half an hour had gone by—the very longest half hour in sydney’s happy life; and there was silence in the drawing-room.
father had been speaking, but he was silent now, standing with his face turned towards the shuttered windows. on the floor knelt sydney, her head on mother’s knee. she was not crying—this calamity seemed too great for tears—tears such as had been shed over the untimely fate of prissie’s bullfinch, or the sewing up by father of that dreadful cut in ronald’s cheek. her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs, but no tears came.
“my little girl,” mother was speaking, with a gentle hand on the untidy brown head on her knee, “my poor little girl!”
sydney lifted up her piteous face.
“oh, mother, you will let me stay your little girl! i can’t go away. oh, mother, you always said i was given to you!”
[16]
dr. chichester blew his nose violently, and came and sat down beside his wife.
“see here, my little sydney,” he said. “god knows you can’t cease to be our child to us, as you have been for these seventeen years. if it were acting rightly to keep you, do you suppose your mother and i could consent to let our little girl go from us? still, we have got to do the right thing; and when your poor young father gave you to us, he had no idea of your ever coming near the title. but now this accident to your cousin, lord st. quentin, makes you heiress to it, so your cousin’s man of business writes to tell me. lord st. quentin wants you, and, my little girl, you must go.”
“couldn’t i say i don’t want to be a marchioness?” poor sydney asked despairingly; “isn’t there anybody else to be one instead?”
dr. chichester shook his grey head sadly; mr. fenton’s letter had been clear enough on that point. there was a complete failure of heirs male: and, in the house of lisle, the female had the power, in such a case, to inherit land and title.
dr. chichester knew this as a fact, though he had thought about it very little. there had been nothing to bring it very prominently before him in the seventeen years that had
[17]
passed since he promised to be a father to the little motherless daughter of his dying patient, lord francis lisle.
the doctor had come across many sad things in the course of his professional experience, but nothing much sadder than the sight he had seen one cold december day in the little bare bedroom of a miserable lodging-house off pentonville. he was attending the more urgent cases of a sick friend, and in this way came across lord francis and his girl wife. she was lying in the meagre bed, with her young husband fanning her, and a tiny wailing baby at her side.
it was not the first time that doctor chichester’s wife had come to bring help to her husband’s poorer patients: she went daily to the little dingy lodging off pentonville, while the young wife lingered, as though loth to leave the boy-husband who stood watching her with great, sad eyes. the good doctor and his wife soon heard their pitiful little story.
sydney henderson had but just left school when she went as governess to the little boy and girl of lady braemuir, niece to the marquess of st. quentin. it was a big, gay house; but the little governess, playing nursery games with her charges, saw little of the
[18]
company till lady braemuir’s youngest cousin, lord francis, came to shoot the braemuir grouse before joining his regiment.
the children were full of “tousin fwank” before he came. he had stayed at braemuir six months previously. when he came, the reason of their interest in his arrival became speedily apparent. francis lisle was perfectly devoted to children, with a genuine devotion that made mothers beam upon him.
he was known in the nurseries of many a big house: he made himself at home in the school-room of his little cousins.
lady braemuir laughed at him and his “childish tastes,” but never said a word upon the subject to the little governess, hardly more than a child herself, until a day when, coming home from a tennis-party tired and cross, she heard laughter issuing from the school-room, where lord francis, who had declined going to the party, was found sharing his little cousins’ tea.
forgetful of everything but irritation, lady braemuir spoke cruelly to the girl, who knew so little of the duties of a governess. lord francis bore her remarks in silence for a minute, then the frightened appeal in the childish eyes overcame his prudence.
he went across to the girl and took her hand.
[19]
“excuse me, gwenyth,” he said sternly; “there is no need to say any more upon this subject. i am going to ask miss henderson if she will be my wife.” and he did.
“i wash my hands of the whole business!” lady braemuir said. “frank must explain as best he can to uncle st. quentin.”
until that time his fourth and youngest son had been lord st. quentin’s favourite—this bright, handsome boy, who had made half the sunshine of his home. he was proud of him, too, and looked to see him do well in the army, and prove an honour to the name he bore. the pride of the old marquess was far greater than his love.
“going to marry a clergy-orphan and a governess!” frank’s father cried. “then you won’t get a penny of mine to help you make a fool of yourself! do it, if you choose; but in that case never darken my doors again!”
“good-bye, then, father,” said lord francis; and he took his hat and went.
the little governess had no near relations, and the young couple were married almost immediately. he was twenty-two and she was eighteen.
he gave up the army and obtained a clerkship in a house of business in london. but
[20]
the salary was small, and, strive as they would, they could not live within their income.
she tried to do a little teaching to add to it; but her health was delicate and pupils hard to get. their small reserve fund melted fast, though lord francis worked long after office hours at odd jobs for the sake of the few extra shillings that they brought him.
hard work and poor living brought their usual consequence. when dr. chichester broke it very gently to the young husband that there was no getting better for sydney, he was aware that the two would not probably be parted long.
when the young mother died one grey december morning, with her head upon her husband’s shoulder, mrs. chichester carried home the baby to her own fast-filling nursery, where sturdy seven-year-old hugh took at once to “his baby,” as he called her, to distinguish her from red-faced ronald in the cradle, whose advent had meant so many “hushings” at times when he wished to make a noise.
under mrs. chichester’s tender care the little wizened baby girl grew fat and merry, crowing courageously even when hugh staggered round the room with her held in too tight a clasp.
[21]
her young father used to come round to the tall dingy house in the dull old square, when office hours were over, and sit beside the nursery fire, watching mrs. chichester, as she put the babies to bed, with an oft-repeated game with the ten bare pink toes of the child upon her knee.
his little daughter learned to know him, and to crow and laugh when he came into the nursery and held out his arms for her. he began to look forward to the time when she would learn to call him “father,” but that was not to be.
easter came late, in the spring following little sydney’s birth, with hot sun and bitter winds.
dr. chichester had never had so many cases of pneumonia to attend, and one day a scrawl from lord francis’s lodgings told of illness there. he hurried round to find little sydney’s father in high fever. there was from the first small chance of his recovery, as his strength was not sufficient to fight illness. he would have been altogether glad to go, if it had not been for the thought of his baby girl.
“my people cast me off completely,” he said, one day, when the end was near, “and they are not at all likely to receive my child.”
[22]
“my dear boy,” said the doctor, “don’t you worry. we couldn’t part with the little lassie now; if i would, my wife wouldn’t. give her to us, and she shall be our child. she has our love already, and, god helping us! she shall have a happy home.”
“i can’t thank you,” lord francis had said hoarsely; and the doctor had said “don’t!”
it was in his arms that lord francis died three days later.
dr. chichester had written to the poor boy’s eldest brother, who had now become the marquess, telling him that frank was dying; but no notice had been taken of the letter. lord francis was laid beside his wife in the cemetery, and little sydney grew from babyhood to childhood and from childhood to girlhood, with nothing but the difference of surname and the occasional telling of an old story with the saddest parts left out, to remind her that she was not a chichester by birth.
that unknown mother and father, of whom this real living, loving mother told her at times seemed part of a story, not her own life, and the story always ended with the comfortable words: “your father gave our dear little girl to us, to be our child for always!”
i think perhaps dr. and mrs. chichester
[23]
forgot too very often that sydney bore another name from theirs, for though the doctor certainly read in the papers of the tragic death while mountain-climbing of lord herbert lisle, “second son of the late marquess of st. quentin,” he hardly realised lord herbert to be little sydney’s uncle; nor did her relationship occur to him when, some four years later, lord eric, “the third son, etc., etc.,” fell a victim to malarial fever when travelling in italy.
the papers took considerably more interest in the matter, and there were discreetly hinted fears expressed in them lest the old title should die out for lack of heirs. the present marquess was in feeble health, and his only child, lord lisle, unmarried. lord herbert had been also unmarried, and lord eric a childless widower. regret was expressed that lord lisle possessed neither brother nor sister. it was then the doctor realised that in this house, in default of heirs male of the direct line, females had the power to inherit land and title.
he looked at long-legged, short-frocked sydney with a sudden anxiety, and for a few weeks actually glanced down the “personal and social” column of the standard in the hope of his eye falling on—“a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place
[24]
between viscount lisle, only son of the marquess of st. quentin, and ...,” some damsel of high degree. but before long he forgot the matter in the press of daily life, and five years had passed peacefully away without anything happening to remind him of the house of lisle or its connection with his little sydney.
and now, without warning, the blow had fallen.
lord st. quentin, as lord lisle had become through his father’s death four years ago, had met with a fearful motor-accident, in which he had sustained some internal injury, from which the doctors feared there was no recovery. he might linger on for months, but the end was certain, and he was unmarried.
sydney lisle had been ignored by her father’s family for nearly eighteen years; but their man of business had known where to find her. it was he who wrote to dr. chichester, requesting that he would resign his guardianship of miss lisle into the hands of the cousin whose heir she had now become, the marquess of st. quentin.
“we shall have to let her go,” the doctor had said, as he and mrs. chichester read mr. fenton’s letter together. “the child was
[25]
never put legally into my charge: i only took her at that poor boy’s expressed wish. mr. fenton writes very sensibly, and tells me that lord st. quentin’s maternal aunt, lady frederica verney, is to be at st. quentin castle, and will take care of the child. and of course she will have advantages we have no power to give her.”
mr. fenton proposed calling upon dr. chichester that evening, and, if quite convenient, would be glad to see miss lisle. hence the speed with which the news had been broken to the girl.
but when the lawyer came, an elderly man with old-fashioned grey whiskers and keen, kindly eyes, he had to do without a sight of the poor little heiress to the title of st. quentin. for sydney had gone to bed with an overpowering headache, and was fit for nothing but to lie still in the dark, with eau-de-cologne on her forehead and mother’s hand, idle for once, clasped tightly in both hers.
perhaps it was as well, for she was spared not only the lawyer’s visit, but the telling of the dreadful story to the others—the children’s questions, and what she would have minded more, the sight of hugh’s face, first fierce and then very white.
[26]
but she cried herself to sleep upstairs, while mr. fenton in the drawing-room was inflicting on the silent doctor a description of the “splendid position” to which his little sydney, the child who had been as his own for nearly eighteen long years, had been called.
he suddenly broke in upon the lawyer’s well-turned phrases, leaning forward and speaking almost roughly to him.
“you tell me of the age of the title—of the magnificence of the castle—i don’t want to hear all that! there is only one thing that i want to know—my little girl, will they be good to her? will she be happy?”
mr. fenton considered this question for some minutes before answering it. when he came to think of it, it was not such a very easy one to answer.
“miss lisle will have, i trust, every reason to be happy,” he replied at length; “every advantage will be hers, and a splendid, yes, undoubtedly, a splendid position.”
