The Three Miss Kings

"And so, by this time to-morrow, we shall be man and wife," Mr. Yelverton said, musingly. "Doesn't your head swim a little when you think of that, Elizabeth? I feel as if I had been drinking, and I am terribly afraid of finding myself sober presently. No, I am not afraid," he continued, correcting himself. "You have given me your promise, and you won't go back on it, as the Yankees say, will you?"

"If either of us goes back," said Elizabeth, unblushingly; "it won't be me."

"You seem to think it possible that I may go back? Don't you flatter yourself, my young friend. When you come here to-morrow, as you will, in that pretty cool gown – I stipulate for that gown remember – "

"Even if it is a cold day? – or pouring with rain?"

"Well, I don't know. Couldn't you put a warm jacket over it? When you come here to-morrow, I say, you will find me waiting for you, the embodiment of relentless fate, with the wedding ring in my pocket. By the way – that reminds me – how am I to know the size of your finger? And you have not got your engagement ring yet! I'll tell you what we'll do, Elizabeth; we'll choose a ring out of the Exhibition, and we'll cheat the customs for once. The small things are smuggled out of the place all day long, and every day, as you may see by taking stock of the show cases occasionally. We'll be smugglers too – it is in a good cause – and I'll go so far as to use bribery and corruption, if necessary, to get possession of that ring to-day. I'll say, 'Let me have it now, or I won't have it at all,' and you will see they'll let me have it. I will then put it on your finger, and you shall wear it for a little while, and then I will borrow it to get the size of your wedding ring from it. By-and-bye, you know, when we are at home at Yelverton – years hence, when we are old people – "

"Oh, don't talk of our being old people!" she interrupted, quickly.

"No, I won't – it will be a long time yet, dear. By-and-bye, when we are at home at Yelverton, you will look at your ring, and think of this day, and of the German picture gallery – of the dear Exhibition which brought us together, and where you gave yourself to me – long after I had given myself to you, Elizabeth! It is most appropriate that your engagement ring should be got here. Come along and let us choose it. What stones do you like best?"

They spent nearly an hour amongst the jewellery of all nations before Mr. Yelverton could decide on what he liked. At last he selected from a medley of glittering trinkets a sober ring that did not glitter, and yet was rare and valuable – a broad, plain band of gold set with a lovely cameo carved out of an opal stone. "There is some little originality about it," he said, as he tried it on her finger, which it fitted perfectly, "and, though the intaglio looks so delicate, it will stand wear and tear, and last for ever. That is the chief thing. Do you like it? Or would you rather have diamonds?"

She had no words to say how much she liked it, and how much she preferred it to diamonds. And so, after a few severe struggles, carried on in a foreign tongue, he obtained immediate possession of his purchase, and she carried it away on her finger.

"Now," said he, looking at his watch, "are you in any great hurry to get home?"

She thought of her non-existent trousseau, and the packing of her portmanteau for her wedding journey; nevertheless, she intimated her willingness to stay a little while longer.

"Very well. We will go and have our lunch then. We'll join the table d'hôte of the Exhibition, Elizabeth – that will give us a foretaste of our Continental travels. To-morrow we shall have lunch – where? At Mrs. Duff-Scott's, I suppose – it would be too hard upon her to leave her literally at the church door. Yes, we shall have lunch at Mrs. Duff-Scott's, and I suppose the major will insist our drinking our healths in champagne, and making us a pretty speech. Never mind, we will have our dinner in peace. To-morrow evening we shall be at home, Elizabeth, and you and I will dine tête-à-tête, without even a single parlourmaid to stand behind our chairs. I don't quite know yet where I shall discover those blessed four walls that we shall dine in, nor what sort of dinner it will be – but I will find out before I sleep to-night."

CHAPTER XL.

MRS. DUFF-SCOTT HAS TO BE RECKONED WITH

Prosaic as were their surroundings and their occupation – sitting at a long table, he at the end and she at the corner on his left hand, amongst a scattered crowd of hungry folk, in the refreshment room of the Exhibition, eating sweetbreads and drinking champagne and soda water – it was like a dream to Elizabeth, this foretaste of Continental travels. In the background of her consciousness she had a sense of having acted madly, if not absurdly, in committing herself to the programme that her audacious lover had drawn out; but the thoughts and fancies floating on the surface of her mind were too absorbing for the present to leave room for serious reflections. Dreaming as she was, she not only enjoyed the homely charm of sitting at meat with him in this informal, independent manner, but she enjoyed her lunch as well, after her rather exhausting emotions. It is commonly supposed, I know, that overpowering happiness takes away the appetite; but experience has taught me that it is not invariably the case. The misery of suspense and dread can make you sicken at the sight of food, but the bliss of rest and security in having got what you want has an invigorating effect, physically as well as spiritually, if you are a healthy person. So I say that Elizabeth was unsentimentally hungry, and enjoyed her sweetbreads. They chatted happily over their meal, like truant children playing on the edge of a precipice. Mr. Yelverton had the lion's share in the conversation, and talked with distracting persistence of the journey to-morrow, and the lighter features of the stupendous scheme that they had so abruptly adopted. Elizabeth smiled and blushed and listened, venturing occasionally upon a gentle repartee. Presently, however, she started a topic on her own account "Tell me," she said, "do you object to first cousins marrying?"

"Dear child, I don't object to anything to-day," he replied. "As long as I am allowed to marry you, I am quite willing to let other men please themselves."

"But tell me seriously – do you?"

"Must I be serious? Well, let me think. No, I don't know that I object – there is so very little that I object to, you see, in the way of things that people want to do – but I think, perhaps, that, all things being equal, a man would not choose to marry so near a blood relation."

"You do think it wrong, then?"

"I think it not only wrong but utterly preposterous and indefensible," he said, "that it should be lawful and virtuous for a man to marry his first cousin and wicked and indecent to marry his sister-in-law – or his aunt-in-law for the matter of that – or any other free woman who has no connection with him except through other people's marriages. If a legal restriction in such matters can ever be necessary or justifiable, it should be in the way of preventing the union of people of the same blood. Sense and the laws of physiology have something to say to that– they have nothing whatever to say to the relations that are of no kin to each other. Them's my sentiments, Miss King, if you particularly wish to know them."

Elizabeth put her knife and fork together on her plate softly. It was a gesture of elaborate caution, meant to cover her conscious agitation. "Then you would not – if it were your own case – marry your cousin?" she asked, after a pause, in a very small and gentle voice. He was studying the menu on her behalf, and wondering if the strawberries and cream would be fresh. Consequently he did not notice how pale she had grown, all of a sudden.

"Well," he said, "you see I have no cousin, to begin with. And if I had I could not possibly want to marry her, since I am going to marry you to-morrow, and a man is only allowed to have one wife at a time. So my own case doesn't come in."

"But if I had been your cousin?" she urged, breathlessly, but with her eyes on her plate. "Supposing, for the sake of argument, that I had been of your blood – would you still have had me?"

"Ah!" he said, laughing, "that is, indeed, a home question."

"Would you?" she persisted.

"Would I?" he echoed, putting a hand under the table to touch hers. "I really think I would, Elizabeth. I'm afraid that nothing short of your having been my own full sister could have saved you."

After that she regained her colour and brightness, and was able to enjoy the early strawberries and cream – which did happen to be fresh.

They did not hurry themselves over their lunch, and when they left the refreshment-room they went and sat down on two chairs by the Brinsmead pianos and listened to a little music (in that worst place that ever was for hearing it). Then Mr. Yelverton took his fiancée to get a cup of Indian tea. Then he looked at his watch gravely.

"Do you know," he said, "I really have an immense deal of business to get through before night if we are to be married to-morrow morning."

"There is no reason why we should be married to-morrow morning," was her immediate comment "Indeed – indeed, it is far too soon."

"It may be soon, Elizabeth, but I deny that it is too soon, reluctant as I am to contradict you. And, whether or no, the date is fixed, irrevocably. We have only to consider" – he broke off, and consulted his watch again, thinking of railway and telegraph arrangements. "Am I obliged to see Mr. Brion to-day?" he asked, abruptly. "Can't I put him off till another time? Because, you know, he may say just whatever he likes, and it won't make the smallest particle of difference."

"Oh," she replied earnestly, "you must see him. I can't marry you till he has told you everything. I wish I could!" she added, impulsively.

"Well, if I must I must – though I know it doesn't matter the least bit. Will he keep me long, do you suppose?"

"I think, very likely, he will."

"Then, my darling, we must go. Give me your ring – you shall have it back to-night. Go and pack your portmanteau this afternoon, so that you have a little spare time for Mrs. Duff-Scott. She will be sure to want you in the evening. You need not take much, you know – just enough for a week or two. She will be only too delighted to look after your clothes while you are away, and" – with a smile – "we'll buy the trousseau in Paris on our way home. I am credibly informed that Paris is the proper place to go to for the trousseau of a lady of quality."

"Trousseaus are nonsense," said Elizabeth, who perfectly understood his motives for this proposition, "in these days of rapidly changing fashions, unless the bride cannot trust her husband to give her enough pocket money."

"Precisely. That is just what I think. And I don't want to be deprived of the pleasure of dressing you. But for a week or two, Elizabeth, we are going out of the world just as far as we can get, where you won't want much dressing. Take only what is necessary for comfort, dear, enough for a fortnight – or say three weeks. That will do. And tell me where I shall find Mr. Brion."

They were passing out of the Exhibition building – passing that noble group of listening hounds and huntsman that stood between the front entrance and the gate – and Elizabeth was wondering how she should find Mr. Brion at once and make sure of that evening interview, when she caught sight of the old lawyer himself coming into the flowery enclosure from the street. "Why, there he is!" she exclaimed. "And my sisters are with him."

"We are taking him out for an airing," exclaimed Eleanor, who was glorious in her Cup-day costume, and evidently in an effervescence of good spirits, when she recognised the engaged pair. "Mr. Paul was too busy to attend to him, and he had nobody but us, poor man! So we are going to show him round. Would you believe that he has never seen the Exhibition, Elizabeth?"

They had scarcely exchanged greetings with each other when, out of an open carriage at the gate, stepped Mrs. Duff-Scott, on her way to that extensive kettle-drum which was held in the Exhibition at this hour. When she saw her girls, their festive raiment, and their cavaliers, the fairy godmother's face was a study.

"What!" she exclaimed, with heart-rending reproach, "you are back in Melbourne! You are walking about with – with your friends" – hooking on her eye-glass the better to wither poor Mr. Brion, who wasted upon her a bow that would have done credit to Lord Chesterfield – "and I am not told!"

Patty came forward, radiant with suppressed excitement. "She must be told," exclaimed the girl, breathlessly. "Elizabeth, we are all here now. And it is Mrs. Duff-Scott's right to know what we know. And Mr. Yelverton's too."

"You may tell them now," said Elizabeth, who was as white as the muslin round her chin. "Take them all to Mrs. Duff-Scott's house, and explain everything, and get it over – while I go home."

CHAPTER XLI.

MR. YELVERTON STATES HIS INTENTIONS

"I don't think you know Mr. Brion," said Mr. Yelverton, first lifting his hat and shaking hands with Mrs. Duff-Scott, and then, with an airy and audacious cheerfulness, introducing the old man (whose name and association with her protégées she immediately recalled to mind); "Mr. Brion – Mrs. Duff-Scott."

The fairy godmother bowed frigidly, nearly shutting her eyes as she did so, and for a moment the little group kept an embarrassed silence, while a sort of electric current of intelligence passed between Patty and her new-found cousin. Mr. Yelverton was, as we say, not the same man that he had been a few hours before. Quiet in his manner, as he ever was, there was yet an aspect of glowing energy about him, an air of being at high pressure, that did not escape the immediate notice of the girl's vigilant and sympathetic eyes. I have described him very badly if I have not made the reader understand the virile breadth and strength of his emotional nature, and how it would be affected by his present situation. The hot blue blood and superfine culture of that ardent young aristocrat who became his father at such an early age, and the wholesome physical and moral solidity of the farmer's fair and rustic daughter who was his mother, were blended together in him; with the result that he was a man at all points, having all the strongest human instincts alive and active in him. He was not the orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist with a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set the world right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of a sense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and the spirit which produced that was not limited in any direction. From the same source came a passionately quick and keen apprehension of the nature of the closest bond of all, not given to the selfish and narrow-hearted. Amongst his abstract brothers and sisters he had been looking always for his own concrete mate, and having found her and secured her, he was as a king newly anointed, whose crown had just been set upon his head.

"Will you come?" said Patty to him, trying not to look too conscious of the change she saw in him. "It is time to have done with all our secrets now."

"I agree with you," he replied. "And I will come with pleasure." Mrs. Duff-Scott was accordingly made to understand, with some difficulty, that the mystery which puzzled her had a deep significance, and that she was desired to take steps at once whereby she might be made acquainted with it. Much bewildered, but without relaxing her offended air – for she conceived that no explanation would make any difference in the central fact that Mr. Yelverton and Mr. Brion had taken precedence of her in the confidence of her own adopted daughters – she returned to her carriage, all the little party following meekly at her heels. The girls were put in first – even Elizabeth, who, insisting upon detaching herself from the assembling council, had to submit to be conveyed to Myrtle Street; and the two men, lifting their hats to the departing vehicle, were left on the footpath together. The lawyer was very grave, and slightly nervous and embarrassed. To his companion he had all the air of a man with a necessary but disagreeable duty to perform.

"What is all this about?" Mr. Yelverton demanded with a little anxious irritation in his tone. "Nothing of any great consequence, is it?"

"I – I'm afraid you will think it rather a serious matter," the lawyer replied, with hesitation. "Still," he added, earnestly, "if you are their friend, as I believe you are – knowing that they have no responsibility in the matter – you will not let it make any difference in your feeling for them – "

"There is not the faintest danger of that," Mr. Yelverton promptly and haughtily interposed.

"I am sure of it – I am sure of it. Well, you shall know all in half an hour. If you will kindly find Major Duff-Scott – he has constituted himself their guardian, in a way, and ought to be present – I will just run round to my lodgings in Myrtle Street."

"Are you going to fetch your son?" asked Mr. Yelverton, quickly. "Don't you think that, under the circumstances – supposing matters have to be talked of that will be painful to the Miss Kings – the fewer present the better?"

"Certainly. I am not going to fetch my son, who, by the way, already knows all there is to know, but some documents relating to the affair, which he keeps in his strong-box for safety. Major Duff-Scott is the only person whose presence we require, since – "

"Since what?"

Mr. Brion was going to say, "Since your solicitors are not at hand," but checked himself. "Never mind," he said, "never mind. I cannot say any more now."

"All right. I'll go and find the major. Thank Heaven, he's no gossip, and I think he is too real a friend of the Miss Kings to care what he hears any more than I do." But Mr. Yelverton got anxious about this point after it occurred to him, and went off thoughtfully to the club, congratulating himself that, thanks to his sweetheart's reasonableness, he was in a position which gave him the privilege of protecting them should the issue of this mysterious business leave them in need of protection.

At the club he found the major, talking desultory politics with other ex-guardians of the State now shelved in luxurious irresponsibility with him; and the little man was quite ready to obey his friend's summons to attend the family council.

"The Miss Kings are back," said Mr. Yelverton, "and old Brion, the lawyer, is with them, and there are some important matters to be talked over this afternoon, and you must come and hear."

The major said that he was at the Miss Kings' service, and got his hat. He asked no questions as he passed through the lobby and down the steps to Mr. Yelverton's cab, which waited in the street. In his own mind he concluded that Elizabeth's engagement had "come off," and this legal consultation had some more or less direct reference to settlements, and the relations of the bride-elect's sisters to her new lot in life. What chiefly occupied his thoughts was the fear that he was going to be asked to give up Patty and Eleanor, and all the way from the club to his house he was wondering how far his and his wife's rights in them extended, and how far his energetic better half might be relied upon to defend and maintain them. At the house they found that Mr. Brion had already arrived, and that Mrs. Duff-Scott was assembling her party in the library, as being an appropriate place for the discussion of business in which men were so largely concerned. It was a spacious, pleasant room; the books ranging all round from the floor to about a third of the way up the wall, like a big dado; the top shelf supporting bric-à-brac of a stately and substantial order, and the deep red walls, which had a Pompeian frieze that was one of the artistic features of the house, bearing those pictures in oils which were the major's special pride as a connoisseur and man of family, and which held their permanent place of honour irrespective of the waves of fashion that ebbed and flowed around them. There was a Turkey carpet on the polished floor, and soft, thick oriental stuffs on the chairs and sofas and in the drapery of the wide bow-window – stuffs of dim but richly-coloured silk and wool, with tints of gold thread where the light fell. There was a many-drawered and amply-furnished writing table in that bow-window, the most comfortable and handy elbow tables by the hearth, and another and substantial one for general use in the centre of the floor. And altogether it was a pleasant place both to use and to look at, and was particularly pleasant in its shadowed coolness this summer afternoon. At the centre table sat the lady of the house, with an air of reproachful patience, talking surface talk with the girls about their country trip. Eleanor stood near her, looking very charming in her pale blue gown, with her flushed cheeks, and brightened eyes. Patty supported Mr. Brion, who was not quite at home in this strange atmosphere, and she watched the door with a face of radiant excitement.

"Where is Elizabeth?" asked the major, having hospitably shaken hands with the lawyer, whom he had never seen before.

"Elizabeth," said Mr. Yelverton, using the name familiarly, as if he had never called her by any other, "is not coming."

"Oh, indeed. Well, I suppose we are to go on without her, eh?"

"Yes, I suppose so." They were all seating themselves at the table, and as he took a chair by Patty's side he looked round and caught a significant glance passing between the major and his wife. "It is not of my convening, this meeting," he explained; "whatever business is on hand, I know nothing of it at present."

"Don't you?" cried his hostess, opening her eyes.

The major smiled; he, too, was thrown off the scent and puzzled, but did not show it as she did.

"No," said Mr. Brion, clearing his throat and putting his hand into his breast pocket to take out his papers, "what Mr. Yelverton says is true. He knows nothing of it at present. I am very sorry, for his sake, that it is so. I may say I am very sorry for everybody's sake, for it is a very painful thing to – "

Here Mr. Yelverton rose to his feet abruptly, nipping the exordium in the bud. "Allow me one moment," he said with some peremptoriness. "I don't know what Mr. Brion means by saying he is sorry for my sake. I don't know whether he alludes to a – a special attachment on my part, but I cannot conceive how any revelation he may make can affect me. As far as I am concerned – "

"My dear sir," interrupted the lawyer in his turn, "if you will wait until I have made my explanation, you will understand what I mean."

"Sit down," said Patty, putting a hand on his arm. "You have no idea what he is going to say. Sit down and listen."

"I do not want to listen, dear," he said, giving her a quick look. "It cannot be anything painful to me unless it is painful to you, and if it is painful to you I would rather not hear it."

The major was watching them all, and ruminating on the situation. "Wait a bit, Yelverton," he said in his soft voice. "If it's their doing there's some good reason for it. Just hear what it is that Mr. Brion has to say. I see he has got some legal papers. We must pay attention to legal papers, you know."

"Oh, for goodness sake, go on!" cried Mrs. Duff-Scott, whose nerves were chafed by this delay. "If anything is the matter, let us know the worst at once."

"Very well. Mr. Brion shall go on. But before he does so," said Mr. Yelverton, still standing, leaning on the table, and looking round on the little group with glowing eyes, "I will ask leave to make a statement. I am so happy – Mrs. Duff-Scott would have known it in an hour or two – I am so happy as to be Miss King's promised husband, and I hope to be her husband actually by this time to-morrow." Patty gave a little hysterical cry, and snatched at her handkerchief, in which her face was immediately buried. Mrs. Duff-Scott leaned back in her chair with a stoical composure, as if inured to thunderbolts, and waited for what would happen next. "I know it is very short notice," he went on, looking at the elder lady with a half-tender, half-defiant smile, "but my available time here is limited, and Elizabeth and I did not begin to care for each other yesterday. I persuaded her this morning to consent to an early and quiet marriage, for various reasons that I do not need to enter into now; and she has given her consent – provided only that Mrs. Duff-Scott has no objection."