CHAPTER I A WONDERFUL GUINEA

A rainy November afternoon was drawing to its close. The sun had set in a haze of fog, to which it gave a fleeting warmth of colour. The street lamps were lit, and chinks of light showed here and there through the shuttered windows of the tall, dingy houses in a dull old square not far from Euston Station.

Yes, chinks of light were coming from almost every house, casting little gleams of brightness on to the wet pavements and rusty iron bars guarding the areas; but from one, the last in the square, considerably more was to be seen.

Uncertain blobs of light, now broad, now narrow, from the windows of the dining-room, suggested that the curtains were being drawn back impatiently every few minutes, that someone[8] might look out into the uninviting darkness; and at least three times in one half-hour a broad blaze streaming out into the night assured the passers-by that the hall door of Number 20 had been opened wide, despite the fog and rain.

If they had paused at such a moment they might have seen a slender figure, with brown hair blown away from her bright face, and eager eyes that searched the familiar square, regardless of the cold, until a call from within made her slowly close the door and return into the brightness that looked doubly bright after the darkness without.

“Father and Hugh won’t come any the quicker because you send a draught right through the house, dear!” a pleasant-looking girl of two or three-and-twenty remarked, as Sydney came dancing and singing into the shabby school-room after her third unsuccessful journey to the door; “they are hardly ever in before half-past five, you know.”

“It feels like half-past six, at least!” cried Sydney. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! I’ve never known half-past five so awfully long in coming!”

“Sydney! Sydney!” Mildred said reprovingly, “don’t you remember what mother was[9] saying to you only yesterday? You really must give up slang and schoolgirl ways, now you are going to be eighteen next month, and to put your hair up, and leave off doing proper lessons and——”

“And become a real, celebrated authoress!” shouted Tom, who was despatching bread and butter at the table with a highly satisfactory appetite. “You’ll have to mind your shaky grammar now, Syd.”

“Of course I shan’t be a celebrated authoress quite at once,” said Sydney modestly. “I believe you are usually rather more grown up than eighteen first, and have a little more experience. But it makes one feel ever so much older when one is really going to be in print.”

“And when you’ve earned a whole guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!” little Prissie contributed in an absolutely awestruck voice.

“Read us the letter again, Syd,” Hal demanded, stretching out his long legs to the cheerful blaze. “Go ahead; I really don’t think I took it all in.”

And Sydney, nothing loth, produced that wonderful letter, which had come in quite an ordinary way by the four o’clock post that afternoon, together with an advertisement about a dairy-farm for mother, and an uninteresting-looking[10] envelope for father, with “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the back.

The outside of her letter was quite ordinary-looking too, Sydney had thought, when Fred and Prissie had almost torn the envelope in half, in their anxiety each to have the pleasure of bringing it upstairs to her. Just a narrow envelope, with something stamped upon the back, and her name in very scrawly hand-writing—“Miss Sydney Lisle.”

And then, when she had turned it over several times, and all the Chichester children who were in had had a look at it, and tried to guess what the raised and twisted letters on the back might mean, Sydney had opened it.

And there was a typed letter, and inside the letter a cheque for a guinea—actually a guinea, the largest sum Sydney had ever owned in the course of her seventeen years! She never will forget the wonder and delight of that moment!

“It’s a guinea—twenty-one whole shillings!” she had told the wildly-excited Madge and Fred and Prissie. “The Editor of Our Girls has sent it to me. He is going to print my story in the next week’s issue, and he calls me ‘Madam’!”

This was the astounding news which was[11] told afresh to every member of the Chichester family as he or she set foot inside the door, and which made the hands of the school-room clock stand still to Sydney, as she waited for Dr. Chichester and Hugh to come in from the hospital and hear it.

How surprised father would be, and what a lovely new fountain pen she would buy for him! And Hugh—Hugh was always so specially pleased when anything nice happened to Sydney! She would get Hugh to take her out and help her to choose presents for everyone out of that wonderful guinea, which seemed as inexhaustible as Fortunatus’s purse.

Father and mother (what a present mother should have!), and Mildred—Mildred wanted a new pair of gloves; she should have suède, the very best. And Hal and Dolly and Tom—Tom should have the bicycle-lamp he was longing for, in spite of his remark about her grammar; and Madge and Ronald and dear little Freddie and Prissie, oh, what a doll she would get for Prissie! with real eyelashes and hair that you could brush! And old nurse must have a present, too, and Susan the cook. And Hugh—Hugh should have the very best present of anybody’s, after mother.

So absorbed was she in these thoughts that[12] she never heard the front door open and the steps, which she had been waiting for so long, come down the passage to the school-room.

The watched pot had boiled the minute that she took her eyes from it: Hugh Chichester was standing in the doorway looking at her.

“Oh, Hugh!” She was at his side in a moment, and pouring out the great news in words that would hardly come fast enough to please her.

He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down—such a long way he had to look from his six feet two inches—at her glowing face.

“Why, Syd,” he said, “that’s first-rate, isn’t it? Well done!”

“Three cheers for Miss Lisle, the celebrated authoress!” yelled Tom, rising from his chair and waving his tea-cup. The toast was received with enthusiasm.

“Only I wish it were ‘Miss Chichester,’” said Ronald; “it’s so silly for old Syd to have a different name!”

“Oh, well, she can’t help that,” Tom contributed; “and her father and mother gave her to us, so it’s just the same.”

“Yes, she’s ours right enough,” said Hugh,[13] putting his arm round his “little sister,” as Sydney Lisle would have called herself.

And then, quite suddenly, Dr. Chichester’s voice was heard calling “Sydney! Sydney!”

“There’s father calling; mother must have told him!” Sydney cried, and, gathering together her precious cheque and letter, she rushed out like a whirlwind.

“The pater is in the drawing-room, Syd,” Hugh called after her; “he just took up his letters and went straight in there to mother,” he added, for the others’ benefit. Sydney was already out of hearing, and only echoes of her fresh young voice came floating back to them, as she ran down the long back passage and up the stairs through the hall to the drawing-room.

Mildred stooped to pick up the mending-basket which Sydney’s energetic movements had swept off her knee. “I wonder whether Sydney ever will grow up!” she said.

“Well, she’s right enough as she is,” said Hugh, at last beginning on his long-delayed tea.

Sydney’s merry voice was hushed as she came into the drawing-room, for mother did not like[14] boisterous ways, and father might be tired. But, though her feet moved soberly, her eyes were dancing as she held out the precious letter to the doctor, standing by the window.

He turned, and Sydney suddenly forgot the guinea.

What made him look so old and strange? And surely mother’s head was bent down low above her work to hide her tears! Sydney stopped short, with an exclamation of dismay.

Father grasped a letter in a hand that shook. Vaguely she saw that the crumpled envelope had “Lincoln’s Inn” upon the back. It was the letter which had come with hers at four o’clock that afternoon!

The hall clock heralded the striking of six by a variety of strange wheezing sounds: when it had slowly tinged away the six strokes, father spoke.

[15]

CHAPTER II HER OWN PEOPLE

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.