The Last of the Mortimers

Chapter IV

OUR little journey was arranged by Aunt Milly in the most comfortable way she could think of for us. Harry would not consent to let her send the carriage all the way. The railway was close to us, and it passed about two miles from the Park, where there was a little station; and the carriage was to meet us there. It was a very short journey, certainly; but I remember when we were all in the train,—all—every one of us,—a family entire and close together,—and especially at the moment when we were passing through the tunnel, and felt in the darkness more entirely separated from the world,—a sudden thought seized upon me: “Oh, if we were only going on, anywhere, anywhere to the end of the world!” Plunging through the darkness, with Harry sitting close by me, and baby on my knee, and nobody able to approach or stop us—going on all together! All sorts of people have their fancies, no doubt. I daresay mine were very homely ones; but I shall never forget the strange thrill that came upon my heart as this wild possibility seized me. When we came slowly into the daylight, and the train stopped, and the door of the carriage flew open, and dear Aunt Milly herself appeared to welcome us, I woke up with a little shiver into real life again. Ah me! one cannot dart into the bowels of the earth and hide one’s self. But life and duty somehow looked cold at me with their piercing daylight eyes after that thought.

Everything familiar stopped short and broke off when we got into the carriage. Aunt Milly was not a great lady. I don’t think anything could ever have made her a great lady; but it was clear she had been a person of consideration for many a year. I never had been in such a carriage before; indeed, I don’t think I had ever been in any carriage but a public one, for, of course, Aunt Connor was not rich enough to have a carriage of her own. But when I sat down by Aunt Milly’s side, I could not help feeling immediately that it all belonged to me. It was a strange feeling, and indeed, if nobody will be shocked, it was a very pleasing feeling. Instead of making me discontented, somehow it quite reconciled me to being poor. My own opinion is, that people of good family, or whatever is equivalent to good family,—people that know they belong to a higher class, whether other people know it or not,—always bear poverty best. It does not humiliate them as it does people who have always been poor. I think I could have stood any remarks upon my bonnet, or even baby’s pelisse, with great equanimity after my visit to the Park; being poor looked so much more like an accidental circumstance after that. Perhaps I don’t explain very well what I mean, so I will just state it plainly, and then you may understand, or disagree with it, just as you choose. The higher one’s rank is, the better one can bear being poor. There! it is not the common opinion, but I believe it all the same for that.

And here was the Park, the very same great modern house that stood (leaning on the trees) in poor papa’s drawing, with two wings drawn out from the main body of the building, and a curious archway and a little paved court at the side before you came to the great door. We went to the great door as we were strangers, and I could see the grave face of my omnibus acquaintance peeping through a round bow-window close to the door before he admitted us, very solemnly and with profoundest abstract air. I wonder if he could remember us. His face looked as blankly respectful as if any idea on any subject whatever would somehow be unbecoming the dignity of the Park. Aunt Milly, who had gradually become fidgety, now took hold of my hand and drew me forward quickly. I went with her, a little astonished, but with no clear idea where I was going. She took me into a very long, very large room, with a great many tall windows on one side, a room so big as to look a perfect maze of furniture to me. I saw nobody in it, and did not think of it as being a room in common use. She had brought me to see some picture, no doubt. But Aunt Milly hurried me up this long room, with her hand upon my wrist, to a screen that seemed drawn so as to shelter one side of the fireplace. When we came in front of this, I was greatly startled to see a lady, with large knitting-pins in her hands, rise slowly from an arm-chair. There was nothing extraordinary in her look; she had fine features, I suppose,—I don’t think I know, very well, what fine features are,—she had white hair, and a pretty cap with soft-coloured ribbons, and a strange, studied, soft-coloured dress. I noticed all this unconsciously, in the midst of the nervous and startled sensation that I had in being brought in front of her so suddenly. She put both her knitting-pins into one hand, and held out the other to me. Then she bent forward a little, meaning me to kiss her, which I did with much awe and with no great sensation of pleasure. Her hand was cold, and so was her cheek. I could scarcely help shrinking away from her touch. Then she spoke, and I, being quite unprepared for it, was still more startled. Her voice was a kind of whisper, very strange and unpleasant; all the s’s came out sharp, with a kind of hiss. I suppose it was because she was so entirely used to it herself that Aunt Milly never mentioned it to me.

“So you are Richard Mortimer’s daughter?” she said. “Sit down: I am very glad to see you. It is I that have been so anxious about finding you for some time past. But where is your husband? I want him to come as well as you.”

“He is in the hall. He will be here presently, Sarah,” said Aunt Milly. “I told Ellis to show him in, and the dear baby, too; but I could not keep back Milly from you for a moment. I knew you would be anxious to see her at once.”

“I wish to see her husband too,” said Miss Mortimer. “So your name is Milly? Because it was our principal family name, I suppose? Your father was a great man for family matters, because his father was such a leveller; otherwise I should have thought he would have called you after me.”

Why, I wondered? but indeed I had very little inclination to speak.

“I want to see your husband particularly. I should like you to live here. Milly says he is going to the Crimea,” said Miss Mortimer. “I hope he’s a reasonable man. Why shouldn’t he leave the army at once? I want him here. You were not the heir to an estate like the Park when he got orders for the Crimea. I see no reason in the world why he should not sell out and stay at home.”

I think she went on saying more, but I did not hear her; the great room swam in my eyes; she seemed all fading away into pale circles. I lost hold of the chair or something I was standing by. I don’t remember anything else till I felt some water dashed on my face, and gradually the pale circles cleared away, and I was in the same room again. I had no idea what had happened to me. I was lying on a sofa, though, now, with my face all wet, and a dreadful singing and buzzing in my ears, and Harry was there. I found out I had fainted. I never did such a thing in all my life before; how very foolish of me! and just when she was talking, too, about that—that chance. I caught hold of Harry’s fingers tight: “Go and speak to her!” I cried out. I could not keep still until he went, for I could see the screen, and knew she was there.

When he disappeared behind the screen, and when, after a moment, Aunt Milly followed, always keeping her eyes on me, I lay perfectly still, grasping my two hands in each other. My mind was all seething up, as if in a fever, round what she had said. I was conscious of nothing else. I could not hear what they were saying now for the noise in my ears; but as I lay still a strange succession of feelings came over me. It was like so many breezes of wind, each cooler,—nay, I mean colder,—than the other. First it occurred to me what other people would say of him, of Harry, whom no one now durst breathe a doubt upon; then I thought of him fighting with himself for my sake, trying to put down his manhood and his honour to save breaking his wife’s heart; then I came to myself last of all. Would I? could I? I groaned aloud in my anguish. Oh, Russian woman, what would you say? There are plenty to be killed and sacrificed. Shall we let our children’s fathers go, to be lost in that smoke and battle? Harry burst out to me from behind the screen when I was in this darkness. I never saw him look as he looked then. He took my two hands and cried out in an appeal and remonstrance, “Milly, do you say so?” looking down at me with his eyes all in a blaze. I could not bear it. I put him away—thrust him away. They say I cried out to God in my despair. I cannot tell anything that I said but “Go!” Oh, Russian woman, I wonder if you made up your mind as I did! No, not if it were to break my heart; we could die, all of us, when the good Lord pleased; but the good Lord never pleased that one of us should make the other fail.

Chapter V

I FELT ill and shaken all the rest of that day. It was some time before they would let me get up from the sofa, and I quite remember how very strange it was to lie there in the great daylight room, with the sky looming in through the great window, and to watch, always so close by, and yet so distant, that screen which was drawn out by the side of the fire. I could not keep my eyes from that harmless piece of furniture. Aunt Milly kept coming and going, constantly talking to cheer me up, and bring things to show me. But no sound came from the screen. There, in that little space, shut off and shaded out of the centre of her home, sat the woman who already fascinated me with an influence I could not explain. Without knowing what I was doing—indeed, even I may say against my will,—strange recollections of stories I had read came up to my mind; about people in masks going whispering through an evil life, about the veiled prophet in the poem, about secret hidden creatures suspected of all manner of harm, but never found out, or betrayed. There she was, within three paces of me, concealed and silent,—or was it not rather watchful, lurking, with her bloodless smile and her shut up heart? My imagination, perhaps, is always too active; somehow it quite overpowered me that day. It seized upon Miss Sarah Mortimer’s looks and her voice, and the strange separation which she made by that screen between herself and the world. She was different—entirely different—from that old ghastly Miss Mortimer whom I used to dream of in my grandfather’s house; that one with her hair all mixed with grey, and her dark careless dress, sitting by the fire with the ghosts of the past about her, was a pleasant recollection in face of this. The great beauty, deserted of all the world and fallen into solitude, had something pathetic in her loneliness. But behind that screen there was no pathos that I could see; nothing human, I had almost said. What folly to speak so! To anybody’s eyes but mine, I daresay there was only an old lady very prettily and carefully dressed, everything about her looking as if it were intended to repeat and reproduce the effect of her white hair; soft colours with clouds of something white coming over them. But I could not look at her in that way. I was in awe and afraid when I looked at the screen. It was a comfort to get out of the room, to go upstairs, where after a while Aunt Milly took me. But I could not forget her even upstairs. There she sat in her armchair, stony-eyed, knitting like one of the Fates,—or was it spin they did?—and that screen drawing a magical, dreadful shadow round her chair.

Aunt Milly had prepared our rooms for us with the greatest care, that was very evident. There was the daintiest little bed for baby, all new and fresh, evidently bought for him, and quite a basketful of new toys, which already he was doing his best to pull all to pieces. Oh, such bright, luxurious rooms! I felt my heart grow a little cold as I looked at them. Neither Harry nor Aunt Milly had said a word to me on the subject. They thought they could deceive me, I suppose; but the moment I saw these apartments, don’t you think I could see what they were planned out for? I was to be taken there when he went away.

“And, my dear, what do you think of your Aunt Sarah?” said her kind sister, looking rather wistfully into my face.

I was so foolish that I was half afraid to answer. How could I tell that our words were not heard behind the screen yonder? And as for meeting her eyes I could not have done that for the world.

“But you know she is not my Aunt Sarah,” said I. “It is a love name, dear Aunt Milly. I—I don’t know Miss Mortimer yet; you must let me keep it for you.”

“Hush! you have not known me much longer!” cried Aunt Milly, “No such thing, child! we are both the same relation to you. Poor dear Sarah! I forgot to tell you about her voice. Isn’t it very sad she should have lost her beautiful voice? She is very clever too, Milly,” said Aunt Milly, with a sigh. “When you know her better you will admire her very much.”

“But you know she jilted poor papa,” said I, trying to laugh and shake off my dread of the veiled woman downstairs.

“My dear! she jilted half the county!” said Aunt Milly, rather solemnly and not without a little pride. “Your Aunt Sarah was the greatest beauty that ever was seen when she was as young as you.”

This speech made me smile in spite of myself. Dear Aunt Milly, perhaps, had been a little slighted by the county. She had no compunction about her sister’s prowess. I don’t know that I felt very sorry for her victims myself, even poor papa, I fear. But, ah me! what kind of a woman was this, I wonder, that had been an enchantress in her day! She was an enchantress still. She charmed me, as a serpent, I could suppose, might charm some poor creature. I wonder if there was any pity in her, any feeling that there was a God and a heaven, and not merely the century-old ceiling with the Mortimers’ arms on it, over her where she sat? I don’t believe she cared. I don’t think there was anything in the world but her own will and inclination, whatever it might be, that ruled her in her dreadful solitude. I wonder when she looked across her knitting at such a human creature as Aunt Milly how she felt; whether it ever came into her head to wonder which of them was contrary to nature? But I don’t suppose Miss Mortimer cared anything about nature. In this wonderful world, all so throbbing with life and affection, I think she must have known nothing but herself.

Thinking like this, you may suppose I could not deceive Aunt Milly to make her think I admired her sister. I kept off speaking of her; which, of course, though not quite so unpleasant, tells one’s mind clearly enough. Aunt Milly gave a little sigh.

“My dear, I see you don’t take to Sarah just at once. I was in hopes if you had taken to each other she might, perhaps, have told you something of what is on her mind. Because, you know, after all we have heard, something must be on her mind, whether she shows it or not. I am afraid it is all beginning again now, Milly; but somehow she hasn’t let her courage down as she did when that young man was about before. I suppose she’s more prepared now. She drove out quite calm yesterday, just as usual; though Mr. Luigi’s servant was out here with a letter the very day I saw his master at your house.”

“So I heard,” said I.

“So you heard! Dear! How did you hear? I know things spread in the most dreadful way,” said Aunt Milly, in great distress; “but to think that should have reached Chester already! What did you hear?”

“I heard it only from Lizzie, my little maid,” said I, pointing to the door of the other room. “Mr. Luigi’s servant and she are great friends.”

Aunt Milly followed the movement of my hand with her eyes, a little awe-stricken. “She must speak his language, for he knows no English,” she said, with involuntary respect. “But dear, dear, she’s only a child! To be sure she’ll go and publish it all in the servants’ hall. But speaking of that, my dear, you ought to have a proper nurse. I felt very nervous about baby when I saw her carrying him. She may be big, you know, but she’s only a child.”

Here Lizzie, either because she had heard us, or by some sudden impulse of her own, knocked pretty loud at the door. I went to it a little timidly, rather apprehensive that she had been listening, and meant to defend herself. I did Lizzie great injustice however. She was standing in a paroxysm of joyful impatience on the other side of the door. I don’t believe the most injurious expression applied to herself could have reached Lizzie’s ears at that moment. She had her great arms stretched out, stooping over little Harry. Her face was perfectly radiant and flushed with delight. On they came, baby tottering on his own little limbs, half triumphant, half terrified, Lizzie with her wings spread out, ready to snatch him up the moment he faltered. Anybody may imagine what I did. I dropped down on the floor and held out my arms to him, and forgot all my troubles for the moment. When he came tottering into my arms, the touch of his little hands swept all the cares and sorrows out of the world. It was not for long. But a minute’s joy is a wonderful cordial; it strengthens one’s heart.

“And oh, mem!” cried Lizzie, lifting her apron to her eyes, “the Captain’ll see him afore he gangs away!”

“Go and fetch him,” cried Aunt Milly, turning her out of the room. Aunt Milly was nearly as delighted as she was; but she saw it was hard upon me to be continually reminded that Harry was to be gone so soon. By way of putting it out of my mind, she began such a lecture about letting babies walk too soon, and about weak ankles and bowed legs and all kinds of horrors, that I snatched my boy up on my knee, and was as much alarmed as I had been overjoyed. When Harry came, and found me half frightened to allow baby to exhibit his new accomplishment, and Aunt Milly doing her best to soften down her own declarations, and convince me that she referred to babies in general, and not to my boy, he burst into fits of laughter. I rather think he kissed us all round, Aunt Milly and all. He was in very high spirits that day. It did not occur to him what a struggle I had come through before I overcame Miss Mortimer’s temptation; he was contented to think I had fainted from heat and excitement and all the fatigue I had been exposed to of late; and it was a comfort to him to have my real voluntary consent to his going away. Then this was to be my home, and here was my dear kind friend beside me. His heart rose, he laughed out his amusement and pleasure with the freedom of a young man in the height of his strength and hope. The sound startled the unaccustomed walls. I saw Aunt Milly look at him with a kind of delighted surprise and pleasure. Youth had not been here for long. I wondered did manhood, after Harry’s fashion of it, belong to the Mortimers at all? Many a day since, sitting in these silent rooms, the echo of Harry’s laugh has come back to me ringing like silver bells. Ah, hush! we shall all laugh when he comes back.

But when Lizzie came to take her charge, the expression of the girl’s face had completely changed. She took the child away with a certain frightened gravity that had a great effect upon me. Aunt Milly had left me by this time, and Harry had gone out to see the grounds, leaving me to rest. Resting was not very much in my way; of course I got up from the sofa the moment they were gone. What good would it do me, does anybody suppose, to lie there and murder myself with thinking? I went after Lizzie to ask her what was wrong. Lizzie was very slow to answer. There was “naething wrang; she wasna minding. The man in blacks had asked if she was the nurse or the nursery-maid. But it’s no my place to answer questions,” said Lizzie, with indignation, “and thae English they’re that saucy, they pretend they dinna ken what I’m saying. Eh, I would just like to let them ken, leddies and gentlemen ay ken grand what I’m saying! but they’ve nae education: ’Menico says that himsel’.”

“But what does ’Menico know about education, Lizzie?” said I.

Lizzie looked much affronted. “He mayna maybe ken English,” she said, “but he may be a good scholar for a’ that. The tither maids just gape and cry La! when he takes the dictionary, and laugh at every word he says. He says they’ve nae education, thae English. He’s no’ a common servant-man like that man in blacks. He kens a’ the gentlemen’s business and what he’s wantin’, and everything about it. Eh,” cried Lizzie, opening her eyes wide, and glancing behind her with involuntary caution, “do you think yon would be her?”

“Who?” said I. Was it possible that Lizzie knew?

“Mem!” said Lizzie, with national unconscious skill and the deepest earnestness, “do you think there’s ony witches in this country, like what there was lang syne?”

I was a little startled by the question; it brought back to my mind in an instant that extraordinary picture which had so great an effect on my own imagination,—the veiled woman at her knitting with the screen behind her chair.

“Or the Evil Eye,” continued Lizzie, with a little gasp of visionary terror; “oh dinna say, if ye please, that I’m to bring him into yon muckle room! for I would do some ill to the house, or her, or myself—and would be carried, and no ken what I was doing, if she put any of her cantrips upon our bairn!”