Chapter XVIII
I HAD with difficulty overcome Aunt Milly. I had represented to her how much better I was able to bear it than she, and Aunt Milly herself had sent off Sara Cresswell to bed. It was late at night, and all the house was still. We were both together in the dressing-room. Nothing would persuade dear Aunt Milly to leave me alone to this vigil. She wrapped herself in a shawl and lay down upon the sofa. “I am at hand the moment I am wanted,” she said. I had kissed baby, and said my prayers beside him. I was not frightened or nervous now. I went in, wrapped in my dressing-gown, to look at my patient. She stretched out her hand, and then when she saw me, drew it back again with a fretful groan, and turned her face to the wall. It was Carson, still Carson, whom she missed at every turn. But she did not answer me when I asked if she wanted anything, she only groaned again with a dismal impotence and impatience. I sat and watched her at a distance while she lay in that broad wakefulness, her eyes wandering to and fro, her mind evidently wandering, too, into never-ending thought. It was to me a spirit, somehow, chained and fettered to a body it could not throw off, which lay in irksome confinement on that bed,—a spirit ever active, sleepless, evil. Why was I sitting up with her? she was not even ill. Was it that she had died that day, and some wicked spirit had taken possession of the exhausted frame? I declare that this idea returned to me in spite of myself. I could not escape from it; as the night crept on strange fears came over me. Her eyes fascinated mine. I could not withdraw my gaze from those two gleams of strange light within the crimson curtains, moving about from minute to minute with their restless observation. What was she thinking of? Could she tell that, under this roof, the roof of his fathers, her injured son was sleeping? Was she thinking of her youth, her life, the past, with all its dread, pertinacious, stubborn cruelty? I did not know then how the extraordinary story told by Luigi could be harmonised into possibility. I could not think of any story; I could think of nothing but that solitary woman pursuing those sleepless thoughts, which nobody shared, through all the dread recesses of her conscience, through all the scenes, visible to her only, of her hidden mysterious life.
It must have been about midnight when some one knocked softly at the door. It made me start painfully with a terror I could not subdue. I rose to see who it was, trembling at the summons. It was Carson, who called me anxiously into the drawing room. She did not say anything, but drew me to a little medicine-chest, which she opened, and from which, all silently, with the speed of long custom, she took a little bottle, and dropped some of its contents into a glass of water. “You must put this by her bedside,” whispered Carson, “and here are all her medicines; but don’t drop them yourself, for the love of pity!—you’ve no experience. You might give her her death. When my missis wants her draughts, will you call me?” While I promised to do so, Aunt Milly woke up from a short sleep. “Has anything happened, Milly?” she cried, starting up suddenly. Nothing had happened but that her start had thrown down a footstool, and made a noise which sounded dreadful in the calm of the night. The three of us dispersed hastily upon that sound. Carson disappeared out of the room. Aunt Milly sat up trembling on the sofa. I went back to the patient. The noise had roused her. She had struggled up in bed, and was trying to look round to the dressing-room door.
“Who is it?” she cried, when I went in, her eyes fixing on me with something of the dreadful expression they had in the drawing-room, as if she had lost control over them, and the orbs turned wildly out and fluttered to the light. “If it’s him, let him come here.”
“It was only Carson,” I said.
“Carson? let her not come near me. I will do her an injury,” cried Miss Mortimer with wild exasperation. Then she suffered herself to fall back on her pillows. “They’re all in a plot,” she went on, “all in a plot, the very woman I trusted; I shall never trust anybody any more. But here’s the wonderful thing; she is just as great a coward as she is a fool; and to think she should hate me so much as to be able to go up and down these passages in the middle of the night with a dead man! Hark, there they are!”
I fell back from the bedside at the words, unable to refrain from a shudder of horror.
“You’re afraid,” said Miss Mortimer, looking at me with a kind of contemptuous curiosity. “Yet you saw him come in yesterday and you did not faint. I remember seeing you stare and stare. Ah! it’s strange to see a dead man!”
“I saw nobody but Luigi; nobody but your son,” cried I, in dismay.
When it was said I drew back in alarm, lest the words should rouse her into passion. But they did not. She was beyond that.
“I could not see him, though,” she continued, going on in her dreadful monologue; “it was only a kind of feeling he was there, and the scent of the syringas in the garden. You know it’s very overpowering; those they call the Virgin’s Breast. It was that made me faint.”
Here she fixed her eyes on me again, as if she imagined that she had been setting up a plausible plea and dared me to contradict it.
“I wonder if he’s as handsome now he’s dead,” she went on in a very low tone; “he was never as handsome for a man as I was for a woman. I’ll never, never speak to Carson again; but you might ask her if he’s kept his looks. Ah! I thought I saw some one behind the curtains there; but he’ll never appear to me. For he swore, you know, he swore, he was never to give me any trouble, and he kept his word till he died.”
“Oh, Miss Mortimer,”—I cried, coming forward to the bed with the glass in my hand. She held out hers eagerly, and interrupted me.
“Miss Mortimer! to be sure I am Miss Mortimer; I have always been Miss Mortimer, you know that; then what’s all this made up story about a son? For, you know,” she said, sinking her voice again into a whisper, and holding the glass in her hand, “to be called countess would have been a temptation to many a woman. But I never would have it, not for a day, never after he refused to take our name. That’s what a man calls love, you know. You shall take his name if it’s a beggar’s, and he will not take yours if it brings a kingdom. But I was not the sort of woman to be a beggarly Italian countess. And I’ve beaten him in his grave,” she cried out in ghastly triumph,—“in his grave I’ve got the victory over him! Here’s the child on his knees to me to call him Lewis Mortimer. Ah! you’re Richard Mortimer’s daughter. I might have married Richard if I had known how things were going to turn out. We’ll set it all right to-morrow. Yes; stand by me, and we’ll set it all right. There’s no dead man shall conquer me. Do you hear? There he is pacing about the passage as he used to do when I refused to see him. But he dared not come in; no, not if I had been a thousand times his wife.”
And I cannot help it if people may think me a fool; there were steps outside in the passage. If it was a living creature I cannot tell; but, as certain as I live, there were footsteps going up and down, up and down, with a heavy, melancholy tread. She looked at me full in the face as we heard them going on. She began to tremble so that the bed shook under her; her eyes grew wilder, her colour more ghastly. In spite of all she said, she was stricken to her very heart with fear.
And as for me, I did not feel I had courage to open the door. I called out, “Whoever you are, go away, I beseech,—go away! She cannot rest while you are here.” The steps stopped in a moment, then, after a pause, went on and went away, growing fainter in the distance. Thank heaven it must have been somebody living! perhaps Carson, perhaps her son.
When I came back to the bedside she had dropped asleep—actually, in the midst of her terror, had fallen into an unnatural slumber. It was an opiate that Carson had given her. The little medicine-chest was full of different kinds of opiates. Scarcely one of them that was not marked poison. I looked into the dressing-room for a minute to comfort poor Aunt Milly, who had heard all her sister said, and was in a dreadful state of agitation. She kissed me and blessed me, and leaned her dear kind head upon my shoulder for the moment I dared stay beside her. “She would never have said so much to me,” said Aunt Milly, and wrapped her own shawl round me, and tried to make me take some wine which she had brought upstairs. When I would not take that, lest it should make me sleepy, Aunt Milly got up from the sofa to make some tea for me. Everybody knows such nights—everybody knows how some one always tries to comfort the watcher with such attentions—tender, useless, heartbreaking attempts at outside consolation. I went back to the sick room with a pang both of relief and anguish. If it had been my husband or my baby that I was watching! Thank God it was not so! but the picture came before me with a terrible force just then, when I did not know where Harry was, nor how he might be lying, nor who might be watching over him. I tried to shut out my own thoughts from this room; but who could ever do that? I fancied I could see white soldiers’ huts rising in the darkness, and groans of wounded men. It was a relief to me when my patient groaned and turned in her bed. But she did not wake; She lay all night long in what seemed more like a stupor than a sleep, interrupted by groans and stifled outcries, and long sighs that broke one’s heart. No wonder we had heard of her bad nights.
In the morning, when she woke at last, Miss Mortimer turned round upon me with a half-stupified, wondering stare. Then she recollected herself. She did not speak, but I saw all the thoughts of the previous night come slowly back to her face. She watched me arranging the room in the cheerful morning light; she even permitted me to raise her among her pillows, and swallowed, though with an effort, the tea I brought her. She bore no malice against me for anything I had said. She seemed even pleased to have me beside her; but it was not for my sake; I believe she thought I was doing it for an interested reason. And she—she thought she had found an accomplice in me.
This morning she spoke with difficulty, and her looks were changed. She looked ill, very ill. The morning light showed a strange widening and breadth about her eyes, a solemn fixed expression in her face, which, though I had never watched it coming before, went to my heart with an instinctive chill and recognition. She could not bear me to be out of her sight for a moment. When I went to the dressing-room door to speak a word to Aunt Milly she called me back with an impatient, stifled cry. At last she beckoned me close to her bedside.
“I want—I want—send—let him come,” she stammered out.
“Luigi?” I said.
She clasped her hands together in an access of passion. “To make my will,” she cried, with a kind of scream; “now—now—this moment.” When she had uttered the words she fell back panting, a flush of weakness and fever coming to her face. I went and told Aunt Milly, who, all troubled as she was, sent off a messenger immediately for Mr. Cresswell. “I will send for the doctor, too, and—and the clergyman; but what can Dr. Roberts do for her?” cried poor Aunt Milly, wringing her hands. The clergyman! What, indeed, could that sleek, comfortable man do at this deathbed of guilt and passion? Ah me! A poor priest might have done something, perhaps, or a poor preacher accustomed to matters of life and death.
The day glided on while we waited. She would not let me leave her; but she did not say anything, except disjointed murmurs, and strange broken conversations with herself. It was not the present time that her mind was busy with. Listening in the silence of that room I became aware of a passionate prime of life, an Italian summer, a bitter mortification, disappointment, revenge—revenge which had come back upon the remorseless inflictor, and made her life the desert it had been. It all opened up before me in breaks and glimpses; afterwards, when I knew the story, it was with the force of an actual representation that I remembered this broken, unconscious autobiography. She was not raving; she was only calling up and setting in order the incidents of that crisis of her life, I cannot follow her through it now; but I remember that the awe, and interest, and excitement kept me from feeling any weariness.
I could not turn away for any sort of refreshment; I sat fascinated before that revelation of the secret of her days. She seemed to have foresworn husband and child, life itself and all that made it bearable, in dreadful vengeance for some broken promise or unfulfilled vow. Her father came flitting across the troubled picture; the count, and some dreadful controversy about a name, all intermixed with recollections of certain rooms and their furniture; of a garden and a thicket of syringas. What that point of deception or disappointment was, on which the whole story turned, I could not tell; but for this she had left the stream of life when life was at its fullest promise; for this she had settled down in a frightful, stubborn determination, behind that screen in the drawing-room of the Park. All her after existence, huddled up into one long monotonous day, had not made these scenes less fresh in her memory. This was now she had revenged herself—on the Count, who was dead—on her son, whom she disowned and cast away from her; ah! above all, a thousand times more bitterly, on herself.
It was afternoon when Mr. Cresswell came. He was brought up to the room immediately, without a word of explanation, and accordingly knew nothing of all the dreadful history of the last twenty-four hours. He had not even a hint that anything was changed, except the health of Miss Mortimer. He came and expressed his concern in the common-place tone of an unexcited stranger; he expressed his surprise to see me with her. In his heart he set it down that this will was of my suggesting. I am certain he did; and smiled to find me the nurse of the sick woman. But Miss Mortimer (that I should still go on calling her by that name after all I had heard!) left him very little time. She recovered herself wonderfully at sight of him; her very utterance became easier in the anxiety she showed to express herself plainly. She was impatient of his inquiries and condolences. She moved her hands uneasily about the bed, and for a moment her eyes fluttered as they had done the day before; but as soon as he had prepared his papers, and taken his pen in hand, she was composed again. My heart beat so loud with anxiety to hear what she said, that I could scarcely breathe. Was she now at last to set right the injustice of a life?
“Write,” she cried, with a gasp for breath, “that I leave everything—mind, it is everything, Bob Cresswell, no partitions. My sister Milly, though she is a fool, is as fond of her, ah! as—as I am—all the Park and the lands belonging to it, to Millicent Mortimer. There! the young soldier’s wife; and to—eh! who is it? Who speaks to me?”
I grasped her hand hard in my sudden passion. It was cold, cold, a dead hand, and horrified me with its touch. “Stop,” I cried, “oh, stop, Mr. Cresswell; she cannot mean such horrible injustice! Miss Mortimer! Countess! whatever you are! will you dare to die and never repent? Do you think I will let you bring a curse on my innocent baby? Stop! Stop! I forbid it, for her soul’s sake!”
Mr. Cresswell pushed back his chair and stared in amazement too great for words. She looked at me with a strange air of cunning and superior wisdom, and then at him.
“She thinks,” said the dying woman, in a kind of whisper, addressing Mr. Cresswell, “to draw me into some foolish talk, and bring it up against the will. Fool! they are all fools; go on.”
“What does it mean?” he said looking at me.
“It means that she ought to do justice,” I cried; “that it is all she can do now; that she is going to die without repenting, without making amends. If you write it, it will be a sin.”
“Bob Cresswell, go on; it is I who am the person to be attended to,” said Miss Mortimer. “This creature, do you hear, is a fool. I know what I mean.”
“There is something here I don’t understand; my dear lady, you’re not so very ill, suppose we put it off,” said the lawyer in great perplexity; “and there’s Miss Milly, you know, she has her share in the Park.”
“Attend to me!” cried Miss Mortimer, wildly. “You will kill me; am I to be thwarted now, as well as all my life? Oh, good heavens! in my own house, and in bed, and perhaps going to die—and I am not to have my will, my will! I shall have my will, if I should write it myself!”
She stretched out her eager hand towards the writing things, stretching out of bed, and by some chance touched Mr. Cresswell. When he felt that deathly touch he grew very grave, and started with a shudder. He took up his pen immediately.
“I will do what you please,” he said. He could not resist that cry of death.
Chapter XIX
I RAN downstairs in desperation. I could not be content to let that dreadful mockery go on. It was vain, for we never, never, would have taken another man’s rights; but for herself, the miserable, guilty woman, to hinder her by any means, to save her from putting that seal upon all her cruelty and falsehood. I saw nobody as I flew down the stairs, though afterwards I was conscious that Lizzie had been standing there with my beautiful innocent boy. Do you think I would consent for a kingdom to bring the curse of wrongful wealth upon little Harry? Not if starvation and misery had been the only other choice!
I burst into the library, where I knew Aunt Milly was. Pale with watching and anxiety, she was sitting propped up in an easy-chair, with Sara Cresswell and Luigi beside her. I believe they had been telling her their story, and she, straining her ear for every sound, had been trying to listen to them. When I came in she started up from her chair and came to meet me, unconsciously putting them away. “What is it, Milly?” she cried, putting out her arms to me. I dared not permit myself to rest or even lean upon her. I seized her hand and drew her to the door.
“Come up, and interfere,” I cried; “she is making her dreadful will. She is leaving everything to me. Come, before she has put the seal to all this misery. Aunt Milly, can you stand aside and let this be done?”
“My dear,” said Aunt Milly, with a burst of tears, kissing me and looking in my face, “you know I love you, Milly; you know you are almost dearer to me now than any creature on earth.”
I could not thank her; I had no time. I did not feel grateful or pleased, but only impatient. “Come; come!” I repeated almost with violence. I could not understand how she could delay.
“Let her do what she will,” cried Aunt Milly. “If I go and argue with her, it will only make her worse. Oh, child! we can’t cross her now; don’t you see we can’t cross her now? But I took a vow, as sure as God saw us, I would do justice,” said Aunt Milly, solemnly through her tears. “She can but do what she can. We are co-heiresses! she has no power but over her own share.”
“Share!” I cried, “is it shares we have to think of? She is dying, and she does not repent.”
I could not wait there any longer; they all followed upstairs, Aunt Milly holding my hand. They all came into the dressing-room, where we could faintly hear Miss Mortimer’s voice, and where Carson stood trembling at the door. At this moment there was no order or rule in the stricken house. Then Aunt Milly went with me into the sick room. Mr. Cresswell was writing, and Miss Mortimer had stopped speaking. She turned her eyes triumphantly upon us both.
“I have carried out your wishes, Milly. I have left everything to your favourite,” she said, with pauses to got her breath. “You may sign it after me, and then it will be complete.”
“Sarah, that boy, that boy!” cried Aunt Milly. “Oh, put out your hand to him just once—think, before it is finished, what claims he has. Give him something. Sarah! Sarah! you would not take me into your confidence; but I’ll go down on my knees to you if you’ll do justice to that boy!”
“I am going to die,” said Miss Mortimer, after a pause. “I can see it in all your faces. I can’t be much worse off than I’ve been here. But look you, Milly, if you come and drive me into passion; if that wretched boy so much as comes near me, I’ll die directly, and you’ll be my murderers. His father made the choice—and I will not change, no, not if he came again, as he did yesterday, with the dead man. Cresswell, I’m growing a little faint. Is it ready to sign?”
He brought it and laid it before her on the bed; and she called to me to raise her up. I was desperate. I would rather have been content to be her murderer, as she said, than to let her do that sin.
“You are not Sarah Mortimer,” said I, as with great difficulty she wrote her signature. “It is a false name, and you know it is. Write your own name, Countess Sermoneta, and let everybody know that you have disinherited your son.”
She stared round at me, setting her teeth, then returned to the paper, and with a desperate resolution completed it. I stood perfectly aghast as I saw that dead hand trace those words, which to me cut her off for ever from every hope:—“By marriage, Sermoneta.” God help us! was there now no place of repentance?
“And now,” she said, falling back on her pillows, “send me Carson—I want no more—no more from anybody; send me my maid. I’ll forgive her though she deserted me;—nobody,” sobbed the poor voice, all at once breaking and growing feeble,—“nobody knows me but Carson. I want my maid; Carson, here!”
She had scarcely spoken, when Carson was by her side kneeling down at the bed, kissing the cold hand held out to her with such tears and eager affection as I never saw a servant show to a mistress. It was a reconciliation of love. The tears came into Miss Mortimer’s eyes. She gave her hand to her maid’s caresses with actual affection. It was the strangest conclusion to that dismal scene. One after another we three went out of the room confounded. Aunt Milly weeping tears, the bitterness of which I could not enter into. Mr. Cresswell, with a face of utter wonder, and myself, too much shocked and shaken to be able for anything. I could not go downstairs with them. I took refuge in the room that had been fitted up as a nursery for my baby. I got my boy into my arms and cried over him. It was too much; when he put his innocent arms round my neck and laid his cheek to mine to console me, my happiness struck me as with a pang. Oh, the unutterable things she had lost, that poor, miserable woman! I got up again to rush back to her with my baby, and see if that would not touch her heart, but stumbled in weariness and weakness, and fell on my knees on the floor. That was all that was to be done. I acknowledged it with that dreadful sense of impotence that one has, when hearts and souls have to be dealt with. On my knees I might help that desolate, lonely creature,—nowhere else, in no other manner. And even this not now. I was worn out with excitement and distress. I was ashamed to think, or permit myself to say, that one night’s watching had done it. I had to put little Harry back into Lizzie’s hands and lie down in the waning daylight. My head throbbed, and my heart beat, so that I could not even recollect my thoughts. And all that had happened seemed to have no impression but one upon me. I never thought of that group downstairs going over the wonderful story which nobody had so much as guessed at. I thought only of that hopeless woman, in her shut-up room, slowly floating out of existence, dying hour by hour, and minute by minute, unchanged and unsubdued. What was death that it should change her, whom love and pity, and the long-suffering of God had not changed? But I thought to myself I could never more blame those who preach out of season as well as in season, and cannot be silent. There were moments in which I could not endure myself—in which I felt as if I must go and make another appeal to her—even at the risk of thrusting myself into the room, and disturbing the quiet of her last hours.