GRACEDIEU, DERBYSHIRE.

When Edith Grace came into the little sitting-room in Grimsby Street, the morning after her flight from Eltham House, she found her grandmother had not yet appeared. She went to Mrs. Grace's door and asked if she might bring the old woman her breakfast. To her question she received a blithe answer that Mrs. Grace would be ready in a minute. The girl came back to the room where the breakfast was laid and sat down to wait. The old woman always presided, and sat with her face to the window. She liked to see as much sunlight and cheerfulness as came into Grimsby Street. On the table were two plates, two cups, eggs, rashers, and a loaf of bread. By the side of Mrs. Grace's plate a letter. It was a frugal-looking breakfast for middle-class people, but much, more elegantly appointed than one would expect to find in a Grimsby Street lodging-house. The cutlery, linen, silver and china were bright and clean and excellent. There were no delicacies or luxuries on the table, but the adjuncts of the viands were such as no lady need take exception to.

Edith was dressed in a perfectly plain black gown, one she had got for her duties as companion. She had a trace of colour at the best of times. This morning she looked pale and listless. She had slept little during the night. She had lain awake, alternately reviewing the extraordinary events of the day before, and trying to discover some means by which in her future search of employment she might insure herself against repeating her recent experience.

Up to this she knew little or nothing of the world. Her father, a barrister, had died when she was young. Her mother had been dead since her childhood. She had spent seven years at a boarding school, during which time she had come home for the holidays to find her grandmother's position gradually declining, until from a fine house in Bloomsbury the old woman was reduced to poor lodgings in Grimsby Street, where the two had lived together since Edith left school, three years ago. The money left her by her father had been more than enough to pay the fees of the "select seminary for young ladies" where she had spent those seven years.

While at school she had kept much apart from the other boarders, and had made no friends, for she knew all the girls she met at Miss Graham's had homes much better than she could hope to possess after her grandmother had been compelled to leave Russell Square.

Edith did not care to take any of her school-fellows into the secret of their decaying fortunes. She was too proud to pretend to be their equal in wealth, and too sensitive to allow them to know how poor she was. She was the quietest, most silent, most reserved girl in all the school. The majority of those around her were the daughters of City men. Her father had been a barrister. He had never soiled his fingers with business. He had been a gentleman by the consecration of generations of forefathers who had never chaffered across a counter, never been in trade; and she was a lady. She did not despise those around her for their wealth or unfortunate origin. She simply kept herself to herself, and made no friends. She was kind and considerate to all, and polite almost to painfulness, but she would let no one near her. Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply perfect, if she only had a heart.

But, alas! the girl had a heart, and what is worse still, a heart very hard to possess in seeming peace in a young breast confronted with a decaying fortunes.

Her school-fellows said she ought to be a queen. By this they meant that she was, by her appearance and manners, suited to statelinesses, and splendours, and pageants. They conceived a queen to be above the common nature of our kind. To be free from the aches and pains of feeling. To be superior to the bemeaning littlenesses of life. To be incapable of joy or suffering which does not involve the triumph or the ruin of a state.

From the moment of her father's death she knew she must expect to be poor, poor far below any depth she would have been likely to know, if he had lived a dozen years longer. Young as she then was, she felt within herself a love of all the beautiful things that money can buy. She loved rich and exquisite flowers, and dainty fabrics, and sparkling stones, and gleaming metals, and fine odours, and stately pictures, and glories of lamps and melody. As she grew older, her love of these things would, she told herself, increase. To what purpose? To the torture of desire denied; for with such splendour she could hold no converse. She was poor, and she should always be poor. What was to be done? Beat down, stamp out these tastes, teach herself to rise above them. Deny herself.

In time she should leave school and be a woman. She should, when she left school, be a young woman, and a young woman of no ordinary personal attractions. She knew this as fully as she knew that the perfume of the tuberose is sweet, by the evidence of one of her senses. How should it be with her, then? All these other girls around her would marry, she never. For who would come wooing her? Some other lodger in Grimsby Street! A City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser, or a furniture dealer, or a man who contracted for the supply of suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a white cap, or the son and heir of a tailor! She had no moderation of power to discriminate between any of these. They were all preposterously impossible lovers, and there were no others left! No thing was degrading even to fancy. There was only one way of meeting this aspect of her poverty--she should never marry. That was easy enough. Nothing could be easier than to keep all men at as great a distance as she kept the cabman, or the young man who sold her the double elephant paper for drawing, or the telegraph clerk. No man should, to her dying day, ever say anything to her beyond the mere business words necessary to their meeting. Thus she should be as strong in this way as she was now in her indifference to diamonds or the opera. People said girls were weak, but girls could be as strong as men, stronger than men, if they only made up their minds not to long for pretty, or fine, or interesting objects.

In the latter class Edith supposed lovers would find their place.

She should be strong because she should be self-contained. She should be content because she should be undesiring. She should be independent because she should form no ties of any kind. Her position should be completely unassailable.

So she did not allow herself to display any particular affection for any one of her schoolmates. She was uniformly kind, and gentle, and polite. But she was too poor to love anyone, for it would rend her heart to be separated from one she loved, and she could run no risk of breaking her heart about her poverty when her poverty did not step in to separate her from one on whom she settled her affections.

So for the three years she had lived at home with her grandmother she comported herself with strict exclusiveness. No young man out of the formidable list of possible suitors she had allowed to a young girl with her means had approached her to tell a tale of love, and towards all whom she met she sought to pass for a retiring shadow.

But her first advent into the world had brought an alarming, a horrible awakening.

The discipline of denial to which she had inured herself prepared her for the loss of her modest competency. Up to the time of leaving school, she had regarded her income as sure as the coming of the planets into the constellations. Soon after leaving Miss Graham's doubts began to arise in her mind. When at length the blow came, and she learned she was penniless, no giant despair crushed her. She simply bowed to the inevitable, without going to the trouble of even affecting indifference. The money or income had been hers, and was gone. To lose an income was an unmixed evil, but it ought to affect her less than others, for had she not cultivated self-abnegation? Was she not used to desire little or nothing, and was not the step between asking for little next to that of working for the necessaries of life, for the things indispensable? She should now have to go forth and earn her bread, for she could not think of encroaching on the little left to her grandmother. She was young, and healthy, and accomplished, as far as Miss Graham's select seminary for young ladies at Streatham could make a receptive pupil accomplished.

Up to this she had allowed herself only one luxury, a deep, and quiet, and romantic love, the love for her kind-hearted old grandmother. That need not even now be put away, could not, indeed, be put away, but it might and must be dissimulated. Or, anyway, it might and must remain undemonstrative, for to show much affection to her grandmother would be to enhance the pain of the old woman at the parting.

Hence she steeled herself, and prepared for the separation with seeming indifference, which only made the desolation seem to Mrs. Grace more complete, more like death, and freed it from the torture of struggling with a living and cruel force.

When Edith Grace saw Oscar Leigh, and arranged to go as companion to his mother, although she shrank naturally from his objectionable manner and unhappy appearance, she was better pleased than if he had belonged to the ordinary mould of man. His deformities made him seem a being proper to a new condition of life, a condition of life in which his very unusualness would enable her to preserve and even increase the feeling of reserve, and being apart from the world, cultivated by her with such success at Miss Graham's and at home. He was so much out of the common, he need not be taken into account at all. His unhandsome appearance would be no more to her than the unhandsomeness of this street in which she, who dreamed of parks and palaces, and the Alhambra of Granada, lived. No doubt to look at him was to feel unpleasant, but the endurance of unpleasant sights was not very much harder, if so hard, as doing without pleasing sights, and she had taught herself to abstain from longing after gratifying the eyes. The system of self-denial which she had imposed upon herself with so much success needed only a little extension to cover endurance of the undesirable. She was strong, fortified at every point. This system of hers was the whole secret of getting through life scatheless. It afforded an armour nothing could pierce. It made her superior to fate--absolutely superior to fate.

She had built for herself a tower of strength. She lived in a virgin fortress.

In thinking over at Miss Graham's the possible suitors a young lady who lodged in Grimsby Street might have, she had allowed as likely a City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser, or a man who contracted for the supply of suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a white cap, or the son and heir of a tailor. With such, she had some kind of acquaintance, either personal or by strong hearsay. Often in amused reverie, she passed these candidates for the hand of an imaginary young lady before her view. The young men were invariably in their Sunday best when they came a-wooing. There was a dandified air, an air of coxcombry, about them which amused her. They were, of course, dandies only after their kind; not like Lord Byron in his Childe Harold days, or the dandy officers for whom the great Duke of Wellington prayed so devoutly. They wore gloves of a sort, and flowers in their button-holes. They carried canes in genteel imitation of the beaux of old. Their hair was arranged with much precision and nicety. Their figures were good. They were stalwart and valorous, not, indeed, in the grand way, but as of their kind. They made displays, as displays may be made in reasonable conduct, of their physical graces and alertness. They carried themselves with the heroic air, without the inartistic stiffness of soldiers of the rank and file. Their features were well proportioned and agreeable, and they wore smiles of bland confidence and alluring archness. They looked their approbation of this imaginary young lady, but their good manners, their awe, never allowed them to do anything more than strut like harmless peacocks before the object of their admiration.

When the girl was alone and in good spirits, she often laughed aloud at these phantom suitors of this imaginary young lady lodger in Grimsby Street. She did not look on them with the pity of disdain. She regarded them as actors in a play. She summoned them for her amusement and dismissed them without emotion, without even thanks for the entertainment which they had afforded her.

On stepping out of the world of dreams into the world of reality what had happened?

This man, this deformed, odious little man, whose bread she was to eat for hire and whose money she was to take for services under his roof, had paid her attentions! forced his hateful attentions upon her! attempted to kiss her after an acquaintance of a few hours!

Good Heavens! Had she, Edith Grace, lived to see that day? Had it come to this with her? Had she fallen so low? Had she suffered such degradation and lived?

It was not the young lady lodger in Grimsby Street of her imagination, who had been compelled to listen to the ridiculous suits of the clerk, and the caterer, and the carpet-beater, and the baker, and the tailor of her fancy, but she herself, Edith Grace, who had had love offered to her by this miserable creature who was her master also!

Yet she had lived through it, and the house, Eltham House, had not fallen down on them, nor had the ground opened and swallowed them, and neither her grandmother herself nor Leigh seemed to realise the enormity of the crime!

Even if she had been the young lady of her imagination, and the young men of her fancy had taken flesh and done this thing, it would be unendurable degradation. What had occurred had been endured, although to reason a thing infinitely less seemed unendurable! In pity's name, had all that had taken place happened to her, Edith Grace?

Thoughts in part such as these had haunted the dark hours and early morning of the young girl. What wonder she was wakeful. Then she had to consider the future. Turn which way she might, the prospect was not cheerful. The necessity for her seeking her own living was as imperative as ever. She could not live at home in idleness without absolutely depriving her grandmother of the comforts of life. All her own money had vanished into thin air, and so much of Mrs. Grace's that there would be barely enough for her mere comfort. When Edith arranged to go to Eltham House Mrs. Grace had given the landlady notice that she should no longer require the second bed-room. It was doubtful if even the sitting-room could be retained, and if the old woman had to content herself with a bed-room and the "use" of a sitting-room (which no lodger ever used except to eat in), the poor old woman would mope and pine and, in all likelihood, sicken and break down. This consideration, being one not of her own, Edith allowed to trouble her deeply. For herself she had no pity, but she could not forbear weeping in the security of her own room when she thought of her grandmother suffering absolute poverty in old age. No wonder the girl looked pale and worn.

She was standing at the window absorbed in thought, when Mrs. Grace glided into the room and took the girl in her arms before Edith was aware of her presence.

"Thank God, you are here once more, my darling. To see you makes even this place look like home. Oh, what a miserable time it was to me while my child was away. It seemed an age. Short as it was, it seemed an age, darling. Of one thing, Edy, I am quite certain, that no matter what is to become of us we shall never be separated again, never, darling, never. That is, if you are not too proud or too nice to be satisfied with what will satisfy your old grandmother."

It was only in moments of great emotion that Mrs. Grace called her grand-daughter by the affectionate pet name, Edy. The girl's name was Edith, and she looked all Edith could mean, and deserved the full stateliness of the name. But this morning the old woman's heart was overflowing upon the lost one who had returned. The heart of the blameless prodigal was so disturbed and softened that it became human, and all Edith could say or do was to fall upon the bosom of the old woman, and with her young, soft, moist lips, kiss the dry lips of the other and cry out:

"Oh, mother! oh, mother!" and burst into tears.

Mrs. Grace calling the young girl Edy was not by any means common, but Edith's weeping in a scene was without any parallel. It frightened the grandmother. What she, the passionless, the collected, the just Edith in tears! This was very serious, very serious indeed. The affair of Eltham House must have had a much greater effect upon the child than anything which had hitherto occurred, for Mrs. Grace could remember no other manifestation exactly so sudden and so vehement.

"There child, there!" cried the old woman, caressing the bent, shapely, smooth head against her breast. She durst not say any more. She was afraid of checking this outburst of feeling, afraid of saying something which would not be in harmony with the feelings of this troubled young heart.

So the girl sobbed her long-pent torrent of chaotic feeling away, the old woman stroking softly the dark glossy hair with one hand and pressing the head to her bosom with the other.

In a little while Edith recovered her composure, and stealing out of her grandmother's arms, turned towards the window to conceal her red and tear-stained face. The old woman went and busied herself at the table, re-arranging what was quite in order, and making changes that were no improvement. At last she sat down and saw the letter awaiting her close to her plate. She took it up anxiously, hoping it might prove the means of introducing some new subject between them.

Mrs. Grace was no slave to that foolish modern habit of tearing and rending a letter open the minute one sees it, as though it were a long-lost enemy. Most of the few letters she received were pleasant. She liked to savour the good things that came by the post before she bolted them. To one who knows how to enjoy this self-denial of delay, the few moments before a letter addressed in unknown or partly remembered handwriting are more precious than the coarse pleasures of realization. While the seal is unbroken one holds the key of an intensely provoking mystery. Once the envelope is removed the mystery is explained, and no mystery ever yet improved upon explanation. The writing of this letter was unknown to Mrs. Grace. She could make nothing of it. She turned the back, she could make nothing of that either. She was expecting a letter from her solicitor, Mr. James Burrows. This was not from him. He had the bad taste to print his name on the back of the envelope, a vandalism which paralyzed all power of speculation at once, and was more coldly and brutally disenchanting than the habit of writing the name of the sender on the left-hand corner of the face, for this external signature had often the merit of being illegible. The writing on the face of this was in a business, clerkly hand. The thing was a circular, no doubt.

"Edy," she said, "here is a letter. I have not my glasses with me. Will you read it to me, dear?"

The girl turned round, took the letter and went back to the window--for a better light.

"From whom is it?" asked Mrs. Grace, when she saw Edith break the envelope.

"It is signed Bernard Coutch," answered the girl in a low voice.

"Bernard Coutch--Bernard Coutch. I do not know anyone of that name. Are you quite sure the address is right?"

"Quite sure, mother. 'Mrs. Grace, 28, Grimsby Street.'"

"Well, go on, child. Let us hear what this Mr. Coutch has to say. Breakfast must wait. Nothing grows cold in such lovely weather. I hope this Mr. Coutch has good news."

"Dear Madam,

"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of Gracedieu----"

"Stop," said Mrs. Grace, "where is the letter dated from?"

"Castleton, Derbyshire," answered the girl with some awakening of interest in her voice and manner.

"Wait a minute, Edith." The old woman rose excitedly and came to the window. "I must tell you, dear, that when first Mr. Burrows wrote me to say the bank had failed, and that your money and mine were gone, I went to him, as you know, and got no hope of ever saving anything out of the bank. But I did not tell you then, for I was ashamed of being so weak as to mention the matter to Mr. Burrows, that I told him all I knew of the history of the Graces of Gracedieu, and of the old story of mysterious money going to the runaway Kate Grace, of a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago. I asked him to make what inquiry he could, and let me know any news he might pick up. I was foolish enough to imagine, dear, that something might come to you out of the property of the rich Graces if we only knew where they are, if there are any. Now go on, dear."

Edith re-commenced the letter:--

"Dear Madam,

"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of Gracedieu, near this place. He requested, with a view to saving time, that I should forward you the result of my inquiries.

"I regret to say that I have not been able to find out much. Gracedieu is a small residence about a couple of miles from this. No property of any extent is or was, as far as I can ascertain, attached to the place. In the middle of the last century the Graces lived in this town, and dealt, I believe, in wool. The family were in comfortable circumstances, and one of the daughters, a lady of great beauty, attracted the attention of all who lived in the town, or saw her in passing through. She disappeared and was, so the story goes, never afterwards heard of here. It was rumoured she married a very handsome and rich young foreign nobleman who had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, but nothing is known for certain of her fate.

"Some years after the disappearance of the young lady, Mr. Grace seemed to come suddenly into a large amount of money; for he gave up the wool business, bought a few acres of land, and built a house for himself a couple of miles out of the town, and called his place Gracedieu. From the name of the house it was assumed the gentleman the young Miss Grace had married was a French nobleman. Why this was supposed from the name is not clear, except that the name is French. It is, however, a common name enough in England. I know two other Gracedieus. About a hundred years ago the Graces left Gracedieu for ever, and went to reside, it is believed, in London. Absolutely nothing else is known of them in this neighbourhood, and even this much would not be remembered only for the romantic disappearance of Miss Kate Grace, the rumour she was married, and the sudden influx of wealth upon the family.

"The land attached to Gracedieu in the time of the builder of the house was about five acres. The family, as far as is known, never held any other property here.

"If you desire it, search, involving considerable expense, can be made in the records of the town and parish and county, but I understand from Mr. Burrows that no expense is to be incurred without hearing further from you or him.

"Yours faithfully,

"Bernard Coutch."

The girl turned away from the window, dropped the letter to the floor, and said in a listless voice, looking, with eyes that did not see external things, at the old woman, "Mother you ought to be glad you are not one of the family of Grace."

"Why, child, why?"

"We are an accursed race."

"My child! my child, what folly you talk. There is no disgrace in marriage, no disgrace in this. There was no shame in this, and who knows but the mysterious man who ran away with the beautiful Kate long ago, and married her, may now be a great man in France. He was a nobleman then and honours are things that grow, dear. If we could only find out the title he had. I suppose we could if we tried."

The girl shook her head. "Where there is no disgrace, mother, there is no secrecy about such things. I thought the Graces went further back than that."

"What! Do you want them to go back to Noah or Adam? Why this is four or five generations! How many of the best titled houses in England go back so far? Nonsense, child, I wish we knew what the French title is."

"So there really was no family of Grace of Gracedieu after all. That is if this account is true. And there was no estate, mother, and there can be no money. I am very, very sorry for you, mother."

"For me, child! Why for me? I don't want anything, pet. I have enough for my darling and myself, more than enough. I did not make these inquiries on my own account, but it was on yours that I asked Mr. Burrows to find out for me. Anyway, dear, no harm has been done. Come pet, breakfast must be getting cold even this warm morning. How delightful it is to be able to breakfast with the window open. Tea is such a luxury this warm weather."

It was the only luxury on that table tasted by either woman that morning. The food went away untouched.

When the landlady saw the unbroken food, she said to her daughter, "I know the poor ladies are sorely troubled by their losses in that shameful bank. There's one thing I can't make out about our corrupt nature. The people who are troubled by something wrong with their bodies eat and drink more than is good for them by way of trying to coax themselves to break their fast, and them that are troubled in their minds don't eat anything at all. The matter seems upside down somehow."