The Last of the Mortimers

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.

Chapter II

I GOT very little rest that night, and was up almost by break of day the next morning. In the height of my excitement and anxiety, I felt more comfort in my mind than I had done for a long time. Sitting waiting is dreadful work, but I felt myself again when there appeared anything to do. I would not allow myself to suppose that it would end in nothing. Such inquiries could not possibly be made without a motive. I was so restless that I scarcely could remain quietly at home for an hour or two after breakfast which, out of regard for appearances, I was obliged to sacrifice; but for the same reason I made up my mind not to take the carriage, but to walk to the point where the omnibus passed, and take my chance of finding a seat in it as other people did. I went out accordingly about eleven o’clock, and left a message for Sarah that I was going to make some calls, and that she was not to wait dinner for me, as I should probably lunch somewhere at a friend’s house. I saw Ellis look out after me from the hall window, with a kind of solemn grin on his face. Ellis was not to be deceived; he knew where I was going as well as I did myself.

As I had intended, I got into the omnibus when it passed, to the great amazement and dismay of both guard and driver, who knew me well enough. I thought to myself, after I was in it, that it was perhaps rather a foolish thing to do. If any talk got abroad about our family, and if the strangers, male and female, kept making strange inquiries, and I was seen driving—no, that is not the word—riding in an omnibus, what would people think but that some extraordinary downfall had happened at the Park? There were only some countrywomen in the coach, who stared at me a little, but were too busy with their own affairs to mind me much. Fortunately there was no one there from our own village. It was a very long drive to Chester, going in the omnibus; and being unaccustomed to it, and never on the outlook for jolts, I felt it a good deal, I confess, besides being just the least thing in the world in a false position. Not that I minded being seen in the omnibus, but because the guard knew me, and was troublesomely respectful, and directed the attention of the other passengers towards me. Great people, when they pretend to travel incognito, must find it a great bore, I should fancy. Of course somebody always betrays them, and it must be a great deal easier to bear what you can’t help bearing when there is no mystery about it, than when every blockhead thinks himself in your secret, and bound to keep up the joke with you.

At last we came to the street, and I got down. It was near the railway station, and so all sorts of traffic poured past the place; shabby hackney cabs, omnibuses from the Chester hotels, vans of goods, all the miscellaneous stuff that pours into railway stations. The houses were a little back from the road, to be sure, with little “front gardens,” as the people call them. I walked past three or four times before I had screwed myself up to the point of going in. The thing that dissipated all my feelings of embarrassment in a moment, and brought me back to the eagerness and excitement with which I set out from home, was the sudden appearance of Mr. Luigi’s servant, the large, fat, good-humoured Italian, whom I have before mentioned, at the door of one of the houses. The sight of him flushed me at once into determination. I turned immediately to the house where he stood, and of course it was the house, the number which Ellis had written down on his paper; there could be no doubts on the subject now.

“I wish to see your mistress,” said I, going up to the man, too breathless and eager to waste any words.

He looked at me with good-humoured scrutiny, repeating “Meestress” with a puzzled tone; at last a kind of gay, half-flattered confusion came over his good-humoured face, he put his hand on his heart, made a deprecatory, remonstrating bow, and burst into some laughing mixture of Italian and English, equally unintelligible. The fellow actually supposed I meant his sweetheart, or pretended to suppose so. I became very angry. He did not look impertinent either; but you may fancy how one would feel, to be supposed capable of such a piece of levity at such a time. And a person of my condition, too! Happily, at this moment the nurse-girl whom I had seen with my pretty young stranger suddenly made her appearance with the baby in her arms. I appealed to her, and though she stared and made answer in words not much more intelligible to me than her fellow-servant’s, she showed me upstairs. She was going out with the beautiful baby, but one way and another I was so worried and uncomfortable, and felt so strongly the existence of those plots against us which I was now going to clear up, that I took no notice of the child. I said nothing at all but that I wanted to see her mistress, and walked into the little drawing room without thinking I might be going into the young stranger’s presence, possibly into the presence of both husband and wife. However, the moment I had entered I saw her; there she was. In my heat and annoyance I went up to her instantly.

“Young lady,” said I, “you were in the neighbourhood of my house yesterday; you were in our village; I myself saw you approaching the Park. You put some very strange questions to my servant. You must know how harassed and disturbed I have been by inquiries I don’t know the meaning of. What is it all about? What claim has your husband upon the Mortimers? Who is he? What does he want with us?”

I said this without pausing to take breath, for my encounter with the servant, I confess, had irritated me. Now, when I had said my say and come to myself, I looked at her and felt a little shocked. She was certainly changed since yesterday; but before I had time even to make a mental comment on this change, I was entirely confounded by the entrance of a new and unsuspected actor on the scene; her husband! evidently her husband; but as unlike Mr. Luigi as one handsome young man could be unlike another,—a bright, open-faced unmistakable Englishman, a young soldier. The sight of him struck me aghast. What new complication was this?

“If there’s going to be any fighting, that’s my trade,” said the new-comer. “We’ll change places, Milly darling. Madam, my wife has a great many things to occupy her just now; let me answer for her, if that is possible. I think I know what she has been about.”

Saying which, he wheeled the one easy chair in the room towards me, and invited me to sit down. I sat down with the feeling of having somehow deceived myself strangely and made a huge mistake. I could not make it out. Mr. Luigi’s servant was below, and this was certainly the young woman whom I had arrested on her way to the Park, and who had asked questions of Ellis in the omnibus. But who was this handsome young soldier? What had he to do with it? A cold tremble came over me that it was what the newspapers call a mistaken identity, and that somehow I had stumbled in, after the rudest and most unauthorized fashion, into the privacy of two innocent young creatures who knew nothing about the Park.

“Pardon me if I am wrong,” I said with a gasp; “I fear I must be wrong, only let me ask one question. Did you speak to a man in the omnibus yesterday about the Mortimers of the Park? or was it not you? I am sure I shall never forgive myself if I have made such a foolish mistake.”

“But it is no mistake,” said the young wife, who had remained in the room, standing very near the half-opened door into the tiny apartment behind. Poor young soul! she was certainly changed in those twenty-four hours. I could scarcely resist an impulse that came upon me, to go up and take her in my arms, and ask the dear young creature what it was that ailed her. Depend upon it, whatever she might have asked about the Mortimers, that face meant no harm. I looked at her so closely, I was so much attracted by her, that I scarcely noticed, till she repeated it, what she said.