The Last of the Mortimers

But still there was no sound at the door; there was time to look round all the peaceable vast room, and be struck by the quietness, the repose of the scene in which some act of this mysterious drama was about to be enacted. It was always very light here, but the bright day and the sunshine out of doors, made it now even lighter than usual, and refused to any of us the slightest shade for our faces, whatever undue expression might come to them. Sara had adopted the only expedient possible, by turning her back upon the light, and had, besides, a little shelter in her hat. But dear Aunt Milly, looking at her favourite with a troubled inquiring expression, and laying down the work she had in hand in order to examine Sara’s countenance the better, was so fully set forth in all her looks, movements, and almost feelings, by that broad clear day-light, that I shrank back from it in spite of myself, fearing that it would betray me too. The only shadow in the room was that afforded by Miss Mortimer’s screen. She sat there just as usual, in her violet-coloured dress, her light muslin embroidered scarf, worn without any lining, now that the weather was warm, and her pretty cap, with ribbons corresponding to her dress; her head moving so slightly that it was difficult to perceive the motion; her pattern-book open on her knee, her head bent over it. At this moment, when the thunders of Providence were just about to break over her, she sat there, with her head over her knitting-book, counting her stitches, and trying a new pattern. When I saw how she was occupied, my own trembling pretence at work fell from my hands. I gazed at her openly with a wonder which was almost awe. My heart cried out against her in her dread composure. The Avenger was coming, and there she sat, all conscious, aware, in every nerve, of her guilt, and yet able to maintain that hideous calm. Yes! it would have been sublime had she been a good woman, threatened by some undeserved doom. I declare it was ghastly, devilish, dreadful to me!

All this time nobody came to the door. I daresay, perhaps, it was not very many minutes after all; but in the excitement and suspense it seemed a very long time to me. And either the house was specially quiet, or there was something in my agitated condition which made me think so. Miss Mortimer never lifted her head; if she had not been so engaged with her pattern, surely she would have noticed the perplexed looks of Aunt Milly, and my excited face. But she did not, she kept working on at her new stitch. We all relapsed into perfect silence; Sara’s voluble excuses for herself died all at once off her lips. Aunt Milly dropped into a strange anxious silence, looking at her. As for myself, I could not have spoken a word whatever had been the consequences. Sara’s nervous motion of her foot on the carpet startled me so much that I had nearly committed myself by some cry of agitation. It was a dread, inexplainable pause, which nobody dared either break or account for. Dead silence and expectation. And Miss Mortimer bending her head over her pattern-book counting the loops for her new stitch.

The bell did not ring. If it had rung it must have startled us all so much as to diminish the sense of what was coming; there was no such premonition;—a little sound of steps and subdued voices in the hall made my heart beat so loud that I felt sure my Aunt Milly must have heard it. Sara looked up at me suddenly when that sound became audible. Her face was perfectly colourless, and her hands firmly clasped together.

“Children, what is it?” said Aunt Milly, with a sharp frightened cry, breaking off suddenly in a troubled manner as the steps drew nearer. Miss Mortimer lifted her head from her book. She looked up, she looked full at me; she smiled. She was listening, but she was not afraid.

When suddenly the door was thrown open; Ellis called out, with his fullest voice: “The Count Sormonata,” and somebody came in. I cannot tell who it was that came in. I heard Sara cry out with a kind of shriek and repeat the name, “The Count Sermoneta!” The work and the book and all the trifling matters about her fell off from Miss Mortimer. She rose up, clenching her hand, ghastly, like a dead woman. She cried out in a voice I shall never forget: “he is dead, dead!” she cried, with the wildest scream and outcry. “I tell you, he is dead, dead! My God, he is dead! Will nobody believe me?” shrieked out the miserable woman. Her sister ran to her, and was thrust away with those terrible clenched hands. But she never turned to look, nor cast aside her screen that hid the new comer from her. She stood still like some frightful statue, rigid, with her wild eyes fixed upon the air before her—heaven knows what she might see there!—listening in some frightful agony to the steps that came slowly up the room. When that scream burst from her the footsteps faltered and stopped. Then Miss Mortimer looked at me, the only creature she saw before her, and laughed a dreadful laugh of madness and misery. “He knows it!” she cried out, triumphantly, “if you did not, he does. He is dead, dead!” and then came to another dreadful pause, leaning her clenched hands upon the table and fixing her wild eyes upon something straight before her. While I followed the mad stare of her eyes with a shudder I could not refrain, another person came with noiseless rapidity into the spot she was gazing on. It was not a spectre—it was simply Luigi, from whose face agitation had banished all the colour, and who stood trembling and speechless, wringing his hands, and gazing at her with an unspeakable appeal and entreaty. She did not say anything more; she stood with her eyes full opened and staring wide, leaning her hands on that table. I believe, if anybody had touched her, she would have fallen. I almost believed, while I looked at her, that she had died standing, and that it was a lifeless form that stood fixed in that horrible erect attitude, fronting us all, fronting a thousand times more than us, all the guilt and sins of her life. I gave a cry myself in the extremity of my terror and trouble. I went to her, I cannot tell how, stumbling over Aunt Milly, who had either fallen or fainted, or I cannot tell what. I went and put my arm round that dreadful ghastly figure. It was not her I was approaching, but it, the terrible mask and image of her. I had not a thought but that she was dead.

When I touched her, she fell, as I had thought she would. But so strong an impression did her dreadful appearance have upon me, that, when her figure sank into the chair and showed some elasticity, instead of going down on the floor, crumbling down, dropping to pieces, as somehow I had expected, I was struck with a horrible fear and surprise. She was not dead. I called out to them all, what were we to do? and she seemed to hear me. I saw, with a terror I cannot explain, her terrible eyes turn from Luigi—they looked at me, at Aunt Milly, they cast a glance over the room. Was it that the spirit was living and the body dead?

I cannot tell what we did for a dreadful interval after that. Carson came into the confused crowd. Luigi disappeared to find a doctor, and we tried to get her lifted and laid upon the sofa. But though she neither moved nor spoke, and scarcely seemed to breathe, she resisted, in some dreadful way, and would not be removed. I shall never forget that dreadful face; when I am ill it comes back to me, a recollection never to be banished;—dead—yet never consenting to die, keeping alive, determined, resolute, unshaken. I can see the discoloured lips begin to move, the words formed on the inarticulate tongue, the eyes lightening out of that fixed stare. Half the house had stolen into the room in this dreadful emergency without anybody observing them. But the dead woman observed them. And I, who was standing nearest, recoiled from her side, and the whole circle round her broke up and fell back in speechless horror, when a sound broke from that dreadful convulsed mouth. Old Carson, trembling but faithful, stood by her mistress. The poor creature said she understood that sound. It was to send everybody away, said the woman, whose limbs would scarcely support her, and whose very teeth chattered. They all went away, terrified but curious; the boldest lingered behind the screen. Nobody remained within sight of those dreadful eyes but Aunt Milly and me. We two stood huddled on each other, not daring to say a word, or even to exchange looks. Carson stood by her mistress’s side. Carson knew all and everything, more than we knew. She held some cordial to the dead lips, she chafed the ghastly hand, she gazed with pitiful eyes and tears and entreaties at the terrible face. This woman was not deserted in her terrible necessity. The voice of that humble love reached somehow to the springs of existence, and she came back slowly, in a solemn, fearful waking, out of death into life. We stood looking on, with an awe and terror impossible to describe. It was a miracle slowly enacting before us. She was dead and was alive again. Ghastly and dreadful, like a woman out of the grave, Miss Mortimer woke up to all her misery again.

Chapter XVI

THIS extraordinary revival was going on when the doctor rushed in. Carson, who had been the principal person in all this scene, rushed at him and drew him back. She kept her hand on his arm, detained him, ran into voluble but trembling explanations. When he came forward the doctor gazed with a troubled face at the patient. A fainting fit brought on by great agitation; nobody could give any other account of it; he felt her pulse, and prescribed, and lingered, and looked at us all with mingled inquiry and suspicion. What had we been doing to her? Why had she not been removed to bed? A flash came from the awakening eyes. She made a motion of her hand, waving him away, then looked at me, and pointed vaguely but imperatively before her. When I did not obey immediately, she repeated the question, and at last spoke, with great evident pain, impatience, and imperiousness: “Bring him?” were those the words? She was so imperative, so fiercely determined, that I hastened out to call Luigi. I found him at the door watching, very pale, and in profound distress. He came in after me without saying a word; he went up to her without waiting for me, and knelt down at her feet, and took her hands in his own. “Mother! Mother!” cried the young man. If it did not go to her heart, it went to the heart of every other person present; and Aunt Milly, with a great cry of amazement and terror, repeated it after him, “Mother!” But who could think of any discovery then? The doctor stood listening, thunderstruck, behind the screen. I believe Sara Cresswell was in the room. But we who were round about this terrible figure could observe nothing else, except the dread inarticulate waves of passion that kept rising in her dead face. She thrust at her son with a wild motion of her bloodless hands as if to put him away. She questioned him with her eyes in such frantic impatience, because he could not understand her, that the sight was more than I could bear. I fell back from her trembling and like to faint. Then her will got the better of her weakness. She cried out aloud, with a voice that I am sure could have been heard all over the house;—it was not a living voice; it rang out wild, and loud, and hard, in separate words,—“Where is he?—he? dead! let him come. I know he is dead, let him come;—Count!” and here the terrible voice rose and broke in a wild horror of babbling cries. God help us! It was a dreadful scene. Aunt Milly stood supporting herself by a chair, unable to utter a word or even to move. I was afraid to stir, lest I should faint and fall on the floor. Carson only stood close by her mistress, supporting her head and gazing with wistful eyes at Luigi; the young man stumbled up from his knees in an agony of pity and horror. He held up his hands in wild appeal, whether to her, or to us, or only to God, I cannot tell. “It is my father!” he cried. “She thinks it was my father; and I am to blame!” Then he knelt down again humbly at her feet, and held up his clasped hands to her as if he were praying. I think he must have done it with an intention of drawing her attention by any means, and to prove to her that it was the truth he said.

“Mother,” he cried, looking up at those eyes which had returned, and were fixed upon him,—“mother, I am your son! My father is dead and undisturbed in his grave; he has sent me to his wife. It is I, it is no other. He is with the saints, where there are no names. It is I who am Sermoneta; mother! Oh, heaven, does she not hear me? will she not hear me? It was I, only I. It was Luigi, Countess! If I must not bear your name, I must bear my own. I say it was I, not my father, who can neither do evil nor endure it,—me, either Luigi Sermoneta or Lewis Mortimer, as you will,—your son!”

It is impossible to describe the effect this had upon us all. Aunt Milly burst forth into weeping, convulsive, and not to be restrained. Poor Carson’s bosom heaved with silent sobs. Luigi, who had risen up as he said these last words, stood erect in a passionate self-assertion and defence before his miserable mother. Even she changed under this sudden blaze of revelation. She sat up in her chair, and grew more human; her rigid head began to tremble, her dread-eyes to lose their horror. Now it was no longer that mad ghastly stare with which she regarded the young man before her. She looked at him, leaning forward, slowly recovering her powers. Some convulsive gasps or sobs in her throat alone interrupted this pause of terrible silence. She looked at him, from head to foot, with a slow, dismal scrutiny. Only once before in her life had she met him face to face; then she had been strong enough to send him away and disown him. Now, perforce, the mother looked at her son. The young man trembled under that steady gaze; he held out his hands, and cried out “Mother!” as if all the eloquence in the world lay in that word. She continued perusing him all over with that slow examination. Gradually she returned to be herself again. Not changed, not subdued! Out of that death and agony there came forth, not a repentant woman, but Sarah Mortimer, a creature who would not believe in everlasting truth and justice—not though one should rise from the dead.

“If you are Count Sermoneta,” she said, with all her old expression, pausing between the words to get strength, but speaking in her usual voice, “how do you dare come to me and offer what your father refused? Impostor! you shall never, never, never sit in my father’s place! I disown you. I—I have nothing to do with you. What! would you kill me again?”

Here I interposed; I could not help myself. My very soul sickened at her. I came forward, without knowing what I was doing. “Let her alone,” I cried out, “don’t say anything. She has died and come alive again, and is no better. Do you think you can move her? Oh, Aunt Milly, it is your part now. Take him away out of her sight, leave her alone in her wretchedness. Can you bear to see her smiling there?—smiling at us! She is dead, and it is a devil that has come into her frame!”

“Milly, hush, hush, you are mad,” cried Sara Cresswell, behind me; but Aunt Milly did not think I was mad. She came and put her arm into Luigi’s, her tears driven away by horror and indignation. “As sure as God sees us all,” cried Aunt Milly, “I will do you justice. Come away from her, as Milly, says. You make her wickeder and wickeder—Oh, wickeder than she really is! Oh, Sarah,” she cried out, turning suddenly round, “is it true?—is he your son?”

Miss Mortimer said nothing;—the very colour had returned to her face. Her head trembled excessively, but she had forced some frightful caricature of a smile upon her lip. She held out her hand and pointed at them in a kind of derision. “You were always a fool,” she said at last, with a gasp. Aunt Milly did not wait or hesitate any longer. She was possessed, like me, with a sudden impatience and intolerance of that inhuman hard-heartedness. She went away hastily out of the room, drawing Luigi with her. Miss Mortimer listened to the sound of their steps till it had quite died away. Then she turned round to Carson with some instinctive confession of weakness at last. Their eyes met; but even Carson could no longer receive this dreadful confidence. She stumbled back from her mistress with a cry. “I cannot, I cannot!” cried Carson, “anything but this. I held him in my arms a baby, and I’ll never disown him, if I was to die.” As her mistress turned round upon her, Carson retreated back till she came to the wall, and stood there, fixed and desperate, holding up her hands as if to keep off those pursuing eyes. “Whatever you please!” cried Carson, “but not to disown him as I dressed the first day he was in this world. No! not for no payment nor coaxing! I’ve served you faithful all times and seasons, but I’ll not do no more, not if I was to die!”

Miss Mortimer sat gazing at her rebellious maid. What no other appeal could do this did. She sank into the frail old woman she was, as she gazed at Carson, who had forsaken her. She broke forth into feeble, passionate tears. She could bear to send her son away from her, but she could not bear to lose her faithful companion and attendant of forty years. “Carson!” cried the broken voice, in a tone of absolute despair. Then Miss Mortimer rose up. I ran forward to her in terror, and so did Sara, but she waved us both away, steadied herself, cast a long look upon the woman who stood trembling against the wall, and slowly turned to make her way out of the room. She walked like some one upon whom sudden blindness had fallen, wavering, stopping to steady herself, putting out her hand to pilot the way, groping through the piercing daylight that penetrated every corner of the room. We followed her, trembling and terrified. As she went slowly through the long room, heavy sobs came from her poor breast, sobs of which she was not conscious; her muslin scarf had been torn and crushed in her dreadful faint, if it was a faint, and hung all dishevelled from her shoulders. One hand hung loosely down by her side, the other she groped with as she made her way. Now and then she moaned aloud. Oh, miserable forsaken creature! there had been still one link of life to hold her on to the living world.

We went after her, silent, hushing our very steps lest she should turn upon us, and watching with a perfect awe of wonder how she steered herself through the room; she stumbled on the stair, but still rejected any assistance. All the way up she went forlorn, accepting no support. When we reached her door, I rushed forward not to let her shut me out. “Let me be your maid to-night,” I cried out, laying my hand upon hers. Her hand made me shiver; it was cold, as if it had actually been dead. She pushed me back, not looking at me, and shut the door. What she did, or how she sustained herself in that vacant room, we could see no longer. Sara and I, arrested at the door, turned and looked into each other’s faces. Sara broke out into the passionate tears of excitement and agitation which could be restrained no longer. “She will kill herself!” cried Sara. “Oh, godmamma, let me in, let me in. I will never cross you or trouble you. I will wait upon you night and day, godmamma!” No answer came. We tried to open the door, but she had fastened it. We could do nothing but leave her alone in this dreadful solitude. For a little while a rustling sound of motion was in the room, and still those pathetic, unconscious moans breaking at intervals into the silence. But after a while all became still. She had not fainted or fallen, for we should have heard her. She made no answer to our entreaties—dead silence reigned in the room where that living spirit, with all its dread forces and passions, palpitated within its veil of worn-out flesh. I could imagine her taking possession of that dreadful solitude, losing at a blow far more than reputation or fair-fame, all that made her life tolerable to her, entering upon a new, unthought of, murderous purgatory. We could not make up our minds to leave that closed door. Sara was still crying, and almost hysterical with her long strain of excitement. I made her go into the neighbouring room, where Lizzie was with my boy, while I ran downstairs for Aunt Milly. Oh, what a contrast it was! I snatched little Harry into my arms to kiss him, and went away again, with a pity, I cannot describe, past the door where that dreadful forsaken woman lay alone in the silence. I could not bear it. God alone knew how she had sinned; but to leave her thus deserted in her misery was not in the heart of man.

I ran downstairs very hastily without waiting to think—at the foot of the stairs Carson stood crying. She gasped out an inquiry at me which was not audible at first. “Is she alone? alone? alone? Will nobody stay with her?” cried Carson. “Oh, ma’am, my missis will never let me near her again! I know it’s no use trying; but, for the love of mercy, let somebody get into the room! There’s poisons and all sorts there. God forgive me! couldn’t I have held my tongue?” cried the poor woman, in an agony of terror. I was angry with her in the impatience of my thoughts. I did not consider for how many long years Carson had endured all.

“But why can’t you go up now? try if she will let you in; she is fond of you, Carson,” said I. “Oh, go, go, and try.”

“She’ll never look at me more,” said Carson with mournful certainty; “but I’ll go, I’ll try. If it was at the end of the world, I’d go; but she’ll never see me again.” The poor woman went upstairs saying this over to herself, and dreadful as it was to think so, I was certain she was right.

And I went on to the library where Aunt Milly was. She had forgotten her sister. She was listening, with a glowing face, with tears, and outcries, and lamentations, to the tale Luigi told her. Some papers were lying before them, and a miniature, which caught my eye even at such a moment—a picture of a lovely fair woman, imperious and splendid. I cannot say that it bore any resemblance to the wretched, solitary creature upstairs; but I knew it was Sarah Mortimer,—Sarah Mortimer, unkind, untrue, a woman making no account of love or tenderness; but not the Sarah Mortimer who had delivered herself to the devil, and turned her back upon nature. I pointed at it unconsciously in my excitement. It was easier than naming her name.

“Do you know she is alone upstairs, by herself?” cried I, “perhaps dying, and nobody with her! Aunt Milly, you are her sister. She will neither let us in, nor answer us. You have a right to go to her. There are all kinds of dangerous things in the room—she might die!”

“But Carson—Carson is there,” cried Aunt Milly, grasping my hand, to bring me to myself. “My dear, Carson is a better companion than either you or me.”

“But Carson has gone,” I cried, “Carson will never be with her any more. Hush! was that a sound upstairs? Come, I entreat you! She is all alone, quite alone, not a creature with her. It is heartrending to think what she is doing there—come! come!”

Aunt Milly stood perplexed. She could not comprehend Carson’s absence, and I might have had a long account of the whole matter to go through had not Luigi come to my assistance. He took her hand hurriedly, and pressed it in his own.

“My aunt, I can wait,” said Luigi, “and I will till there is time for me; but my mother, my mother is–”

Aunt Milly started, and understood all in a moment. His mother, the unfortunate wretched woman who had disowned and rejected him—no need for over-much explaining, or setting-forth of all the darker shades of the picture to show her wretchedness. Nature and she had parted company, and there was nothing too dreadful that might not befall her in the fatal silence of that secluded room.

Chapter XVII

ALL the remainder of that dreadful afternoon we spent in vain endeavours to get admission. No answer came to us from those closed doors—silence, dead and unbroken, was within those concealing walls, which it seemed wonderful to me did not beat and throb with the torturing life within them. The whole house was disturbed, as was to be supposed. While we stood in an anxious, troubled group round Miss Mortimer’s door, Carson, with her melancholy and ashamed face, stood anxious and terrified at a little distance—the maids below came to take furtive peeps upon the stairs—and Ellis himself stood listening in the hall, catching at every sound. The whole house was conscious of some dreadful crisis, which had occurred, or was occurring; and even in the frightful anxiety which possessed us, Aunt Milly began to feel that extraordinary infraction of all the decorums of such a house. She whispered to Sara to leave us, and go downstairs to restore the equilibrium of the household a little, and sent Carson into Lizzie’s room, where the poor creature sank, overpowered and almost fainting, upon the bed. Then Aunt Milly went away to her own apartment, and came back with a huge bunch of keys. With these in her hand she motioned me to follow her round about into the little corridor to which Miss Mortimer’s dressing-room opened. “Milly, stand by me,” she cried, with a sob. “I’d rather face so many lions than go in upon her against her will—but it must be—I cannot help myself. After what we saw to-day, I should be guilty, I should be a criminal—don’t you think so, Milly?—if I left her alone to-night.”