Fortune's Fingers

Chapter I

Guendolen Williams lifted her tear-stained face from her hands to look at the vicar's wife. "Yes, my dear, it is very hard for you," that good lady was saying, " very hard ; all the parish feels for you. As the vicar says, if you had only been older, just a little older, eighteen — " " I am eighteen next week." " That's very young, terribly young ; " the vicar's wife gave a t'ck of compassion ; " you see you are so childish. Dolly looks older than you, or I would have had you for her governess." " Oh, no, I could not." A fortune's jffngers. 2 Mrs. Dawtry sighed. She was glancing round the pleasant room, marking the articles for which she would bid at the sale next week. There was a pretty little three-cor nered table she had often wanted and grieved for in her house-wifely soul, when Guen had placed tea-cups and hot-water jugs upon the polished walnut ; it was little damaged in spite of reckless usage.

Then there were nick-nacks, little ornaments scattered about, which she knew were valuable, but which would probably go for a few shillings in that country district. Her thoughts came back to Guen with a little shock of shame at their wanderings. " Poor child, it is very sad," she murmured. "What did they teach you at that expensive school ? " Guen heard the disapprobation expressed in the tone. " Heaps of things," she said, with a gleam of spirit in her drowned eyes ; "we learnt to ride and speak French and German, and paint and — and — " " My dear, Fraulein Hertz says your German is execrable." fortune's lingers. 3 Those words cut Guen to the heart. How many a time during this past summer had she heard Mrs. Dawtry saying in a stage whisper, that " Miss Williams was so clever. Can speak two languages like a native, and paint !

Guen, dear, may Dolly run across to the Hall and fetch those pretty sketches you did the other day ? I want to show them to Mrs. Blank." She began to sob again. " I know it is bad," she said, " but you have often praised it." A brighter tinge of colour came to Mrs. Dawtry's weather-beaten cheeks. " Well, well, my dear, I did not know until Fraulein Hertz told me. But now, Guen, I want to hear what you think of doing ? What does your lawyer advise ? " " He has found out relations of my mother's, a Mr. Soleston. He wrote to him, and Mr. Soleston has asked me to live with them for a time. He says that if I please him he will give me a home." " You are a lucky girl," said Mrs. Dawtry solemnly ; " do you know this Mr. Soleston ? " " No ; he lives in the north, and I don't want to go away from here.

Is there no fortune's jffngers. 4 way I could manage to live in the village — in a cottage — " " Certainly not," said the vicar's wife. " I call it a most providential thing your having this offer of a home. The vicar shall write to your lawyer and learn full particulars of this Mr. Soleston. Yours is quite one of the saddest cases I ever knew. I wish we could do something for you ; but now that tithes are nothing, and Dolly growing up, and the boys at expensive schools, we hardly know which way to turn sometimes. I must really go. Good-bye, my dear child. I suppose you will leave before the sale ? " " As soon as that ! " said Guen. " Oh! not so soon as that ! " " What can you do ? You cannot stay in a house without furniture. We have friends coming, or I would have invited you to the Vicarage for a time."

" I wish I had asked her to show me her bedroom furniture ; it will just do for Dolly's room, and it was new in July. But there ! poor child, she might have thought it unkind," thought the vicar's wife, walking down the drive. fortune's jfingers. 5 Guendolen, left alone, moved about the room, tenderly touching the ornaments. She looked from each window on the pleasant park, and the familiarity and the beauty of it filled her heart. The month was October. The trees were patched with yellows and reds, their trunks gleamed orange in the setting sun. Leaves lay on the grass, or danced and whirled in the rising evening breeze. How her father would grumble if the gardeners did not keep the turf like velvet, if leaves were left lying ! Her father had been in his grave a fortnight, and the gardeners had been gone a week.

Three months ago she had left school and come home to take her place as mistress of the Hall, a petted only child. There had been a summer of picnics, of tennis parties, of impromptu dances, and Guen reigning the queen of the hour. Then had come the crash. Mr. Williams' money went in a great bank failure, and he, always somewhat of an invalid, did not survive the shock of the sudden news. Guen could see him carelessly opening the fatal letter at the breakfast-table ; there had been a gasp and a fall, and she was father less. When everything was paid there might be a few hundreds left for his daughter — or there might not. His wife had been an only child ; he was an only child; no near relations were on either side. He had lived at Asham Hall twelve years, and had made no intimate friends. For a few days after his death Guen seemed to have no relation in the world.

Then a Mr. Soleston had been discovered, a cousin of her mother. He was informed of Guen's position ; his answer was to ask her to pay a long visit to Stone Hall, his home in the north. The letter was curt, still it was the offer of a home, and could not be refused. Guen was too miserable to care very much what happened to her. To stay in Asham near her father's grave was her only wish, and as that was denied her she was indifferent whether it was a Mr. Soleston or anyone else to whom she went. " Really, she seems to have become quite idiotic," said Mrs. Dawtry to her husband ; "when I told her that your inquiries had been most satisfactory, most, and that she must be a daughter to Mrs. Soleston, she only stared, and when I said she should be thankful to have such relations, she said she did not care."

" Poor child ! " said the vicar, who had come upon her in the churchyard with her face pressed against the brown earth over her father's grave. ''Of course I am sorry for her," said his wife hastily, " but really she ought to learn to control her grief. She sobbed the whole time I was in her room looking over the things I should like to buy for Dolly, and really she should be glad that friends may have her things, and not strangers. She ought to be thankful to be going to these Solestons, rich people. Dolly must write to her, and keep up the acquaintance. What luck some have ! Still, I suppose Lancashire is a smoky county, not like this. There is no place after all like Devonshire ! " Guen left Asham two days before the sale. The furniture was ticketed with the auctioneer's numbers : the dining-room table was Lot 9, the ornaments on the mantelpiece Lot 20 ; a number stared at her from fortune's fingers. her father's writing-table.

Dolly Dawtry came to say good - bye, and to fetch the dog Guen had given her. Bob the terrier could not understand why his mistress sent him away from his home. He looked back and tugged at his chain, wagging his droop ing stump of a tail. Guen, tearless, watched them down the drive, Dolly's sturdy figure pulling the unwilling dog. " It is time we started," said the vicar, who was waiting to take Guen to the station. They got into the cab. The old coach man who had taught her riding came to the window. " Squire Walters is going to bid for your mare, miss, and she'll have a comfortable home there." Guen shook hands with him, and muttered something. The cab began to move, jerk ing and rumbling down the drive. The early October morning was cold, and a thick white mist lay upon the hills and distant trees ; the sky overhead was clearly lightly blue, and the leaves left upon the Virginian creeper, climbing the face of the lodge, were scarlet and gold.

Guen saw everything — the withered leaves rustling over the grass of the park, the blue distance between the trunks of trees, the smoke curling upwards from a cottage in the dell. At the churchyard gate the cab was stopped, and she went to lay the flowers she held upon her father's grave. A little farther down the village street stood the schoolhouse, and the children on their way to school came round the cab and stared. The vicar looked away when Guen returned. She did not see the curtseying children or the women at their cottage doors. "Poor child! poor child!" muttered the vicar. The nearest station was six miles from Asham. To Mr. Dawtry that morning it seemed like twenty, to Guen but one. He tried to say something of her future life, to tell her she was lucky to have relations like these Solestons, but the words died in his throat.

" Mind you write to us and tell us every thing. Next summer you must pay us a long visit," he said at the last when she was in a first-class carriage, and he had provided fortune's fingers. her with papers and magazines. The awkward last moments before the train starts were come. The vicar fidgeted from one foot to another, glanced from engine to luggage van, and then up at Guen. "You will be off in a moment," he said. His lips lost their conventional smile, his eyes meeting hers ; he shuffled his feet un easily. "Don't forget us," he said, "and remember we shall expect you next summer." The train moved from the platform. Guen leant out of the window, her eyes fixed on the shabby familiar figure. He was buying a paper ; he would take it back to Asham and read it in his study. How many a time, when she had gone to the Vicarage for Dolly, she had wickedly tapped at the study window to see the vicar start.

Mrs. Dawtry would be in her morning apron, key-basket in hand. She began to sob piteously. The illustrated papers lay scattered upon the carriage seats, and Guen crouched in the corner, her face against the cushions. The train rushed on ; for three stoppages no one entered her carriage. At the fourth there was a sudden opening of the do^r, a bang of luggage upon the floor, and the set tling down of a passenger who has only just caught the train. Guen did not know, and did not care, whether the person was a man or a woman. Her sobs were quiet from exhaustion, and she was shrunk together at the farther end of the carriage. " Excuse me," said a man's voice, " are you ill?" She tried to sit up and answer. Her hat was fallen from her head, her dark - brown hair was ruffled with rubbing against the cushions.

" Good Lord ! " said the man to himself, " the child is going to faint." But Guen had no intention of so distinguish ing: herself. She was faint with want of food (she had not been able to eat for days), and her sobbing had exhausted her, but she was quite conscious. "I am not ill," she muttered. Her cheeks were puffed and stained with tears ; her red swollen eyelids, and the black half circles beneath, were not to be recognised i2 fortune's fingers. as belonging to the real Guendolen. Her colourless lips were slightly parted, showing a glint of white teeth. She picked up her hat and tried to put it on with trembling fingers ; the pin slipped and fell down upon the floor. Her blinded eyes could not see, and she groped along the dusty bit of carpeting, catching her breath in a strangled sob.

" Here it is," said the man. He pushed the pin into her shaking hand. " Thank you," she tried to say, but the words were lost in a fresh burst of sobs. She crouched into her corner again, her face against the cushions. The man turned his head and looked out of his window, frowning as the sound of sobs came every now and again to his ears above the rattle of the train. He looked at his watch ; this was an express, and would not stop for twenty minutes. In future he would be a good five minutes at stations before his train was due, and be able to choose his carriage. How the girl sobbed ! He bit his thick underlip and looked round uneasily. At the next stopping-place he would get into a smoking compartment, but there were some minutes before that. The girl must be queer to cry so before a stranger.

Scarcely more than a child though, by Jove! her people had no business to let her travel alone in such grief. Poor little beggar ! lost her mother, perhaps. He looked at her again with softened face. " You will make yourself ill if you cry so much," he said, moving to the seat opposite her. She was too young and crumpled and grief stricken for him to be ceremonious, or, indeed, to treat her as anything but a child. " Come, stop crying," he said, authority and crossness mingled in his tone. He was not in the habit of playing the good Samaritan, and Guendolen might have cried herself sick and he would not have cared had her sobs been unheard. " That is right," he said, when she did as she was told, sitting up and wiping her swollen face. " Now, look at these papers, and try to keep your thoughts from your grief."

He thrust some of the illustrated papers into her hands, and went back to his place. Guen was roused into a consciousness of her position. She swallowed down her sobs, sat upright, and turned over the pictures. Her eyes stared down at the sheets, but she never knew what those particular papers contained. He looked at her from behind his Times, and was relieved to see her sit stiffly upright, and every now and then turn a page. How miserable she looked ! It made him posi tively uncomfortable. The train slowed down, and came to a stop. He picked up his portmanteau, and opening the door, stepped out upon the platform. As he closed it again, he could not help glancing at the wretched girl. She was looking vaguely over his head at the station walls. He was irritated with her. If people were in grief, they had no right to inflict it upon their fellow-beings.

Yet, in a moment he was back again at the carriage door, followed by a waiter with a tray. " I have brought you a cup of tea and some sandwiches," he said. She looked into his dark face with dazed eyes. " I don't want it," she said, with a little shudder at the sight of food. " I am sure it will do you good, or would you rather have wine ? " "Oh! no." She took the cup and sipped a little of the mixture. " You can leave the plate and cup at the next station." He raised his hat and turned away, glad to have seen the last of that swollen piteous face. " I don't suppose she will touch the sand wiches," he said to himself as he settled down to smoke.

Chapter II

How Guendolen reached Braeburn, the station for Stone Hall, she never knew. There was a faint consciousness in her mind of being pulled by porters from one train to another, of crowded platforms and bustling people, but where she changed, and the names of the stations, she did not know. Somehow she reached Braeburn safe and sound. The tea had done her good, and she had not again given way to uncontrolled grief; she had even forced herself to attack one of the sandwiches. She looked out with a shudder on the desolateness of the black country, and began to faintly wonder what the Solestons and Stone Hall would be like. It was dark when she stepped upon the platform of Brae burn station. Many passengers had come by this train, and she was pushed roughly to and fro. A porter came at last to her, and she told him the number of her boxes, and asked whether there was anyone from Stone Hall.

Braeburn was the centre of a large manu facturing district, and the porter knew nothing of Stone Hall or the name Soleston. The air was raw, and smelt of smoke and grit. She shivered, and looked helplessly about the station with its garish gas-lamps and blackened advertisement-covered walls. The luggage was collected and wheeled under bridges and down covered ways until the street was reached, Guen walking breath- £_> lessly by the porter's side. One carriage still waited. The coachman gruffly said that he was from Stone Hall to meet a young lady. He grumbled loudly at the heap of luggage. Guen was driven through mean dark streets, the horse's hoofs sounding loudly on the granite sets, the carriage wheels occasion ally sliding on a slippery hill. On and on, past lighted streets into darkness, then the houses would begin again, a sudden jolt of the brougham as it crossed a tram line, a flaring public-house, then darkness again, and B away on a hill the flare of some huge fur nace.

" What a horrible, horrible place," said Guen. They were stopping ; a gate was flung open, and the crunch of gravel told her the carriage was in the drive. She shivered with cold and nervousness. What would these people be like ? Would they be kind ? Would they be cruel ? Not that it mattered very much. She could never again be happy, with the earth pressing down upon her father in Asham churchyard. The carriage came to a stop. She stepped from it, and climbed the great stone steps which led to the hall door. No glimpse of light, no welcome shone upon her from the front of the large, many-windowed house. "You must pull the bell hard, miss," said the coachman from the box. Then he drove away, and Guen was left in the darkness, tugging at the heavy iron bell-pull. When she had almost given up hope of making anyone hear, a solemn toll echoed through the silence like a passing bell.

The door was opened by a manservant, her name asked, and she was shown into the darkness of an outer hall. But she could hear voices, and see lights beyond, while she waited the servant's return. " Miss Williams, show her in," said loudly one of the voices ; "a sort of cousin of mine, Owens. Left without a penny. I suppose I shall have to feed and clothe her." Guendolen heard, and shivered with angry shame. She was in the large inner hall, and the elder of the two men, standing before a blaz ing fire, was looking her up and down. He held out his hand to the shrinking girl after a minute's pause, a minute which seemed an hour to Guen. " How de do ? " The two fingers he had given her fell limply again to his side. " Brought any luggage ? Has it been taken to her room, Johnson ? No ! Then see those fools of servants don't take the paint off the walls carrying the boxes upstairs.

I suppose you have a dozen trunks ; women always have." Guen still stood before him ; he had not thought of offering her a chair. "Won't you sit down?" said a pleasant young voice. She turned, and her eyes met those of a young man. Ted Owens was young, good - looking, healthy, and blest with enough of this world's goods. His luck and easy temper were pro verbial ; he had never known a sorrow worse than the loss of a favourite horse or dog ; his friends were many, and not all were fair weather friends ; nor had good fortune spoilt him. He was simple, unassuming, and un selfish ; he was contented, and trifles did not vex his soul. His happy grey eyes met Guen's dazed, reddened ones. " Have you had a long journey ? From Devonshire ! You must be tired and famished. What time did you leave? Nine o'clock!

I say, you must be worn out. Here, lie back in this chair." Tears welled up in Guen's eyes at the first touch of kindness with which she had met since her arrival at Braeburn. He said a few words to Mr. Soleston, and that gentleman nodded his head, and turned to the exhausted girl. " Go upstairs, and one of the maids will meet you on the landing, and show you your room. There is some dinner for you in the dining-room. Be quick ! I cannot have the meals kept about until midnight." Guen hurried upstairs, with the rough words sounding in her ears. What a dreadful man ! She shuddered while she followed a cross looking maid down what seemed an endless passage. " This is your room, miss," said the woman. The candle she held aloft showed a small, scantily-furnished closet ; it was scarcely more. No blind or curtain hid the window.

A strip of carpet beside the small camp bedstead was the only covering on the floor. What furniture there was might have been rejected by the servants. "Hi sye, this in't the lidy's room," said a loud voice with a cockney accent. " It's the men with your luggage," said the maid. There was a knock at the door, and one of Guen's trunks was borne in by the coachman and a younger man, with sharp small features and sallow face. "There in't no room for all these bawxes in ere," he said, rubbing his head. " Wy cawn't the young lidy have one of they large rooms ? " " Master's orders," said the maid sharply. "Ask 'im to change you, miss," said the man. " 'Tis a long way from everyone, and — " "Shut up, Bill," interrupted the maid. " Master 'ull go his own way without advice from you." Bill and the coachman tramped off down the long corridor to bring up the remainder of the boxes.

It was true what the man had said, all would not go into the small room. They were piled up against the wall in the passage. " The young lidy ought ter 'ave a larger room," said Bill every time he thumped down a trunk. The maidservant did not offer to unpack or help Guen in any way. She put down the candle upon the dressing-table, and stumped heavily away down the passage. Guen was alone. She sat upon the low bed, and looked around in despair ; then, remembering the order given her by Mr. Soleston to be quick, she knelt down by her trunks and began to unfasten the one she wanted. The straps hurt her fingers, and a sudden spasm of sobs shook her at the memory of when that trunk had last been unpacked. Then she had looked on while her maid had rummaged for what she wanted. There had been impatient exclamations of " What a time you are, Jane.

Anything will do. There is father calling me. Give me that," and a snatching from the maid of the hat she had picked out, and a rush downstairs to the garden, where her father waited. Then she had been surrounded with all the evidences of love. The room had been newly furnished to celebrate the return from school of the mistress of the house ; the sun shone in at the open windows ; the month was July. Now it was October, and she was hundreds of miles away from Asham. " Father ! father ! " she moaned, her head against the lid of the trunk. There was no time for moaning. She dashed the tears from her eyes and hurried her toilette. No one was sent to fetch her. She lifted the candlestick and walked into the passage. What a length it was ! And how gloomy ! On either side were doors, opening apparently into uninhabited rooms.

From the silence she thought them empty, until she came to the last. A ray of light filtered under the door, and within someone moved to and fro. Guen was glad that the passage had other occupants besides herself. The heavy green baize door, which divided it from the rest of the house, made her realise the loneli ness of her bedroom. She was not nervous or fanciful, but she had not liked the thought of sleeping in a room so far from others. Mr. Soleston and Mr. Owens were smoking before the hall fire. She heard Mr. Soleston's voice, harsh, overbearing, all the way down the stairs. He did not trouble to remove his cigar from his mouth when she came into the hall. "Your dinner is in there," he said, with a throwing back of his head to indicate a door behind him. Mr. Owens had risen to his feet when she appeared.

" Mind you make a good meal," he said, the pleasant smile which made him liked by all men shining out upon his face. Her lips curved a little uncertainly in answer to that smile. The dining-room was large, far larger than any room at Asham Hall, and the furniture was rich and in good taste. The lights had been turned out, save the one over the end of the table where her place was laid. That was lowered to the merest point. Johnson, the butler, pushed the dishes before her with a rough manner, impatient to have her end her meal and set him free. She was not long. The gloomy room, the surly-mannered servant, took away all desire to eat ; the few morsels she forced down her throat nearly choked her. It was ended, and she went back to the hall. " You have been a short time," said Mr. Owens, giving her a chair.

Her heart was warmed by the kind voice and warm manner. When he rose to his feet and said that he must be going, she felt that she was losing the one friend in that mourn ful house. " Mary said something about coming over to see you to-morrow," he said to Mr. Soleston. " I shall be in all the afternoon." "Very well, I will drive her over. Good bye, Miss Williams. You will sleep well after your journey."

Chapter III

" Shall I see Mrs. Soleston to - night ? " asked Guen timidly, when Mr. Owens was gone. " Certainly. But before you go upstairs we had better have a little talk, a business talk." Mr. Soleston warmed his coat-tails at the fire, and looked down upon Guen with an expression in his face which sent her heart beating like a sledge hammer. "You are left penniless, I hear from your solicitors ; ab solutely penniless." " They said there might be five hundred pounds." " Which would give somewhere about fifteen pounds a year ; you could not live on that. Therefore, practically, you are penniless and dependent upon my chaiity. In fact, you are a pauper." Guen's lips trembled, and she stared fascinated up at the watery blue eyes which watched her distress. "A pauper, a penniless pauper. Your father must have been a fool to invest his money in such a rotten concern as the Bundelcore Bank."

" My father is dead, and — " Of course he is dead or you would not be here. Perhaps you do not know that Mrs. Soleston is an invalid ? " He frowned as though the thought of Mrs. Soleston was not pleasant. "She is a great invalid," he went on with out waiting for an answer ; " she has not come downstairs for years. She wants brightening up, and the doctor says that a young person about her might do her good. How old are you r " Nearly eighteen." " You look younger. In return for my kindness in having you here I shall expect you to do some waiting upon Mrs. Soleston. There are no idle persons in this house, and I intend to have none. Do you under stand ? " " Yes." " I am a punctual man. Breakfast at eight, lunch at one, and dinner at seven, are the hours of meals." "What is it, Smithers?" The man known as Bill was waiting to speak.

" Please, sir, the young lidy's bawxes. The room in't nearly large enough to 'old 'em ; t'int much more than a cupboard, sir." " What have you got to do with the size of Miss Williams' room ? If I choose she shall sleep in a cupboard." " Yuss, sir, of course, sir ; but they bawxes sir, is rubbing all the paint off the walls." " Oh ! that is a different matter. The boxes must be taken to the lumber-room," and he turned to Guen. " I will send for a second hand dealer from Braeburn and you can sell him the contents of these trunks. A couple of black dresses is all you need." "Oh! no, no," cried Guen, "there are little things of my own, that father gave me, that they said I might take with me from Asham. I could not sell them." " You will do what I order," thundered Mr. Soleston, and Guen shrank back in her chair as he stepped towards her.