the day was two hours older.
launce keymer had not required much pressing to induce him to accept the invitation of the ladies of vale view to join them over their early supper. the sisters had been used to early hours in their youth, and as they did not account themselves as being in any respect fashionable folk, they had seen no reason to alter their ways now they were growing old. in the dining-room the lamps were lighted and the curtains drawn. the circular table was laid out with immaculate napery and gleaming silver, with a china centre bowl heaped with some of the flowers ethel had gathered earlier in the day, supplemented by other blooms from the conservatory. charlotte, deftest of waiting-maids, in her neat black dress and snowy cuffs and apron, had an eye to the wants of each and all.
keymer was in the brightest of spirits, and did not allow the talk to flag for a moment. the sisters had not laughed so much for a long time as they did over his description of a voyage in bad weather from boulogne to folkestone. he was a capital mimic, and the way in which he hit off the idiosyncrasies of sundry of those on board was genuinely diverting, without any trace of the vulgarity to which such a subject so readily lends itself; for launce keymer was clever enough to know where to draw the line in accordance with the class of company in which he happened to find himself. as for charlotte, she was several times compelled to turn her back on the table, and even then was unable wholly to suppress the giggle with which she could not help greeting some of mr. keymer's sallies.
if ethel did not laugh much, a smile was rarely long absent from her lips, while there was a sparkle in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks such as, to those who knew her well, might almost have seemed due to a touch of fever. but, if such were the case, they had their origin in a fever of the mind rather than of the body. was she happy? she could not have told. had the question put itself to her, she would have thrust it aside, and have resolutely refused to answer it. self-analysis was about the last thing she would have cared to enter upon just then; indeed, she was far too healthy-minded to indulge much at any time in introspective moods and fancies. so many surprising things had happened to her in the course of the day, that she might well be excused for feeling as if she had not yet recovered her mental equilibrium. she ate scarcely anything, and to her that scene at the supper-table was almost as unreal as some phantasmagoria, conjured up by an overwrought brain. what she needed was a long night's sleep to calm her overheated pulses, and restore the delicate balance of her nervous system which a crowd of circumstances had for the moment sufficed to disturb.
supper was just over, but the ladies had not yet risen from the table, when fanny, the under-housemaid, entered the room with a letter which had arrived by the evening post. the letter was addressed to "the misses thursby," but, as a matter of course, she took it direct to miss matilda, as she would have taken it to miss jane had it not arrived till a fortnight later. miss matilda examined the address and postmark through her pince-nez, which she did not wear habitually, but only when reading or writing.
"it bears the london postmark," she remarked to her sister, across the table; "but the writing of the address is strange to me." then turning to launce, with a smile and a little bow, she said: "have i your permission, mr. keymer?"
"most certainly, my dear madam," he replied, with a grave inclination of the head. then, while miss matilda was occupied with the opening and reading of her letter, he said to himself, glancing from one sister to the other: "what a couple of queer old frumps they are! they are awfully nice and good, though, far too good, not to say goody-goody, for the like of me. if i were compelled to be shut up here, i should be bored to death in a week. i suppose this place will be ethel's, when they have gone over to the majority. well, by that time, what's ethel's will be mine, and it strikes me i could make myself pretty comfortable at vale view, with a thousand, or twelve hundred a year. no, on second thoughts, i could never bear to settle down here. i should let the place and----but what's up with the old damsel? she looks as if she might be going to have a fit."
and, indeed, miss matilda's face, as she read the letter, had gradually faded to a dull, ashen hue.
"what is it, mattie, dear?" demanded miss jane, with a gasp. it was a proof how much she was moved that she should have addressed her sister before company by the familiar name of her girlhood.
"oh, aunty, what has happened?" broke in ethel.
for answer miss matilda pushed the letter across the table to her sister. "perhaps you had better read it for yourself," she said. then turning to charlotte, she added: "you can leave the room till i ring."
miss jane, with fingers that trembled slightly, brought her pince-nez into requisition and did as her sister had bidden her. "what does it mean?" she asked when she had read it through; but there was a frightened look in her eyes which seemed to indicate that, in part at least, she guessed.
"it means ruin, sister--nothing less than ruin," replied miss matilda in her most solemn tones, "should what is here stated prove on further investigation to be the fact."
at the word "ruin" keymer's marrow seemed to freeze. if the sisters were ruined, where, then, would be the fortune which ethel was to have inherited as their heiress?
for a while no one spoke. what, indeed, was there to say? the shock was of a kind which words could do nothing to mitigate, and at no time were the sisters in the habit of giving vent to their feelings in futile exclamations. they were of the women who suffer mostly in silence.
presently, miss matilda, reading in the look with which keymer was regarding her what seemed like a note of interrogation, said to herself: "it is due to him that he should be told the particulars of our loss; for is he not now almost like one of ourselves?" with that she handed him the letter. "oblige me by reading this, mr. keymer," she said. "your doing so will save me the necessity of a long explanation."
he took the letter in silence.
well might miss matilda turn pale when she read it. briefly stated, the information it conveyed (afterwards supplemented by her for keymer's further enlightenment) was to the following purport: the london solicitor through whom, and through whose father before him, nearly all the monetary affairs of the sisters had been managed since the time when they were quite young women, had recently died. although mr. tidson's cheque for the interest due on account of the various investments he was supposed to have made on their behalf had come to hand with the utmost regularity, the securities which should have represented the investments in question were not now to be found, and there was only too much reason to fear that the dead man had surreptitiously disposed of them from time to time and applied the proceeds to his own use. the letter concluded with an intimation that the sisters should hear further from the writer in the course of a few days.
as launce keymer, a little later, walked homeward through the dewy night, the word ruin rang in his ears like a knell. ethel thursby (or whatever her right name was, or ought to be) was a charming girl, no one more so--although, perhaps, a trifle too demure and puritanical for his taste--and, as heiress to the spinsters, he would gladly have made her his wife. but to marry her without a shilling to call her own, either now or in time to come, was an altogether different affair.
launce lost no time on the morrow in laying the case before his father. that astute person, having heard him quietly to the end, said: "what a very fortunate thing it is that this news has come to hand now, instead of later on. of course the affair must not be allowed to proceed any further till we have ascertained for a fact whether the old maids are, or are not, ruined. after all, it is just possible that the missing securities may turn up and nobody be a penny the poorer. by the way, has the girl any letters written by you in her possession?"
"not a single line."
"so much the better. now, what you must do is to disappear from the scene for awhile. you can run down to cornwall and stay with your uncle for a week or two."
"but," urged launce, "i can't, with any show of decency, leave home without either calling on, or writing to ethel, and giving some more or less plausible excuse for my absence."
"you must neither call nor write," said his father. "you had better start by the three o'clock train this afternoon, and have your right wrist bound up as if the result of a sprain. i will make all needful excuses for you."
launce keymer was one of that numerous class of young men who can do with an unlimited quantity of holidays, and his father's suggestion seemed to him in every way an admirable one. accordingly, the three o'clock train carried him away in due course, with his wrist bound up in accordance with his father's directions; but by the time st. oswyth's had been left half-a-dozen miles behind, the bandage was unrolled and flung out of the carriage window.
in the course of the same afternoon a note, addressed to "miss thursby," was delivered at vale view. in it mr. keymer senior begged to inform that lady, that, in consequence of his son having been called away by telegram owing to the serious illness of a near relative, he--launce--would not be able to dine at vale view that day, as promised. his son would himself have written had he not unfortunately happened to sprain his wrist so severely that it would be impossible for him to hold a pen for some time to come.
the note made no mention of ethel, purposely leaving it an open question whether, before quitting home, launce had, or had not, confided to his father the fact of his engagement.
later in the day mr. keymer senior made it his business to call on his cousin, the lawyer's clerk. to him he said: "i have reason to believe that the miss thursbys of vale view have lost the greater part, if not the whole, of their fortune. what i want you to do is, to keep your eyes and ears open and pick up whatever scraps of information may come in your way tending to prove either the truth or falsity of the rumour which has reached me."
the brewer argued with himself that if the news conveyed by the letter which launce had read should prove to be correct, the sisters would go to his cousin's employer, as their local man of business, and seek his advice in the matter--which, some few days later, was precisely what they did.
