The Bell in the Fog | Page 6

large
kitchen in which were several women. The old man, who looked

patriarchal enough to have laid the foundations of his dwelling, glanced
up and regarded the visitor without hospitality. His expression softened
as his eyes moved to the child.
"Who 'ave ye brought?" he asked. He removed his spectacles. "Ah!" He
rose, and offered the author a chair. At the same moment, the women
entered the room.
"Of course you've fallen in love with Blanche, sir," said one of them.
"Everybody does."
"Yes, that is it. Quite so." Confusion still prevailing among his faculties,
he clung to the naked truth. "This little girl has interested and startled
me because she bears a precise resemblance to one of the portraits in
Chillingsworth--painted about two hundred years ago. Such
extraordinary likenesses do not occur without reason, as a rule, and, as I
admired my portrait so deeply that I have written a story about it, you
will not think it unnatural if I am more than curious to discover the
reason for this resemblance. The little girl tells me that her ancestors
lived in this very house, and as my little girl lived next door, so to
speak, there undoubtedly is a natural reason for the resemblance."
His host closed the Bible, put his spectacles in his pocket, and hobbled
out of the house.
"He'll never talk of family secrets," said an elderly woman, who
introduced herself as the old man's daughter, and had placed bread and
milk before the guest. "There are secrets in every family, and we have
ours, but he'll never tell those old tales. All I can tell you is that an
ancestor of little Blanche went to wreck and ruin because of some fine
lady's doings, and killed himself. The story is that his boys turned out
bad. One of them saw his crime, and never got over the shock; he was
foolish like, after. The mother was a poor scared sort of creature, and
hadn't much influence over the other boy. There seemed to be a blight
on all the man's descendants, until one of them went to America. Since
then, they haven't prospered, exactly, but they've done better, and they
don't drink so heavy."

"They haven't done so well," remarked a worn patient-looking woman.
Orth typed her as belonging to the small middle-class of an interior
town of the eastern United States.
"You are not the child's mother?"
"Yes, sir. Everybody is surprised; you needn't apologize. She doesn't
look like any of us, although her brothers and sisters are good enough
for anybody to be proud of. But we all think she strayed in by mistake,
for she looks like any lady's child, and, of course, we're only
middle-class."
Orth gasped. It was the first time he had ever heard a native American
use the term middle-class with a personal application. For the moment,
he forgot the child. His analytical mind raked in the new specimen. He
questioned, and learned that the woman's husband had kept a hat store
in Rome, New York; that her boys were clerks, her girls in stores, or
type-writing. They kept her and little Blanche--who had come after her
other children were well grown--in comfort; and they were all very
happy together. The boys broke out, occasionally; but, on the whole,
were the best in the world, and her girls were worthy of far better than
they had. All were robust, except Blanche. "She coming so late, when I
was no longer young, makes her delicate," she remarked, with a slight
blush, the signal of her chaste Americanism; "but I guess she'll get
along all right. She couldn't have better care if she was a queen's child."
Orth, who had gratefully consumed the bread and milk, rose. "Is that
really all you can tell me?" he asked.
"That's all," replied the daughter of the house. "And you couldn't pry
open father's mouth."
Orth shook hands cordially with all of them, for he could be charming
when he chose. He offered to escort the little girl back to her playmates
in the wood, and she took prompt possession of his hand. As he was
leaving, he turned suddenly to Mrs. Root. "Why did you call her
Blanche?" he asked.

"She was so white and dainty, she just looked it."
Orth took the next train for London, and from Lord Teignmouth
obtained the address of the aunt who lived on the family traditions, and
a cordial note of introduction to her. He then spent an hour anticipating,
in a toy shop, the whims and pleasures of a child--an incident of
paternity which his book-children had not inspired. He bought the
finest doll, piano, French dishes, cooking apparatus, and playhouse in
the shop, and signed a check for thirty pounds with a sensation of
positive