Chapter VII
NEXT morning at breakfast I found a letter waiting me, in an unknown hand—an odd hand, not inelegant, but which somehow gave a kind of foreign look even to the honest English superscription. The address was odd, too. It was Miss Milla Mortimer, a very extraordinary sort of title for me, Millicent. That is the work of diminutives—they are apt to get misunderstood and metamorphosed into caricatures of names.
The letter inside was of a sufficiently odd description to correspond with the address; this is how it was expressed:—
“Madame,
“You will pardon me if I say Madame, when I perhaps should ought to say Mademoiselle. Madame will understand that the titles of honour, which differ in every country, do much of times puzzle a foreigner. Since I had the honour of making an encounter with Mademoiselle, I have more than once repeated my searches; and all in finding no one, it has come to me in the head to go to another place, where there may be better of prospects. I have, then, made the conclusion to go to Manchester, where I shall find, as they say, some countrymen, and will consult with their experience. There are much of places, they say, with Chester in the name. I go to make a little voyage among them. If I have the happiness to find the Contessa, I will take the liberty of making Madame aware of it. If it is to fail, I must submit. I shall return to Chester; and all in making my homage to Madame, will use the boldness of asking if anything of news respecting the Contessa may have come to her recollection. In all cases Madame will permit me to remember with gratitude her bounty to a stranger.
“Luigi S–.”
Sara and I were, as usual, alone at the breakfast-table, and to tell the truth, I prized this interval when Sarah’s eyes were not upon me, nor all the troublous matters conveyed in her looks present to my mind, as quite a holiday season,—when I could look as I liked, say what I pleased, and be afraid of nobody. Besides, though I was more and more uneasy about Sarah, I was not disturbed in my mind about this young man to the degree I had been, nor so entirely mystified about any possible connection between them. Since last evening, thinking it all over, it came to be deeply impressed upon my mind that there was no connection between them: that my poor sister knew nothing whatever about him or his Italian Countess. Simply that Sarah’s mind, poor dear soul, was giving way, and that catching sight of the strange face on the road, she had somehow identified and fixed upon it as the face of an unknown agent of trouble, the “somebody” who always injures, or persecutes, or haunts the tottering mind. It was but little comfort to me to conclude upon this, as you may suppose, but it seemed to explain everything. It cleared up a quite unintelligible mystery. Poor Sarah! poor soul! She who had known such a splendid morning, such an exciting noon, such a dull leaden afternoon of life,—and how dark the clouds were gathering round her towards the night!
But being thus eased in my mind about the young man, the kindness I had instinctively felt to him came strong upon me. I remembered the look he had, quite affectionately, the nice, handsome, smiling, young fellow! Who could it be that he was like? Somebody whom I remembered dimly through the old ages; and his voice, too? His voice made a thrill of strange wondering recollections run through me. Certainly that voice had once possessed some power or influence over my mind. I decided he would not find his Countess in Manchester. Fancy the ridiculous notion! A Countess in Manchester! No. She must belong about Cheshire, somewhere; and I must have known her in my youth.
So I read his note twice over, with a good deal of interest, and then naturally, as we had talked of him together so often, handed it to Sara. Now I did not in the least mean to watch Sara while she read it, but, having my eyes unconsciously upon her face at the moment, was startled, I acknowledge, by seeing her suddenly flush up, and cast a startled glance at me, as if the child expected that something more than usual was to be in the note. Who could tell what romantic fancies might be in her head? It is quite possible her imagination had been attracted by the stranger, and perhaps if she had heard that Mr. Luigi had fallen romantically in love with her, Sara would have been less surprised and much less shocked than I should. However, there was no such matter, but only a sensible, though, I must confess, rather odd and Frenchified note. After the first glance she read it over very calmly and carefully, then laid it down, with something that looked wonderfully like a little shade of pique, and cried out in her sharpest tone:
“Oh, godmamma, how sensible!—to be sure to be an Italian, and young, he must be a perfect miracle of a Luigi. Actually, because there are countrymen of his in Manchester—music teachers and Italian masters, of course—to give up an appointment with a lady, and at such a house as the Park! I think he must be quite the most sensible and pretty-behaved of young men.”
“I think he shows a great deal of sense,” said I, not altogether pleased with the child’s tone; “but if you will excuse me saying so, Sara, I think it is just a little vulgar of you to say ‘at such a house as the Park.’”
Sarah flushed up redder and redder. I quite thought we were to have a quarrel again.
“Oh, of course, godmamma, if I had been speaking of a—of an English gentleman; but you know,” said the wicked little creature, looking boldly in my face, “you set him down at once, whenever you heard of him, as an adventurer,—a count, you know,—one of the fellows that came sneaking into people’s houses and wanted to marry people’s daughters. I am only repeating what you said, godmamma. It was not I that said it. And now you perceive this good respectable young man does not attempt anything of the kind.”
“But then you see we, at the Park, have no daughters to marry,” said I, looking at her rather grimly.
“Oh, to be sure, that makes all the difference,” cried Sara, bursting open her own letters with a half-ashamed, annoyed laugh. I have no doubt she had said twice as much as she meant to say, the impatient little puss, and was ashamed of herself. She had set her heart on seeing Mr. Luigi, that was the plain truth of the matter. Seeing him at the Park, where of course papa could have nothing to say against the introduction, hearing all about his search after the unknown lady, exercising her wiles upon him, turning him into a useless creature like that poor boy Wilde, in Chester, who was good for nothing but to waylay her walks and go errands for her. That was what she wanted, the wicked little coquette. It was just as well Mr. Luigi had taken care of himself, and kept out of the way. I really thought it was right to read her a lecture on the occasion.
“Sara, you are quite disappointed the poor young man is not coming. You wanted to make a prey of him, you artful puss,” said I. “You thought, out here in the country, with nothing else to do, it would be good fun to make him fall in love with you—you know you did! And I think it is not at all a creditable thing, I assure you. How can you excuse yourself for all the damage you have done to that young Wilde?”
“Damage!” cried Sara. “If I am a puss, I may surely pounce upon a mouse that comes in my way,” she said spitefully; and then putting on her most innocent look;—“but, indeed, it is very shocking to have such suspicions of me, especially as I am a fright now, godmamma Sarah says.”
“It is just as well Mr. Luigi does not put himself in your way,” said I; “and it would be very wicked of you to do any harm to him, or attempt such a thing; and I say so particularly, because I think you are quite inclined to it, Sara, which is very wrong and very surprising. You are not such a beauty as your godmamma Sarah was, but you have just the same inclinations. It is something quite extraordinary to me.”
The little puss looked at me with her wicked eyes blazing, and her face flushed and angry. She looked quite beautiful in spite of her short little curls. I am not sure that she might not, when she grew older, be very near as great a beauty as her godmamma. She did not make any answer, but bit her lips, and set her little red mouth, and looked a very little sprite of mischief and saucy daring. She was not abashed by what I said to her. She was a thoughtless child, aware only of a strange mischievous power she had, and thinking no harm.
“For I know,” said I, half to myself, “that poor Mr. Luigi will come back. I feel as if I had known him half a lifetime ago. His voice is a voice I used to hear when I was young. I can’t tell whose voice it is, but I know it. He’ll come back here. He won’t find the lady in Manchester, or any other chester; he’ll find her in Cheshire, if he finds her at all.”
“Did godmamma Sarah say so?” cried Sara, suddenly losing her own self-consciousness in her interest in this bit of mystery.
“Child, do not be rash,” cried I, in some agitation. “Your godmamma knows nothing about her; it is all a mistake.”
“Did you ask her?” said Sara. “Godmamma, it is written in her face. When the rector was speaking, when you were speaking, even when I was speaking, it was quite evident she knew her abroad, and remembered who she was; but she will not tell. It is not a guess; I am perfectly sure of it. She knows all about her, and she will not tell.”
“It is quite a mistake, Sara,” cried I, trembling in spite of myself. “She has taken some fancy into her head about Mr. Luigi, some merely visionary notion that he has some bad intention, I cannot tell you what. But I am certain she knows nothing about this Countess. Child, don’t think you know better than anybody else! I have thought a great deal about it, and made up my mind. Your godmamma has grown fanciful, she has taken this into her head. Don’t be rash in speaking of your fancies; it might give her pain;—and your idea is all a mistake.”
“Will you ask her? or will you let me ask her?” cried Sara. “If she says ‘No,’ I shall be satisfied.”
“I will do no such thing,” said I. “She is my only sister, I will do nothing to molest or vex her; and, Sara, while I am here, neither shall you.”
Sara did not say anything for a few minutes. She allowed me to pick up my letter in silence, for we had finished breakfast. She let me gather up my papers and ring the bell, and make my way to the door. Then, as I stood there waiting for Ellis, she brushed past me rapidly. “Godmamma” said Sara, looking into my face for a moment, “all the same, she knows,” and had passed the next instant, and was gliding upstairs before I had recovered my composure. How pertinacious she was! Against my will this had an effect on me.
Chapter VIII
GREAT and many were my musings what steps I ought to take; or, indeed, whether I ought to take any steps in the strange dilemma I was in. I considered of it till my head ached. What if Sarah’s mind were possibly just at that delicate point when means of cure might be effectual? but how could I bring her to any means of cure? There have been many miserable stories told about false imputations of insanity and dreadful cruelties and injustice following, but I almost think there might be as many and as sad on the other side, about friends watching in agony, neither able nor willing to take any steps until it was too late, far too late, for any good. This was the situation I felt myself in; no matter whether I was right or wrong in my opinion, this was how I felt myself. I suppose nobody can think of madness appearing beside them in the person of their nearest companion, without a dreadful thrill and terror at their heart; but at the same time I felt that, however inevitable this might be, I must first come to it unmistakably. I must first see it, hear it, beyond all possibility of doubt, before I ventured to whisper it even to the secret ear of a physician.
All this floated through my mind with that dreadful faculty of jumping at conclusions that imagination always has. Did ever anybody meet with any great misfortune, which has been hanging some time over them, without going through it a thousand times before the blow really fell, and the dreadful repetition was done away with once and for ever? How many times over and over, sleeping and waking, does the death-bed watcher go through the parting that approaches before it really comes? Dying itself, I think,—one naturally thinks what kind of a process that is, as one comes near the appointed natural period of its coming,—dying itself must be rehearsed so often, that its coming at last is a real relief to the real actor. Not only does what is real go through a hundred performances in one’s imagination, but many a scene appals us that, thank heaven, we are never condemned to go through with. I could not see before me what was to happen, nor into Sarah’s mind to know what was astir there; but I tortured myself all the same, gathering all the proofs of this new dismal light thrown upon her, in my mind. All insane people make up a persecutor or pursuer for themselves. Poor Sarah had found hers in the strange face,—it was so unusual in our quiet roads to see a strange face!—which she met all at once and without warning, on the quiet road.
I recollected every incident, and everything confirmed my idea. She had taken a panic all at once,—she had driven five miles round to get out of his way; from that hour painful watchfulness and anxiety had come to her face. Carson was sent out to see that the road was clear, before, poor soul, she would venture out, though with the carriage blinds drawn down. Ah! I think if my only communication with the open air and the out-of-doors world was in the enclosure of that carriage with the blinds drawn down, I should certainly go mad, and quickly too! I had a long afternoon by myself in the library that day. I went back, as well as my memory would carry me, into the history of the Mortimers. Insanity was not in our family,—no trace of it. We had never been very clever, but we had been obstinately sane and sober-minded. My mother’s family too, the Stamfords, so far as I know, were all extremely steady people. It is odd when one individual of a family, and no more, shows a tendency to wander; at sixty, too, all of a sudden, with no possible reason. But who can search into the ways of Providence? It might perhaps never go any further; it might be the long silence of her life, and perhaps long brooding over such things as may have happened to her in the course of it. Something must have happened to Sarah; she was not like me. She had really lived her life, and had her own course in the world. She had known her own bitterness, too, no doubt, or she—she, the great beauty, the heiress,—would not have been Sarah Mortimer sitting voiceless by the fireside. She had been too silent, had too much leisure to go over her life. Her brain had rusted in the quietness; terrors had risen within her that took form and found an execution for themselves whenever, without any warning, she saw a strange face. This explained everything. I could see it quite clear with this interpretation; and without this nothing could explain it; for the young Italian looking for his friend, the lady whom nobody had ever heard of, could be nothing in the world to Sarah Mortimer.
Thinking over this, it naturally occurred to me that it would be important to let my poor sister know that this innocent young object of her fears had left the neighbourhood. It might, even, who knows? restore the balance to her poor mind. I got up from my chair the moment I thought of that, but did not go out of the library quite so quickly as you might have supposed, either. I was afraid of Sarah’s passions and reproaches; I always was. She had a way of representing everybody else as so unkind to her, poor dear soul, and of making out that she was neglected and of no consequence. Though I knew that this was not the case, I never could help feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps if I could only have put myself in her place, I might have felt the same; but it made me very timid of starting any subject before her that she did not like, even though it might be to relieve her mind.
I went slowly into the drawing-room. I thought most likely little Sara was dressing upstairs, and we two would have a little time to ourselves. When I went into the great room it was lying in the twilight, very dim and shadowy. The great mirror looked like another dimmer world added on to this one which was already so dim,—a world all full of glimpses and gliding figures, and brightened up by the gleams of the firelight which happened to be blazing very bright and cheerful. There were no curtains closed nor blinds down. Four great long windows, each let into the opposite wall a long strip of sky, the grass, and leafless trees, giving one a strange idea of the whole world outside, the world of winds, and hills, and rivers, and foreign unknown people. It was not light that came in at these windows; it was a sort of grey luminous darkness, that led our eyes up to the sky and blurred everything underneath. But in the centre of the room burned that ruddy centre of fire, a light which is quite by itself, and is not to be compared to anything else. Straight before me, as I stood at the door, was Sarah’s screen, shutting out as much light as it could, and of course concealing her entirely; but beyond, full in the ruddy light on the other side of the screen, with the red fire reddening all over her velvet jacket, her glossy hair, and the white round arms out of those long wide sleeves, sat little Sara Cresswell, on a footstool opposite her godmamma, and talking to her. I cannot say Sara was in a pretty attitude. Young ladies now-a-days are sadly careless in their ways. She was stooping quite double, with one of her hands thrust into her hair, and the fire scorching her complexion all to nothing; and one of the long, uncovered windows, with the blind drawn up to the very top, you may be sure by Sara’s own wilful hands, was letting in the sky light over her, like a very tall spirit with pale blue eyes, so chilly, and clear, and pale, that it looked the oddest contrast possible to the firelight and the little velvet kitten then in front of it, all scorched and reddened over, as you could fancy; velvet takes on that surface tint wonderfully. I could see nothing of Sarah in the shelter of her screen; but there sat the little puss in velvet, straight before her, talking to her as nobody else ever ventured to talk. I have been long telling you how that fireside scene looked, just to get my breath. I had been trying to work myself up to the proper pitch to enter upon that subject again with my poor sister. But lo! here had little Sara come on her own account and got it all over. I could see at a glance that there was no more to be said.
I came forward quietly and dropped into my own seat without saying anything. Dear, dear! had it been an insane, unreasonable terror, or had it been something real and serious that she knew, and she alone? Sarah was leaning a little towards the fire, rubbing the joints of her fingers, which were rheumatic, as I have mentioned before; but it was not what she was doing that struck me; it was the strange look of ease and comfort that had somehow come upon her. Her whole person looked as if it had relaxed out of some bondage. Her head drooped a little in a kind of easy languor: her muslin shawl, lined with pale blue, hung lightly off her shoulders. Her pins were laid down orderly and neat on her basket with the wools. Her very foot was at ease on the footstool. How was it? If it had been incipient madness, could this grateful look of rest have come so easily? Would the fever have gone down only at knowing he was away? Heavens know! I sat all silent in my own chair in the shadow, and felt the water moisten my old eyes. What she must have gone through before this sudden ease could show itself so clearly in every limb and movement! What an iron bondage she must have been putting on! What a relief this was! Her comfort and sudden relaxation struck me dumb. I was appalled at the sight of it. My notion about insanity, dreadful to think of, but still natural and innocent, was shaken; a restless uneasiness of a different description rose upon my mind. Could he indeed be anything to her, this young stranger? Could she in her own knowledge have some mysterious burden which was connected with his coming or going? Could she have recognised, instead of only finding an insanely fanciful destiny in his strange face? Impossible! That foreign life of hers, so obscure and mysterious to me, was of an older period than his existence. He could bring no gossip, no recollections to confound her. At the time of her return he could scarcely have been born. Thus I was plunged into a perfect wilderness of amazed questions again.
“When little Sara went off to dress,—she dressed every evening, though we never saw anybody,—I stole to the door after her, and caught her little pink ear outside the door in the half-lighted hall. She gave a little shriek when I came suddenly behind her. I believe she thought I was angry, and came to take her punishment into my own hand.
“What did you say to your godmamma, Sara?” said I.
“Nothing,” said the perverse child. Then, after a little pause, “I told her that your Mr. Luigi was gone, godmamma; and that he was a very pretty-behaved young man; and asked her who the Countess Sermoneta was.”
“You did?”
“Yes; but she did not mind,” said Sara. “I am not sure if she heard me; she gave such a long sigh, half a year long. Godmamma Sarah’s heart must be very deep down if it took that to ease it; and melted all out, as if frost was over somehow, and thaw had come.”
“Ah! and what more?” said I.
“Nothing more,” cried the child. “Don’t you think I have a little heart, godmamma? If she felt it so, could I go poking at her with that Countess’s name? Ah! you should have seen her. She thawed out as if the sun was shining and the frost gone.”
“Ah!” I cried again. It went to my heart as well. “Come down and talk, little Sara,” said I, and so went back to the drawing room, where she sat looking so eased and relieved, poor soul, poor soul! I was very miserable. I had not the heart to ring for lights. I sat down in my chair with all sorts of dismal thoughts in my heart. She did not speak either. She was rubbing her rheumatic fingers, and taking in all the warmth and comfort. She looked as if somehow she had escaped—good heavens! from what?