CHAPTER I.

EVELYN MANWARING ARRIVES AT THE PALACE.

ALL the morning of that particular 8th of November upon which some of the events of the ensuing story began, a dense fog had been brooding over the Essex marshes. The silence of those gloomy expanses of faded yellow grass and brown slime, deposited by earlier autumnal floods, was deep and oppressive, and was only broken at times by the cough of a footsore sheep as it gnawed at a half-rotten turnip brought wearily down in creaking wains from the sodden uplands, by the distrustful low of a bullock surprised by the sudden apparition of a fellow-animal of the same species with himself, or by the shrill alarm-whistle of a steamer upon the neighbouring, but well-nigh invisible river. By noon the last-named sounds had ceased, for steamboat traffic had become impossible from the density of the mist, and then, little by little, a raw, chilly wind began to blow from the east. This wind gradually drove the fog up-stream, until it met and mingled with that pall of black smoke which legislative and municipal incompetence, and that often fatal English respect for “vested interests,” as confirmed nuisances are called by their originators, allow to pollute and render deadly the atmosphere of the first city in the world--wonderful and incomparable London.

This intermingling of white fog and black smoke speedily produced that infernal compound which makes the lives of five millions of people almost intolerable. Stagnation of trade, interruption of business, stoppage of traffic, depression of spirits, and serious injury to health ensued. Every Londoner was reduced to a state of utter gloom and wretchedness, and some two millions of the poorer sort of citizens “bitterly thought of the morrow,” and feared that the time-honoured Show of the following day--which, with all its absurdities and all its anachronisms, still breaks the monotony of countless lives, and rejoices the hearts of multitudes of toilers who have little else to rejoice them--would be a failure and a disappointment. The ex-Lord Mayor felt glad that he was going out of office, and could enjoy the society of worthy Mrs. Buggins at the domestic hearth at Wimbledon, instead of at the dusky Mansion House; and the incoming Lord Mayor sighed involuntarily when he reflected that, on the day ensuing, as he passed them at noontide by gas-light, he would appear to his fellow-citizens, and subjects of one year, as a man suffering from a severe attack of the jaundice. The incoming Lady Mayoress, who was afflicted, poor thing, with neuralgia in the face, dreaded exposure next day in the raw fog on the embankment in her state coach; and her Ladyship’s “Maids of Honour”--buxom, strapping wenches from Finsbury Square, who laid in a stock of health and jolly red cheeks when they went every year for six weeks’ sea-bathing to Margate--devised (by gas-light) all sorts of pretty things in swansdown to protect their fat shoulders from the cold during next day’s procession. My Lord Scamperdown at the “Carlton”--and he, to be sure, was a pretty tough old customer--avowed publicly that “that fog was more than any fellah alive could stand,” and swore he’d be off to Cadiz, or Cairo, or Castellamare; and all the men within earshot wished they were Lord Scamperdown, and could follow his Lordship’s noble example. Foodles, too, of the “Reform,” who had failed the previous week for something over the respectable sum of £200,000, committed suicide. The “intelligent British Jury,” who ought to have known all about it, found as their verdict that Foodles had committed “the rash act in aberration of mind, occasioned by miasmatic vapours acting upon an excitable temperament,” and would have separated, quite happy at having thus secured Christian burial for Foodles (who, between ourselves, was the most stony-hearted old heathen imaginable), had not the Coroner--whose wife had just presented him (for the second time) with twins, both of whom were doing well, and who lived near the Lambeth Potteries--remarked, in a hollow voice, that “he hoped he might not himself be the _next_ victim to a combination of fog and coal-smoke.” That was a very unpleasant observation to make, and so the Jury felt it.

Gradually the chilly, searching wind increased in force, and as it did so, it drove the fog--which, white on the Essex marshes, had become black as ink in London--up the river, involving town after town, and village after village, in its sooty folds, so that, as evening fell over Hampton, the fog was almost as thick there as it had been in London at midday.

A train was due at the Molesey Station at five o’clock; but there were several detentions upon the line, and a long one (of course) at Clapham Junction, and the Palace clock had chimed out a quarter to seven upon the darkness, when a fly, heavily loaded with luggage, drove up through the mean barrack court, to the stately principal entrance of the magnificent dwelling erected by Cardinal Wolsey in the plenitude of his wealth and power. A single gas-light flickered above the gateway as the vehicle stopped, and illumined the cloaked figure of Jack Watchet, a smart young soldier of the 29th Lancers, who stood sentry at the entrance.

“Some old cat out late!” This was the first irreverent thought which occurred to Jack’s mind as he stood in the conventional attitude of military respect, when, to his surprise and delight, a young lady--without waiting for the slow old coachman to disencumber himself of his numerous wraps--opened the fly door herself before he had time to offer his assistance, and springing out, followed by a beautiful spaniel, confronted him on the pavement.

“Can you be so kind as to direct me to Miss Manwaring’s set of apartments in the Palace?” asked the young lady in a clear, musical voice.

“It minded me of a mavish,” said Jack--who was a Norfolk man, and had loved to hear the throstles singing in the leafy lanes of his native county--when describing the incident in bed that night to his particular chum and comrade, Tom Wakefield. On the present occasion he answered--“Don’t know the name, Miss; but I will soon see;” and so saying, the young soldier, who felt as if a ray of sunshine had burst through the fog and darkness, turned from the side into the central arch of the grand old Tudor gateway, where, by the uncertain light of a still dimmer lamp than that which flickered outside, he looked down the list of the names of those ladies and gentlemen who, by the grace and favour of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, enjoyed the privilege of occupying apartments in her Royal Palace of Hampton Court. No name of Manwaring, however, appeared upon the list.

“The rooms I am in search of,” said the young lady, “were those lately occupied by Lady Glengriskin;” and then Jack pointed out the following inscription:--

FOUNTAIN COURT. _Staircase. Number Ten._

GROUND FLOOR. Lady Lavinia Gathercole. Admiral Grogrum, C.B.

SECOND FLOOR. Miss Strong. Lady Glengriskin.

THIRD FLOOR. Hon. and Rev. Orlando fforester. Gen. Sir T. Blazer Brown, K.C.B.

“Thank you very much,” said the young lady; “I am afraid I am giving you a great deal of trouble; but now, can you tell me where I can find any one to help the driver to carry my boxes upstairs?”

“Very sorry I can’t go myself, Miss,” answered Jack, hastily, and looking as if he _was_ sorry; “but I’m going off sentry in a minute or two, and there’s an odd man about the canteen who does jobs for the quality in the Palace, and I’ll send him to you in a jiffy.”

In fact, while he was speaking, the clank of arms was heard, and the relief appeared through the fog, who, leaving another man in his place, bore back with them Jack Watchet to the barracks, while the young lady, whose name the reader, from the heading of this chapter, and from the inquiries she made, will have rightly conjectured to have been Miss Evelyn Manwaring, remained standing in the cold under the gateway. So true, however, was Jack to his word, that in the specified “jiffy,” which in this case was a period of less than five minutes, the “odd man” arrived, and, showing himself thoroughly acquainted with the somewhat labyrinthine topography of the Palace, conducted the lady through the silent and deserted quadrangles and echoing cloisters to the apartments of the late Lady Glengriskin, where she found a single candle guttering upon the drawing-room table, and a wretched apology for a fire glimmering upon the hearth; but her maid, who had preceded her the previous evening, was nowhere to be found.

Nearly half-an-hour elapsed before the driver and the “odd man”--who seemed to regard one another with mutual distrust and abhorrence, and who had several unpleasant differences of opinion upon the staircase--had brought up the last of Miss Manwaring’s trunks; but at last these worthies, having been abundantly satisfied for their trouble, consented to depart, and the young lady found herself alone. She had, in fact, feared that her two assistants would have broken out into open warfare. Thus the coachman had remarked that “he’d seed a lot o’ soft-headed fools in his time, but he’d never seen sich a soft-headed ’un” as the odd man; and the odd man had replied that “he’d be ’tarnally shivered if he didn’t knock the coachman’s conk up agen the doorpost, and see vich vos the ’ardest block o’ the two.”

However, at last Miss Manwaring was happily rid of them. She looked around, and there in unwonted positions were the articles of furniture, and the little nicknacks and household goods which she had known from childhood, and which had been removed from her old home in the North--that home which was hers no longer--that home which had been rudely broken up by death, and which was now the property of a stranger. The girl, for such she was, was dressed in deep mourning, and as she threw off her hat, long masses of lovely, pale gold hair fell around and about a beautifully cut face of ashy paleness; out of which, however, gleamed, like stars, eyes which might have been grey, or hazel, or violet. Great yearning eyes they were, of marvellous beauty, like those of Beatrice Cenci, as they look out from the long-dead past from the canvas at Rome; eyes which it was a joy to have seen once, a delight even to dream of hereafter. The girl was alone in a strange place, without friends, without acquaintances, and in a new and unknown sphere of existence. She was cold, and travel-worn, and tired, and she felt very desolate, and the sight of the objects around her, connected as they were with those she had loved and lost, affected her deeply; and throwing herself upon her knees at a table, she buried her pale, fair face in her white hands, and burst into an agony of tears.