Miss Grantley's Girls, and the Stories She Told Them — Chapter II - The Silver Goblet Pt 2

* * * * * Anton Dormeur sits alone in the grim old house.

Cook and housekeeper have gone to market for the means of providing supper.

Not a footfall sounds in the street; only the wailing voice of the watchman calling the hour at a distance breaks the dead silence, amidst which the old man can hear the ticking of the gold repeater in his pocket, the tinkle of the ashes that stir in the old wide grate, where a fire has been lighted, and the gnawing of a mouse behind the wainscot.

He sits with the silver goblet beside him on the table, his knees towards the fire, his furrowed face quivering as he bends it down over the miniature he has taken from its case, the miniature of his younger daughter, dead and--no, not unforgiven--dead and mourned for now, with a silent grief that speaks of years of desolation and remorse.

The light of the shaded lamp falling on the picture in his hands seems to expand its lineaments; the tears that gather in his eyes almost give quivering motion to the face before him.

A strange emotion masters him.

His temples seem to throb, his hands to shake.

The sudden sound of a light single knock at the street door sets his nerves ajar; the quiet click of the lock--a pause of deadest silence--and then the light tread of an uncertain foot upon the stairs make him tremble; yet he knows not why--does not even ask himself the reason.

There is a lamp outside upon the landing, he knows--the light of it shines down into the hall--and yet he cannot stir towards it.

What superstition holds him?

Even at the moment that he starts up from his chair, the portrait still in his hand, his highly-strung senses enable him to hear a rustle that sounds quite close, and is followed by a low knocking at the door of the room itself.

In a voice of hope, of dread, of fear, he knows not what or which, he hoarsely cries, "Come in."

In the mirror above his head he sees the room-door partly open, and then--yes, then--either to his waking vision or in disordered fancy, the living original of the picture stands with pale and earnest face in the upright bar of light that streams in from the landing.

His daughter--not as he had last seen her, but with a difference unaccountable if he had had time to think or strength to reason.

His daughter, with the past years rolled back to show her in her youth, and yet with poor and scanty dress, and long fair hair tossed in confusion on her shoulders, whence a battered bonnet hung.

He had no time to note all this at first.

He only knew that his heart seemed to be going out in some dumb movement towards this apparition--that he sank again into his chair--that he felt a living hand upon his shoulder--saw a frightened face looking into his.

Then his senses came back, and he heard the voice speak rapidly, and in French.

* * * * * With swift steps, but without picking his way, taking the nearest road rather by habit than with any observation, Antoine Dormeur traversed the narrow streets leading to his destination.

There were so few people abroad that the way was clear enough, and yet there were some apprentices or worklads on their way home; while in that neighbourhood, just on the edge of Spitalfields, a lower colony of petty thieves and receivers kept up the trade of two or three disreputable taverns, where dogs, birds, and pigeons were exchanged or betted on.

It may have been in consequence of this taste for pigeon-flying that the whole neighbourhood resounded with whistles and bird-calls.

Men and boys gave each other this shrill greeting as they passed, or warned each other by it, or used it to express reproach or pleasure, hilarity or dismay, varying its peculiar note to suit each emotion.

The Hare Street whistle was as well-known an institution there as the jödel is to the Tyrolese peasant.

It scarcely surprised Antoine, therefore, when, as he reached a beer-shop (the last lighted house before the straggling street opened into a dirty lane leading to the open fields), a man who was just emerging from the place gave a low whistle as he turned in the opposite direction and crossed the road.

Had he given the matter a thought, he might have hesitated for a moment before plunging into the gloom of the muddy lane, or at least might have grasped his walking-cane more firmly and looked about him, in which case it is just possible he would have seen two shadows that moved in the darkness of the wall some fifty yards behind.

As it was, he did neither.

The course of his gloomy thoughts was unbroken by so trivial an interruption, and continued to be so till he approached a corner where a high ragged fence turned off on the edge of a footpath.

Only a sudden scuffle, a muttered oath, and the grasp of two powerful arms that pinioned his elbows to his side awakened him.

Three men had leaped out from the projecting corner of the fence, where a light cart was drawn up, and were upon him before he could raise a hand; but he was quick and active, so that by a sudden turn and trip he bore to the ground the fellow who held him, and fell upon him heavily.

"Give it him, and quick there with the sack!"

cried this worthy, as they rolled on the path together.

Another ruffian seized Antoine by the throat.

A weapon gleamed before his eyes; but in that moment a quick patter of feet sounded in the roadway, followed by two reports like the sudden breaking of a cocoa-nut.

Crack!

crack!

and the ruffian's body fell heavily against the fence, as two shadows--the two shadows that had been following Antoine so long--danced in the footway, whence they had just struck a second of the ruffians through a jagged hole in the fence, and left him sticking there till he recovered his senses.

In a moment the young man felt his arms released, and struggled to his feet, his late antagonist escaping by a plunge through the fence and a desperate run across the fields, where he was followed by a flash and the report of a pistol, which failed to stop him.

"Who fired?"

said one of the shadows, now visible--a light active fellow, armed with a knotted cudgel.

"I did, Mat," replied a voice that Antoine knew, as a thin spare old man came from the open space beyond.

"Are you hurt, my boy?"

he asked tenderly, approaching Antoine, who stared from one to another in amazement.

"Pierre--Pierre Dobree!"

exclaimed the young man; "you here--and these--how is all this?"

"I will tell you presently," said the old pensioner, for it was he indeed.

"I expected a trap, and had you followed by two lads that I could trust.

--Gave him a body-guard of a couple of weaver-lads, eh?"

he said, turning to the rescuers.

"You've done your work well, boys."

"Why, we haven't been three years at sea and learnt the knack of the press-gang for nothing, daddy," replied one of them grinning; "but we must be off; we ain't constables, you know, and there may be trouble about."

"Antoine, you sha'n't be disappointed of your ride in the cart," said Peter; "we must hasten, or your grandfather will be waiting supper.

He will have to excuse me, though.

Come, in with you."

The two shadows leaped lightly up, and one of them took the reins.

"Stop, though," he said suddenly; "this isn't our cart.

This will be brought in stealing.

It might be a hanging matter, daddy."

"I'm going to take it to the owner if I'm not much mistaken," said Peter, as he and Antoine scrambled in at the back.

"But, Pierre Dobree, what of Sara?

what of your niece?

I must know.

If she is in danger, and through me, I will brave my grandfather's displeasure, lose my hope of the fortune for which I care so little.

I

will, I must find her!"

"You can no more find her than I," said the old man.

"One word with your grandfather, and then I go to seek her."

"What!

She has left home then?"

"Only this evening, and for an hour or two; but if my hopes do not play me false we shall overtake the scoundrel who detains her, and he shall answer for it with my hand at his throat but I will have her back."

Pierre Dobree was ordinarily a calm, rather rosy, cheerful, high-dried old Frenchman, quite small and thin, and with a very perceptible stoop;

but Antoine said afterwards that there was a very terrible look in his face just then--such a look as may have been born, perhaps, in the days of Terror, when he stood in the crowd beneath the guillotine and saw the head of Achille Dufarge fall into the sack.

* * * * * It was many minutes before old Anton Dormeur could clear his mental vision or recover his senses sufficiently to determine that the girl who stood beside him touching his shoulder was real flesh and blood; but at last, with a strong effort, he roused himself to listen; and only half comprehending her hurried story, rose from the chair into which he had fallen.

"And you, little one, who are you?

what are you?"

he asked presently, without taking his eyes from her face.

"Your name is Sara?

it must be--shall be," he exclaimed almost passionately.

"It is," said the girl--"Sara Rondeau."

"Rondeau, Rondeau!

where have I heard that?"

"It is my aunt--she is a weaver; we work for you, monsieur.

See you not that this Monsieur Bashley, having a spite against us, and against monsieur your grandson----" "Who and what are you?"

again said the old man; "you talk as one of us--speaking of monsieur my grandson.

Has he seen you?

do you know him?

Your mother never saw him?

she was---- Mon Dieu!

what am I saying?"

he added wildly.

"Pray, pray delay not!"

said the girl, clasping her hands.

"No, no, I come--first to the watch-house, and then to your house, did you say?"

And with a great effort, but almost without taking his eyes from the child's face, Dormeur strode to a closet beside the window, and took down a sword, which he drew quickly from the scabbard.

Sara feared him, and retreated to the door.

"What!"

he said; "dost think I'd harm thee, little one?

Come, take my hand.

Tell me, how did you get in?"

"I found the street-door unfastened, and knocked, but could make no one hear; then I came in and listened, and there was a light up here, and so I came and knocked, not knowing what to do; but there is some one there now--hark!"

"'Tis the servants come back, child," said Anton; but he trod softly for all that, and, turning about, traversed noiselessly the long winding passage that led towards the back of the house.

At the end of that passage the well stair-case sent a cold gray gleam from the skylight in the roof, but down at the basement, where the lobby opened in the yard, there was a stronger light--the light of a lantern, by which a man stood impatiently examining a key, and picking it with a penknife, as though it had been clogged.

"I wanted to unlock that closet too," he muttered, "for I would swear he keeps gold there, but the cart will be here directly.

It's rare luck that he should be out, and the women too as I verily believe, for not a soul is stirring in the kitchen.

Fancy leaving the house alone!

I was a fool not to take the chance before."

The sound of wheels aroused him, and Bashley--for it was he--gave a half-frightened glance behind him, for he had suddenly become conscious that he was talking to himself.

He looked upwards also, as though by some strange instinct; and there, leaning over the wooden balustrade of the "well," their faces lighted in the gleam of his lantern, were Anton Dormeur and Sara Rondeau, looking down upon him.

He made a dash at the door leading to the yard, then suddenly turned and, with a desperate oath, drew a pistol and fired it from the stairs;

but his aim was uncertain, and the ball went straight upward crashing through the skylight.

Another moment, and a door clanged open, a torrent of air rushed up the well, and amidst shouts and cries, and the sound of falling glass, Bashley was smitten down, and handcuffed between two officers, who had been posted in the street, according to the instructions they had received from Peter Dobree.

The old weaver had not counted on such a success, but he had actually driven Antoine home in the very cart which was to have carried away the plunder, after having conveyed the young man to some place of imprisonment, where he might have died before aid could reach him.

The first thing that Antoine saw clearly, when they had all got into the house again, was his grandfather carrying a woman in his arms.

The old man had darted down the stairs at the moment Bashley fired his pistol;

but Sara had fainted.

Poor child, she had been long without food, and her strength gave way amidst that awful scene.

Arrived at the door of the room, the second thing Antoine saw was that this was the very girl whom he had gone out to seek.

As she lay there in the great leathern chair, with a wan face and closed eyes, a keen anguish wrung the lad's heart--anguish not unmingled with utter amazement, for there, bending over her and kissing her hands, which he held gently to his breast, was the proud old man, who had so rarely displayed emotion.

Antoine covered his face with his hands, for his head began to reel.

So Peter Dobree found him standing outside the half-open door, when he came panting up.

"Why, what's the matter, boy?

you're not wounded surely--say?"

asked the old foreman anxiously.

Antoine pointed to the scene within the room, and Peter stooped down and peered in--well he might.

Anton Dormeur was on his knees beside the child, moistening her lips with brandy from a teaspoon (it was a spoon that had fallen from her dress, but he knew nothing of that, for he found it on the floor without thinking how it came there).

He spoke encouraging words to her, talked to her as men talk to babies; touched her forehead with his fingers, and took up one of her long fair tresses to press it to his lips.

Presently she sighed heavily, and opened her great eyes upon him, then flushed, drew herself further back in the chair, and began to cry.

"Pierre--Pierre Dobree!"

shouted the old man, striding to the door, "he should be here; where is he?"

"Here am I," said Peter, suddenly confronting him, and drawing Antoine into the room, all grimed and torn, and smirched with mud, as he was.

"What is the meaning of that?"

said old Dormeur, glaring into Peter's eyes, and laying a grip upon his shoulder that must have left a bruise there.

"The meaning of _that_ is," said Peter steadily, and looking back with an eye as fierce as his master's--"the meaning of _that_ is, that when nearly nineteen years ago I stood under St. Guillotine and vowed a vow, I meant to keep it.

That when Sara Dufarge--once Sara Dormeur--my loved and lovely mistress, joined her husband--not by the guillotine, but by a broken heart in a little country lodging at Nogent--she left her child--_that_ child--to the nurse who had been faithful to her--to my own good sister Nancy, who, bringing her to England when she and her husband came to escape the troubles, found here another sister, the widow Rondeau--childless--to whom came as a legacy that same little orphaned one who lies now in her grandsire's chair."

Anton Dormeur stood and glared for a moment at the undaunted little old man, who had thus kept a secret for eighteen years, though he had been here in his service; but even in his bitter anger there came to him the recollection of the stern relentless temper with which he had blotted out his daughter's name from the family record; and, with a drooping head and tears that fell fast on his furrowed cheeks, he went again and knelt beside the girl, who now sat looking at them all with wide and wondering eyes.

"Peter Dobree," he said presently, "go or send for your sister Rondeau.

--Antoine, dear lad, go you into the kitchen and see if any one has come in; for we will have supper through all, and Sara, Sara, my child, my little one, you must never leave me more."

"What!

and are you, monsieur, truly my grandfather, and Monsieur Antoine truly your grandson?

Then he is--no, not my brother; what then?

--But I may kiss him?"

said the wondering girl, as she stood the centre of a talking group, apart from which stood the lad, who still looked at her wistfully enough.

They broke into a laugh, at which she turned red as a rose, and with a sudden gesture, which shot a pain to the old man's heart, for it was that of her mother once again, turned away.

"Yes, but you may kiss him," said Anton gently, and leading her to where Antoine stood--"a cousin's kiss, you know--have you learned what that is?"

"No, I never had a cousin--at least, Antoine never kissed me," she said simply, and held up her sweet face to the young man, who bent and touched it with his lips.

------------------------------ "I do not think I need say any more; but that is the story of the Silver Goblet," said our governess as she rang the bell for the strawberries and cream.

On the following evening the weather was so close and lowering that we had to remain indoors.

It was one of those heavy days which sometimes occur in the summer months, when the whole atmosphere appears to be one low-hanging cloud, enveloping everything in a kind of dark-gray mist, that is only now and then pierced with red rays, and droops upon the distant fields in a straw-coloured vapour--the effect of the sunlight behind the atmosphere of mist.

"What a dim, uninviting evening!"

said Miss Grantley as we stood at the window looking out at the garden, where the roses seemed to droop heavy-headed in the moisture-laden air, and the song of the birds was hushed, or only an occasional chirp was heard as one or two thrushes flashed from amidst the plum-trees, or a martin twittered beneath the eaves.

"What a dim evening!

It almost reminds one of a London fog--not a black fog, but a yellow one, such as one sees in the city sometimes on a late autumn afternoon or an evening in February."

"Oh!

do tell us a story about London, Miss Grantley.

You _must_ know ever so much of the streets and places there, or how could you have learned so easily about Spitalfields and all that?

Beside, you've lived in London, haven't you?"

"Well, yes.

I was in London for more than two years, and near the city too, and I think I must have spent too much time in wandering about some of the quaint old streets and lanes, where there are rare old churches, and halls belonging to city companies, and ancient houses that once belonged to noblemen of the court of King James and King Charles, but are now used for counting-houses and warehouses, such of them as are not pulled down at least.

I made some odd acquaintances too; and a kind old couple, who were caretakers at one of the smaller city halls, used to ask me to take tea with them, for the old gentleman had known my great-uncle Joseph, who was an East India merchant, and belonged to the company that used to meet in the hall.

I think the old gentleman said he had been the 'master;' but at any rate his portrait was on the wall along with many others, and he was so like my dear father that I stood and cried, and often wished I could take the portrait itself away, but that of course was impossible."

Here Miss Grantley became silent, and we could see tears shining in her eyes, till Annie Bowers, who was standing near her, gently took her in her arms and kissed her on the cheek, and without saying a word held her round the waist.

"Well," resumed our governess, smiling, and pressing Annie's hand, "I was going to say that the old gentleman had kept a kind of diary or great memorandum-book, in which he had written--oh, in such a neat, stiff, stalky kind of hand!

--all kinds of things that had happened among his friends and acquaintances for many years.

He used to read it to me sometimes; and once, when I had to stay there in the little cozy parlour for a whole winter evening because of a downpour of rain, he asked me if I should mind his reading to me a little story that he had written about a very strange occurrence to an old friend of his who lived in just such another lane, near just such another old hall in the city.

He said that he felt like Robinson Crusoe sometimes, except that his wife was there with him in that quiet island of bricks and mortar; and, like Robinson Crusoe, he had learned to put his narratives upon paper in quite a remarkable way, so that if I didn't mind listening he would read me a bit of a romance that was as true as anything I should be likely to get out of the circulating libraries.

"I said of course that I should like it very much; and so, while his wife sat on one side the fire knitting, and I was half lost in a great leather easy-chair on the other side, the old gentleman took a bundle of papers out of a drawer in the bookcase and read me the story that I am now going to read to you; for as I was very much interested in it he was so pleased that he made me a low bow, and handed me the paper neatly folded and tied with a bit of red tape.

He said it would be something to remember him by when I went away from London."