CHAPTER VI.

"YOU ARE EMMIE'S UNCLE!"

"So speaking, with less anger in my voice Than sorrow, I rose quickly to depart."--_Curwen Leigh._

Queenie Marriott was right in asserting that she never failed to undertake anything to which she had really made up her mind. Strong impulses were rare with her; but now and then they gained the mastery, and over-bore all dread of opposing obstacles. At such times the forces of her mind lay dormant; argument could not shake; persuasion, even conviction, availed nothing. In such moods Queenie was inexorable, and triumphed in the exercise of her self-will.

"I have nothing to lose in this matter, and all to gain," she had said to Cathy. On the afternoon of the next half-holiday she had arrayed herself, with the stoicism of a young Spartan, and, with the help of feminine art and cunning arrangement, had even given a certain style to her shabby garments.

"No one could take you for anything but a lady," Cathy said, as she watched her, half curiously and half enviously; "when people look at you they will not notice what you wear I mean. I wish I knew where you learnt deportment, my dear Madam Dignity. There," as Queenie buttoned her old gloves with a resolute air, "I cannot even lend you my pretty new ones, they would be ever so much too large."

"Never mind," returned Queenie with a smile; "my plumes are homely, certainly, but they are not borrowed. Take care of Emmie for me, and wish me good luck, for I am continually leading the forlorn hope."

Queenie had preserved a gallant demeanor in Granite Lodge, but she slackened her footsteps and drew her breath a little unevenly when she came in sight of Mr. Calcott's house, a large grey stone building with dark outside shutters, and a high portico over the gate resembling the entrance to a tomb. Queenie thought of the thin austere-looking man who eyed their ranks so gloomily with a sudden failure of courage and an ominous beating in the regions of the heart; but the bell was already ringing in strange hollow fashion, and the next moment she was confronted by a grey-haired butler.

"Does Mr. Calcott live here? could I see him for a moment on business?" It must be averred that Queenie's voice was somewhat faint at this juncture; the sombre hall, the morose face of the man, a little daunted her.

"People on business always call at the office down the town. Mr. Calcott is not very well, but Mr. Smiler or Mr. Runciman could see you," returned the man civilly enough, but with an evident desire to close the door in her appealing face.

"It is not exactly business, but my errand is very pressing. If he is not very ill I must see him," pleaded Queenie with a desperation evoked by emergency.

"My master does not see visitors when he is suffering from gout," persisted the man, with a pointed stress on the word visitors. "I will take your card if you like, but I fear it will be little use."

"I have no card," faltered Queenie; "I do not want to send my name, though he knows it well. Please tell him a young lady wishes to speak to him on a matter of great importance; tell him how grateful I shall be if he will grant me a five minutes' interview."

The man hesitated; but Queenie's face and voice evidently pre-possessed him in her favour; for after another glance he closed the door and ushered her into a small waiting-room leading out of the hall, with a cold, fireless grate, and a horse-hair sofa and chairs placed stiffly against the wall. There was a picture of Strafford led out to execution over the mantel-piece, which somehow attracted Queenie oddly. "Even the anticipation must be worse than the reality," she thought; "one is a coward before-hand. Never mind if I can only find words to tell him the truth when the time comes. I am not the first who has to suffer for trying to do the right thing."

Queenie was cheering herself up in sturdy fashion, but she turned a little pale, nevertheless, when the servant re-entered and bade her follow him. "The execution will soon be over," she said to herself, as she rose; "only in my case perhaps the pain will not cease."

They had passed through the large square hall, dimly lighted from above, and had turned down a side-passage shut in with red baize doors; through one of these was an inner one, which the servant threw open, and Queenie found herself in a small room, furnished as a library, with a bright fire burning in a steel grate, and a cushioned chair beside it with a foot-rest, wherein sat a tall, thin old man, whom she at once recognized as Mr. Calcott. There was an instant's silence as she bowed and threw back her veil, during which he eyed her morosely, and pointed to his foot swathed in bandages.

"I cannot rise, you see," he said, in a harsh voice that somewhat grated on her ear, "neither can I keep a lady standing; please to be seated, while you tell me to what I am indebted for the pleasure of this interview; my servant says you declined to give him your name."

"I had reasons for doing so. I feared you might not see me," returned Queenie, summoning all her resolution now the opportunity was gained. The hard mouth, the narrow, receding forehead, and the cold, gray eyes of the man before her stifled every dawning hope. Would those eyes soften? could those lines ever relax? He was an old man, older than she had thought, and there were traces of acute physical suffering in his face, but the hard tension of the muscles were terrible.

"Would you have seen me," she continued, steadily, "if I had said my name was Marriott?"

"So you are Frank Marriott's daughter," without the faintest token of surprise. "I must own I suspected as much from Gurnel's description; but I am slightly at a loss to discover what business Frank Marriott's daughter can possibly have with me."

"I have come on no business of my own," returned the girl, proudly. "I ask nothing from the world but the price of my own earnings. I would sooner starve"--with a sudden flush of irrepressible emotion--"than ask a favor from a stranger, even though he were the brother of my own dear stepmother. It is for Emmie's sake I have come to you, Mr. Calcott; Emmie, your own niece, your own flesh and blood, your sister's child."

"I have always expected this," muttered Mr. Calcott, as he refreshed himself with a pinch of highly-scented snuff; but a closer observer of human nature than Queenie would have detected a slight trembling in the white wrinkled hand.

"When my dear stepmother, your sister, died," continued Queenie, speaking more calmly now, "she called me to her bed-side, and prayed me, for love of her, to watch over Emmie. I have kept my promise, and have done so; but I am only young, not much more than twenty, and I have no one to help me, no one but Mr. Runciman, who is so good to us, to give me advice and counsel; and now I feel that I cannot do my duty to Emmie."

"Your conduct has been estimable, no doubt; but you must permit me to observe, my dear young lady, that I have not invited this confidence; on the contrary, it is distasteful to me. But doubtless you are only acting on Mr. Runciman's advice?"

"No, indeed," interposed the girl eagerly; "he tried to dissuade me from coming to you; he seemed frightened when I proposed it; it is my own thought; I am acting on my own responsibility. I said to myself, 'If he only knows what Emmie suffers, how often she is cold and hungry, and sad, he will do something to make her poor life happier.'"

"My good young woman, no melodrama, if you please. I have all my life confined myself strictly to facts. Miss Titheridge's establishment for young ladies is the most respectable in Carlisle. I have heard much from my clients in her praise; no one has ever before informed me that her pupils are cold or half-starved--facts, if you please, facts."

"I am speaking sober truth," returned Queenie, coloring. "I am one of Miss Titheridge's governesses, and, as far as I can tell, her pupils have no cause for complaint; it is only Emmie."

Mr. Calcott shook his head incredulously, and took another pinch of snuff, this time somewhat irritably.

"I work for my own and Emmie's board," she went on, "and we pay a few pounds besides--all that we can spare. I do not complain for myself that the accommodation is bad and the food insufficient, though it is so for a growing child; but the food is such that Emmie cannot eat it, and often and often I have seen her cry from sheer cold and misery."

"Tut, some children will be fretful--aye, and dainty too."

"Emmie is bred up in too hard a school for daintiness; she is wasting and pining for want of proper nourishment and care and kindness. They are killing her by inches," continued Queenie, losing self-restraint and clasping her hands together. "When she cannot learn they shut her up in a desolate garret at the top of the house, where she gets frightened and has gloomy fancies; they will not listen to me when I tell them she is weak and ill. She is getting so thin that I can carry her, and yet they will not see it."

"Humph! all this is very pleasant. Young lady, you are determined to have your say, and I have let you say it; now you must listen to me. You are trying to plead the cause of Emily Calcott, my niece, to interest me in her favor. What if I tell you," continued Mr. Calcott, raising his voice a little till it sounded harder and more metallic--"what if I tell you that I have no niece?"

"It would not be the truth, Mr. Calcott."

"What if I tell you that I have renounced the relationship," reiterated the old man, frowning at the interruption; "what if I once had a sister Emily, but that from the time of her marriage she became nothing to me! She left me," he went on, lashing himself into white passion by the remembrance of his wrongs, "when she knew I was a lonely, suffering man,--suffering mentally, suffering physically,--aye, when she knew too that she was the only thing spared to me out of the wreck of my life, that I cared for nothing in the world but her."

"Could you not forgive her for loving my father?" interposed Queenie softly.

"Pshaw! she had no love for him. She was fooled by a soft tongue and handsome face; she was to choose between us,--the invalid sorely-tried brother, who had cared for her all her life, and Frank Marriott,--and she chose him."

"She did, and became our dearest blessing."

"Aye, he valued his blessing," with a sneer; "he did not drag her down, and wear out her youth for her, eh? What does it matter what he did? From that day she was no sister of mine; I did not welcome her when she came to me, or feel grieved when she left."

"Alas! we knew that too well when she came back to us looking so sad and weary."

"She told Frank Marriott that I repulsed and treated her cruelly, eh?"

"No, she never told him that; she bore her troubles silently, and brooded over them; but," in a low voice, "it helped to kill her."

The veins on Mr. Calcott's forehead swelled visibly, and his eyes became bloodshot.

"What, girl! you come into my house uninvited and accuse me of being my sister's murderer! Do you know I can have you up for libel and falsehood?"

"I never told a falsehood in my life," returned Queenie simply; and somehow the young quiet voice seemed to soothe the old man's fury. "Poor mamma was unhappy, and grew weaker and weaker; and so when the fever came she had no strength to throw it off. The doctors never expected her to die, but I did always. Once in the middle of the night I heard her say, 'I ought never to have left Andrew--poor Andrew;' but I did not understand it then."

"Aye, she repented! I knew she would. Listen to me, girl, and then you will know you have come to me on a fruitless errand. Time after time she used to come crying to me, and asking me to lend her husband money. I loathed the fellow, and she knew it; and one day, when she had angered me terribly, I took a dreadful oath, that neither Frank Marriott or any child of hers should ever have a penny of my money--and Caleb heard me."

"I knew all this, Mr. Calcott."

"You knew this, and yet you came to me. Do you expect me to perjure myself for the sake of my precious niece?"

"I think such perjury would bring a blessing on your head."

"You think so, eh?" regarding her with astonishment and perplexity. Strange to say, her independent answers and fearless bearing did not displease him; on the contrary, they seemed to allay his wrath. The white eyebrows twitched involuntarily as he watched her from under them. In spite of himself and his anger, he felt an inexplicable yearning towards this girl, who sat there in her shabby clothes and looked at him with such clear, honest eyes. Somehow the young presence seemed to lighten the desolate room, so long untrodden by any woman's foot. "If she were any one but Frank Marriott's daughter--" but here the softer mood evaporated. "Tut! what should you know of such things? There, you have said your lesson, and said it well. Go home, girl; go home."

"Shall I go back to your niece, sir, and say to her that one of her own flesh and blood has deserted her?"

"I have no niece, I tell you; I will not have a hated relationship forced upon me."

"Your name is Andrew Calcott, and therefore you are Emmie's uncle. Take care, for heaven's sake; you cannot get rid of your responsibility in this way. If Emmie dies her death will lie at your door."

"I am sorry to ask a lady to withdraw, but I will hear no more."

"One moment, and I will take your hint," returned Queenie, rising and turning very pale. "You are merciless, Mr. Calcott, but you shall not find me troublesome after this, though we were perishing of hunger, though Emmie were dying in my arms. I will not crave your bounty. You have received me coldly," she continued with emotion, "you have given me hard, sneering words, but I do not resent them; you are refusing to help me in my bitter strait; you are leaving me young and single-handed to fight in this cruel, cruel world; you have disowned your own niece, and are sending me back to her almost broken-hearted, but I will not reproach you; nay, if it would not make you angry, I could almost say, I am sorry for you."

"Sorry for me! Is the girl mad?" but again the white eyebrows twitched uneasily.

"I am sorry for you," repeated Queenie, in her clear young voice, "because you are old and lonely; because you have only hard, miserable thoughts to keep you company; because when you are ill no one will comfort you, when you die no one will shed tears over your grave. It must be so dreadful," continued the girl, "not to want love, to be able to do without it. Don't be angry, Mr. Calcott, I am sorry for you; I am indeed."

Not only the eyelids, but the rigid lines of the mouth twitched convulsively, but his only answer was to point to the door; but, as though irresistibly and painfully attracted by this spectacle of loveless old age, Queenie still lingered.

"Emmie never forgets you, sir. She does not love you; how can she? but she still says the prayer mamma taught her--'God bless poor Uncle Andrew.' Now I have seen you I shall ask her never to forget it."

"Leave me," was all his answer; and this time Queenie obeyed him. Had she remained she would have been frightened by the change that came over him. The veins of the forehead were swollen and purple now, the twitching of the mouth increased, a strange numbness seemed creeping over him. That night Mr. Calcott was alarmingly ill.