A Secret Inheritance (Volume 1 of 3) Page 5

  CHAPTER V.

  This event, which set me completely free, caused a repetition ofcertain formalities. The doctor visited me, and regaled me withdoleful words and sighs. In the course of conversation I endeavouredto extract from him some information as to the peculiar form ofillness from which my mother had been so long a sufferer, but all thesatisfaction I could obtain from him was that she had always been"weak, very weak," and always "low, very low," and that shehad for years been "gradually wasting away." She suffered from"sleeplessness," she suffered from "nerves," her pulse was too quick,her heart was too slow, and so on, and so on. His speech was full offeeble medical platitudes, and threw no light whatever upon thesubject.

  "In such cases," he said, "all we can do is to sustain, to prescribestrengthening things, to stimulate, to invigorate, to give tone to theconstitution. I have remarked many times that the poor lady might gooff at any moment. She had the best of nurses, the best of nurses!Mrs. Fortress is a most exemplary woman. Between you and me sheunderstood your mother's ailments almost as well as I did."

  "If she did not understand them a great deal better," I thought, "shemust have known very little indeed."

  In my conversations with the lawyer Mrs. Fortress's name also croppedup.

  "A most remarkable woman," he said, "strong-minded, self-willed, withiron nerves, and at the same time exceedingly conscientious andattentive to her duties. Your lamented father entertained the highestopinion of her, and always mentioned her name with respect. The kindof woman that ought to have been born a man. Very tenacious, veryreserved--a very rare specimen indeed. Altogether an exception. By theway, I saw her a few minutes ago, and she asked me to inform you thatshe did not consider she had any longer authority in the house, andthat she would soon be leaving."

  At my desire the lawyer undertook for a while the supervision ofaffairs, and sent a married couple to Rosemullion to attend todomestic matters.

  Three days after my mother's funeral Mrs. Fortress came to wish megood-bye. Although there had ever been a barrier between us I couldnot fail to recognise that she had faithfully performed her duties,and I invited her to sit down. She took a seat, and waited for me tospeak. She was wonderfully composed and self-possessed, and had suchperfect control over herself that I believe she would have sat therein silence for hours had I not been the first to speak.

  "You are going away for good, Mrs. Fortress?" I said.

  "Yes, sir," she answered, "for good."

  It was the first time she had ever called me "sir," and I understoodit to be a recognition of my position as Master of Rosemullion.

  "Do you intend to seek another service?" I asked.

  "No, sir; it is not likely I shall enter service again. You are awarethat your father was good enough to provide for me."

  "Yes, and I am pleased that he did so. Had he forgotten, I should havebeen glad to acknowledge in a fitting way your long service in ourfamily."

  "You are very kind, sir."

  "Where do you go to from here?"

  "I have a home in Cornwall, sir."

  "Indeed. I do not remember that you have ever visited it."

  "It is many years since I saw it, sir."

  "Not once, I think, since you have been with us."

  "Not once, sir."

  "Your duties here have been onerous. Although we are in mourning youmust be glad to be released." I pointed to her dress; she, likemyself, was dressed in black; but she made no comment on my remark."Will you give me your address, Mrs. Fortress?"

  "Willingly, sir."

  She wrote it on an envelope which I placed before her, and I put itinto my pocket-book.

  "If I wish to communicate with you, this will be certain to find you?"

  "Yes, sir, quite certain."

  "Circumstances may occur," I said, "which may render it necessary forme to seek information from you."

  "Respecting whom, or what, sir?"

  "It is hard to say. But, perhaps respecting my mother."

  "I am afraid, sir, it will be useless to communicate with me upon thatsubject."

  "Mrs. Fortress," I said, nettled at the decisive tone in which shespoke, "it occurs to me that during the many years you have been withus you have been unobservant of me."

  "You are mistaken, sir."

  "Outwardly unobservant, perhaps I should have said. When you enteredmy father's service I must have been a very young child. I am now aman."

  "Yes, sir, you will be twenty-two on your next birthday. I wish you ahappy life, whether it be a long or a short one."

  "And being a man, it is natural that I should desire to know somethingof what has been hidden from me."

  "You are assuming, sir, that something _has_ been hidden."

  "I have not been quite a machine, Mrs. Fortress. Give me credit for atleast an average amount of intelligence. It is not possible for me tobe blind to the fact that there has been a mystery in our family."

  "It is you who say so, sir, not I."

  "I know, and know, also, that of your own prompting you will saylittle or nothing. To what can I appeal? To your womanly sympathies,to your sense of justice? Until this moment I have been silent. As aboy I had to submit, and latterly as a man. My parents were living,and their lightest wish was a law to me. But the chains are loosenednow; they have fallen from me into my mother's grave. Surely youcannot, in reason or injustice, refuse to answer a few simplequestions."

  "Upon the subject you have referred to, sir, I have nothing to tell."

  "That is to say, you are determined to tell me nothing."

  She rose from her chair, and said, "With your permission, sir, I willwish you farewell."

  "No, no; sit down again for a few minutes. I will not detain you long,and I will endeavour not to press unwelcome questions upon you. In allhuman probability this is the last opportunity we shall have ofspeaking together; for even supposing that at some future time youshould yourself desire to volunteer explanations which you nowwithhold from me, you will not know how to communicate with me."

  "Is it your intention to leave Rosemullion, sir?"

  "I shall make speedy arrangements to quit it for ever. It has not beenso filled with light and love as to become endeared to me. I shallleave it not only willingly but with pleasure, and I shall never againset foot in it."

  "There is no saying what may happen in the course of life, sir. Haveyou made up your mind where you are going to live?"

  "In no settled place. I shall travel."

  "Change of scene will be good for you, sir. It is altogether the bestthing you could do."

  "Of that," I said impatiently, "I am the best judge. My future lifecan be of no interest to you. It is of the past I wish to speak. Haveyou any objection to inform me for how long you have been in mymother's service?"

  "You were but a little over two years of age, sir, at the time Ientered it."

  "For nearly twenty years, then. You do not look old, Mrs. Fortress."

  "I am forty-two, sir."

  "Then you were twenty-three when you came to us?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "We were poor at the time, and were living in common lodgings inLondon?"

  "That is so, sir."

  "My father's means were so straitened, if my memory does not betrayme, that every shilling of our income had to be reckoned. You didnot--excuse me for the question, Mrs. Fortress--you did not serve myparents for love?"

  "No, sir; it was purely a matter of business between your father andme."

  "You are--again I beg you to excuse me--not the kind of person to workfor nothing, or even for small wages."

  "Your father paid me liberally, sir."

  "And yet we were so poor that until we came suddenly and unexpectedlyinto a fortune, my father could never afford to give me a shilling.Truly your duties must have been no ordinary ones that you should havebeen engaged under such circumstances. It is, I suppose, useless forme to ask for an explanation of the nature of those duties?"

  "Qu
ite useless, sir."

  "Will you tell me nothing, Mrs. Fortress, that will throw light uponthe dark spaces of my life?"

  "I have nothing to tell, sir."

  To a man less under control than myself this iteration ofunwillingness would have been intolerable, but I knew that nothing wasto be gained by giving way to anger. I should have been the suffererand the loser by it.

  "Looking down, Mrs. Fortress, upon the dead body of my mother, youmade the remark that it was a happy release."

  "Death is to all a happy release, sir."

  "A common platitude, which does not deceive me."

  "You cannot forget, sir, that your mother was a great sufferer."

  "I forget very little. Mrs. Fortress, in this interview I think youhave not behaved graciously--nay, more, that you have not behaved withfairness or justice."

  "Upon that point, sir," she said composedly, "you may not be acompetent judge."

  Her manner was so perfectly respectful that I could not take exceptionto this retort. She seemed, however, to be aware that she was upondangerous ground, for she rose, and I made no further attempt todetain her. But now it was she who lingered, unbidden, with somethingon her mind of which she desired to speak. I raised my head, andwondered whether, of her own free will, she was about to satisfy mycuriosity.

  "If I thought you were not angry, sir," she said, "and would not takeoffence, I should like to ask you a question, and if you answer itaccording to my expectation, one other in connection with it."

  "I shall not take offence," I said, "and I promise to exercise lessreserve than you have done."

  "I thank you, sir," she said, gazing steadily at me, so steadily,indeed, as to cause me to doubt whether, in a combat of will-powerbetween us I should be the victor. "My questions are very simple. Doyou ever hear the sounds of music, without being able to account forthem?"

  The question, simple as it was, startled, and for a moment almostunnerved me. What she suggested had occurred to me, at intervalsperhaps of two or three months, and always when I was alone, and hadworked myself into a state of exaltation. I do not exactly know atwhat period of my life this strange experience commenced, but myimpression is that it came to me first in the night when I awoke fromsleep, and was lying in the dark. It had occurred at those timeswithin the last two or three years, and had it not been that it hadalready become somewhat familiar to me in hours of sunshine as well asin hours of darkness, I should probably have decided that it was butthe refrain of a dream by which I was haunted. In daylight Ifrequently searched for the cause, but never with success. Lately Ihad given up the search, and had argued myself into a half belief thatit was a delusion, produced by my dwelling upon the subject, andmagnifying it into undue importance. For the most part the mysteriousstrains were faint, but very sweet and melodious; they seemed to comefrom afar off, and as I listened to them they gradually died away intoa musical whisper, and grew fainter and more faint till they were lostaltogether. But it had happened on two or three occasions, instead oftheir dying softly away and leaving me in a state of calm happiness,that the sweet strains were abruptly broken by what sounded now like awail, now like a suppressed shriek. This violent and, to my senses,cruel termination of the otherwise melodious sounds set my bloodboiling dangerously, and unreasonably infuriated me--so much so thatthe power I held over myself was ingulfed in a torrent of wild passionwhich I could not control. The melodious strains were always the same,and the air was strange to me. I had never heard it from a visiblemusician.

  Not to a living soul had I ever spoken of the delusion, and that thesubject should now be introduced into our conversation, and notintroduced by me, could not but strike me as of singular portent. AsMrs. Fortress asked the question I heard once more the soft spiritualstrains, and I involuntarily raised my right hand in the act oflistening; I hear them at the present moment as I write, and I layaside my pen a while, until they shall pass away. So! They aregone--but they will come again.

  I answered Mrs. Fortress briefly, but not without agitation.

  "Yes, I have heard such sounds as those you mention."

  "You hear them now?"

  "Yes, I hear them now. Do you?"

  "My powers of imagination, sir, are less powerful than yours," shesaid evasively, and passed on to her second question. "It is not anEnglish air, sir?"

  "No, it is not English, so far as I am a judge."

  "It comes probably," she suggested, and I was convinced that she spokewith premeditation, "from a foreign source."

  "Most probably," I said.

  "Perhaps from the mountains in the Tyrol."

  A Tyrolean air! I seized upon the suggestion, and accepted it as fact,though I was quite unable to speak with authority. But why to me, whohad never been out of England, should come this melody of the Tyrol? Icould no more answer this question than I could say why the impassive,undemonstrative woman before me was, as it were, revealing me tomyself and probing my soul to its hidden depths.

  "It may be so," I said. "Do you seek for any further information fromme?"

  "No, sir." But there was a slight hesitancy in her voice which provedthat this was not the only subject in her mind which bore upon myinner life.

  "And now," I said, "I must ask you why you put these questions to me,and by what means you became possessed of my secret, mention of whichhas never passed my lips?" She shook her head, and turned towards thedoor, but I imperatively called upon her to stay. "You cannot dealwith me upon this subject as you have upon all others. I have adistinct right to demand an explanation."

  "I can give you no explanation, sir," she said, with deference andrespect.

  "You refuse?"

  "I _must_ refuse," she replied firmly, and then she bowed, and saying,"With my humble duty, sir," was gone.