Chapter XXXII: Mrs. Bancroft’s Narrative

At this outburst from Captain Bancroft’s widow, Lady Elaine flushed and looked troubled.

It pained her to arouse the woman’s sorrows like this, and yet she felt that if she could throw any light upon the mystery which she was seeking to unravel, it was no more than right for her to ask her to do so.

But Mrs. Bancroft soon recovered herself, and, sitting erect, she looked even more stern than before, while she said, with the stateliness that would have become a queen:

“Pardon me, young lady; but I never can recall that time of horror without a terrible shrinking. If there is anything that I can tell you, however, or any way that I can serve you, I am very willing to do so.”

Lady Elaine thanked her, and then said:

“I was told that you accompanied your husband upon this voyage of which I have spoken, and after learning that he was not living, I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me what I want to know.”

“I will, miss, anything that I can.”

“Were there any children on board?” asked Lady Elaine.

“Yes, there were five--two boys of ten and twelve, brothers; and three little girls--one five, the other two mere babies, about a year and a half old.”

Lady Elaine caught her breath at those last words.

“Ah! do you remember those babies distinctly?” she asked, eagerly.

“Perfectly,” returned the ancient dame, whose memory appeared to be in as fine a state of preservation as her body. “One was a poor little waif--an orphan--whose parents had both died in India, and who was being sent to its grandfather in England, in the care of its nurse, an Ayah, who couldn’t speak a word except in her own language.”

“Describe the child, please,” Lady Elaine said, with paling lips, while her chest rose and fell with excitement; “was she dark, with large, black eyes and curling hair?--was she anything like this?” and she drew from her pocket a picture of Arley, which Miss McAllister had taken off soon after her return, and Lady Elaine had begged leave to take for awhile.

Mrs. Bancroft adjusted her glasses and looked at it intently for a moment.

“No, this is a picture of the other one; but the one I was telling you about had great, blue-gray eyes and sunny, brown hair, that did not curl, but hung in soft, little waves over her shoulders. She was white and plump and as pretty as a little wax doll, and the nurse called her a queer name--Ar--Arley, I think it was; yes, I am sure that was it, for I remember how strangely she used to pronounce it, and it was the only word any one could understand, though she would chatter away most fondly to her little charge, in her own language, and always took the best of care of her. But you seem to be getting excited, young lady,” she added, seeing how very pale Lady Elaine was, and that she trembled violently.

“It does not matter,” was the low, eager reply; “please go on; can you remember how this little one was dressed?”

“No; only that she had a great many dainty little dresses, and her nurse seemed to take great pride in making her look as fine as possible; but one thing that she wore--a pretty little chain--I do remember, for she would persist in putting it into her mouth and biting it with her little, white teeth, and one day when I took it out and told her she must not do so, I saw the letters ‘A. W.’ marked on the catch.”

Lady Elaine sat listening, with wide, eager eyes, and hands almost convulsively clasped on her lap.

How exactly all this agreed with the story which Ina had told to prove her identity!

“I shall never forget,” Mrs. Bancroft went on, “how frantic that nurse was when she found out that the vessel must go to pieces. I remember seeing her walking the saloon from end to end like a wild woman, hugging and kissing the child, and sobbing as if her heart would break. The next thing I knew, she brought her up on deck, wrapped securely in a waterproof, and tied her with a strong rope into a trunk-tray and that is all that I can tell you about her.”

“That is all that I need to know about her, madam,” Lady Elaine returned, leaning back in her chair, and feeling almost faint, for she was sure that she should learn all that she wished to know now--the “mystery” would all be solved at last, and she could hardly wait until it should be told.

“It is about the other child that I wish particularly to hear,” she resumed; “she is the one whose identity I wish to prove, though what you have already told me confirms a great deal. But this black-eyed child was taken by mistake to the place where the other one should have gone, and it is only recently that she has discovered she is an entirely different person from the one she has been brought up to believe herself.”

“Is that so?” demanded Mrs. Bancroft, actually startled out of her almost stoical calmness into something like interest by this statement.

“Yes,” Lady Elaine returned; and then she gave her a brief account of Arley’s life, and the appearance and developments of Ina Wentworth upon the wedding day of the former.

“Well, child, this has been a puzzle indeed,” the widow said; “but you have hit upon the right one at last to work it out for you; though it is the strangest thing in the world that both of those babies should have been saved from that wreck! I tell you it was a fearful time!”

“I do not doubt it,” Lady Elaine said, with a shudder. “Now will you please tell me about the dark-eyed child?”

“With the greatest pleasure, miss. She was the brightest little darling in the world; she had such great, beautiful eyes, rosy cheeks, and such cunning little white teeth, and just the cutest ways. Her mother called her ‘Allie’--‘Baby Allie,’ and both she and her husband seemed to worship her. She was never allowed to go out of their sight, and they hung over her as if they thought there never had been another child like her in the world. They were young people, too, and more like a pair of lovers than like husband and wife.”

“What were their names?” Lady Elaine interrupted, with such breathless eagerness that her voice sounded weak and faint.

Mrs. Bancroft paused to think a moment.

“Well, miss,” she then said, as if surprised at herself, “I thought I could speak it on the instant, but it has gone from me just at this moment. But I have it somewhere, and I’ll find it for you before you go.”

Lady Elaine opened her lips to beg her to find it at once; but, thinking better of it, she controlled her impatience, and waited anxiously for the rest of her story.

“They were Lord and Lady somebody, anyhow,” the widow said, still looking annoyed at having forgotten, “and her first name was Margaret--that much I do remember--and she was so sick that I waited upon her a great deal, while the child’s nurse couldn’t raise her head from her pillow, and so the little one fell into my hands almost altogether, when her papa did not feel able to take care of her. I told you the baby was a cute little thing, and I shall never forget one caper that she cut up. She wore a little ring on one of her fingers, and it had a bright green stone in it.”

Lady Elaine drew a little box from her pocket, and taking from it the tiny emerald ring which Miss McAllister had loaned her, she held it out with a trembling hand to her companion.

“Was it anything like this?” she asked.

Again the spectacles were adjusted over those aged eyes, and the dame bent to examine the trinket.

“I should say that it is the very same. I should know it anywhere,” she said.

“Arley! Arley! it is proved at last,” Lady Elaine cried, in a low, exultant voice, and covering her face she wept such happy, happy tears, while the old woman, sitting opposite, regarded her with wonder, and thought that she must love this friend, for whom she was laboring so earnestly, very dearly.

“And here, also are a pair of shoes and stockings that she wore at the time of her rescue,” the young girl continued, after a few moments, and, drawing them forth, she laid them upon the woman’s lap.

“Aha!” she cried, eagerly seizing upon the tiny stockings, “her ladyship knit those herself.”

“How do you know?” Lady Elaine asked, astonished.

“Because she told me so. One day when she was feeling a little better than usual, I found her bolstered up in her berth trying to finish off a pair just like them, and that were almost done.

“‘I am so tired lying here doing nothing,’ she said, when I told her she was not able.

“‘What pretty little socks,’ I told her; ‘the prettiest I had ever seen,’ for I had never set eyes on silk stockings before.

“Well, just as she had finished them she gave them to me, and in the toe of each was a gold eagle.

“‘Ah, lady,’ I said, ‘you are very kind, but it is too bad to give me these socks that you have knit for the little one.’

“‘I can make some more,’ she said, ‘keep them for your own little girl, if you should ever have one; if not, give them to your first grandbaby.’

“But, miss, God never gave me one, for both my boys were lost at sea.”

The poor woman broke down entirely here, and covering her face with her apron, wept bitterly.

But she soon checked herself again, and rising, went to an old chest that stood in one corner of the room.

She came back after a minute or two, and laid a small package in Lady Elaine’s lap.

“There they are,” she said, “take them and give them to your friend--the one for whom they were knit--with an old woman’s blessing.”

Lady Elaine unfolded the package with reverent fingers, and saw there a tiny pair of light-blue silk stockings, the exact counterpart of the ones already in her possession, except for the holes and stains.

“Oh!” she cried, clasping her hands, and heaving a sigh of delight, “I cannot tell you how much I thank you; and madam, what you have told me proves beyond a doubt just what I wanted to know; and now, after more than nineteen years, my dear Arley will be restored to her proper position in life.”

“Ah, but she cannot be restored to her father and mother,” said Mrs. Bancroft, sadly.

Lady Elaine lifted her eyes with a quick, questioning, look, and the widow added:

“For they are dead; I read a notice of their death several years ago.”

“Did you?” asked her companion, then she added, musingly: “It seems strange that Arley should have been separated from them at the time of the wreck.”

“It was through no fault of theirs, dear,” the captain’s wife answered. “His lordship clung to his child with one arm, and to his wife with the other; and I heard him say, as they stood waiting for a lifeboat to be made ready: ‘My treasures, if death comes we shall all go together; I will never give either of you up.’ But he did not know. They were safely seated in the boat ready to push off, when a great wave dashed over it and swamped it. Another was quickly lowered, and as many rescued as could be found. My lord and lady were among the number, but the baby could not be found, and I have always supposed, until to-day, that she was lost.”

Lady Elaine’s eyes were full of tears.

“Now will you please find their names for me?” she asked, in a low but trembling tone.

“Yes, yes; the captain always kept a copy of the passenger list of every voyage, and it will be easy enough to find them,” the woman replied, and rising again, she brought from another room a wooden box about a foot square.

It was full of nothing but passenger lists--a curious assortment of all shapes and sizes.

It was something of a task to find the one she wanted, but they were placed according to their dates, and at last Mrs. Bancroft drew one from a package which she had been looking over, and handing it to Lady Elaine, pointed to three names about midway of the list.

The young girl bent eagerly forward, but her tears were falling like rain, and she could not see.

She wiped her eyes, and then with bated breath and throbbing heart, read what she had so longed to know.

A minute after, she looked up into Mrs. Bancroft’s face, her own all aglow with emotion, her eyes full of deep delight.

“It is just as I have suspected,” she said, in a low, tremulous tone; “I have known something of these people before, but I did not think--oh! I never dreamed until very recently that Arley belonged to them. How strange--how wonderful it is!”

Then bidding her farewell, she went away.

Lady Elaine had obtained Arley’s address from Miss McAllister and she immediately wrote her an imperative summons to “come home.”

“I have such glorious news for you,” she wrote. “I have discovered your parentage. You are no longer a stray waif; you are no longer ‘nameless.’ It is such a long and complicated story that I cannot write it.”

Such was a portion of the young countess’ letter to the friend whom, during those happy days at Hazelmere, she had claimed as hers for all time, and then sealed the compact with that beautiful ring.

“In sickness or in health, for better or for worse, it will be all the same. Be sure that you never forget it, Arley,” she had said, with solemn sweetness, and how nobly she was proving her sincerity now!

But long weeks went by and Arley did not come, nor any reply to her urgent letter, and she grew troubled and anxious over the delay.

She wrote again and again, with the same result; and Miss McAllister was also in much distress now, for it had been a long time since she had received a letter from her absent dear one, and she was beginning to imagine all sorts of evil things as happening to her.

“She is either sick or unhappy,” she said, one day, when Lady Elaine called to see if there was any word from her. “If she is sick, Philip ought to write; if she is unhappy, of course I know very well that neither of them would let it be known. I do not like it. I am very uneasy.”

“Ah, you might well be troubled and anxious if you knew all!” thought Lady Elaine.