The Guinea Stamp.

by Annie S. Swan.

CHAPTER I.

FATHERLESS.

It was an artist's studio, a poor, shabby little place, with a latticed window facing the north. There was nothing in the furnishing or arrangement of the room to suggest successful work, or even artistic taste. A few tarnished gold frames leaned against the gaudily-papered wall, and the only picture stood on the dilapidated easel in the middle of the floor, a small canvas of a woman's head, a gentle Madonna face, with large supplicating eyes, and a sensitive, sad mouth, which seemed to mourn over the desolation of the place. The palette and a few worn brushes were scattered on the floor, where the artist had laid them down for ever. There was one living creature in the room, a young girl, not more than sixteen, sitting on a stool by the open window, looking out listlessly on the stretch of dreary fenland, shrouded in the cold and heavy mist. It was a day on which the scenery of the fen country looked desolate, cheerless, and chill. These green meadows and flat stretches have need of the sunshine to warm them always. Sitting there in the soft grey light, Gladys Graham looked more of a woman than a child, though her gown did not reach her ankles, and her hair hung in a thick golden plait down her back. Her face was very careworn and very sad, her eyes red and dim with long weeping. There was not on the face of the earth a more desolate creature than the gentle, slender girl, the orphan of a day. At an age when life should be a joyous and lovely thing to the maiden child, Gladys Graham found herself face to face with its grimmest reality, certain of only one thing, that somewhere and somehow she must earn her bread. She was thinking of it at that moment, with her white brows perplexedly knitted, her mouth made stern by doubt and apprehension and despair; conning in her mind her few meagre accomplishments, asking herself how much they were likely to bring in the world's great mart. She could read and write and add a simple sum, finger the keys of the piano and the violin strings with a musicianly touch, draw a little, and dream a great deal. That was the sum total of her acquirements, and she knew very well that the value of such things was _nil_. What, then, must become of her? The question had become a problem, and she was very far away yet from its solution.

The house was a plain and primitive cottage in the narrow street of a little Lincolnshire village--a village which was a relic of the old days, before the drainage system was introduced, transforming the fens into a fertile garden, which seems to bloom and blossom summer and winter through. Its old houses reminded one of a Dutch picture, which the quaint bridges across the waterways served to enhance. There are many such in the fen country, dear to the artist's soul.

John Graham was not alone in his love for the wide reaches, level as the sea, across which every village spire could be seen for many a mile. Not very far away, in clear weather, the great tower of Boston, not ungraceful, stood out in awe-inspiring grandeur against the sky, and was pointed out with pride and pleasure by all who loved the fens and rejoiced in the revived prosperity of their ancient capital. For ten years John Graham had been painting pictures of these level and monotonous plains, and of the bits to be found at every village corner, but somehow, whether people had tired of them, or hesitated to give their money for an unknown artist's work, the fortune he had dreamed of never came. The most of the pictures found their way to the second-hand dealers, and were there sold often for the merest trifle. He had somehow missed his mark,--had proved himself a failure,--and the world has not much patience or sympathy with failures. A great calamity, such as a colossal bankruptcy, which proves the bankrupt to be more rogue than fool, arouses in it a touch of admiration, and even a curious kind of respect; but with the man out at elbows, who has striven vainly against fearful odds, though he may have kept his integrity throughout, it will have nothing to do; he will not be forgiven for having failed.

And now, when he lay dead, the victim of an ague contracted in his endeavour to catch a winter effect in a marshy hollow, there was n.o.body to mourn him but his motherless child. It was very pitiful, and surely in the wide world there must have been found some compa.s.sionate heart who would have taken the child by the hand and ministered unto her for Christ's sake. If any such there were, Gladys had never heard of them, and did not believe they lived. She was very old in knowledge of the world, that bitterest of all knowledge, which poverty had taught. She had even known what it was, that gentle child, to be hungry and have nothing to eat--a misery enhanced by the proud, sensitive spirit which was the only heritage John Graham had left the daughter for whom, most cheerfully, he would have laid down his life. The village people had been kind after their homely way; but they, working hard all day with their hands, and eating at eventide the substantial bread of their honest toil, were possessed of a great contempt for the worn and haggard man who tramped their meadow-ways with his sketch-books under his arm, his daughter always with him, preserving still the look and manners of the gently born, though they wore the shabbiest of shabby garments, and could scarcely pay for the simple food they ate. It was a great mystery to them, and they regarded the spectacle with the impatience of those who did not understand.

It was the month of November, and very early that grey day the chilly darkness fell. When she could no longer see across the narrow street, Gladys let her head fall on her hands, and so sat very still. She had eaten nothing for many hours, and though feeling faint and weak, it did not occur to her to seek something to strengthen her. She had something more important than such trifling matters to engross her thoughts. She was so sitting, hopeless, melancholy, half-dazed, when she heard the voice of an arrival down-stairs, and the unaccustomed tones of a man's voice mingling with the shriller notes of Miss Peck, their little landlady. It was not the curate's voice, with which Gladys had grown quite familiar during her father's illness. He had been very kind; and in his desperation, when his end approached, Graham had implored him to look after Gladys. It was a curious charge to lay upon a young man's shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it cheerfully, and had even written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire village, asking her advice about the girl. Gladys was disturbed in her solitude by Miss Peck, who came to the door in rather an excited and officious manner. She was a little, wiry spinster, past middle life, eccentric, but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great deal of gratuitous and genuine kindness on her lodgers, though knowing very well that she would not likely get any return but grat.i.tude for it; but times were hard with her likewise, and she could not help thinking regretfully at times of the money, only her due, which she would not likely touch now that the poor artist was gone. She had a little lamp in her hand, and she held it up so that the light fell full on the child's pale face.

'Miss Gladys, my dear, it is a gentleman for you. He says he is your uncle,' she said, and her thin voice quite trembled with her great excitement.

'My uncle?' repeated Gladys wistfully. 'Oh yes; it will be Uncle Abel from Scotland. Mr. Courtney said he had written to him.'

She rose from her stool and turned to follow Miss Peck down-stairs.

'In the sitting-room, my dear, he waits for you,' said Miss Peck, and a look of extreme pity softened her pinched features into tenderness. 'I hope--I hope, my dear, he will be good to you.' She did not add what she thought, that the chances were against it; and, still holding the lamp aloft, she guided Gladys down-stairs. There was no hesitation, but neither was there elation or pleasant antic.i.p.ation in the girl's manner as she entered the room. She had ceased to expect anything good or bright to come to her any more, and perhaps it was as well just then that her outlook in life was so gloomy; it lessened the certainty of disappointment. A little lamp also burned on the round table in the middle of the narrow sitting-room, and the fire feebly blinked behind Miss Peck's carefully-polished bars, as if impressed by the subdued atmosphere without and within. Close by the table stood a very little man, enveloped in a long loosely-fitting overcoat, his hat in one hand and a large damp umbrella in the other. He had an abnormally large head, and a soft, flabby, uninteresting face, which, however, was redeemed from vacancy by the gleam and glitter of his remarkably keen and piercing black eyes. His hair was grey, and a straggling beard, grey also, adorned his heavy chin. Gladys was conscious of a strong sense of repulsion as she looked at him, but she tried not to show it, and feebly smiled as she extended her hand.

'Are you Uncle Abel, papa's brother?' she asked--a perfectly unnecessary question, of course, but it fell from her involuntarily, the contrast was so great; almost she could have called him an impostor on the spot.

'Yes,' said Uncle Abel in a harsh undertone; 'and you, I suppose, are my niece?'

'Yes. Can I take your overcoat or your umbrella?' asked Gladys; 'and would you like some tea? I can ask Miss Peck to get it. I have not had any myself--now I come to think of it.'

'I'll take off my coat. Yes, you can take it away, but don't order tea yet. We had better talk first--talking always makes one hungry; then we can have tea, and we won't require any supper. These are the economics poor people have to study. I guess you are no stranger to them?'

Gladys again faintly smiled. She was not in the least surprised. Poverty had long been her companion, she expected nothing but to have it for her companion still. She took her uncle's hat and overcoat, hung them in the little hall, and returned to the room, closing the door.

'Perhaps you are cold, uncle?' she said, and, grasping the poker, was about to stir up the fire, when he hastily took it from her, with an expression of positive pain on his face.

'Don't; it is quite warm. We can't afford to be extravagant; and I daresay,' he added, with a backward jerk of his thumb towards the door, 'like the rest of her tribe, she'll know how to charge. Sit down there, and let us talk.'

Gladys sat down, feeling a trifle hurt and abashed. They had always been very poor, she and her father, but they had never obtruded it on their own notice, but had tried cheerfully always to accept what they had with a thankful heart. But Love dwelt with them always, and she can make divine her humblest fare.

Mr. Abel Graham fumbled in the inner pocket of his very shabby coat, and at last brought out a square envelope, from which he took the curate's letter.

'I have come,' he said quite slowly, 'in answer to this. I suppose you knew it had been written?'

'If it is Mr. Courtney's letter, yes,' answered Gladys, unconsciously adopting her uncle's business-like tone and manner. 'Of course he told me he had written.'

'And you expected me to come, of course?'

'I don't think I thought about it much,' Gladys answered, with frankness. 'It is very good of you to come so soon.'

'I came because it was my duty. Not many people do their duty in this world, but though I'm a very poor man, I won't shirk it--no, I won't shirk it.' He rubbed his hands together slowly, and nodded across the hearth to his niece. Instead of being pleased, as she ought to have been, with this announcement, she gave a quick little shiver. 'My brother John--your father, I mean--and I have not met for a good number of years, not since we had the misfortune to disagree about a trifle,'

continued the old man, keeping his eyes fixed on the girl's face till she found herself made nervous by them. 'Time has proved that I was right, quite right; but my brother John was always, if you will excuse me saying it, rather pigheaded, and'--

'Don't let us speak about him if you do not feel kindly to him!' cried the girl, her great eyes flashing, her slender frame trembling with indignation. 'I will not listen, I will go away and leave you, Uncle Abel, if you speak harshly of papa.'

'So'--Abel Graham slapped his knee as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper--a very firebrand.

My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice.

Let me advise you to control that fiery pa.s.sion. Temper doesn't pay--it is one of the things which nothing can ever make pay in this world.

Well, will you be so kind as to give me a little insight into the state of your affairs? A poor enough state they appear to be in, if this parson writes truly--only parsons are accustomed to draw the long bow, for the purpose of ferreting money out of people's pockets. Well, my dear, have you nothing to tell me?'

Gladys continued to look at him with dislike and distrust she made no attempt to disguise. If only he would not call her 'my dear.' She resented the familiarity. He had no right to presume on such a short acquaintance.

'I have nothing to tell you, I think,' she said very coldly, 'except that papa is dead, and I have to earn my own living.'

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER II.

WHAT TO DO WITH HER.

'Your own living? I am glad to hear you put it so sensibly. I must say I hardly expected it,' said the old man, with engaging frankness. 'Well, but tell me first what your name is. I don't know what to call you.'

'Gladys,' she answered; and her uncle received the information in evident disapproval.

'Gladys! Now, what on earth is the meaning of such a name? Your father and mother ought to be ashamed of themselves! Why can't people name their children so that people won't stare when they hear it? Jane, Susan, Margaret, Christina,--I'm sure there are hundreds of decent names they might have given you. I think a law should be pa.s.sed that no child shall be named until he is old enough to choose for himself. Mine is bad enough,--they might as well have christened me Cain when they were at it,--but Gladys, it beats all!'

'I have another name, Uncle Abel. I was baptized Gladys Mary.'

'Ah, that's better. Well, I'll call you Mary; it's not so heathenish.

And tell me what you have thought of doing for yourself?'

'I have thought of it a great deal, but I have not been able to come to any decision,' answered Gladys. 'Both papa and Mr. Courtney thought I had better wait until you came.'

'Your father expected me to come, then?'

'Yes, to the last he hoped you would. He had something to say to you, he said. And the last morning, when his mind began to wander, he talked of you a great deal.'

These details Gladys gave in a dry, even voice, which betrayed a keen effort. She spoke almost as if she had set herself a task.

'I came as soon as I could. The parson wrote urgently, but I know how parsons draw the long bow, so I didn't hurry. Business must be attended to, whatever happens. You don't know what it was your father wished to say? He never asked you to write it, or anything?'

'No, but in his wandering he talked of money a great deal, and he seemed to think,' she added, with a slight hesitation, 'that you had taken some from him. Of course it was only his fancy. Sick people often think such things.'