The Grim House

“Oh, Miss Grey!” I exclaimed. “You are far, far too kind. We – we don’t – ” how I longed to finish my sentence, “don’t deserve it.” But I dared not, for there flashed over me the remembrance that, if I confessed my own share in our impertinent intrusion, I should implicate Isabel, which I had no right whatever to do, and I stopped short. My tears, I think, standing me in good stead, as they gave a reason for my confusion, and increased the kind woman’s pity. They were genuine enough, too, Heaven knows, for I had been putting considerable restraint on myself to keep them back hitherto, for every sake – Moore’s especially.

I felt Miss Grey’s other hand steal on to the top of mine, already in her clasp.

“My poor child,” she said, – “excuse me for calling you so – do not take things so to heart, unless – unless, indeed, there is fresh cause for your distress?” and now her tone was full of anxiety. “I trust your brother is not worse? No injury to the head, or to the limbs, that did not show perhaps at first?”

I shook my head, and now a silly feeling of wishing to laugh came over me, when I thought of the excellent breakfast I had seen the naughty boy upstairs despatching, and his very comfortable condition, propped up with a story-book, at the present moment. No, my tears were not those of anxiety about him, but of very sincere shame and distress at the trouble we had caused these good kind people, who surely had a right to shut themselves up in their own domain if they chose, without being subjected to inquisitive espionage.

“Oh, no,” I said at last, choking down my hysterical symptoms, “he is going on all right. In himself he is really very well indeed, and I think his foot is improving. But you are standing all this time,” and I drew forward a chair, Miss Beatrice Grey, who looked pale and nervous, having already sunk into a corner of a sofa.

“Jessie,” she now said, speaking for the first time, and addressing her sister, “you are forgetting the liniment.”

“By no means, my dear love,” replied the elder one, “I am just coming to it,” and from the folds of her mantle – a good but old-fashioned affair, as was every part of their attire – she produced a phial, neatly wrapped up, which she carefully unfolded. “This is a very excellent preparation,” she continued, “for external application —external. If Dr Meeke has not called this morning, pray suggest it to him when he does so. He knows it of old, though probably he did not think of it in the present case. We distil it ourselves – my sister and I – not having” – here she coughed a little – that tiny cough was her only sign of nervousness – “as we have not,” she resumed, “too much to do;” and here there came a little murmur about “a quiet country life,” “we amuse ourselves with these sorts of things – distilling, and so on. We take a great interest in herbs, and we have some rare ones.”

She tapped the little bottle as she spoke.

“There are some ingredients in here which are not to be met with every day,” she said, with a funny little tone of self-congratulation, “as Dr Meeke knows!”

I thanked her warmly, of course, promising to ask the doctor to let us make use of her gift at once.

“And is there anything else,” she went on, “that we can be of use in?” While from the sofa there came a little echo of – “Yes, so glad to be of use!”

I considered for a moment. It was so plainly to be seen that these good creatures would feel real pleasure in their offer being literally accepted.

“New milk,” murmured Miss Beatrice, “to keep up his strength. It did wonders for our dear Caryll, long ago, when he – injured his spine. New milk with a spoonful of rum, first thing in the morning on waking.”

Miss Grey – Miss Jessie I feel inclined to call her – turned a little sharply on her younger sister.

“My dear Beatrice,” she exclaimed, “you forget. Everything of that kind of course is at Miss – Fitzmaurice’s command.”

“To be sure,” was the reply. “Still – ”

“I’m sure it would be an excellent thing,” I said, as she paused, “but I do not think there is much fear of Moore’s strength failing him, though he has been rather a delicate boy.”

“I hope not,” said Miss Jessie; “I hope not, indeed. Perhaps we felt unduly anxious, for in our case it was not till several days after the accident that the grave injury was discovered.” I suppose my face must have betrayed a little alarm at this, for she hastened to reassure me.

“If Dr Meeke is satisfied, I am sure you may feel so,” she said. “He is really a very competent man. We had no misgiving on that score; it was only hearing of you two young things being here alone, we felt we – must inquire at first hand.”

“You have been most good and kind,” I said. “I shall never be able to thank you – you all,” after a moment’s hesitation, “enough;” and though she said nothing, I felt that she understood the under-sense of my words. I had it on the tip of my tongue to add that I hoped their friend had caught the later train, but a moment’s reflection satisfied me that I must follow their cue, and make no allusion to the secret which their brother and I had agreed to preserve intact.

Then they both rose, saying they had detained me long enough; I must be anxious to rejoin my brother.

“We shall hear how he goes on,” were Miss Jessie’s last words, “as Dr Meeke calls now and then at present. We have a delicate young servant who requires care.”

“Yes,” I said impulsively, “and Mr Caryll Grey – I suppose he is never very strong?”

Both faces brightened perceptibly at the mention of his name.

“His condition does not vary much,” said Miss Grey in her precise way, “and, thank God, he rarely suffers acutely. And what we should be still more thankful for – his nature is a quite wonderfully buoyant one.”

“He is so very, very good,” murmured the other little sister. “Always cheerful, always thinking of others, never of himself, dear fellow.”

She lost her shyness and timidity as she spoke of him. It was really beautiful to see. I felt as I ran upstairs, eager to confide to Moore the details of the wonderful visit, that it was not only Mr Caryll Grey who was “so very, very good,” but that I had indeed been entertaining angels!

Moore was of course intensely interested and excited by my story. I think it deepened, perhaps more even than the punishment he had brought on himself, the lesson he had received. For I heard a murmur as I concluded, in which the words, “caddish thing to do,” were audible enough.

The doctor made his appearance shortly afterwards. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, which he was too discreet to express otherwise, when I related to him the visit from the Grim House, and by no means “pooh-poohed” the use of the medicament the kind woman had brought.

“I remember it,” he said. “And in more than one case of sprain I have known it have a wonderfully good effect. Try it by all means, Miss Fitzmaurice, now that the inflammation has begun to subside; it is just the sort of thing we want, and you may safely continue its use, diluted with water of course, till you have emptied the bottle.”

The next two or three days passed quietly, even monotonously. Moore was very patient, and I think I did my best to help him to be so. It was a relief when my home letter was written, and a still greater one when an answer to it had been received. I meant to tell mother the whole circumstances when I saw her again, by no means exonerating myself where I felt I had been to blame, but to enter into any explanation in a letter would have been out of the question. Besides – and as I arrived at this point in my cogitations a new idea struck me – had I any right to retail what Isabel had told me in confidence, without her permission, and would not the applying for this, risk the betrayal to her of my agreement with Mr Grey?

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself, “what a labyrinth a little indiscretion may involve one in. I see now that I was not justified in telling Moore about Grimsthorpe. It was not faithful to Isabel, but with his being here on the spot and seeing the place for himself, it never struck me before in this light. No doubt he would have heard some gossip about it, but probably not enough to cause much curiosity. I shall really be very glad when we are both safely back at home again, and the whole thing forgotten, so far as ever can be. Moore has had his lesson anyway; I am certain he would never intrude on the Greys again, even if he were here for months. How very discreet those old ladies were! I suppose they have learnt it, poor things.” For that there was a secret, and a very sad one, my recent experiences had in no way led me to doubt. “By the way,” I went on in my own mind, “I wonder how they knew our name?” Then I recalled the little colloquy at the hall-door. “Of course,” I reflected, “they must have asked for the young lady who was staying here, and naturally the footman would speak of me as ‘Miss Fitzmaurice’?” and later I discovered, by a little judicious inquiry through my own maid, that this had in fact been the case. Nor did I make the inquiry solely through curiosity. I had noticed the almost imperceptible hesitation in Miss Jessie’s manner as she addressed me by name, and I could not forget – it was no use pretending to myself that I should ever do so – the mention of “Ernest Fitzmaurice” which I had overheard. “Something to do specially with Jessie,” I had gathered.

“Poor little woman! What may she not have suffered in life, and how brave she seems!” were my last waking thoughts that night.

Chapter Ten.

Change of Scene

The Wynyards’ return was after all delayed for a day or two, and this, as will be readily understood, I did not regret, as it gave more time for Moore’s progress in convalescence. I had persuaded Mrs Bence and Sims, though not without some difficulty, to join me in keeping back the news of the accident from our hosts till we could tell it to them by word of mouth.

“It would only worry them,” I said, “and do no conceivable good, and they are sure to come back the very first day possible.”

And when they did arrive I felt doubly glad that I had taken this precaution, for Mr Wynyard was looking rather tired and depressed, and Isabel confided to me that the meeting his relative after an interval of a great many years had – as she expressed it – “taken it out of him” considerably, though the business matters which they had met to arrange had all been satisfactorily concluded.

Moore’s misfortune did not strike them very seriously. Mr Wynyard never having had a son of his own, had an almost exaggerated idea of boys’ spirits and love of adventure, and thought it very lucky indeed that Moore had got off with lesser injury than broken bones. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts just at that time, and once satisfied that everything had been done, and that my brother was in a fair way to a speedy recovery, allowed, so to say, the matter to drop, never even inquiring into the details of how it had happened, nor, rather to my surprise, did Isabel, though it was not till long afterwards that she confided to me the real grounds of her apparent lack of curiosity on the subject.

Both she and her father, however, were keenly interested, as indeed could not but have been the case, in my account of the visit I had received from the Misses Grey, and I felt again a peculiar gratitude to the kind-hearted ladies for the discretion and tact which had prevented a word, or even allusion, which I could not with perfect openness repeat to the Wynyards, as to this part of our experiences.

“They are really very good,” said Isabel heartily, when we were all talking it over together. “It is just the same kind way they behaved to the vicarage people, that time I told you of, several yours ago. Does it not make one wish, Regina, that anything could be done for these poor Greys towards removing the cloud that has hung over them for so long?”

“Yes, indeed,” I said heartily, thinking to myself as I spoke that I had a good deal more reason than my friend knew of for endorsing what she said. And then again there seemed to re-echo through my brain the name “Ernest Fitzmaurice.” Was it only a coincidence, or was it possible that there had ever been any connection between these brothers and sisters and a member of our own family? An unhappy connection, no doubt, possibly even a disgraceful secret of some kind, involving one who apparently had not been the sufferer.

And now, I think, my story will best be told by passing over some considerable interval of time with but a few words of notice.

Nothing farther occurred of any special interest during the remainder of our stay at the Manor-house. Moore’s recovery had progressed most satisfactorily by the date of our return home, which was speedily followed, of course, by his going back to school for the remainder of the term, as he was practically perfectly sound again. And after full consideration I decided that I was behaving more honourably and loyally in not relating to any one the details of his accident, or rather of what had led to it. There was no occasion for doing so, in which the boy himself agreed with me, promising me faithfully to consider all that had occurred as a closed chapter in his life.

“It is what the Greys wished,” I said, by way of impressing it upon him more forcibly, “and considering how very kindly and generously they behaved to us, the least we can do is to respect their wishes to the full. You must never speak of it, Moore, to any of your school-fellows.”

He repeated his promise, and I felt satisfied that he would not forget it. He had had a lesson; all the same I was glad to know that he had overheard nothing of the dialogue which had so impressed me myself.

One thing I did, and feeling assured of the entire purity of my motive, I could not feel that I was wrong in this. Not many days after our return home, when I happened to find myself alone with father, I inquired, in as casual a tone as possible of him, if the name “Ernest” was a family one with us.

His manner was completely free from consciousness of any kind, as he replied after a moment or two’s consideration —

“Well, no; I should scarcely call it such, though there have been one or two of the name among us. One, by-the-bye, whose career would scarcely add prestige to the name he bore, whatever it had been!”

“Who was he?” I said, “and what did he do?” speaking as quietly as I could, for I had no wish, naturally, to rouse any curiosity on my father’s part.

“I scarcely know,” he replied. “He was a distant cousin only, and he has long since disappeared. I fancy he was more weak than wicked, a tool in the hands of a thoroughly unprincipled man, but I never heard the details, nor would they be edifying to know. What put it into your head, Regina, to ask about the name? You are not thinking of getting up a family chronicle, are you?”

“Oh dear no,” I said lightly. “I heard the name accidentally quite, and I just wondered if it belonged to any relation of ours;” and there, for the time being, the matter dropped.

The summer and autumn succeeding our visit to Millflowers passed uneventfully. One great disappointment they brought with them, and that was the impossibility of Isabel Wynyard coming to stay with us, as we had hoped might have been the case. I forget the special reasons for this. I think they must have been connected with her father’s being less well than usual, for, looking back to that time as we have often done since, it seems as if the slow failure which ended a few years later in his death had begun to show itself that year. Soon after Christmas, however, Mr Wynyard went to pay a visit to the Percys, and then Isabel came to us. It was of course delightful to me to have her, and to reverse the rôles of our previous time together, for I had now the pleasure – always, I think, a very great one – of acting hostess and cicerone of our pretty neighbourhood – pretty at all seasons, even in midwinter, to my mind at least, in which opinion Isabel cordially agreed.

She had been the sweetest of little hostesses; she was the most charming of guests. Every-thing seemed to come right to her, and everybody liked her. I think she specially loved the filing of a mother in our home, above all a mother who had known hers.

“It must be so delightful, Regina,” she said, a day or two after her arrival, “to have some one you can always appeal to, always consult, like Mrs Fitzmaurice, close at hand,” and she gave a little sigh. “Papa is the dearest of fathers, and since Margaret’s marriage he and I have been, as you know, everything to each other. Still, after all, a man isn’t a woman, and over and over again I long for a mother.”

“But you have your sister?” I said.

“Oh yes, of course,” was the reply. “The best of sisters; but it cannot now be quite the same, no longer living together. She has her own home and separate interests. I shouldn’t feel it right to trouble her about little things. And you can go to your mother for everything. I do so hate responsibility, and now it seems coming upon me more and more since father is less well than he used to be.”

“I don’t think,” I answered, “that I have ever dreaded responsibility very much, perhaps because, so far, I have small experience of it! But I am likely to have to be rather ‘independent’ before long. I don’t think you will envy me, Isabel, when I tell you that this spring I am going up to London for a couple of months to be taken out by a cousin of mother’s, whom I scarcely know, and already feel afraid of.”

Isabel looked up with startled sympathy in her eyes.

“Oh yes, indeed,” she said. “I do pity you, or rather I would pity myself in your place. Why doesn’t your mother take you out herself?”

Here it was my turn to sigh.

“She is not nearly strong enough,” I said, “for anything of the kind. I have always known that something of the sort was before me sooner or later, and I don’t look forward to it in the least.”

“Poor Regina!” said Isabel. “In our different ways I don’t think either you or I would ever care very much for what is called ‘society’ – I from cowardice, and you from – oh! from having so many other things that interest you – such a delightful home, where you are made so much of, and country things. My only experience of London has been for quite a short time together, and under Margaret’s wing. But then, Regina, you are much, much stronger-minded than I. I dare say in the end you will really enjoy it.”

“Perhaps,” I allowed. “I certainly should not care to live a very shut-up life, nor would you either, in any extreme. For instance,” I went on, with a little self-consciousness, which, if Isabel perceived, she was clever enough to conceal that she did so, “for instance, we don’t envy those poor little Miss Greys at Grimsthorpe. By-the-bye, you have not told me if you’ve heard anything of them.”

I was not sorry for the opportunity of making this inquiry in an apparently off-hand way. I was really anxious to know about the Grim House people, and yet the feeling of our secret and the great dread of involuntarily breaking my agreement with them, made me almost nervously afraid of any mention of them.

“Yes,” said Isabel, speaking, it seemed to me, more slowly and as it were consideringly than her wont. “Yes, I have been going to tell you ever since I came, but I have got to have a perhaps exaggerated dread of gossiping about them – only, you see, you do already know all I do. Yes, we are more sorry for them than ever. The cripple one, the brother with the angelic face, has been so ill this winter. And the other three’s poor faces have got sadder and sadder, and grimmer and grimmer, Sunday after Sunday.”

“No,” I exclaimed impulsively, “not grimmer; at least not the sisters; for theirs have never been grim. I think their expression is quite sweet.”

“Do you?” said Isabel. “How do – oh, I was forgetting. Of course you saw them quite at close quarters that day they came down on a Good Samaritan visit when Moore hurt his foot I have never managed to see them very distinctly; those old-fashioned bonnets of theirs hide them so. But the elder brother —he is grim enough, at least.”

“Ye-es,” I replied half-dubiously, “I suppose so.” I had lost my nervous feeling by now, and a certain curious spirit of defiance which I have always known to be latent in me, and which, were it not kept in check, might grow into a kind of recklessness, had been aroused by a touch of “dryness” in Isabel’s tone. I felt inclined to disagree with her, to contradict her for the sake of doing so! So “ye-es,” I repeated. “Perhaps so, but there is more in his face than grimness and melancholy. I think there is dormant tenderness too.”

“Dear me!” was Isabel’s comment on this, “what good eyes you must have! I could never have detected all that.”

“I have very good eyes,” I replied, “and, naturally, your talking so much about the Greys sharpened them whenever I had a chance of using them in that quarter.”

“Good eyes, and good ears, too,” I thought to myself, and with the recollection of my eavesdropping, there awoke again the old sensation of shame, bringing with it quick repentance for my manner to Isabel, in which a rather ungenerous wish to remind her that her confidences had been the origin of my curiosity, had been a motive at work. “If she does know anything about what really happened, it is just as well for her to take some of the blame,” I had thought, “and I have been faithful to her.” But as usual, her gentleness still further disarmed me.

“I am afraid,” she said next, “that the poor things have increasing cause for anxiety and distress. Without cross-questioning Dr Meeke, which of course he wouldn’t allow, I could not but gather from him that he is very anxious about the younger brother. He, the lame Mr Grey, has not been at church for weeks past.”

This news saddened me. Surely our escapade had in no way brought fresh trouble to the Grim House, even though indirectly? It might have rendered the elder man still more anxious and uneasy, and diminished what little cheerfulness his sisters and brother had managed to preserve among them. For I had never wavered in my first intuition, that Mr Grey himself was the centre of the mystery, and the words I had overheard had deepened this impression.

I turned to Isabel rather abruptly, as another thought struck me.

“Have they had any more visitors?” I asked. “Have you seen the man of the pocket-book again?”

Isabel shook her head.

“No,” she replied; “I am pretty sure no one but Dr Meeke has crossed their threshold since you were with us. How deadlily dull it must be for them – one day just like another all the year round, excepting the variety the seasons must bring!”

“And added to that,” I said, “this winter, the daily suspense as to what the doctor would say about their brother, who is their darling, I am perfectly certain. Oh, poor people, poor people!”

After this conversation I do not think the Greys were alluded to again during Isabel’s stay with us. She had told me all there was to tell, and even had there been more news, she would probably not have heard it, her father not being at Millflowers. The two or three weeks of her visit passed all too quickly, far too quickly for me, for more reasons than the pleasure of her society. She had scarcely left us when the preparations began for my stay in London, which, to suit our cousin’s – Lady Bretton’s – arrangements, was to be rather earlier than had been originally intended. Mother was a little surprised at my distaste for the idea of it. She knew I was not specially shy, nor constitutionally timid, like dear little Isabel, and I myself could scarcely explain why the prospect had so little attraction for me.

“It is just that I shall feel ‘out of it all,’” I said, “and Lady Bretton will think me stupider than I am, and will wish she hadn’t troubled herself about me! I know it will be like that, mother. I do wish you would give it up, even now.”

But mother, as I have said, could be firm enough when occasion called for it, besides which, I well knew that any appeal to my father would be worse than useless, and only irritate him. So mother ignored my last sentence altogether.

“It is a very bad plan,” she said quietly, “to put your own imaginings into your anticipations of another person’s feelings towards or about you. Nothing is more misleading – it blocks the way to any sympathy between you. I know Regina Bretton very well, otherwise I would not have accepted her proposal. She is the sort of woman who will enjoy your inexperience, as well as” – mother went on, with a little mischief in her tone – “smartening you up generally. She loves being appealed to; then, too, she is your godmother, and really thoroughly kind-hearted.”