So he wished to introduce her to his sisters! What did that mean? If the Deyncourts were ever so high they could not sneer at Lord Northmoor’s sisters.
Then she thought of many a novel, and in real life, of what she believed respecting that lost lover of Miss Morton’s. And later in the day Tom Brady lounged up to Northmoor Cottage, and leaning with one elbow on the window-sill, while the other arm held away the pipe he had just taken from his lips, p. 214he asked if they would give him a cup of tea, the whole harbour was so full of such beastly, staring cads that there was no peace there. One ought to give such places a wide berth at Whitsuntide.
‘I wonder you did not,’ said Ida, as she hastened to compound the tea.
‘Forgot it,’ he lazily droned, ‘forgot it. Attractions, you know,’ and, as she brought the cup to the window, with a lump of sugar in the tongs, ‘when sugar fingers are—’ and the speech ended in a demonstration at the fingers that made Ida laugh, blush, and say, ‘Oh, for shame, Mr. Brady!’
‘You had better come in, Mr. Brady,’ called Mrs. Morton. ‘You can’t drink it comfortably there, and you’ll be upsetting it. We are down in the dining-room to-day, because—’
The cause, necessary to her gentility, was lost, as Ida proceeded to let him in at the front door, and he presently deposited himself on the sofa, grumbling complacently at the bore of holidays, especially bank holidays. His crew would have been ready to strike, he declared, if he had taken them out of harbour, or he would have asked the ladies to come on a cruise out of the way of it all.
‘Why, thank you very much, Mr. Brady, but, really in my poor brother, Lord Northmoor’s state, I don’t know that it would be etiquette.’
‘Ah, yes. By the bye, how’s the governor?’
‘Very sad, strength failing. I hardly expect to hear he is alive to-morrow,’ and Mrs. Morton’s handkerchief was raised.
‘Oh ay, sad enough, you know! I say, will it make any difference to you?’
p. 215‘My poor, dear brother! Well, it ought, you know. Indeed it would if it had not been for that dear little boy. My poor Herbert!’
‘It must have been an awful sell for him.’
‘Yes,’ said Ida, ‘and some people think there was something very odd about it all—the child being born out in the Dolomites, with nobody there!’
‘Don’t, Ida, I can’t have you talk so,’ protested her mother.
‘Supposititious, by all that’s lucky! I should strangle him!’ and Mr. Brady put back his head and laughed a loud and hearty laugh, by no means elegant, but without much sound of truculent intentions.
p. 216CHAPTER XXXII
A SHOCK
It was on the Thursday of Whitsun-week when Lady Adela and Bertha came down from their visit of inquiry, a little more hopeful than on the previous day, though they could not yet say that recovery was setting in.
But a great shock awaited them. The parlour-maid met them at the door, pale and tearful. ‘Oh, my lady, Mrs. Eden’s come, and—’
Poor Eden herself was in the hall, and nothing was to be heard but ‘Oh, my lady!’ and another tempest of sobs.
‘Come in, Eden,’ scolded Bertha, in her impatience. ‘Don’t keep us in this way. What has happened to the child? Let us have it at once! The worst, or you wouldn’t be here.’
For all answer, Eden held up a little wooden spade, a sailor hat, and a shoe showing traces of sand and sea-water.
‘It is so then,’ said Lady Adela. ‘Oh, his mother! But,’ after that one wail, she thought of the poor woman before her, ‘I am sure you are not to blame, Eden.’
p. 217‘Oh, my lady, if I could but feel that! But that I should have trusted the darling out of my sight for a moment!’
Presently they brought her to a state in which she could tell her lamentable history.
She had been spending the afternoon at Mr. Rollstone’s, leaving Master Michael as usual in the care of the underling, Ellen, and after that she knew no more till neither child nor maid came home at his supper-time, and Mrs. Morton was slowly roused to take alarm, while Eden, half distracted, wandered about, seeking her charge, and found Ellen, calling and shouting in vain for him. Ellen confessed that she had seen him running after the Lincoln children, and supposing him with them, had given herself up to the study of a penny dreadful in company with another young nursemaid. When they had awakened to real life, the first idea had been that he must be with these children; but they were gone, and Ellen, fancying that he might have gone home with them, asked at their lodging, but no, he was not there.
The tide was by this time covering the beach, and driving away the miserable maids, with the aunt, cousin and others who had been on the fruitless quest. No more could be done then, and they went home with desolation in their hearts. Miss Ida, as Eden declared, stayed out long after everybody else when it was clearly of no use, and came back so tired and upset that she went up straight to bed. There was still a hope that some one might have met the little boy and taken him home, unable clearly to make out to whom he p. 218belonged, more especially as the Lincolns in terror and compunction had confessed that they had seen him and his nurse from a distance, and had rushed headlong round a projecting rock into a cove, hoping that he had not seen them, because he was so tiresome and spoilt all their games. And when that morning the spade, hat, and shoe were discovered upon the shore, not far from the very rock, the poor children had to draw plenty of morals on the consequences of selfishness. No doubt that poor little Michael had pursued them barefooted and gone too near the waves!
There was nothing more but the forlorn hope that the waves would restore the little body they had carried off, and Mrs. Morton was watching for that last sad satisfaction. In case of that contingency, Ellen, as the last person known to have seen the boy, had been left at Westhaven, in agonies of despair, vowing that she would never speak to any one, nor look at a story-book again in her life. She had attempted the excuse that she thought she saw Miss Ida going in that direction, but the young lady had declared that she had never been on the beach at all that afternoon till after the alarm had been given; and had been extremely angry with Ellen for making false excuses and trying to shift off the blame, and the girl had been much terrified, and owned that she was not at all sure.
‘And oh, my lady,’ entreated Eden, ‘don’t send me up to the House! Don’t make me face her ladyship! I should die of it!’
‘We must think what is to be done about that,’ p. 219said Lady Adela. ‘Can you tell whether any one from the House has seen you?’
Eden thought not, and after she had been consigned to her friend, Lady Adela’s maid, to be rested, fed, and comforted as far as might be possible, the sisters-in-law held sad counsel, and agreed that it was not safe to keep back the terrible news from the poor mother who expected daily tidings of her child, and might hear some report, in spite of her shut-up state.
‘Poor Adela, I pity you almost as much as her,’ said Bertha.
‘Oh, I know now how much I have to be thankful for! No uncertainty—and my little one’s grave.’
‘Besides Amice. Let me drive you up, Addie. Your heart is beating enough to knock you down.’
‘Well, I believe it is. But not up to the front door. I will go in by the garden. Oh, may he be spared to her at least!’
Very pale then Lady Adela crept in, meeting a weeping maid who was much relieved to see her, but was hardly restrained from noisy sobs. Mr. Trotman, she said, had come just before the garden boy had inevitably dashed up with the tidings, and the household had been waiting till he came out, to secure that he should be near when Lady Northmoor was told.