The Clever Woman of the Family
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“It was no fault of hers,” said Rachel, sadly.
“I wish I could feel it so.”
“That was a mere chance. The rest was my own doing.”
“Aided and abetted by more than one looker-on.”
“No. It is I who am accountable,” she said, repeating Mr. Grey’s words.
“You accept the whole?”
It was his usual, cool, dry tone; but as she replied, “I must,” she involuntarily looked up, with a glance of entreaty to be spared, and she met those dark, grey, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her with so much concern as almost to unnerve her.
“You cannot,” he answered; “every bystander must rue the apathy that let you be so cruelly deceived, for want of exertion on their part.”
“Nay,” she said; “you tried to open my eyes. I think this would have come worse, but for this morning’s stroke.”
“Thank you,” he said, earnestly.
“I daresay you know more than I have been able to understand,” she presently added; “it is like being in the middle of an explosion, without knowing what stands or falls.”
“And lobster salad as an aggravation!” said he, as the dish successively persecuted them. “This dinner is hard on you.”
“Very; but my mother would have been unhappy if I had stayed away. It is the leaving the poor child that grieves me. She is in a fearful state, between sore throat, starvation, and blows.”
The picture of the effect of the blows coming before Rachel at that moment, perilled her ability even to sit through the dinner; but her companion saw the suddening whitening of her cheek, and by a dexterous signal at once caused her glass to be filled. Habit was framing her lips to say something about never drinking wine; but somehow she felt a certain compulsion in his look, and her compliance restored her. She returned to the subject, saying, “But it was only the woman that was cruel.”
“She had not her Sepoy face for nothing.”
“Did I hear that Miss Williams knew her?”
“Yes, it seems she was a maid who had once been very cruel to little Rose Williams. The Colonel seems to think the discovery may have important consequences. I hardly know how.”
This conversation sent Rachel out of the dining-room more like herself than she had entered it; but she ran upstairs at once to Lovedy, and remained with her till disinterred by the desperate Grace, who could not see three people talking together without blushing with indignation at the construction they were certainly putting on her sister’s scarlet cheeks and absence from the drawing-room. With all Grace’s efforts, however, she could not bring her truant back before the gentlemen had come in. Captain Keith had seen their entrance, and soon came up to Rachel.
“How is your patient?” he asked.
“She is very ill; and the worst of it is, that it seems such agony to her to attempt to swallow.”
“Have you had advice for her?”
“No; I have often treated colds, and I thought this a case, aggravated by that wicked treatment.”
“Have you looked into her mouth?”
“Yes; the skin is frightfully brown and dry.”
He leant towards her, and asked, in an under tone—
“Did you ever see diphtheria?”
“No!”—her brow contracting—“did you?”
“Yes; we had it through all the children of the regiment at Woolwich.”
“You think this is it?”
He asked a few more questions, and his impression was evidently confirmed.
“I must send for Mr. Frampton,” said Rachel, homeopathy succumbing to her terror; but then, with a despairing glance, she beheld all the male part of the establishment handing tea.
“Where does he live? I’ll send him up.”
“Thank you, oh! thank you. The house with the rails, under the east cliff.”
He was gone, and Rachel endured the reeling of the lights, and the surges of talk, and the musical performances that seemed to burst the drum of her ear; and, after all, people went away, saying to each other that there was something very much amiss, and that poor dear Mrs. Curtis was very much to blame for not having controlled her daughters.
They departed at last, and Grace, without uttering the terrible word, was explaining to the worn-out mother that little Lovedy was more unwell, and that Captain Keith had kindly offered to fetch the doctor, when the Captain himself returned.
“I am sorry to say that Mr. Frampton is out, not likely to be at home till morning, and his partner is with a bad accident at Avonford. The best plan will be for me to ride back to Avoncester, and send out Macvicar, our doctor. He is a kind-hearted man, of much experience in this kind of thing.”
“But you are not going back,” said polite Mrs. Curtis, far from taking in the urgency of the case. “You were to sleep at Colonel Keith’s. I could not think of your taking the trouble.”
“I have settled that with the Colonel, thank you. My dog-cart will be here directly.”
“I can only say, thank you,” said Rachel, earnestly. “But is there nothing to be done in the meantime? Do you know the treatment?”
He knew enough to give a few directions, which revealed to poor Mrs. Curtis the character of the disease.
“That horrible new sore throat! Oh, Rachel, and you have been hanging over her all this time!”
“Indeed,” said Alick Keith, coming to her. “I think you need not be alarmed. The complaint seems to me to depend on the air and locality. I have been often with people who had it.”
“And not caught it?”
“No; though one poor little fellow, our piper’s son, would not try to take food from any one else, and died at last on my knee. I do not believe it is infectious in that way.”
And hearing his carriage at the door, he shook hands, and hurried off, Mrs. Curtis observing—
“He really is a very good young man. But oh, Rachel, my dear, how could you bring her here?”
“I did not know, mother. Any way it is better than her being in Mrs. Kelland’s hive of children.”
“You are not going back to her, Rachel, I entreat!”
“Mother, I must. You heard what Captain Keith said. Let that comfort you. It would be brutal cruelty and cowardice to stay away from her to night. Good night, Grace, make mother see that it must be so.”
She went, for poor Mrs. Curtis could not withstand her; and only turned with tearful eyes to her elder daughter to say, “You do not go into the room again, Grace, I insist.”
Grace could not bear to leave Rachel to the misery of such a vigil, and greatly reproached herself for the hurry that had prevented her from paying any heed to the condition of the child in her anxiety to make her sister presentable; but Mrs. Curtis was in a state of agitation that demanded all the care and tenderness of this “mother’s child,” and the sharing her room and bed made it impossible to elude the watchfulness that nervously guarded the remaining daughter.
It was eleven o’clock when Alexander Keith drove from the door. It was a moonlight night, and he was sure to spare no speed, but he could hardly be at Avoncester within an hour and a half, and the doctor would take at least two in coming out. Mrs. Kelland was the companion of Rachel’s watch. The woman was a good deal subdued. The strangeness of the great house tamed her, and she was shocked and frightened by the little girl’s state as well as by the young lady’s grave, awe-struck, and silent manner.
They tried all that Captain Keith had suggested, but the child was too weak and spent to inhale the steam of vinegar, and the attempts to make her swallow produced fruitless anguish. They could not discover how long it was since she had taken any nourishment, and they already knew what a miserable pittance hers had been at the best. Mrs. Kelland gave her up at once, and protested that she was following her mother, and that there was death in her face. Rachel made an imperious gesture of silence, and was obeyed so far as voice went, but long-drawn sighs and shakes of the head continued to impress on her the aunt’s hopelessness, throughout the endeavours to change the position, the moistening of the lips, the attempts at relief in answer to the choked effort to cough, the weary, faint moan, the increasing faintness and exhaustion.
One o’clock struck, and Mrs. Kelland said, in a low, ominous voice, “It is the turn of the night, Miss Rachel. You bad best leave her to me.”
“I will never leave her,” said Rachel impatiently.
“You are a young lady, Miss Rachel, you ain’t used to the like of this.”
“Hark!” Rachel held up her finger.
Wheels were crashing up the hill. The horrible responsibility was over, the immediate terror gone, help seemed to be coming at the utmost speed, and tears of relief rushed into Rachel’s eyes, tears that Lovedy must have perceived, for she spoke the first articulate words she had uttered since the night-watch had begun, “Please, ma’am, don’t fret, I’m going to poor mother.”
“You will be better now, Lovedy, here is the doctor,” said Rachel, though conscious that this was not the right thing, and then she hastened out on the stairs to meet the gaunt old Scotsman and bring him in. He made Mrs. Kelland raise the child, examined her mouth, felt her feet and hands, which were fast becoming chill, and desired the warm flannels still to be applied to them.
“Cannot her throat be operated on?” said Rachel, a tremor within her heart. “I think we could both be depended on if you wanted us.”
“She is too far gone, poor lassie,” was the answer; “it would be mere cruelty to torment her. You had better go and lie down, Miss Curtis; her mother and I can do all she is like to need.”
“Is she dying?”
“I doubt if she can last an hour longer. The disease is in an advanced state, and she was in too reduced a state to have battled with it, even had it been met earlier.”
“As it should have been! Twice her destroyer!” sighed Rachel, with a bursting heart, and again the kind doctor would have persuaded her to leave the room, but she turned from him and came back to Lovedy, who had been roused by what had been passing, and had been murmuring something which had set her aunt off into sobs.
“She’s saying she’ve been a bad girl to me, poor lamb, and I tell her not to think of it! She knows it was for her good, if she had not been set against her work.”
Dr. Macvicar authoritatively hushed the woman, but Lovedy looked up with flushed cheeks, and the blue eyes that had been so often noticed for their beauty. The last flush of fever had come to finish the work.
“Don’t fret,” she said, “there’s no one to beat me up there! Please, the verse about the tears.”
Dr. Macvicar and the child both looked towards Rachel, but her whole memory seemed scared away, and it was the old Scotch army surgeon that repeated—
“‘The Lord God shall wipe off tears from all eyes.’ Ah! poor little one, you are going from a world that has been full of woe to you.”
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me, my poor child,” said Rachel, kneeling by her, the tears streaming down silently.
“Please, ma’am, don’t cry,” said the little girl feebly; “you were very good to me. Please tell me of my Saviour,” she added to Rachel. It sounded like set phraseology, and she knew not how to begin; but Dr. Macvicar’s answer made the lightened look come back, and the child was again heard to whisper—“Ah! I knew they scourged Him—for me.”
This was the last they did hear, except the sobbing breaths, ever more convulsive. Rachel had never before been present with death, and awe and dismay seemed to paralyse her whole frame. Even the words of hope and prayer for which the child’s eyes craved from both her fellow-watchers seemed to her a strange tongue, inefficient to reach the misery of this untimely mortal agony, this work of neglect and cruelty—and she the cause.
Three o’clock had struck before the last painful gasp had been drawn, and Mrs. Kelland’s sobbing cry broke forth. Dr. Macvicar told Rachel that the child was at rest. She shivered from head to foot, her teeth chattered, and she murmured, “Accountable for all.”
Dr. Macvicar at once made her swallow some of the cordial brought for the poor child, and then summoning the maid whom Grace had stationed in the outer room, he desired her to put her young mistress to bed without loss of time. The sole remaining desire of which she was conscious was to be alone and in the dark, and she passively submitted.
CHAPTER XX. THE SARACEN’S HEAD
“Alas, he thought, how changed that mien, How changed those timid looks have been, Since years of guilt and of disguise Have steeled her brow and armed her eyes.”Marmion.“Are you sleepy, Rose? What a yawn!”
“Not sleepy, Aunt Ailie; only it is such a tiresome long day when the Colonel does not come in.”
“Take care, Rosie; I don’t know what we shall be good for at this rate.”
“We? O Aunt Ermine, then you think it tiresome too. I know you do—”
“What’s that, Rose!”
“It is! it is! I’ll open the door for him.”
The next moment Rose led her Colonel in triumph into the lamp-light. There was a bright light in his eye, and yet he looked pale, grave, and worn; and Ermine’s first observation was—
“How came Tibbie to let you out at this time of night?”
“I have not ventured to encounter Tibbie at all. I drove up to your door.”
“You have been at St. Norbert’s all this time,” exclaimed Alison.
“Do you think no one can carry on a campaign at St. Norbert’s but yourself and your generalissima, Miss Ailie?” he said, stroking down Rose’s brown hair.
“Then, if you have not gone home, you have had nothing to eat, and that is the reason you look so tired,” said Ermine.
“Yes; I had some luncheon at the Abbey.”
“Then, at any rate, you shall have some tea. Rosie, run and fetch the little kettle.”
“And the Beauchamp cup and saucer,” added Rose, proudly producing the single relic of a well-remembered set of olden times. “And please, please, Aunt Ermine, let me sit up to make it for him. I have not seen him all day, you know; and it is the first time he ever drank tea in our house, except make-believe with Violetta and Colinette.”
“No, Rose. Your aunt says I spoil that child, and I am going to have my revenge upon you. You must see the wild beast at his meals another time; for it just happens that I have a good deal to say to your aunts, and it is not intended for your ears.”
Rose showed no signs of being spoilt, for she only entreated to be allowed “just to put the tea-things in order,” and then, winking very hard, she said she would go.
“Here, Rose, if you please,” said Ermine, clearing the space of table before her.
“Why, Aunt Ermine, I did not know you could make tea!”
“There are such things as extraordinary occasions, Rose. Now, good night, my sweet one.”
“Good night, my Lady Discretion. We will make up for it one of these days. Don’t stay away, pray, Ailie,” as Alison was following the child. “I have nothing to say till you come back.”
“I know it is good news,” said Ermine; “but it has cost you something, Colin.”
Instead of answering, he received his cup from her, filled up her tea-pot, and said—
“How long is it since you poured out tea for me, Ermine?”
“Thirteen years next June, when you and Harry used to come in from the cricket field, so late and hot that you were ashamed to present yourself in civilized society at the Great House.”
“As if nobody from the Parsonage ever came down to look on at the cricket.”
“Yes; being summoned by all the boys to see that nothing would teach a Scotchman cricket.”
“Ah! you have got the last word, for here comes Ailie.”
“Of course,” said Alison, coming in; “Ermine has had the pith of the story, so I had better ask at once what it is.”
“That the Beauchamp Eleven beat Her Majesty’s —th Foot on Midsummer Day, 1846, is the pith of what I have as yet heard,” said Ermine.
“And that Beauchamp ladies are every whit as full of mischief as they used to be in those days, is the sum of what I have told,” added Colin.
“Yes,” said Ermine, “he has most loyally kept his word of reserving all for you. He has not even said whether Mauleverer is taken.”
“My story is grave and sad enough,” said Colin, laying aside all his playfulness, and a serious expression coming over his features; but, at the same time, the landlady’s sandy cat, which, like all other animals, was very fond of him, and had established herself on his knee as soon as Rose had left it vacant, was receiving a certain firm, hard, caressing stroking, which resulted in vehement purrs on her part, and was evidently an outlet of suppressed exaltation.
“Is he the same?” asked Alison.
“All in due time; unless, like Miss Rachel, you wish to tell me my story yourselves. By-the-bye, how is that poor girl to-day?”
“Thoroughly knocked down. There is a sort of feverish lassitude about her that makes them very anxious. They were hoping to persuade her to see Mr. Frampton when Lady Temple heard last.”
“Poor thing! it has been a sad affair for her. Well, I told you I should go over this morning and see Mr. Grey, and judge if anything could be done. I got to the Abbey at about eleven o’clock, and found the policeman had just come back after serving the summons, with the news that Mauleverer was gone.”
“Gone!”
“Clean gone! Absconded from his lodgings, and left no traces behind him. But, as to the poor woman, the policeman reported that she had been left in terrible distress, with the child extremely ill, and not a penny, not a thing to eat in the house. He came back to ask Mr. Grey what was to be done; and as the suspicion of diphtheria made every one inclined to fight shy of the house, I thought I had better go down and see what was to be done. I knocked a good while in vain; but at last she looked out of window, and I told her I only wanted to know what could be done for her child, and would send a doctor. Then she told me how to open the door. Poor thing! I found her the picture of desolation, in the midst of the dreary kitchen, with the child gasping on her lap; all the pretence of widowhood gone, and her hair hanging loose about her face, which was quite white with hunger, and her great eyes looked wild, like the glare of a wild beast’s in a den. I spoke to her by her own name, and she started and trembled, and said, ‘Did Miss Alison tell you?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and explained who I was, and she caught me up half way: ‘O yes, yes, my lady’s nephew, that was engaged to Miss Ermine!’ And she looked me full and searchingly in the face, Ermine, when I answered ‘Yes.’ Then she almost sobbed, ‘And you are true to her;’ and put her hands over her face in an agony. It was a very strange examination on one’s constancy, and I put an end to it by asking if she had any friends at home that I could write to for her; but she cast that notion from her fiercely, and said she had no friend, no one. He had left her to her fate, because the child was too ill to be moved. And indeed the poor child was in such a state that there was no thinking of anything else, and I went at once to find a doctor and a nurse.”
“Diphtheria again?”
“Yes; and she, poor thing, was in no state to give it the resolute care that is the only chance. Doctors could be easily found, but I was at my wit’s end for a nurse, till I remembered that Mr. Mitchell had told me of a Sisterhood that have a Home at St. Norbert’s, with a nursing establishment attached to it. So, in despair, I went there, and begged to see the Superior, and a most kind and sensible lady I found her, ready to do anything helpful. She lent me a nice little Sister, rather young, I thought; but who turned out thoroughly efficient, nearly as good as a doctor. Still, whether the child lives is very doubtful, though the mother was full of hope when I went in last. She insisted that I had saved it, when both she and it had been deserted by Maddox, for whom she had given up everything.”
“Then she owned that he was Maddox?”
“She called him so, without my even putting the question to her. She had played his game long enough; and now his desertion has evidently put an end to all her regard for him. It was confusedly and shortly told; the child was in a state that prevented attention being given to anything else; but she knows that she had been made a tool of to ruin her master and you, and the sight of you, Ailie, had evidently stirred up much old affection, and remembrance of better days.”
“Is she his wife?”
“No, or the evidence she promises could not be used against him. Do you know this, Ermine?” as he gave her a cover, with a seal upon it.
“The Saracen! the Saracen’s head, Colin; it was made with the lost seal-ring!”
“The ring was taken from Edward’s dressing-room the night when Rose was frightened with the phosphorus. Maria declares that she did not suspect the theft, or Maddox’s purpose, till long after she had left her place. He effected his practices under pretence of attachment to her, and then could not shake her off. She went abroad with him after the settlement of affairs; but he could not keep out of gambling speculation, and lost everything. Then he seems to have larked about, obtaining means she knew not how—as artist, lecturer, and what not—till the notable F. U. E. E. was started. Most likely he would have collected the subscriptions and made off with them, if Rachel Curtis had not had just sense enough to trust him with nothing without seeing some result, so that he was forced to set the affair going with Maria at its head, as the only person who could co-operate with him. They kept themselves ready for a start whenever there should be symptoms of a discovery, but, in the meantime, he gambled away all that he got into his hands, and never gave her enough to feed the children. Thus she was absolutely driven to force work from them for subsistence; and she is a passionate creature, whom jealousy embittered more and more, so that she became more savage than she knew. Poor thing! She has her punishment. Maddox only came home, yesterday, too late for any train before the mail, and by that time the child was too ill to be moved. He must have thought it all up with him, and wished to be rid of both, for they quarrelled, and he left her to her misery.”
“What, gone?”
“Yes, but she told us of his haunts—haunts that he thought she did not know—a fancy shop, kept by a Mrs. Dench at Bristol, where it seems that he plays the philanthropical lecturer, and probably has been trying to secure a snug berth for himself unknown, as he thought, to Maria; but she pried into his letters, and kept a keen watch upon him. He was to be inquired for there by his Mauleverer name, and, I have little doubt, will be captured.”
“And then?”
“He will be committed for trial at the sessions; and, in the meantime, I must see Beauchamp and Dr. Long, and arrange that he should be prosecuted for the forgery, even though he should slip through our fingers at the sessions.”
“Oh, could that be?”
“This Clever Woman has managed matters so sweetly, that they might just as well try her as him for obtaining money on false pretences; and the man seems to have been wonderfully sharp in avoiding committing himself. Mrs. Curtis’s man of business has been trying all day to get up the case, but he has made out nothing but a few more debts such as that which turned up yesterday; and it is very doubtful how far a case can be made out against him.”
“And then we should lose him.”
“That is exactly what I wish to avoid. I want to bring up my forces at once, and have him laid hold of at once for the forgery of those letters of Edward’s. How long would it take to hear from Ekaterinburg? I suppose Edward could travel as fast as a letter.”
Alison fairly sprang to her feet.
“O, Colin, Colin! you do not think that Edward would be here by the next sessions.”
“He ought,” said Colin. “I hope to induce Dr. Long and Harry to write him such letters as to bring him home at once.”
Self-restrained Alison was fairly overcome. She stretched out both hands, pressed Colin’s convulsively, then turned away her face, and, bursting into tears, ran out of the room.
“Poor dear Ailie,” said Ermine; “she has suffered terribly. Her heart is full of Edward. Oh, I hope he will come.”
“He must. He cannot be so senseless as to stay away.”
“There is that unfortunate promise to his wife; and I fear that he is become so much estranged from English ways that he will hardly care to set himself straight here, after the pain that the universal suspicion gave him.”
“He cannot but care. For the sake of all he must care,” vehemently repeated Colin, with the punctilious honour of the nobly-born soldier. “For his child’s sake, this would be enough to bring him from his grave. If he refused to return to the investigation, it would be almost enough to make me doubt him.”