Chapter XI
WE were able to get the same omnibus going home, which I was very glad of, for the strange defeat I had received made me feel doubly weary with the walk, which, after all, had not been a very long one. There was only one person in this omnibus, which was not a town omnibus, you know, but one which went between Chester and an important village, seven or eight miles off. He was an elderly man, very well dressed in black, with a white cravat. To tell the plain truth, I took him for a dissenting preacher by his dress; and as he looked very serious and respectable, and was very polite in helping us to get in, we had some little conversation after a while. When he saw me look at the houses we passed with an appearance of interest, he told me the names of them, or who they belonged to. He was exceedingly polite and deferential, so polite that he called me ma’am, which sounded odd; but I could only suppose he was an old-fashioned person and liked such antiquated ways of expression. I confess a suspicion of his real condition never crossed my mind. But he evidently knew everybody, and after a while my prevailing idea woke up again.
“Do you know,” said I, with a little hesitation, “the family at the Park—the Miss Mortimers? I should very much like to hear something about them.”
“There’s nobody I know better, ma’am,” said our companion with a slight look of surprise; “I’ve been with—that is, I’ve known ’em this fifty years.”
“Oh, then will you please tell me how they succeeded?” said I; “how did they come into the estate?”
“How they succeeded?” said the stranger, with a certain slow wonder and amazement; “why, ma’am, in the natural way, after their father as was Squire before them.”
Here I could not help thinking to myself that the dissenting clergy must be dreadfully uneducated, if this were one of them.
“But was there never any gap in the succession?” said I; “has it been in a straight line? has there been no break lately—no branch of the family passed over?”
“Bless you, ma’am, you don’t know the Mortimers,” said our friend; “there’s never enough of them to make branches of the family. There was a second cousin the young ladies had a many years ago, but I never heard of no more of them, and he was distant like, and had no more thoughts of succession than I had. If that gen’lman was alive or had a family, things might be different now.”
“How do you mean things might be different now?” cried I.
“The ladies, ma’am, has never married,” said the man, who certainly could not be more than a Methodist local preacher at the utmost, “and, in the course of nature, there can’t be no natural heir.”
This view of the subject, however, was one totally unsatisfactory to me. “Are you sure,” said I, “that there never was any other heir spoken of—that there never was any story about the succession—that there was never anybody to dispute it with the Miss Mortimers? I thought I had heard some such story about–”
“Ah, you’re thinking, ma’am, of Eden Hall, just the next property,” said he.
“But was there never any claimant to the Park?” asked I, somewhat excited.
“No such thing,” said the man in black, “nor couldn’t be. Bless you, the family’s well known. There never was so much as a will-case, as I ever heard on; for why, you see, ma’am, there never was such a plenty of children to make quarrels. When there’s but two or so, there’s little can come of quarrelling. No, no! there never was no strange claimant to our estate.”
“To your estate, did you say?” cried I, in amazement.
“No, ma’am, no—no such presumption. I said our, and sure I might; I’ve been with the ladies this fifty year.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, much dismayed. This was certainly coming to the very head-quarters for information. This was no local preacher after all, but only the Miss Mortimers’ majordomo. If there had been any possible excuse for it, I should certainly have got out of the omnibus immediately, so utterly confounded and taken aback did I feel. But as we were still some two miles out of Chester, and we were all tired, and baby cross and sleepy, I had to think better of it. However, in my consternation I fell into instant silence, and felt really afraid of meeting the man’s eye. He sat opposite me, beside Lizzie, very respectful and quiet, and by no means obtruding himself upon my notice. I cannot tell how shocked and affronted and angry I felt with myself. I had, I suppose, like most people of my condition, a sort of horror of men-servants, a sort of resentful humiliation in feeling that I had mistaken one of that class for an ordinary fellow-traveller, a frightened idea of what Harry would think to hear of his wife sitting in an omnibus beside Miss Mortimer’s man. Altogether I was sadly discomfited and beaten. The Miss Mortimers had got the better of me at every hand; and I was entirely humiliated and cast down by this last blow of all.
The interval was quite tedious and oppressive till we arrived in Chester. Seeing me look at another house unconsciously as we passed, the man, most kindly and good-humouredly, I am sure, after my sudden withdrawal from the conversation, mentioned its name. “That is Dee-sands, ma’am, the mayor o’ Chester’s place. It ain’t within sight of the Dee, and there’s none of them sands near here, but they do say it’s named after a song,” said the good-natured cicerone. “Oh!” said I again, shrinking back into my corner. He looked at me rather closely after this, muttering something that sounded like “No offence!” and leaned back also, a little affronted. It did not occur to me that I was only drawing his attention to what I had said before by this sudden reserve. I took care to show no more interest in the wayside villas, and sprang out with a great sense of relief when we reached the end of our journey. Happening to glance back when I had reached our own door, I saw that the omnibus had been delayed by numerous descents from the roof, and was still standing where we had left it, and that Miss Mortimer’s man had put his head out of one of the windows, and was watching where I went to. This circumstance made me enter with great haste and trepidation. Now, above all, I had been found out; and if ever any one felt like a traitor and a spy, it was surely me, stumbling back from that unsuccessful enterprise across the threshold of Mrs. Goldsworthy’s house.
The door was opened to us too alertly to be done by anybody but Domenico; and it was Domenico accordingly, in his vast expanse of shirt sleeves. It was quite a comfort to see his beaming, unconscious face. “The time is fine,” said Domenico; “it pleases to the signora to make promenade? Ah, bravo! the piccolo signore grow like tree.”
This was in reference to baby, who crowed at him and held out his arms, and whom Domenico freely called piccolo and piccolino, at first somewhat to my indignation; but I confess the good fellow’s voice and looks, and the way baby stretched out to him, out of poor Lizzie’s tired arms, was quite consolatory and refreshing to me. It is easy to get a feeling of home to a place, surely. It was only lodgings, and Domenico was a foreigner, and I had not the ghost of an early association with the little insignificant house; but I cannot tell you what a sense of ease and protection came upon me the very moment I was within the door.
Upstairs on the table lay a letter. We got so few letters that I was surprised, and took it up immediately, and with still greater surprise found it to be from Sara Cresswell, lamenting over not having found me, wondering where I could have gone, and concluding with a solemn invitation to dinner in her father’s name. “Papa is so anxious to see Mr. Langham and you,” wrote Sara, “and to talk over things. I have been obliged to obey him for once, and not to go or write out to dear godmamma till he has seen you. If you don’t come he will be so dreadfully disappointed; indeed, I am quite sure if you don’t come he will go to see you. I can’t suppose you will be able to resist such a threat as that. Send me a word, please, directly. I shall be quite wretched till I know.”
This revived all my excitement, as may be supposed; there must be something in it after all, and surely, instead of Harry going to his office to seek him, it would be much better to meet at his house, and with an evening’s leisure too; for Sara had taken care to add that nobody else was to be there. The earnestness of this invitation seemed so entirely contradictory to all that I had heard to-day, that the wildest vague suspicions of mystery began to break upon my mind. To be sure, bakers and butlers were not likely to be in the secret. Mr. Cresswell knew all about it; and here was he seeking us entirely of his own accord! Once more all my dazzled ambitious dreams came back again; I forgot my failure and sense of treachery—I was no traitor—it was only my rights that I had been thinking of; and they were not pathetic possible victims, but triumphant usurpers, who now had possession of the Park.
Chapter XII
I HAD managed to regain my spirits entirely before Harry returned: if anything, indeed, I think this revival of all my fancies, after my disappointment and annoyance, had stimulated me more than before. It was a beautiful April evening, quite warm and summer-like, and there had just been such a sunset, visible out of the front windows, as would have gone far at any time to reconcile me to things in general. I was sitting in the little drawing-room alone, with baby Harry in my lap, much delighted to find that he could stand by my side for half a minute all by himself, and rewarding him with kisses for the exhibition of that accomplishment. I was tired after my long walk, and felt it delicious rest to lean back in that chair and watch the light gradually fading out of the sky, free to think my own thoughts, yet always with the sweet accompaniment of baby’s inarticulate little syllables, and touches of his soft small fingers. I remember that moment like a moment detached out of my life. My heart had rebounded higher out of its despondency. Who could tell what a bright future that might be on the very brink of which we trembled? And I, whom Harry had married so foolishly, it was I who was to bring this wealth to my husband and my child. It was pleasant thinking in that stir of hope, in that calm of evening, sitting listening for Harry’s step on the stair. The light grew less and less in the two front windows, and the open door of communication between the two rooms brought in a long line of grey luminous sky from the east into my twilight picture. And I had so much to tell Harry. Ah, there at last was his foot upon the stair!
He came in, not to the room in which I was, but to the other, and gave a glance round to see if I was there; then, not seeing me, instead of calling out for “Milly darling,” as he always did, Harry threw his cap on the table, and dropped heavily into a chair, with a long sigh—a strange sigh, half relieved, half impatient—the sigh of something on his mind. I can see the half-open door, the long gleam of the eastern window, the scarcely visible figure dropped into that chair—I can see them all as clearly as at that moment. I stumbled up unawares, gathered baby into my arms I cannot tell how, and was at his side in a moment. My own voice sounded foreign to my ears as I cried out, “Harry, what is it? tell me!” Nothing else would come from my lips.
He rose too—the attitude of rest was not possible at such a time; he came and held the child and me close to him, making me lean on him. “It is nothing more than we expected,” he said, “Milly darling. It is only to have a heart—you are a soldier’s wife.”
I knew without any more words. I stood within his arm, silent, desperate, holding my dear frightened baby tight, too tight. Ah, God help us! In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as the Bible says, out of the happiest flutter of hope into that cold, desperate, hopeless darkness. I could have fancied I was standing on a battlefield, with the cold, cold wind blowing over us. I made no outcry or appeal; my heart only leaped with a start of agony at the worst, at the last conclusion. We were not within his sheltering arm—he young, and strong, and safe—but looking for him—looking for him on that black, dead battlefield!
I don’t think it was the cry of the child, whom he took softly out of my straining arms, but Harry’s compassion that roused me. I cried out sharply, “Don’t pity me, Harry; I’ll bear it.” It was all I could say. I went out of his arm with agitated, hurried step, and shut out that cruel clear sky looking down upon the battlefield I saw. I did not think nor notice that this unseasonable action threw us into perfect darkness. It was a kind of physical relief to me to do something with my hands, to ring some common sound into my ears. At this moment Lizzie came into the room, carrying lights. As I lifted my confused eyes to them, what a ghastly change had passed on this room—all so cold, dark, miserable; the furniture thrust about out of its place; the fireplace dark, and Harry standing there, with the child in his arms and his cap thrown on the table, as if this very moment he was going away. He was in uniform too, and the light caught in the glitter of his sword. Was there to be no interval? My head swam round. My heart seemed to stop beating. The misery of imagination drove me half frantic—as if the present real misery had not been enough.
After a while we sat together once more as usual, he trying to bring me to talk about it and receive it like a common event. “It is what we have looked forward to for months,” said Harry; “it should not be strange to you now. Think how you looked for it, Milly darling, long ago.”
“Yes,” said I. Was it likely I could talk? I only rocked myself backward and forward in my chair.
“You said God would give you strength when the hour came: the hour has come, Milly. You are a soldier’s wife!” he said.
“Yes, yes!” and then I burst into an attempt to tell him what I had been doing—if I must talk let me talk of something else than this—and broke down, and fell, God help me! to crying and sobbing like a child; which was how the good Lord gave me the power of bearing what He had sent. I got better after that; I heard and listened to it all, every detail, when they would have to go, where they would sail from,—everything. And then I grew to see by degrees that Harry, but for me, was not sorry to be sent to the war; that his eye was brightening, his head raised erect. Oh me! he was a soldier; and I—I was only a foolish creature that could not follow him or be with him, that could not come between him and those bullets, that could only stay at home and pray.
But when he came and stroked my hair down with his hand, and soothed me like a child, and bent over me with such compassion in his face—sorry for me, full of pity in his affectionate tender heart for the poor girl he was leaving behind—that was more than I could bear. With a dreadful pang I thought it was his widow he saw, all lonely and desolate, with no one to comfort her; and I, his wife, thrust him away, and defied that dreadful killing thought. No! I might leap at the worst, because I could not help my hurrying, blind imagination; but he should not, no one else should—I was resolute of that. So we talked of all the things that were needful for his preparation; and he spoke of expense and economy, and I laughed and scorned his talk. Economy! expense! Perhaps I did not know, could not think where it was to come from; but where careless money can get everything, do you think careful love would fall far short? I took courage to laugh at his words.
And then I told him all my day’s trials, and that invitation for the next day, which, even after what had happened, we must still accept. We did not have baby downstairs again that night—I dared not—courage will go so far, but not further. I went upstairs to put him into his little bed, and was glad, God help me! to be out of Harry’s sight for half an hour. But still I was not free; Lizzie was about me, gliding here and there with her inquisitive sharp eyes—sharp eyes all the sharper for tears, praying and threatening me with her looks. Nobody would believe in my courage. They thought I should break down and die. Oh me! if one could die when one pleased, one might sometimes make short work of it; God does not give us that coward’s refuge. When I was all alone in my own room, I took an old regimental sash of Harry’s and bound it round me tight. I cannot tell why I did it; I think it was in my fancy somehow to bind up my heart, that it should neither yield nor fail.
PART V.
THE LADIES AT THE HALL
(Continued)
Chapter I
SOME weeks of quietness passed over us after these dreadful half-revelations which really disclosed nothing. I will not attempt to give you any explanation of my state of mind; I don’t think I could if I tried. I had ceased to think of insanity in respect to my sister Sarah; she was not insane—no such thing. That scrap of conversation I had overheard in her dressing-room overturned all my delusions. Some real thing, some real person, had power to drive her half mad with anxiety and fear. What she could be anxious about—what she could be afraid of—she who had lived in the deadest peace at home for nearly five-and-twenty years—was to me an inscrutable mystery. But that this Italian stranger was no stranger—that his name was given him after the name of my father—that love, supposed by Carson to be love in the heart, and admitted by Sarah to be love for the estate, had suggested that name—were facts not to be doubted. I need not say anything about the long trains of agitated and confused thinking into which these discoveries betrayed me. They ended in nothing—they could not end in anything. But for a kind of determination I had, to keep up stedfastly till some light came, and see the end of it, I don’t doubt they would have made me ill. But I kept well in spite of them. Either our bodies are not so sensitive as they are said to be, or I am a very stupid person, which I wouldn’t deny if I was taxed with it; for certainly many things that worry other people don’t trouble me very much. However, let the reason be what it might, I kept up. I could not take any comfort, as Sarah did, in knowing this young man had gone away. I can’t tell how she could have blinded herself, poor soul. I knew he would come back. She did not seem to think so; yet surely she knew all about it far better than I did. What a strange blank, unexplainable mystery it was! Judging by appearances, the young man could not be much more than born when she returned home. Yet she knew him. Incomprehensible, wild, mad idea, of which, even after all I had heard, my reason denied the possibility! She knew him! and what or who, except herself, could explain it?
The only conclusion I could come to in all my pondering was one that had glanced into my mind before, that my father had married abroad and had a son, whom Sarah had somehow stormed or threatened him into disowning. But then my father was—I grieve to say it, but one must tell the truth—a man who considered his own will and pleasure much more than anything else in the world; and I don’t think it would have broken his heart to have turned us out of our heiress-honours, especially when we grew old and did not marry. And to have left a male heir behind him! It was a very unlikely story, to be sure; but certainly Sarah and he were never friends after their return. They avoided each other, though they lived under the same roof. They treated each other with a kind of ceremonious politeness, more like mutual dislike than love. Dear, dear, to think in a quiet English family how such a dark secret could rise and grow! I set to hunting up all my father’s letters, not those he had written to me at home, for he never wrote except when he was obliged, but his own letters which he had left behind him. I could find nothing there that threw the slightest light upon the mystery. And then, if he was my father’s son, what could the young Italian mean by seeking after this fabulous lady? What had the Countess Sermoneta to do with it? On the whole, anybody will see that I ended my investigations and reasonings just where I began them. I knew nothing about it—I could discover nothing. I had only to wait for the storm that was returning—that must return. And if—oh, dear, to think of such a thing!—if it was the miserable wealth we had, that prompted Sarah to set her face against this stranger—if it were to keep possession of the estate from him who was its lawful owner, thank Heaven! we were co-heiresses. She thought she could do as she pleased with the Park, and I dare say, in right and lawful things, I might have yielded to her; but I hope Millicent Mortimer was never the woman to keep what did not belong to her. If he had a title to the estate—Heaven knows how he could—I gave up trying to imagine;—but if he had, without either resistance or struggle he should have my share.
I really could not tell how much time had passed from that day when Sara Cresswell left us. It was near the end of April, so I suppose it must have been about two months after, when the accident I am going to tell happened. One afternoon when I was in the shrubbery I saw a young lady coming up towards the gate, a young creature, pretty and fair-complexioned, not tall, but very compact and orderly in her looks, with the air of being a handy, cheerful little woman, and good for most things she required to do. That was how she struck me, at all events. I dare say many people would have said she was just a very pretty girl, evidently sobered down by an early marriage, for she had an odd nursemaid by her side, carrying a beautiful baby. This stranger caught her attention very much as I watched her through the tall evergreen bushes. There was no mystery about her, certainly. I took a liking for her all of a sudden. Somehow it flashed into my mind that if I had ever been so young and as happy I might have been just such a young woman myself. I don’t mean so pretty, but the same kind of creature. She was not rich, it was clear, for the nursemaid was not much more than a child, an odd, awkward-looking girl; and though the young mother herself was sufficiently well-dressed, her things had that indescribable home-made look which one always recognises. She was a little heated with walking, and had some very grave wrinkles of care, thoughtfulness, and even anxiety, upon her pretty smooth forehead. I saw her aiming straight at the door of the lodge, and hastened out to warn her off. She was certainly a stranger, and could never know that the hooping-cough was in the house. She took my warning very oddly, looked at me with great curiosity and with tears—I am sure I saw them coming into her eyes—and then, with some half-explanation about wishing to see the Park, hurried away after her lovely little boy. I don’t know how long I stood, like a fool, looking after them, with a great desire to call her back and ask her in to see the house. Very likely she had come out from Chester to give her baby a country walk. Pretty young soul! I had no more doubt she was a good little wife than that she was a pretty creature, and very young to be that child’s mother. I daresay she was tired and would have been much the better for a rest. But while I stood thinking of it, of course she was gone far out of the range of my voice. As for running after her, that was out of the question at my age; and perhaps, after all, it was as well not to bring that lovely baby near the lodge. Mary might have rushed out, and the mischief might have been done in a moment. As for hooping-cough itself, when children have good constitutions, I can’t say it is a thing I am very timid about; but it goes very hard with infants, and one could never excuse one’s-self for putting such a child in peril. So I went back to the house, though rather slowly. I can’t tell how it was, I am sure,—but I felt just as if I had missed a visit from a friend whom it would have been a great comfort to see.
I might have forgotten this little incident altogether, but for something that happened afterwards. Ellis had to go into Chester that day—indeed, he had just left a few minutes before my pretty young stranger came up. When Ellis came back he took an opportunity of speaking privately to me—indeed, he asked me to step aside into the hall for a minute. How he found out that there was any uneasiness in my mind, or that any doubt about our right to the estate had ever occurred to me, I cannot tell; there are few things more wonderful than the kind of instinct by which servants divine the storms which may be only brooding about a house. Ellis looked very grave and important; but as he always does so, I was noways alarmed.
“There was a young lady, ma’am,” said Ellis, “rode in the omnibus along with me this afternoon; well, not perhaps what you might call a real lady neither; leastways I don’t know—her looks was all in her favour; but ladies, as you know, ma’am, don’t go riding in an omnibus with bits of nursegirls and babies. But I don’t say she was one of your common sort.”
“Why, it must have been that pretty young creature,” said I.
“Well, ma’am,” said Ellis, actually with a little shame-facedness, “if you ask me my opinion, she was a pooty young creature, and so was the baby. But it ain’t what she looked, Miss Milly; it’s what she said. She asked as anxious as could be after the family at the Park.”
“Did she know anything of us?” said I, quite delighted. “I wonder who she is; she quite took my heart.”
“Not if you’d have heard her speak, ma’am,” said Ellis. “She asked, kind of curious like, how you came to succeed to the estate, and whether there wasn’t no gap in the line, and if none o’ the family were ever passed over, and a deal of such questions. I told her it was Eden Hall she was thinking on, but she wasn’t satisfied. She said wasn’t there another claimant to the estate, and was I quite sure you was the right people and hadn’t passed over nobody? But the strangest thing of all was, as soon as I let out by accident I belonged to the Park, it was all over in a twinkling. Afore you could know where you was, from asking her questions and looking as anxious as you please, and her little veil up over her bonnet, and her face turned to you like a child—in a moment, ma’am, it was dead shut up and drawn back, and the veil down and face as if it didn’t see the place you was. I said to myself, ‘There’s summut in this,’ as soon as ever I seed the way she took me belonging to the Park; and, to be sure, all the way not another word. Seeing things like that, I made bold to look after her when she went out; and if you might chance to have any curiosity, Miss Milly, here’s a note of the address.”
“But what should I have any curiosity about?” said I, agitated and surprised, taking the paper from him eagerly enough, yet quite at a loss to account for any interest I could have in his adventure. Ah! had it happened six months ago, how I should have laughed at Ellis! but it could not have happened six months ago. Ellis himself would have taken no notice whatever of such questions then.
“Ma’am,” said Ellis, “the quality has their own ways; if I don’t know that, who should? I dare say it ain’t nothink to you; but it’s curious to have parties asking about the Park, as if we was a family as had romances; and being a pooty young creature, you see, Miss Milly, I thought it might be possible as you’d like to know.”
“Very well, thank you, Ellis. I know you’re always careful about the interests of the family,” said I.
“I’ve been at the Park fifty year,” said Ellis, with his best butler’s bow. I gave him a nod, and went away to the library a great deal more disturbed than I would let him perceive, but I don’t undertake to say that he didn’t see it all the same. Here was just the very fuel to set my smouldering impatience into a blaze. A sudden impulse of doing something seized upon me like a kind of inspiration. Here was a new actor in the strange bewildering drama. Who was she? Could she be Luigi’s wife coming to aid him? As the thought struck me I trembled with impatience, standing at the window where it was too dark to read that address. I must wait for the morning, but certainly there was light out of darkness. However foolish it might be, I could bear it no longer. Here was a clue to guide my steps, and whether right or wrong, to-morrow I should plunge into the mystery. The idea took possession of me beyond all power of resistance. I walked about the library in the dark, quite excited and tremulous. The wind had risen, and the night was rather stormy, but I could not go into the comfort and light of that great drawing-room where Sarah sat knitting. To-morrow, perhaps, I should know the secret of her death in life.