be conveniently treated with. The only survivor of the family at the present time is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Rage. When I tell you that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs. Van Ston to the last, and when I add that his conduct presents no extraordinary exception to the conduct in their lifetime of the other relatives, you will understand what sort of people I had to deal with in my client's interests, and how their assumed indignation was appeased. Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr. Van Ston and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years. Girl as she was, she faced her position and its necessities without flinching. Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she loved, having quieted her conscience by persuading herself that his marriage was a legal mockery and that she was his wife in the sight of heaven, she set herself from the first to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so living with him, in the world's eye, as never to raise the suspicion that she was not his lawful wife. The women are few indeed who cannot resolve firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly where the dearest interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs. Van Ston, she has a right now, remember to that name. Mrs. Van Ston had more than the average share of a woman's tenacity and a woman's tact, and she took all the needful precautions in those early days which her husband's less ready capacity had not the art devise, precautions to which they were largely indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times. Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed them when they returned to England. They first settled in Devonshire, merely because they were far removed there from that northern county in which Mr. Van Ston's family and connections had been known. On the part of his surviving relatives, they had no curious investigations to dread. He was totally estranged from his mother and his elder brother. His married sister had been forbidden by her husband, who was a clergyman, to hold any communication with him from the period when he had fallen into the deplorable way of life which I have described as following his return from Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and Ms. Blake left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to this house, neither courting nor avoiding notice, simply happy in themselves, in their children and in their quiet, rural life, unsuspected by the few neighbors who formed their modest circle of acquaintance to be other than what they seemed. The truth in their case, as in the cases of many others, remained undiscovered until accident forced it into the light of day. If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider the circumstances and you will understand the apparent anomaly. Remember that they had been living as husband and wife to all intents and purposes, except that the marriage service had not been read over them for fifteen years before you came into the house, and bear in mind at the same time that no event occurred to disturb Mr. Vanstone's happiness in the present, to remind him of the past or to warn him of the future, until the announcement of his wife's death reached him in that letter from America which you saw placed in his hand. From that day forth, when a past which he abhorred was forced back to his memory, when a future which she had never dared to anticipate was placed within her reach, you will soon perceive, if you have not perceived already, that they both betrayed themselves time after time and that your innocence of all suspicion and their children's innocence of all suspicion alone prevented you from discovering the truth. The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. I have had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with true sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory of the dead. He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on his hand in the quiet and demonstrative manner which was natural to him. Thus far Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by an occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She made no effort to conceal her tears. They fell fast and silently over her wasted cheeks as she looked up and spoke to him. I have done you some injuries, sir, in my thoughts, she said, with a noble simplicity. I know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness. Let me take your hand. Those words and the action which accompanied them touched him deeply. He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak, the first to set the example of self-control. It is one of the noble instincts of women that nothing more powerfully rouses them to struggle with their own sorrow than the sight of a man's distress. She quietly dried her tears. She quietly drew her chair round the table so as to sit nearer to him when she spoke again. I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendrell, by what has happened in this house, she said, or I should have borne what you have told me better than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one question before you go on? My heart aches for the children of my love more than ever my children now. Is there no hope for their future? Are they left with no prospect but poverty before them? The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question. They are left dependent, he said at last, on the justice and the mercy of a stranger, through the misfortune of their birth, through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their parents. With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor, and restored it to its former position on the table between them. I can only place the truth before you, he resumed, in one plain form of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr. Van Stone's daughters dependent on their uncle. As he spoke the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the window. On their uncle, repeated Miss Garth, she considered for a moment and laid her hands suddenly on Mr. Pengell's arm. Not on Michael Van Stone? Yes, on Michael Van Stone. Miss Garth's hands still mechanically grasped the lawyer's arm. Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which had now burst on her. Dependent on Michael Van Stone, she said to herself, dependent on their father's bitterest enemy, how can it be? Give me your attention for a few minutes more, said Mr. Pengell, and you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Van Stone, and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother's orphan daughters. I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on him. You will most readily understand how and why if we take up the chain of events where we last left it, at the period of Mr. and Mrs. Van Stone's marriage. One moment, sir, said Miss Garth. Were you in the secret of that marriage at the time when it took place? Unhappily, I was not. I was away from London, away from England at the time. If Mr. Van Stone had been able to communicate with me when the letter from America announced the death of his wife, the fortunes of his daughters would not have been now at stake. He paused, and before proceeding further, looked once more at the letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the interview. He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by his side. At the beginning of the present year, he resumed, at the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely thought it right, seeing that my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Van Stone's private affairs, to warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I was on the sea when the news of his wife's death reached him, on the 4th of March, and I did not return until the middle of last June. You warned him of your departure, in deposed miscarth. Did you not warn him of your return? Not personally. My head clerk sent him one of the circulars which were dispatched from my office in various directions to announce my return. It was the first substitute I thought of for the personal letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all crowding on me together after my long absence, did not allow me leisure to write. Barely a month later, the first information of his marriage reached me in a letter from himself, written on the day of the fatal accident. The circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in which you must have taken some interest. I mean the attachment between Mr. Clair's son and Mr. Van Stone's youngest daughter. I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that attachment at the time, replied miscarth. I was ignorant then of the family secret. I know better now. Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive that leads us to the point. The young lady herself, as I have heard from the elder Mr. Clair, to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of the circumstances in detail, confessed her attachment to her father, and innocently touched him to the quick by a chance reference to his own early life. He had a long conversation with Mrs. Van Stone, in which they both agreed that Mr. Clair must be privately informed of the truth, before the attachment between the two young people was allowed to proceed further. It was painful in the last degree, both to husband and wife, to be reduced to this alternative. But they were resolute, honorably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own feelings, and Mr. Van Stone betook himself on the spot to Mr. Clair's cottage. You no doubt observed a remarkable change in Mr. Van Stone's manner on that day, and you can now account for it. Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendrell went on. You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clair's contempt for all social prejudices. He continued to anticipate his reception of the confession which his neighbor addressed to him. Five minutes after the interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and unrestrained together as usual. In the course of conversation, Mr. Van Stone mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made for the benefit of his daughter and of her future husband, and in doing so, he naturally referred to his will here on the table between us. Mr. Clair, remembering that his friend had been married in the March of that year, at once asked when the will had been executed, receiving the reply that it had been made five years since, and thereupon astounded Mr. Van Stone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper in the eye of the law. Up to that moment, he, like many other persons, had been absolutely ignorant that a man's marriage is, legally as well as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life, that it destroys the validity of any will which he may have made as a single man, and that it renders absolutely necessary the entire reassertion of his testamentary intentions in the character of a husband. The statement of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr. Van Stone, declaring that his friend had laid him under an obligation which he should remember to his dying day. He had once left the cottage, at once returned home, and wrote me this letter. He handed the letter open to Miss Garth. In tearless, speechless grief, she read these words. If you are surprised at not having heard from me the moment you got back, attribute my silence in great part, if not altogether, to my own total ignorance of the legal necessity for making another will. Not half an hour since, I was enlightened for the first time, under circumstances which I will mention when we meet, by my old friend Mr. Clare. Family anxieties have had something to do with my silence as well. My wife's confinement is close at hand, and, besides the serious anxiety, my second daughter is just engaged to be married. Until I saw Mr. Clare today, these matters so filled my mind that I never thought of writing to you during the one short month which is all that has passed since I got news of your return. Now I know that my will must be made again. I write instantly. For God's sake, come on the day when you receive this. Come and relieve me from the dreadful thought that my two darling girls are at this moment unprovided for. If anything happened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice ended through my miserable ignorance of the law in leaving Nora and Magdalene disinherited, I should not rest in my grave. Come at any cost, to yours ever. A. V. On the Saturday morning, Mr. Pendrell resumed, those lines reached me. I instantly set aside all other business and drove to the railway. At the London terminus, I heard the first news of the Friday's accident, heard it with conflicting accounts of the numbers and names of the passengers killed. At Bristol, they were better informed, and the dreadful truth about Mr. Van Stone was confirmed. I had time to recover myself before I reached your station here, and found Mr. Clare's son waiting for me. He took me to his father's cottage, and there, without losing a moment, I drew out Mrs. Van Stone's will. My object was to secure the only provision for her daughters, which it was now possible to make. Mr. Van Stone, having died in test-state, a third of his fortune would go to his widow, and the rest would be divided among his next of kin. As children born out of wedlock, Mr. Van Stone's daughters, under the circumstances of their father's death, had no more claim to a share in his property than the daughters of one of his laborers in the village. The one chance left was that their mother might sufficiently recover to leave her third share to them, by will, in the event of her disease. Now you know why I wrote to you to ask for that interview, why I waited day and night in the hope of receiving a summons to the house. I was sincerely sorry to send back such an answer to your note of inquiry as I was compelled to write, but while there was a chance of the preservation of Mrs. Van Stone's life, the secret of the marriage was hers, not mine, and every consideration of delicacy forbade me to disclose it. You did right, sir, said Miss Garth. I understand your motives and respect them. My last attempt to provide for the daughters, continued Mr. Pendrell, was, as you know, rendered an availing by the dangerous nature of Mrs. Van Stone's illness. Her death left the infant who survived her by a few hours, the infant born, you will remember, in lawful wedlock, possessed, in due legal course, of the whole of Mr. Van Stone's fortune. On the child's death, if it had only outlived the mother by a few seconds instead of a few hours, the result would have been the same. The next of kin to the legitimate offspring took the money, and that next of kin is the infant's paternal uncle, Michael Van Stone. The whole fortune of eighty thousand pounds has virtually passed into his possession already. Are there no other relations? asked Miss Garth. Is there no hope from anyone else? There are no other relations with Michael Van Stone's claim, said the lawyer. There are no grandfathers or grandmothers of the dead child on the side of either of the parents now alive. It was not likely there should be, considering the ages of Mr. and Mrs. Van Stone when they died. But it is a misfortune to be reasonably lamented that no other uncles or aunts survive. There are cousins alive, a son and two daughters of that elder sister of Mr. Van Stone's, who married Archdeacon Bartram and who died, as I told you, some years since. But their interest is superseded by the interest of the nearer blood. No, Miss Garth, we must look fax as they are resolutely in the face. Mr. Van Stone's daughters are nobody's children, and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy. A cruel law, Mr. Pendrell, a cruel law in a Christian country. Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking peculiarity in this case. I am far from defending the law of England as it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents and the children. It encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage. And it claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality and religion. But it has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in the case of these unhappy girls. The more merciful and Christian law of other countries, which allows the marriage of the parents to make the children legitimate, has no mercy on these children. The accident of their father having been married when he first met with their mother has made them the outcasts of the whole social community. It has placed them out of the pale of the civil law of Europe. I tell you the hard truth. It is useless to disguise it. There is no hope if we look back at the past. There may be hope if we look on to the future. The best service which I can now render you is to shorten the period of your suspense. In less than an hour I shall be on my way back to London. Immediately on my arrival I will ascertain the speediest means of communicating with Mr. Michael Vanstone and will let you know the result. Sad as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at it on its best side. We must not lose hope. Hope, repeated Ms. Garth. Hope from Michael Vanstone. Yes. Hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the influence of mercy. As I have already told you, he is now an old man. He cannot in the course of nature expect to live much longer. If he looks back to the period when he and his brother were first at variance, he must look back through thirty years. Surely these are softening influences which must affect any man. Surely his own knowledge of the shocking circumstances under which he has become possessed of this money will plead with him if nothing else does. I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendrell. I will try to hope for the best. Shall we be left long in suspense before the decision reaches us? I trust not. The only delay on my side will be caused by the necessity of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone's residence on the continent. I think I have the means of meeting this difficulty successfully, and the moment I reach London, those means shall be tried. He took up his hat and then returned to the table on which the father's last letter and the father's useless will were lying side by side. After a moment's consideration, he placed them both in Miss Garce's hands. It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters, he said in his quiet, self-repressed way, if they can see how their father refers to them in his will. If they can read his letter to me, the last he ever wrote, let these tokens tell them that the one idea of their father's life was the idea of making atonement to his children. They may think bitterly of their birth, he said to me, at the time when I drew this useless will, but they shall never think bitterly of me. I will cross them in nothing. They shall never know a sorrow that I can spare them or a want which I will not satisfy. He made me put those words in his will to plead for him when the truth which he had concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them after his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter to help you. I give them both into your care. He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully hastened the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and murmured a few broken words of gratitude. Trust me to do my best, he said, and turning away with a merciful abruptness, left her. In the broad, cheerful sunshine he had come in to reveal the fatal truth. In the broad, cheerful sunshine that truth disclosed he went out. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. According by Linda Lee Paquette's No Name by Wilkie Collins First Scene Chapter 14 It was nearly an hour past noon when Mr. Pendrell left the house. Miss Garth sat down again at the table alone and tried to face the necessity which the event of the morning now forced on her. Her mind was not equal to the effort. She tried to lessen the strain on it, to lose the sense of her own position, to escape from her thoughts for a few minutes only. After a little, she opened Mr. Van Stone's letter and mechanically set herself to read it through once more. One by one, the last words of the dead man fastened themselves more and more firmly on her attention. The unrelieved solitude, the unbroken silence, helped their influence on her mind and opened it to those very impressions of past and present which she was most anxious to shun. As she reached the melancholy lines which closed the letter, she found herself, insensibly, almost unconsciously at first, tracing the fatal chain of events, link by link backward, until she reached its beginning in the contemplated marriage between Magdalene and Francis Clair. That marriage had taken Mr. Van Stone to his old friend, with the confession on his lips which would otherwise never have escaped them. Thence came the discovery which had sent him home to summon the lawyer to the house. That summons again had produced the inevitable acceleration of the Saturday's journey to Friday. The Friday of the fatal accident. The Friday when he went to his death. From his death followed the second bereavement which had made the house desolate. The helpless position of the daughters whose prosperous future had been his dearest care. The revelation of the secret which had overwhelmed her that morning. The disclosure, more terrible still, which she now stood committed to make to the orphan sisters. For the first time she saw the whole sequence of events, saw it as plainly as the cloudless blue of the sky and the green glow of the trees in the sunlight outside. How? When could she tell them? Who could approach them with the disclosure of their own illegitimacy before their father and mother had been dead a week? Who could speak the dreadful words, while the first tears were wet on their cheeks, while the first pang of separation was at its keenest in their hearts, while the memory of the funeral was not a day old yet? Not their last friends left, not the faithful woman whose heart bled for them. No, silence for the present time, at all risks, merciful silence, for many days to come. She left the room with the will and the letter in her hand, with the natural human pity at her heart which sealed her lips and shut her eyes resolutely to the future. In the hall she stopped and listened. Not a sound was audible. She softly ascended the stairs on her way to her own room and passed the door of Nora's bed-chamber. Voices inside, the voices of the two sisters caught her ear. After a moment's consideration she checked herself, turned back, and quickly descended the stairs again. Both Nora and Magdalen knew of the interview between Mr. Pendrell and herself. She had felt it her duty to show them his letter making the appointment. Could she excite their suspicion by locking herself up from them in her room as soon as the lawyer had left the house? Her hand trembled on the banister. She felt that her face might betray her. The self-forgetful fortitude which had never failed her until that day, had been tried once too often, had been tasked beyond its powers at last. At the whole door she reflected for a moment again and went into the garden, directing her steps to a rustic bench and table placed out of sight of the house among the trees. In past times she had often sat there, with Mrs. Banstone on one side, with Nora on the other, with Magdalen and the dogs romping on the grass. Alone she sat there now, the will and the letter which she dared not trust out of her own possession, laid on the table. Her head bowed over them, her face hidden in her hands. Alone she sat there and tried to rouse her sinking courage. Doubts thronged on her of the dark days to come. Dreadbe set her of the hidden danger which her own silence toward Nora and Magdalen might store up in the near future. The accident of a moment might suddenly reveal the truth. Magdalen might write, might personally address himself to the sisters in the natural conviction that she had enlightened them. Complications might gather round them at a moment's notice. Unforeseen necessities might arise for immediately leaving the house. She saw all these perils, and still the cruel courage to face the worst and speak was as far from her as ever. Air-long the thickening conflict of her thoughts forced its way outward for relief in words and actions. She raised her head and beat her hand helplessly on the table. God help me, what am I to do? she broke out. How am I to tell them? There is no need to tell them, said a voice behind her. They know it already. She started to her feet and looked round. It was Magdalen who stood before her. Magdalen who had spoken those words. Yes, there was the graceful figure in its morning garments standing out tall and black and motionless against the leafy background. There was Magdalen herself, with a changeless stillness on her white face, with an icy resignation in her steady gray eyes. We know it already. She repeated in clear measured tones. Mr. Van Stone's daughters are nobody's children, and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy. So without a tear on her cheeks, without a faltering tone in her voice, she repeated the lawyer's own words exactly as he had spoken them. Miss Garth staggered back a step and caught at the bench to support herself. Her head swam. She closed her eyes in a momentary faintness. When they opened again, Magdalen's arm was supporting her. Magdalen's breath fanned her cheek. Magdalen's cold lips kissed her. She drew back from the kiss. The touch of the girl's lips thrilled her with terror. As soon as she could speak, she put the inevitable question. You heard us, she said. Where? Under the open window. All the time? From beginning to end. She had listened, this girl of eighteen, in the first week of her orphanage, had listened to the whole terrible revelation word by word as it fell from the lawyer's lips and had never once betrayed herself. From first to last, the only movements which had escaped her had been movements guarded enough and slight enough to be mistaken for the passage of the summer breeze through the leaves. Don't try to speak yet, she said, in softer and gentler tones. Don't look at me with those doubting eyes. What wrong have I done? When Mr. Pendrell wished to speak to you about Nora and me, his letter gave us our choice to be present at the interview or to keep away. If my elder sister decided to keep away, how could I come? How could I hear my own story, except as I did? My listening has done no harm. It has done good. It has saved you the distress of speaking to us. You have suffered enough for us already. It is time we learned to suffer for ourselves. I have learned, and Nora is learning. Nora? Yes, I have done all I could to spare you. I have told Nora. She had told Nora. Was this girl, whose courage had faced the terrible necessity from which a woman old enough to be her mother had recoiled, the girl Miss Garth had brought up? The girl, whose nature she had believed to be as well known to her as her own? Magdalene! She cried out passionately. You frighten me! Magdalene only sighed, and turned warily away. Try not to think worse of me than I deserve, she said. I can't cry. My heart is numbed. She moved away slowly over the grass. Miss Garth watched the tall black figure gliding away alone until it was lost among the trees. While it was in sight, she could think of nothing else. The moment it was gone, she thought of Nora. For the first time in her experience of the sisters, her heart led her instinctively to the elder of the two. Nora was still in her own room. She was sitting on the couch by the window with her mother's old music-book. The keepsake which Mrs. Van Stone had found in her husband's study on the day of her husband's death spread open on her lap. She looked up from it with such quiet sorrow and pointed with such ready kindness to the vacant place at her side that Miss Garth doubted for the moment whether Magdalene had spoken the truth. See, said Nora, simply turning to the first leaf in the music-book, my mother's name written in it, and some verses to my father on the next page. We may keep this for ourselves if we keep nothing else. She put her arm round Miss Garth's neck, and a faint tinge of color stole over her cheeks. I see anxious thoughts in your face, she whispered. Are you anxious about me? Are you doubting whether I have heard it? I have heard the whole truth. I might have felt it bitterly later. It is too soon to feel it now. You have seen Magdalene? She went out to find you. Where did you leave her? In the garden. I couldn't speak to her. I couldn't look at her. Magdalene has frightened me. Nora rose hurriedly. Rose startled and distressed by Miss Garth's reply. Don't think ill of Magdalene, she said. Magdalene suffers in secret more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard about us this morning. Does it matter who we are or what we keep or lose? What loss is there for us after the loss of our father and mother? Oh Miss Garth, there is the only bitterness. What did we remember of them when we laid them in the grave yesterday? Nothing but the love they gave us. The love we must never hope for again. What else can we remember today? What change can the world and the world's cruel laws make in our memory of the kindest father, the kindest mother that children ever had? She stopped, struggled with her rising grief, and quietly, resolutely kept it down. Will you wait here, she said, while I go and bring Magdalene back? Magdalene was always your favorite. I want her to be your favorite still. She laid the music book gently on Miss Garth's lap and left the room. Magdalene was always your favorite. Tenderly as they had been spoken, those words fell reproachfully on Miss Garth's ear. For the first time in the long companionship of her pupils and herself, a doubt whether she, and all those about her, had not been fatally mistaken in their relative estimate of the sisters, now forced itself on her mind. She had studied the natures of her two pupils in the daily intimacy of twelve years. Those natures, which she believed herself to have sounded through all their depths, had been suddenly tried in the sharp ordeal of affliction. How had they come out from the test, as her previous experience had prepared her to see them? No, in flat contradiction to it. What did such a result as this imply? Thoughts came to her, as she asked herself that question, which have startled and saddened us all. Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward invisible character which is shaped into form by the social influences surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition, which is part of ourselves, which education may indirectly modify, but can never hope to change? Is the philosophy which denies this, and asserts that we are born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper, a philosophy which has failed to remark that we are not born with blank faces, a philosophy which has never compared together to infants of a few days old, and has never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers for mothers and nurses to fill up at will? Are there infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of good and evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression, hidden good and hidden evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation? Within these earthly limits, is earthly circumstance ever the key, and can no human vigilance warn us beforehand of the forces imprisoned in ourselves which that key may unlock? For the first time, thoughts such as these rose darkly, as shadowy and terrible possibilities, in Miskar's mind. For the first time, she associated those possibilities with the past conduct and characters, with the future lives and fortunes of the orphan sisters. Searching as in a glass darkly into the two natures, she felt her way, doubt by doubt, from one possible truth to another. It might be that the upper surface of their characters was all that she had thus far, plainly seen in Nora and Magdalene. It might be that the unalluring secrecy and reserve of one sister, the all attractive openness and high spirits of the other, were more or less referable in each case to those physical causes which worked toward the production of moral results. It might be that under the surface so formed, a surface which there had been nothing hitherto, in the happy, prosperous, uneventful lives of the sisters to disturb, forces of inborn and inbred disposition had remained concealed, which the shock of the first serious calamity in their lives had now thrown up into view. Was this so? Was the promise of the future shining with prophetic light through the surface shadow of Nora's reserve and darkening with prophetic gloom under the surface glitter of Magdalene's bright spirits? If the life of the elder sister was destined henceforth to be the ripening ground of the undeveloped good that was in her, was the life of the younger doom to be the battlefield of mortal conflict with the roused forces of evil in herself? On the brink of that terrible conclusion, Miss Garth shrank back in dismay. Her heart was the heart of a true woman. It accepted the conviction which raised Nora higher in her love. It rejected the doubt which threatened to place Magdalene lower. She rose and paced the room impatiently. She recoiled with an angry suddenness from the whole train of thought in which her mind had been engaged but the moment before. What if there were dangerous elements in the strength of Magdalene's character? Was it not her duty to help the girl against herself? How had she performed that duty? She had let herself be governed by first fears and first impressions. She had never waited to consider whether Magdalene's openly acknowledged action of that morning might not imply a self-sacrificing fortitude which promised in afterlife the noblest and the most endearing results. She had let Nora go and speak those words of tender remonstrance, which she should first have spoken herself. Oh! she thought bitterly. How long I have lived in the world and how little I have known of my own weakness and wickedness until today. The door of the room opened. Nora came in as she had gone out, alone. Do you remember leaving anything on the little table by the garden-seat? She asked quietly. Before Miss Garth could answer the question, she held out her father's will and her father's letter. Magdalene came back after you went away, she said, and found these last relics. She heard Mr. Pendrell say they were her legacy and mine. When I went into the garden she was reading the letter. There was no need for me to speak to her. Our father had spoken to her from his grave. See how she has listened to him. She pointed to the letter. The traces of heavy teardrops lay thick over the last lines of the dead man's writing. Her tears said Nora softly. Miss Garth's head drooped low over the mute revelation of Magdalene's return to her better self. Oh, never doubt her again, pleaded Nora. We are alone now. We have our hard way through the world to walk on as patiently as we can. If Magdalene ever falters and turns back, help her for the love of old times. Help her against herself. With all my heart and strength, as God shall judge me with the devotion of my whole life. In those fervent words Miss Garth answered. She took the hand which Nora held out to her and put it in sorrow and humility to her lips. Oh, my love, forgive me. I have been miserably blind. I have never valued you as I ought. Nora gently checked her before she could say more, gently whispered, Come with me into the garden. Come and help Magdalene to look patiently to the future. The future. Who could see the faintest glimmer of it? Who could see anything but the ill-omend figure of Michael Vanstone posted darkly on the verge of the present time and closing all the prospects that lay beyond him? End of Chapter 14, First Scene. Recording by Linda Lee Paquette