The Last of the Mortimers

“With all my heart!” said I. I was so much surprised by her ignorance and her free speech, that, though I liked her very much, I really did not know what more to say.

“I suppose, then, I may take off my bonnet?” she said, quite innocently looking up in my face.

If she had rushed to kiss me I could have understood it. If she had declared we were to be friends for ever, I should have quite gone in with her; but, to take off her bonnet! that was quite a different matter. I am sadly afraid I stammered and stared. I wanted a friend as much as she did—but men are such strange creatures. What would Harry say when he came in?

However, Sara Cresswell did not wait till I finished considering. In five minutes after she was sitting on the carpet at the window with little Harry, playing with him. The child was quite delighted. As for me, I was too much taken by surprise to know whether I was pleased or not. Harry was to dine at mess that night; and, of course, I had only meant to have tea all by myself in the little back room. What was to be done? I am sorry to say I was very much tempted to improvise a dinner, and pretend that it was just what I always did. I think the thing that saved me from this was looking at her with her little short curls; she looked so like a child! Besides, if we were really to be friends, was I to begin by deceiving her? Much better she should know at once all our simple ways.

“You will have no dinner,” said I, faltering a little. “Mr. Langham goes out, and I only take tea.”

“That is exactly what I like. Dinners are such bores!” said Sara, with the air of one who belonged to us and had taken possession.

It was getting quite dark, and the lamps were being lighted outside; of course it delighted baby very much to be held up to see them, as his new nurse held him. As she stood there lifting him up, I put my hand upon her pretty hair. She had quite taken my heart.

“Have you had a fever, dear?” said I.

Sara stared at me a moment, then looked deeply affronted, then burst into a strange laugh. “I forgive you, because you called me dear,” she cried, starting off with baby to the other window. I suppose, then, it had not been a fever—some foolish fancy or other,—and no doubt her friends and acquaintance had pretty well avenged it, without any further question from me.

Chapter VI

NEXT morning I was a little amused and a little surprised to think over all that had happened. The idea of having a friend, who stayed with me till after nine, and helped to put baby to bed, and interfered with Lizzie, and turned over all our few books, and asked all sorts of questions, was the oddest thing in the world to me; and of course when I told Harry I heard all sorts of jokes from him about female friendship, and inquiries how long it would last, which made me extremely angry. Are men’s friendships any steadier, I wonder? I should say male friendship, to be even with him. Mr. Thackeray is delightful; but he puts a great deal of stuff into young men’s heads. I allow he may joke if he likes—to be sure, he does not mean half of it—but do you suppose they may all follow his example? Not that I mean to infer anything on Harry’s part that I could not pay him back quite comfortably. But not meaning Harry in the least, I don’t see why I should not do my little bit of criticism. I was just beginning to read books at that time, and everything was fresh to me. All the foolish lads think they are quite as wise as Mr. Thackeray, and have quite as good a right to think themselves behind the scenes. I suppose there never was anybody who did not like to feel superior and wiser than his neighbours. I would put Domenico’s laurel wreath on Mr. Thackeray’s head; but I should like to put an extinguisher on the heads of the Thackerians. I should think the great man would be disposed to knock down half the people that quote him, could he only hear, and behold, and note.

However, that has nothing to do with my story. I knew Lizzie must be in a highly excited state from long repression of her manifold gleanings of intelligence respecting last night’s arrival; and I went to her as soon as Harry was out lest any explosion should happen. Lizzie, however, looked rather downcast as, baby being asleep, she went about her work upstairs. My first idea was that some jealousy of Miss Cresswell had invaded the girl’s mind, but that did not explain all the peculiarities of her manner. She certainly allowed herself to be drawn into an account of Domenico’s proceedings, which gradually inspired and animated her; but even in the midst of this she would make a hurried pause, now and then, and listen, as if some painful sound had reached her ear.

“It was a very grand dinner. Eh, I never saw onything like the way he steered, and twisted, and mixed, and watched,” said Lizzie; “he maun be a real man-cook, like what’s in books; and took up everything separate, six different things one after the ither; and Sally says there was as mony plates as if it had been a great party; and the minute before and the minute after, what was the gentleman doing but smoking like as if he was on fire; and eh, mem, he maun be a great man yon! Domenico kissed his hand; but after that,” continued Lizzie, blushing and turning aside with a strong sense of impropriety, “the gentleman kissed him!”

“That is how foreigners do,” said I, in apology.

“And after the dinner there was that sound o’ tongues through the house, you would have thought the walls would ha’e been down. Eh, sic language for Christians to speak! but, mem, they’re no Christians, they’re Papishers—is that true?” said Lizzie, with a little anxiety. “Such a blatter o’ words, and no one a body could understand. No’ that I was wantin’ to understand; but it’s awfu’ funny to hear folk speakin’, and nae sense in’t. Eh, whisht! what was that?” cried Lizzie, starting and stopping short in her tale.

It certainly was, or sounded, very like a moan of pain.

“What is it, Lizzie?”

“Eh, to think of us speaking of dinners, and sic nonsense!—and, mem, it’s a poor man like to dee with pride, and sickness, and starvation! What will I do? What will I do?” cried Lizzie. “If naebody else in the house durst, it maun be me. I’ll no keep quiet ony langer—he canna be ill at me that was destitute mysel’. I’ll gang and steal the bairn’s beef-tea, and tell him lies, that it’s his ain. Mem, let me gang. I canna bear’t ony mair!”

I stopped her, however, growing very much excited myself. “What is it? What do you mean?”

Lizzie, who was choking with distress, eagerness, and excitement, pointed her finger up, and struggled to find her voice. It burst upon me in a moment. The poor gentleman in the attic, the threadbare wistful man who went out to dine, had not been visible for some days. Lizzie told me in gasps what the landlady had told her. He was ill; he was very poor; deeply in Mrs. Goldsworthy’s debt. They had noticed that his usual work had not been on his table for some time, and that no domestic stores of any kind were in his little cupboard; three days ago he had become too ill to go out, they did not think he had anything to eat, and he would accept nothing from them. All yesterday they had not ventured to enter his room. Sick, starving, friendless—what a picture it was! No wonder he had hungry, wistful eyes. I lost no time as you may suppose. I sent Lizzie flying downstairs for the beef-tea. As for asking whether he would admit me or not, whether he would think it impertinent or not, I never stopped to think. Another of those moans, more audible this time because I was listening for it, thrilled me through and through before Lizzie came back. Bless the girl! in no time at all she had got the whitest napkin to be had in the house for the tray; and the beef-tea smoked and smelt just as it ought. I was at the door of the room before I thought anything about how I was to excuse myself. By mere instinct I opened the door first; then knocked, merely to warn the inmate of my coming, and in another moment stood all by myself in a new world.

Another world! a world of misery, endurance, voiceless passion, and persistence, altogether unknown to me. He was lying on some chairs before the fireplace, supporting his gaunt shoulders against the end of his bed,—before the fireplace, in which there was no fire, nor had been. It was trim and well-blacked, and filled up with faded ornamental chippings of paper. His table was beside him, and he leaned one arm on it; nothing on the table, not even a book, except some old pens, blotting-paper, and an ink-bottle. His coat buttoned close up to his neck, with dreadful suggestive secrecy, plainly telling how little there was below; and the hungry sad eyes, glaring wolfish and frenzied out of his worn face. He gave a great start when I came in, and either in passion or weakness thrust one of the chairs from under his feet, so that it fell with a great noise on the floor. The sound and the movement made my heart beat. But he took no further notice, only stared at me. I went forward and put the tray before him on the table, uncovered the basin, placed everything within his reach. All the while he stared at me, his eyes contracting and dilating as I never saw the eyes of any human creature before. I scarcely think he was a human creature at that moment; at least he was holding to his manhood only by that frantic hold of pride, which hunger and misery were rending before my very eyes. He began to tremble dreadfully; the sight of the food excited his weakness; but he tried to resist till the last gasp.

“Who are you? and how dare you come to my room and intrude upon me!” he said hoarsely, and trembling like a palsied man.

“I am your fellow-lodger. You used to notice my baby when you went downstairs; and they told me you were ill, and could not go out. When one is ill there is nothing so good as beef-tea,” said I, trembling a good deal myself; “even if you cannot eat, you might drink a little, and it would refresh you. Do pray try, it will do you good.”

“And how do you know?” he said trembling more and more, till his very utterance was indistinct, “that I cannot have beef-tea or—or anything else I like, of my own. Ah!” he ended, with a sharp cry. He put forward his hand towards it; then he stopped in a dreadful spasm of resistance, and glared at me. I obeyed my first impulse, and went out of the room hurriedly. He would not take it while I was there.

In about five minutes after I went back again with some coals and wood, in one of Mrs. Goldsworthy’s old coal scuttles. I thought I saw how to manage him—never to ask permission or make apologies, but simply to do what was needful. He had emptied the basin, I saw at a glance, and had a piece of bread in his hand, which he put down when I came in. He said nothing, but stared at me as I lighted the fire. When my back was turned to him I fancied he made another stealthy application to the bread. He would hide the full amount of his misery if it were possible; but it was only a partial victory he could obtain over himself.

“Who, who are you?” he said at last. “You—you are a lady, eh? It is not your business to make up fires?”

“Yes,” said I, as cheerfully as I could; “but we are poor; and when one has not much money one has many things to do.”

At this the poor gentleman gave a great groan. Then, after a little, gasped, in broken words, “Thank God! creatures like you don’t know the truths they say.”

I understood him at once. “No,” said I, “it is quite true; but God knows all about it, that is a comfort always. Don’t you think if I put the pillows behind you, you would be more comfortable? Try this. I am quite sure it is better so.”

“Ah! but how do you know I can’t have pillows as I please, and whatever I want of my own?” cried the jealous, delirious pride, waking up again in his big hollow eyes.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said I; “but you have nobody with you just now. If you will not send for any friends, you can’t help having neighbours all the same.”

He said, “Ah!” again, and relapsed into his silent stare. But for the frenzy of desperate want and desperate pride, which only flickered up by moments, he was too far benumbed with want and suffering to do anything in the way of resistance. After I had settled him a little comfortable I went downstairs again, and as soon as baby’s second bowl of beef-tea, which had been hastily made to take the place of the first, was ready, I stole that also, and went up with it again. Baby, who was as fat as possible, could quite well do without it; and I remember having read that people, who had been in great want, should get food very often but not much at a time. The poor gentleman was lying with his head on the pillow and his eyes half shut, the light of the fire glimmering over him, and a kind of quiet in his attitude. When he opened his eyes they grew wolfish again for a moment; but he was subdued—the first frenzy was gone. Somehow he did not seem alone any longer, with that dear good charitable fire blazing and crackling, and making all the noise it could, as if to show what company it could be. And this time he actually drew the basin towards him, and ate its contents before me. I went to the little window and cried a little privately. Oh, it was pitiful! pitiful! That morning I am sure he had laid himself down upon these chairs, mad with want, bitterness, and solitude, to die.

Chapter VII

“YOU, who would not go out to dinner because you could not afford it!” cried Harry, “how do you dare venture on such rash proceedings? It appears to me you have adopted a new member into the family.”

“Ah, but it is different,” said I; “going out to dinner was a matter of choice, this was a matter of necessity.”

“It depends upon how people think,” said Harry, “the priest and the Levite were of quite a different opinion; but if you mean to have friends and pensioners, and get rich people and poor people about you, Milly darling, we’ll have to think of new supplies. I cannot imagine how it has gone out of my mind all this time. Pendleton actually asked me to-day whether I had heard anything more about your grandfather’s house.”

“My grandfather’s house!” I said; and we both looked at each other and laughed; our removal had put all that out of our heads. Chester, and new places to look at, and new people to see, and just the usual disturbance of one’s thoughts in changing about, had betrayed Harry who was so anxious about it, just as much as it had betrayed me.

“I must see after it now in earnest. A thousand pounds or so, you know,” said Harry, with a kind of serio-comic look, “would be worth a great deal to you just now.”

And with this he went out. A thousand pounds or so! twenty would have been nice; aye, or ten, or even five, more than just our regular money. However, I only laughed to myself, and went upstairs to my poor gentleman. After all, I am not so sure that he was a gentleman, or at least anything unusual in himself. He was very independent, and want, and a passionate dread of being found out, and made a pauper of, had carried him to a kind of heroism for the moment. But when he got used to me, and consented to let me bring him things, he became very much like other people. He was always eager to get the newspaper and see the news. I carried him up the Chester paper, which Mrs. Goldsworthy took in just now.

When I went into his room, the first thing I saw was two letters on the table. He was just drawing back, and still trembling from his exertion, for he was still very weak. He put the letters towards me with a little movement of his hand.

“I am writing to ask for work; I’m wonderfully steady now, wonderfully steady; if they would only give me work! Ah, it’s hard times when a man can’t get work,” he said.

I glanced at them as he wished me. “Cresswell?” said I; “I think I know his daughter, Mr. Ward. I’ll speak to her; perhaps she can make him help you.”

“She can make him do whatever she likes,” said my friend, with his wistful eyes; “it’ll be well for him if she don’t make him do what he’ll repent.”

“How do you mean?” said I, with some surprise.

“Well!” said my patient, “it’s a story I don’t understand, and I can’t give you the rights of it. I was never more than just about the office an hour or so in the day, getting my copy. You see there’s two rich old ladies about half-a-dozen miles out o’ Chester, and there’s either some flaw in their title, or something that way. I know for certain there was an advertisement written out for the Times, for one Mortimer–”

“Mortimer!”

“Yes,” he said, looking at me in his eager way. “I suppose it had been some day when he had quarrelled with them, and meant to bring in the true owner; when all of a sudden it was withdrawn, and has never been in the Times to this day; and Miss Cresswell after that spent a long time at the Park. Somebody said in the office it was more than likely the ladies would leave their property to her; and to be sure if that was so, it would be none of her father’s business to hunt up the right heir.”

I felt completely dizzy and bewildered; I kept looking down upon the table, where the letters seemed to be flitting about with the strangest unsteady motion.

“And are the ladies called Mortimer?” I said, almost under my breath.

“Yes; they’re folks well known in Chester, though seldom to be seen here,” said Mr. Ward; “the youngest one, Miss Milly, is a good creature; the other one, and her name is Sarah, was a great beauty in her day. I remember when I was a lad, we young fellows would walk all that way just to see her riding out of the gates, or driving her grey ponies; they called her the beautiful Miss Mortimer in those days. I daresay now she’s as old, and as crazy, and as chilly—but thank heaven, she can never be as poor, and as friendless, and as suffering—as me.”

I could not make any answer for a long time. I stood with my hands clasped together, and my brain in a perfect whirl; these words, Sarah, Miss Mortimer, the Park, going in gusts through my mind. What did it mean? I had come upstairs with a smile on my lips about the fabulous house of my grandfather. Was this the real story now about to disclose itself? I felt for a moment that overwhelming impatience to hear more which makes one giddy when on the verge of a discovery; but I did not want to betray myself to the old man.

“And do you mean,” said I, holding fast by the table to keep myself from trembling, “that they are not the lawful owners of their estate?”

“Nay, I cannot tell you that,” said my patient, very coolly; “but what could be wanted with an advertisement in the Times for one Mortimer? and old Cresswell holding it back, you know, as soon as it was likely that his girl might get the Park.”

“Do you remember what was the Mortimer’s name that was to be advertised for? I know some Mortimers,” said I, with a little tremble in my voice.

“I can’t say I exactly remember just at this moment,” said the old man, after a little pause. “It wasn’t like a Mortimer name; it was—nay, stay,—it was one of the cotton-spinners’ names; I remember I thought of the spinning-jenny directly; something in that way; I can’t tell exactly what it was.”

I could scarcely stand. I could scarcely keep silent; and yet I durst not, for something that choked the voice in my throat, suggest my father’s name boldly to his recollection. I hurried away and threw myself on a chair in my own room. All was silent there; but with just a door between us Lizzie was playing with my boy; and his crows of infant delight, and her soft but homely voice, seemed to break in upon the solitude I wanted. I rose from that retreat, and went down to our little drawing room. There it was Domenico’s voice, round and full, singing, whistling, talking, all in a breath. Nowhere could I get quiet enough to think over the extraordinary information I had just received. Or, rather, indeed it was not either Lizzie’s voice, or Domenico’s, but the agitation and tumult in my own mind; the beating of my heart, and the stir and restlessness that rose in me, that prevented me from thinking. Could it be possible that my father’s languid prophecy, which Aunt Connor reported so lightly, had truth in it after all? The idea excited me beyond the power of thinking. I went out and came in. I took up various kinds of work and threw them down again; I could do nothing till Harry came in, and I had told him. Then I fancied there might possibly seem some sense and coherence in the news. If this were to come true, then what prospects might be dawning upon us! In this sudden illumination my past dread returned to me, as a fear which has been forgotten for a time always does. The war! if Harry’s wife turned out a great heiress, must not Harry himself cease to be a soldier and enter into his fortune? Ah me! but he would not; he would not if I should ask him on my knees; not, at least, till he had taken his chance of getting killed like all the rest.

This threw me back, with scarcely a moment’s interval, into the full tide of those thoughts which had tortured me before we came to Chester. I got up from my chair and began to walk about the room in the restlessness of great sudden apprehension and terror. All my trouble came back. My fears had but been asleep, the real circumstances were unchanged; even to-day, this very day, Harry might be ordered to the war.

He saw my nervous, troubled look in a moment when he came in; he was struck by it at once. “You look as you once looked in Edinburgh, Milly,” he said, coming up to me; “what is the matter? Something has happened while I have been away?”

“Harry,” cried I, with a little excitement, suddenly remembering that I had news to tell him. “I have found the Park and the Sarah; I have found the estate I am heiress to; I have found out something far more important than that old red-brick house; and, do you know, hearing of this brought everything to my mind directly, all my terrors and troubles. Never mind, I’ll tell you what I heard in the first place. It was from my poor gentleman upstairs.”

Harry, who had heard me with great interest up to this point, suddenly shrugged up his shoulders, and put his lips together with that disdainful provoking whew! with which men think they can always put one down.

“Oh, indeed, you need not be scornful!” said I; “he writes papers for a lawyer, and had a very good way of knowing. He says Mr. Cresswell had an advertisement all ready to be put into the Times some months ago, for one Mortimer, whose name reminded him of a spinning-jenny. But it never was sent to the paper, because Miss Cresswell went out to the Park, and it was thought the ladies would make her their heiress; but it was supposed there was some flaw in their title, and that this Mortimer would be the true heir.”

“The Park, and the ladies, and Miss Cresswell, and it was supposed? By Jove, Milly!” cried Harry, with great vehemence, “do you see how important this is?—have you no better grounds than it was thought, and, it was supposed?”

“You are unreasonable, Harry; I only heard what he had to say; and, besides, it might not be my father, nor the same people at all. He could not tell me, I only heard what he had to say.”

But this explanation did not satisfy Harry; he became as excited as I had been, but in a different way. He snatched up his hat, and would have gone at once, on the impulse of the moment, to see Mr. Cresswell, had not I detained him. The news had the same influence on Harry that it had on me. It woke us both out of that happy quiescence into which we had fallen when we came here. We were no longer dwelling at peace, safe in each other’s society; once more we were thrown into all the agitation that belonged to our condition and prospects.

Harry was a soldier, ready to be sent off any day to the camp and the trenches, gravely anxious about a home and shelter for his wife and child; I, a soldier’s wife, ready at any moment to have the light of my eyes torn from me, and my life cut in twain. After the first hurried burst of consultation, we were both silent, thinking on these things. Certainly it was better that we should have been aroused. The reality coming at once, all unapprehended and unthought of, would otherwise have been an intolerable blow. Now there was little fear that we could forget again.

It was natural that we should return to the subject again and again during the day. Harry drew my father’s old books, and the drawing he had laughed at, from his own desk, where he had kept them; and with them the envelope, full of formal documents, which he had written to Aunt Connor for with so much haste and importance, to substantiate my claim to my grandfather’s house; there they lay, unused, almost unlooked at. Harry shook his head as he drew them out. We neither of us said anything. We were neither of us sorry that we had forgotten all about it for a time. For my own part, I went away upstairs very like to cry. This information, which had thrown us back into so many troubles, might never come to anything; and even if it did, what difference would that make? Harry, if I was found out to be a king’s daughter, would never leave his profession, or shrink from its dangers, while this war lasted. My pleasant forgetfulness was over now. He was looking at this subject in the same light he had looked at it before we left Edinburgh;—it would be a home for me.