miss brancker had scarcely been five minutes back at home before doctor hazeldine's boy came in search of his master. the services of the latter were required immediately at an address which the lad had brought with him; clem must hurry off without a moment's delay. he would dearly have liked to give hermia a parting kiss--it may be more than one--but nothing had yet been said to miss brancker, and such a proceeding on his part would certainly have surprised, and might possibly have shocked, that somewhat staid though by no means puritanical spinster. accordingly, clem had to content himself with a simple pressure of hermia's hand, but that of itself conveyed a world of meaning from one to the other. as he was bidding her good-night, he contrived to whisper, "i will call to-morrow after my first round, and seek an interview with your uncle."
his words gave hermia a certain shock. she turned hot from head to foot. in the great rush of gladness with which clem's confession had filled her, she had forgotten all about the strange secret which had been imparted to her only a few days before. she had accepted him without telling him. what would he think of her, what would he say, when he learned the truth? how foolish--how forgetful she had been! he had asked her to be his wife under the belief that she was the orphan daughter of a sister of john brancker. what would his feelings be when told that she was a "nobody's child"--that neither she nor those under whose roof she had been brought up knew anything whatever about her parentage or history, and that in all probability they never would know? ah, if she had but remembered to tell him before allowing his lips to touch hers! in that case, perhaps--but it was too late to think of that now. all she could do was to intercept clement on the morrow before he should have time to see her uncle--as she still continued to call john--and tell him all.
she was on the watch for him next day, and opened the door before he had time to knock. "come in here, i want to speak to you," she said, as she shut the front door behind him, and opened that of the little parlor, the ordinary living-room of the family being on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. as soon as they were in the room and the door shut, clem found it impossible to refrain from repeating the osculatory process of the previous evening.
hermia's resistance was not a very determined one. "it may be for the last time," she said to herself with lips that quivered a little. "he may never want to kiss me again after i have told him."
"sit there," she said to him, indicating a chair. "i have something to tell you which i ought to have told you last evening before"--(here she blushed and hesitated for an instant)--"before i allowed you to think that i cared for you a little; only, somehow, i don't know why, i quite forgot all about it at the time."
she paused and drew a deep breath. then she went on to tell him in her own words that which john and his sister had so recently told her, including all about the twelve hundred and odd pounds lying in her name in the dulminster bank, of which she positively refused to touch a shilling.
the young doctor listened gravely silent, till she had finished all she had to say. her dark-blue eyes, a little wider open than ordinary, were fixed on him with an air of expectancy; the sweet curve of her lips showed a glint of pearly teeth between; her bosom was rising and falling more quickly than ordinary; evidently she attached far more importance than he did to the revelation she had just made him. he gave her a reassuring smile; then he said gently,
"would it have mattered greatly, darling, if you had never told me this? as far as i am concerned, it certainly would not. mr. brancker and his sister will still continue to be your uncle and aunt as they have always been, and you will still continue to be their orphan niece. nothing is changed. of course, it is only natural that now you understand so much, you should be desirous of knowing more, and----"
"but i am by no means sure that i am desirous of knowing more," interposed hermia, softly, and yet proudly. "whoever my relatives may be--that is, providing i have any at all--they have thought well to discard me, and such being the case, i do not know why i should trouble myself greatly about them."
"your words are words of wisdom. whoever the people may be who placed you with mr. brancker, and whatever the connection between you and them may be, it is quite evident that, for the present at least, they are determined to keep their secret to themselves, and that any attempt on your part to force it from them would probably be met by rebuffs and disappointment. as you say, why trouble yourself about them? here are your true relations; here is the only home you have ever known. let them go their way; all you ask is to be allowed to go yours without any interference on their part.
"you do but echo my own thoughts," said hermia, with a heavenly smile.
"which merely serves to prove still more clearly the affinity that exists between us."
"ah, but have you sufficiently considered what you are doing--what risks you may be running in proffering to marry a nameless girl--for how can i be sure what my name really is?--about whose parentage and antecedents you know absolutely nothing? for aught you or i can tell to the contrary, there may be some dreadful disgrace hanging over my birth, or attaching itself in some way to those who have thought well to cast me off. think what it would be if, after your marriage, something should come to light which would make you ashamed of your wife, something which would cause you to wish you had never met her! that would be enough to make her sorry she had ever been born, while, as for you----" she ceased, her sensitive lips quivering almost imperceptibly, while a tear shone in the corner of each of her eyes.
again clement smiled. "my dearest, are you not making a mountain out of a molehill?" he said. "it is a way your sex sometimes has. for my own part, i do not for one moment suppose that there is any disgrace, as you choose to term it, connected with your birth or parentage, or any secret which, if made known to the world to-morrow, you would have the slightest cause to be ashamed of. such cases as yours are by no means so infrequent as you seem to think, and the explanation, when one is forthcoming, is usually of a very commonplace kind indeed. my advice to you is, to think as little as may be about that which mr. brancker has deemed it his duty to tell you--in fact, to treat it as though you had never heard it. you shake your head. well, then, to adopt for the moment your own extreme view of the matter, do you, can you think that whatever may happen, whatever secret the future may bring to light, such a revelation can or will influence my love in the slightest degree, or make me care for you one jot less than i care for you now? if you do think so, you must indeed have a contemptible opinion of me."
"no, no," protested hermia; "indeed i have no such opinion of you. you know differently from that. if such were the case, is is likely that i should have given you"---- a blush finished the sentence.
"the greatest treasure a woman can bestow on a man," said clem, as if he knew exactly what she would have said. "no, it is not likely--indeed, quite the reverse. all which merely brings us round to the point we started from. as i said at first, it would have mattered little or nothing, as far as i am concerned, if you had never told me all this. so now, to change the subject----"
his way of changing the subject was to encircle her waist with his arm.
"but about the money," said hermia, two or three minutes later, as she stood before the chimney-glass, trying to put her hair to rights, which, owing to some accident, had become considerably disarranged--"about the twelve hundred pounds. was i not right in acting as i did?"
"my dearest and best, it was out of the question that you should have acted otherwise. whatever your uncle may choose to say, the money is not yours, but his. if it pleases him to let it accumulate in your name, well and good; no one can hinder him from doing as he likes in the matter, but his doing so in nowise alters the facts of the case. the money remains his just the same; he cannot give you what you are not willing to take, and this is a kind of gift, or so it seems to me, which it is impossible for you to accept."
"i was sure you would say so; i was sure you would think exactly as i do in the matter," said hermia, with shining eyes. "what will uncle and aunt say now?"
"which reminds me that i have not yet had my little interview with your uncle," said clem. "but as i can't stay much longer--for a doctor's time is never his own--and as one should never omit to gather honey while one has the chance," he added artfully, "it seems to me that it will be better to put off my interview with mr. brancker till this evening, or to-morrow."
"indeed, sir, but you will do no such thing," cried hermia. "i begin to discern a certain selfishness of disposition about you, which i trust you will do your utmost to check while it is yet in the bud. i will ask uncle john to come at once, in case any of your poor patients should fancy you are neglecting them," and before clem could intercept her she was gone.
on the interview between the young doctor and john brancker it is not needful that we should dwell. presently miss brancker was called into the room by her brother. the kind-hearted spinster could not help letting fall a few tears when told the news, although she had not been without her suspicions of what was in the air for some time past. "there is no one in the wide world," she said, with fervor, "to whom my brother and i would sooner entrust our darling than to you, mr. clement. and as for her, she is worthy of all the care and love which any man can bestow on her."
"on that point i am quite sure," replied clem, earnestly, "and if i know anything of myself, she will never lack either one or the other at my hands."
then john brought up the subject of the twelve hundred pounds. it would be such a nice little nest-egg to start housekeeping with, he said. clem only laughed, and replied that both he and hermia were fully agreed that the money belonged to john and to him only, and that neither by deed or gift nor in any other form would hermia accept a shilling of it.
"then hang me!" cried john, with what for him was a burst of passion, as he banged his fist on the table, "if i don't give every farthing of it to the dulminster hospital."
"i question whether you could put it to a better purpose," was all the consolation he got from clem.
but already in miss brancker's brain a scheme was germinating for getting rid of the golden incubus after an altogether different fashion.
said john to his sister after clement had gone, "i am not quite sure, my dear, that we are justified in giving our sanction to hermy's engagement without having first obtained mr. hodgson's leave to do so. there may be something in the background of which you and i know nothing, to render such an engagement objectionable to hermy's unknown relatives; for, of course, the dear girl must have relatives somewhere. i am afraid we have acted rather precipitately in the matter, and that we ought first to have taken mr. hodgson's opinion on the occasion of his next visit."
"you seem to forget one little fact, my dear, which is, that you could not very well help yourself," replied his sister, dryly. "you, at least, have no legal control over hermy, and i question very much whether mr. hodgson has. i consider that it was very nice on her part to pay you the compliment, through her lover, of asking your consent to an arrangement which it was not in your power to forbid, or interfere with in any way."
this was a way of looking at the affair such as had never struck john, but he could not help acknowledging that there was a certain amount of force in it. "for all that," he said, dubiously, "i should have been better satisfied if mr. hodgson had known of and approved the engagement."
"when you adopted hermia, it was understood, although there was no specific arrangement to that effect, that she should become to you the same as if she were, your own child. we wanted no money with her, indeed we would not accept of any, and although mr. hodgson has insisted on forwarding a cheque every quarter, we know how each has been disposed of as it came to hand. i fail to see, therefore, what claim mr. hodgson, or those who are at his back, have upon the girl's future, or by what right they could, assuming them to be so disposed, attempt to exercise any control over her. if she needed to be controlled by anyone, which, thank heaven, she doesn't, you are the only person, if there is such a thing as moral law, who has any right to exercise authority over her; and hermia herself would be the first to declare that she would recognize no one's wishes, either in this or other matters, than yours."
it was only on very rare occasions that aunt charlotte launched out in this style, but whenever she did, john was wise enough to know that his only plan was to strike his colors at once.
he did so on the present occasion. "in any case," he said, "there can be no possible harm in my mentioning to mr. hodgson, when i see him next, the fact of hermia's engagement;" and with that he made haste to change the subject.
