The Honorable Miss: A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books .txt] 📗
- Author: L. T. Meade
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Then with a sharp glance at the girl he said, suddenly:
"So you wanted to take me unawares?"
"What do you mean, Grandfather?"
"You know what I mean well enough. However, I'll tell you, you have been on the tramp; you have no money; but you thought your legs would carry you where your heart wanted to be. Shall I go on?"
"Oh, yes, you may say anything you fancy. Stay, I'll say it for you. Yesterday I walked to Northbury. Northbury is over twenty miles from here. I walked every step of the way. In the evening I got there—I was footsore and weary. I had one and sixpence in my purse, no more for food, no more for bribes, no more for anything. I went to Northbury to see the Bertrams—to see that fine lady, that beloved friend of mine, Mrs. Bertram. She was from home. You probably know where she really was. I bribed the gatekeeper, and got into the grounds of Rosendale Manor. I frightened a chit of a schoolgirl, a plain, little, unformed, timorous creature. She was a Bertram, coming home from a late dissipation. She spoke of her fright, and gave her sister the cue. About midnight Catherine Bertram came out to seek me. What's the matter, Grand-dad?"
"Good heavens! Nina, that glib tongue of yours has not been blabbing. Catherine! What is Miss Bertram's Christian name to you?"
"Never mind. Her Christian name, and she herself also, are a good deal to me. As to blabbing, I never blab; I saw her, she spoke to me; I slept at the lodge; I returned home to-day."
"You walked home?"
"Yes, and I am dead tired; I want to go to bed now."
"You can't for a few minutes. I have a few words to say first. Josephine, I have always been a good grandfather to you."
"Perhaps you have done your best, Grand-dad, but your best has not been much. I am clothed after a fashion, and fed after a style, and educated!" she filliped her slender fingers scornfully; "educated! I belong to the self-taught. Still, after your lights, you have been a good Grand-dad. Now, what is all this preamble about? I can scarcely keep my eyes open. If you are not quick your words will soon fall unregarded, for I shall be in the arms of that god of delight, Morpheus."
"I have something very important to say, child. I want to lay a command upon you."
"What is that?"
"You are not to act the spy on the Bertrams again."
"The spy? What do you mean?"
"What I say. You are not to do it. I have made arrangements, and the Bertrams are to be unmolested. I have given my oath, and you must abide by it."
"What if I refuse?"
"Then we part company. You go one way, I another. You are truly a beggar, and can take up no other position without my aid. You have a story to tell which no one will believe, for I alone hold the proofs. Talk much about your fine secret, and what will be the result? People will think you off your head. Be guided by me, and all comes right in the end and in the meantime we share the spoils."
"The spoils," said Josephine, "what do you mean?
"I can give you a practical answer, Nina. I have made a good bargain, a splendid bargain; seeing that I have only put on the first screw, my success has largely anticipated my wildest hopes. Josephine, my poor girl, you need no longer suffer the pangs of hunger and neglect. You and I are no longer penniless. What do you say to an income? What do you say to four hundred a year?"
Josephine put up her thin, white hand to her forehead.
"Four hundred a year?" she repeated, vaguely. "I don't quite know what it means. What have we now?"
"Anything or nothing. Sometimes a pound a week, sometimes two pounds, sometimes five shillings."
"And we have in the future?"
"Didn't I tell you, child? Four hundred a year. One hundred pounds paid regularly every quarter. Got without earning, got without toiling for. Ours whether we are sick or well; ours under any circumstances from this day forward; ours just for keeping a little bit of a secret to ourselves."
"A secret which keeps me out of my own."
"We have no money to prove it, child, at present. In the meantime, this is a certainty. Whenever we get our proofs complete we can cease to take this annuity."
"This bribe, you mean. I scorn it. I hate it. I won't touch it."
Josephine's eyes again gleamed with anger.
"I hate bribes," she repeated.
"All right, child. You can go on starving. You can go your own way, I mine. For myself, at least, I have accepted the annuity; and if you anger me any more, I'll burn the documents tonight, which give you the shadow of a claim."
Josephine turned pale. There were moments when, fearless as she was, she feared this queer old man. The present was one of them. She sat quite still for a moment or two, during which she thought deeply. Then she spoke in an altered tone.
"Grandfather, if I consent to make no fuss, to say nothing, to reveal nothing by word or action, will you give me half your annuity?"
"Why so, Nina? Had we not better live together? When all is said and done, I'd miss you, Grandchild, if you left me."
"You'd get over that, Grand-dad. These are not the days when people are especially affectionate. Will you give me two hundred a year, and let me live away from you?"
The old man looked down at the floor, and up at the ceiling; then furtively into his granddaughter's face, then away from her.
"It's late now, we'll talk of it to-morrow," he said.
"No, I am not sleepy any longer. Two hundred a year is worth staying awake for. Will you give it to me? You can promise to-night as well as tomorrow."
"This is an important thing. I can't make up my mind all in a minute. I've got to think."
"You can think now. I'll give you half-an-hour. I'll shut my tired eyes, and you can think hard for half-an-hour."
"Nina, you are so persistent."
"Exactly, I am so persistent. Now my eyes are shut. Please begin to think."
CHAPTER XIII. THE WHITE BOAT AND THE GREEN.
About a fortnight after the events mentioned in the last chapter, the landlady of the Blue Lion, the little slatternly village inn where Mr. Hart and his granddaughter had their quarters, was somewhat disappointed, somewhat puzzled, and certainly possessed by the demon of curiosity when Hart told her that he and his granddaughter intended to take their departure that evening. Hart often went away; Mrs. Timms was quite accustomed to his sudden exits, but his granddaughter was always left as a hostage behind. Hart with his queer ways, his erratic payments, was perhaps not the most inviting lodger for an honest landlady to count upon, but Mrs. Timms had grown accustomed to him. She scolded him, and grumbled at him, but on the whole she made a good thing out of him, for no one could be more generous than old Hart when he was at all flush of cash.
He came down, however, this morning, and told her he was going.
"For a fortnight or so?" responded Mrs. Timms. "You'll leave Miss Josephine behind as usual? I'll take good care of her."
"No, Miss Josephine is also going. Make out our bills, my good Timms, I can pay you in full."
That evening there arrived at Northbury by the seven o'clock train a single first-class passenger—a girl dressed in a long gray cloak, and a big, picturesque shady hat stepped on to the platform. She was the only passenger to alight at Northbury, and the one or two sleepy porters regarded her with interest and admiration. She was very graceful, and her light-colored eyes had a peculiar quick expression which made people turn to watch her again.
The strange girl had scarcely any luggage—only a small portmanteau covered with a neat case of brown holland, and a little trunk to match.
She asked one of the porters to call a cab, did not disdain the shaky and ghastly-looking conveyance which Loftus Bertram had been too proud to use; sprang lightly into it, desired the porter to put her luggage on the roof, and gave the address of Rosendale Manor.
"Oh, that accounts for it," said the man to his mate. "She's one of them proud Bertram folk. I thought by the looks of her as she didn't belong to none of the Northbury people."
The other laughed.
"She have got an eye," he said. "My word, don't it shine? Seems to scorch one up."
"There's the 7.12 luggage train signalled, Jim!" exclaimed the other.
The men forgot the strange girl and returned to their duties.
Meanwhile, she sat back in her cab, and gazed complacently about her. She knew the scene through which she was passing—she had looked on it before. Very travel-stained and weary she had been then; very fresh and keen, and all alive she felt now.
She threw open the windows of the close cab, and took a long breath of the delicious sea air. It was a hot evening towards the middle of July, but a slight breeze rippled the little waves in the harbor, and then travelled up and up until it reached the girl in the dusty cab.
The Northburians were most of them out on the water. No one who knew anything of the ways of Northbury expected to see the good folk in the streets on an evening like this. No, the water was their highway, the water was their pleasure-scene. Each house owned a boat, each garden ended in steps against which the said boat was moored. It was the tiniest walk from the supper room or the high tea-table to the little green-painted boat, and then away to float over the limpid waves.
All the girls in Northbury could row, steer—in short, manage a boat as well as their brothers.
There was a view of the straggling, steep little High Street from the water; and the Bells now, in a large white boat with four oars, and occupied at the present moment by Mrs. Bell, fat and comfortable in the stern, Alice and Sophy each propelling a couple of oars, and the blushing, conscious Matty in the bow, where Captain Bertram bore her company, all saw the old cab, as it toiled up the hill in the direction of Rosendale Manor.
"Do look at Davis's cab!" exclaimed Matty. "Look, Captain Bertram, it's going in your direction. I wonder now, if any one has come by the train. It's certainly going to the Manor. There are no other houses out in that direction. Do look, Captain Bertram."
"Lor, Matty, you are so curious!" exclaimed her sister Sophy, who overheard these remarks from her position as bow oar. "As if Captain Bertram cared! You always do so fuss over little things, Matty. Even if there are visitors coming to the Manor, I'm sure the captain doesn't care. He is not like us who never see anybody. Are you, Captain Bertram?"
"I beg your pardon," said the captain, waking put of a reverie into which he had sunk. "Did you speak, Miss Bell?" he continued, turning with a little courteous movement, which vastly became him, towards the enamored Matty.
"I said a cab was going up the hill," said Matty.
"Oh, really! A cab is an interesting sight, particularly a Northbury cab. Shall I make a riddle for you on the spot, Miss Bell? What is the sole surviving curiosity still to be found out of Noah's ark?"
Matty went off into her usual half-hysterical laughter.
"Oh! I do declare, Captain Bertram, you are too killingly clever for anything," she responded. "Oh, my poor side—I'll die if I laugh any more. Oh, do have mercy on me! To compare that poor cab to Noah's ark!"
"I didn't; it isn't the least like the ark, only I think it must once have found a shelter within that place of refuge."
"Oh! oh! oh! I am taken with such a stitch when I laugh. You are too witty, Captain Bertram. Sophy, you must hear what the captain has said. Oh, you killing, funny man—you must repeat that lovely joke to Sophy."
"Excuse me, it was only meant for Miss Matty's ears."
Matty stopped laughing, to blush all over her face, and Sophy thought it more decorous to turn her back on the pair.
"Does not that green boat belong to Miss Meadowsweet?" interrupted Bertram. "Look, Miss Bell, I am sure that is Miss Meadowsweet's boat."
(He had seen
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