A docile and obedient husband was Sergeant Larkins, who, through all the years of his married life, had accepted his wife’s will as law. Mrs. Larkins was a buxom, bright-eyed dame, who made a man’s home comfortable for him, so long as he allowed her to rule.
‘You’re right. It’s a folly always to talk, leastways when you’ve nothing to talk about, and the freaks of a mad woman don’t amount to much. We shan’t hear no more about her.’
Nor did they for days, nay, weeks, but months, and the episode was fading from their memories, at least from that of the Sergeant, when the lady suddenly re-appeared unattended and alone.
She looked suspiciously about her as she entered the room.
‘I could not come before. I have been watched. Even now I fear they are on my track. Quick! Where is the boy?’
Hercules Albert was where he and his brothers generally were—in mischief.
‘I must see him; my heart yearns for him. And to think that I should find him thus! How inscrutable are the ways of Providence! My sweet, my pet, it is balm to my wounded heart!’ And she kissed and fondled the boy, regardless of the mud with which his dirty face was encrusted, and of his own evident perturbation and objection to these endearments.
‘But I must not waste time. I may be disturbed before I have said my say. Listen: you will let me have the child? You shall name your own price. I will ask no questions. Keep your own counsel. You shall not divulge your secrets.’
‘There ain’t no secrets to divulge,’ said the Sergeant stoutly. ‘And you shan’t buy a brat of mine, as though he were a full-blooded Congo on the West coast.’
‘Wait, Larkins—let’s see what the lady means,’ the practical wife interposed. Mrs. Larkins was quite quiet and self-possessed, as she looked her strange visitor full in the face. ‘Perhaps she will explain. Do you wish to adopt the child?’
‘I do—and more. I wish to educate him to be worthy of his birth, and of that position which he must some day come to, in spite of all. He shall have all my love while I live, all my possessions after death. They are his by right, indefeasible. Has he not Herbert’s eyes? Is he not my—?’
‘Say no more, Madam,’ Mrs. Larkins interrupted her. ‘If you are in sober, serious earnest, if you mean what you say—’
‘Surely you would not part with the child, not like this?’
‘We have seven, Jonadab, and it is a fine chance for one. If you are in earnest, Madam—’
‘Will this prove to you that I am in earnest?’ said the lady, taking from her purse a roll of bank notes. ‘Here are fifty pounds. Spend it in outfit; get him proper clothes, books, boxes, all that a boy wants when he is going to a school. Within a fortnight you shall hear from me through a lawyer. I will send full instructions, and a confidential messenger, who shall take Herbert—Herbert he must be called, not Hercules—Herbert Farrington.’
‘Is that your own name?’ asked Mrs. Larkins, rather hurriedly.
‘Certainly, I am Lady Farrington. You have then heard the name before? You know me? Say you know me, that you knew Herbert. Confess that Herbert was—’
‘My lady, you are mistaken; I never knew any Herbert Farrington—never in all my life!’
Lady Farrington shook her head sadly.
‘If you know, and will not speak, you may do the child irreparable harm. No matter. It is sufficient for the present that he is mine; that he passes into my keeping; that I am free to lavish upon him the whole of my pent-up yearning affection. The rest will come—all in good time. Heaven bless you, Herbert, and prosper you, and bring you some day to your own.’
She kissed the bewildered boy repeatedly, shook hands with his father and mother, and then left the place.
‘I don’t like it, I don’t; blowed if I do,’ said the Sergeant. ‘It ain’t fair on the youngster, it ain’t—to give him over to that crack-brained old idiot! Why, you may tell she is mad by her talk and her ways. Maybe she’ll fatten him up and eat him; or perhaps she’ll turn him into a Papist or a Frenchman. He shan’t go.’
‘You’re a fool, Larkins! But it’s more my business than it is yours after all. And where’s the harm? Doesn’t she promise fair enough, and ain’t these notes a pretty certain proof that she is all above board? We won’t lose sight of the boy—not altogether. We’ll stipulate that we are to see him sometimes, and then he can’t go far wrong. But you hold your tongue, that’s what you’ve got to do. None of your blabbing or gossipping about. If they ask you what’s become of Herkles, why say he’s got into the Duke of York’s school, and won’t be back for ever so long.’
‘I wish he had. I could see my way then. But I can’t now, and it beats me how you can take it all so coolly.’
The honest Sergeant was chiefly concerned as to the little chap’s future prospects. But although he was not a man of keen intelligence or of suspicious nature, he was also a little exercised as to the strangeness of the whole affair. He might explain the lady’s conduct by calling it eccentricity or madness, but he could not quite understand the part his wife had played.
He would have been still more perplexed had he returned unexpectedly from the canteen that evening after all the children were in bed. He would have found his wife engrossed with the treasures of a little box which she had emptied on her lap. A few gilt buttons, a lock of fair hair, a bow of ribbon—that was all.
Yet she wept bitterly as she kissed them again and again, and restored them one by one to the sacred box reverentially, as though each was a relic in her eyes.
CHAPTER II.
THE FARRINGTON FAMILY.
Farrington Court was the dower-house of the Farrington family, where dowagers and heirs apparent resided, according as it might happen to suit. The Lady Farrington mentioned in the last chapter had occupied it for years—ever since the death of her husband and her sons, when the bulk of the property, with the title, had passed to Rupert Farrington, the late baronet’s nephew. Sir Rupert lived now at Farrington Hall, with his wife and one son of his own.
Old Lady Farrington, in her losses and her loneliness, was a woman much to be pitied. She had seen her children die, all of them but one. He also was dead, but miserably, and at a distance probably from home. Her husband she had mourned last of all, at a time when she had most needed strength and support. The new baronet did not treat her well. She was no doubt fortified by ample settlements. Farrington Court was hers also, by right inalienable, during her lifetime. Yet Sir Rupert had had it in his power to put her to infinite pain, and wittingly or unwittingly had not spared her in the least. The ejectment from the Hall—her once happy home, the scene of her married life, where all her children had been born, and where all were buried, save one—had been carried out with an almost brutal abruptness, which cut the poor afflicted soul to the quick. Sir Rupert had driven hard bargains with her also in taking over the house and the estate; had insisted upon the uttermost farthing, had denied her many possessions, small and great, which she valued as reminding her of the past, but which were his, according to the strict letter of the law. His unkindness pursued her even to the house which she might still call her own. But hers was only a life-interest, after all; and, as Farrington Court must in due course lapse back to the family, Sir Rupert felt bound, he said, for his own and his son’s sake, to see that the place came to no harm. His interference and inquisitiveness were, in consequence, constant and vexatious. He insisted upon inspecting the house regularly; he must satisfy himself that the repairs were duly executed, that the gardens and glass houses were properly