let us have the new cake. Are you too much of a man, Mr. Morris, to like cake?”
In this state of agitation, he was unreasonably irritated by that playful question. “There is one thing I like better than cake,” he said; “and that one thing is a plain explanation.”
His tone puzzled her. “Have I said anything to offend you?” she asked. “Surely you can make allowance for a girl’s curiosity? Oh, you shall have your explanation–and, what is more, you shall have it without reserve!”
She was as good as her word. What she had thought, and what she had planned, when he left her after his last visit, was frankly and fully told. “If you wonder how I discovered the library,” she went on, “I must refer you to my aunt’s lawyer. He lives in the City–and I wrote to him to help me. I don’t consider that my time has been wasted. Mr. M orris, we owe an apology to Mrs. Rook.”
Alban’s astonishment, when he heard this, forced its way to expression in words. “What can you possibly mean?” he asked.
The tea was brought in before Emily could reply. She filled the cups, and sighed as she looked at the cake. “If Cecilia was here, how she would enjoy it!” With that complimentary tribute to her friend, she handed a slice to Alban. He never even noticed it.
“We have both of us behaved most unkindly to Mrs. Rook,” she resumed. “I can excuse your not seeing it; for I should not have seen it either, but for the newspaper. While I was reading, I had an opportunity of thinking over what we said and did, when the poor woman’s behavior so needlessly offended us. I was too excited to think, at the time–and, besides, I had been upset, only the night before, by what Miss Jethro said to me.”
Alban started. “What has Miss Jethro to do with it?” he asked.
“Nothing at all,” Emily answered. “She spoke to me of her own private affairs. A long story–and you wouldn’t be interested in it. Let me finish what I had to say. Mrs. Rook was naturally reminded of the murder, when she heard that my name was Brown; and she must certainly have been struck–as I was–by the coincidence of my father’s death taking place at the same time when his unfortunate namesake was killed. Doesn’t this sufficiently account for her agitation when she looked at the locket? We first took her by surprise: and then we suspected her of Heaven knows what, because the poor creature didn’t happen to have her wits about her, and to remember at the right moment what a very common name ‘James Brown’ is. Don’t you see it as I do?”
“I see that you have arrived at a remarkable change of opinion, since we spoke of the subject in the garden at school.”
“In my place, you would have changed your opinion too. I shall write to Mrs. Rook by tomorrow’s post.”
Alban heard her with dismay. “Pray be guided by my advice!” he said earnestly. “Pray don’t write that letter!”
“Why not?”
It was too late to recall the words which he had rashly allowed to escape him. How could he reply?
To own that he had not only read what Emily had read, but had carefully copied the whole narrative and considered it at his leisure, appeared to be simply impossible after what he had now heard. Her peace of mind depended absolutely on his discretion. In this serious emergency, silence was a mercy, and silence was a lie. If he remained silent, might the mercy be trusted to atone for the lie? He was too fond of Emily to decide that question fairly, on its own merits. In other words, he shrank from the terrible responsibility of telling her the truth.
“Isn’t the imprudence of writing to such a person as Mrs. Rook plain enough to speak for itself?” he suggested cautiously.
“Not to me.”
She made that reply rather obstinately. Alban seemed (in her view) to be trying to prevent her from atoning for an act of injustice. Besides, he despised her cake. “I want to know why you object,” she said; taking back the neglected slice, and eating it herself.
“I object,” Alban answered, “because Mrs. Rook is a coarse presuming woman. She may pervert your letter to some use of her own, which you may have reason to regret.”
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“It may be enough for _you_. When I have done a person an injury, and wish to make an apology, I don’t think it necessary to inquire whether the person’s manners happen to be vulgar or not.”
Alban’s patience was still equal to any demands that she could make on it. “I can only offer you advice which is honestly intended for your own good,” he gently replied.
“You would have more influence over me, Mr. Morris, if you were a little readier to take me into your confidence. I daresay I am wrong–but I don’t like following advice which is given to me in the dark.”
It was impossible to offend him. “Very naturally,” he said; “I don’t blame you.”
Her color deepened, and her voice rose. Alban’s patient adherence to his own view–so courteously and considerately urged–was beginning to try her temper. “In plain words,” she rejoined, “I am to believe that you can’t be mistaken in your judgment of another person.”
There was a ring at the door of the cottage while she was speaking. But she was too warmly interested in confuting Alban to notice it.
He was quite willing to be confuted. Even when she lost her temper, she was still interesting to him. “I don’t expect you to think me infallible,” he said. “Perhaps you will remember that I have had some experience. I am unfortunately older than you are.”
“Oh if wisdom comes with age,” she smartly reminded him, “your friend Miss Redwood is old enough to be your mother–and she suspected Mrs. Rook of murder, because the poor woman looked at a door, and disliked being in the next room to a fidgety old maid.”
Alban’s manner changed: he shrank from that chance allusion to doubts and fears which he dare not acknowledge. “Let us talk of something else,” he said.
She looked at him with a saucy smile. “Have I driven you into a corner at last? And is _that_ your way of getting out of it?”
Even his endurance failed. “Are you trying to provoke me?” he asked. “Are you no better than other women? I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Emily.”
“Emily?” She repeated the name in a tone of surprise, which reminded him that he had addressed her with familiarity at a most inappropriate time–the time when they were on the point of a quarrel. He felt the implied reproach too keenly to be able to answer her with composure.
“I think of Emily–I love Emily–my one hope is that Emily may love me. Oh, my dear, is there no excuse if I forget to call you ‘Miss’ when you distress me?”
All that was tender and true in her nature secretly took his part. She would have followed that better impulse, if he had only been calm enough to understand her momentary silence, and to give her time. But the temper of a gentle and generous man, once roused, is slow to subside. Alban abruptly left his chair. “I had better go!” he said.
“As you please,” she answered. “Whether you go, Mr. Morris, or whether you stay, I shall write to Mrs. Rook.”
The ring at the bell was followed by the appearance of a visitor. Doctor Allday opened the door, just in time to hear Emily’s last words. Her vehemence seemed to amuse him.
“Who is Mrs. Rook?” he asked.
“A most respectable person,” Emily answered indignantly; “housekeeper to Sir Jervis Redwood. You needn’t sneer at her, Doctor Allday! She has not always been in service–she was landlady of the inn at Zeeland.”
The doctor, about to put his hat on a chair, paused. The inn at Zeeland reminded him of the Handbill, and of the visit of Miss Jethro.
“Why are you so hot over it?” he inquired
“Because I detest prejudice!” With this assertion of liberal feeling she pointed to Alban, standing quietly apart at the further end of the room. “There is the most prejudiced man living–he hates Mrs. Rook. Would you like to be introduced to him? You’re a philosopher; you may do him some good. Doctor Allday–Mr. Alban Morris.”
The doctor recognized the man, with the felt hat and the objectionable beard, whose personal appearance had not impressed him favorably.
Although they may hesitate to acknowledge it, there are respectable Englishmen still left, who regard a felt hat and a beard as symbols of republican disaffection to the altar and the throne. Doctor Allday’s manner might have expressed this curious form of patriotic feeling, but for the associations which Emily had revived. In his present frame of mind, he was outwardly courteous, because he was inwardly suspicious. Mrs. Rook had been described to him as formerly landlady of the inn at Zeeland. Were there reasons for Mr. Morris’s hostile feeling toward this woman which might be referable to the crime committed in her house that might threaten Emily’s tranquillity if they were made known? It would not be amiss to see a little more of Mr. Morris, on the first convenient occasion.
“I am glad to make your acquaintance, sir.”
“You are very kind, Doctor Allday.”
The exchange of polite conventionalities having been accomplished, Alban approache d Emily to take his leave, with mingled feelings of regret and anxiety–regret for having allowed himself to speak harshly; anxiety to part with her in kindness.
“Will you forgive me for differing from you?” It was all he could venture to say, in the presence of a stranger.
“Oh, yes!” she said quietly.
“Will you think again, before you decide?”
“Certainly, Mr. Morris. But it won’t alter my opinion, if I do.”
The doctor, hearing what passed between them, frowned. On what subject had they been differing? And what opinion did Emily decline to alter?
Alban gave it up. He took her hand gently. “Shall I see you at the Museum, to-morrow?” he asked.
She was politely indifferent to the last. “Yes–unless something happens to keep me at home.”
The doctor’s eyebrows still expressed disapproval. For what object was the meeting proposed? And why at a museum?
“Good-afternoon, Doctor Allday.”
“Good-afternoon, sir.”
For a moment after Alban’s departure, the doctor stood irresolute. Arriving suddenly at a decision, he snatched up his hat, and turned to Emily in a hurry.
“I bring you news, my dear, which will surprise you. Who do you think has just left my house? Mrs. Ellmother! Don’t interrupt me. She has made up her mind to go out to service again. Tired of leading an idle life–that’s her own account of it–and asks me to act as her reference.”
“Did you consent?”
“Consent! If I act as her reference, I shall be asked how she came to leave her last place. A nice dilemma! Either I must own that she deserted her mistress on her deathbed–or tell a lie. When I put it to her in that way, she walked out of the house in dead silence. If she applies to you next, receive her as I did–or decline to see her, which would be better still.”
“Why am I to decline to see her?”
“In consequence of her behavior to your aunt, to be sure! No: I have said all I wanted to say–and I have no time to spare for answering idle questions. Good-by.”
Socially-speaking, doctors try the patience of their nearest and dearest friends, in this respect–they are almost always in a hurry. Doctor Allday’s precipitate departure did not tend to soothe Emily’s irritated nerves. She began to find excuses for Mrs. Ellmother in a spirit of pure contradiction. The old servant’s behavior might admit of justification: a friendly welcome might persuade her to explain herself. “If she applies to me,” Emily determined, “I shall certainly receive her.”
Having arrived at this resolution, her mind reverted to Alban.
Some of the sharp things she had said to him, subjected to after-reflection in solitude, failed to justify themselves. Her better sense began to reproach her. She tried to silence that unwelcome monitor by laying the blame on Alban. Why had he been so patient and so good? What harm was there in his calling her “Emily”? If he had told her to call _him_ by his Christian name, she might have done it. How noble he looked, when he got up to go away; he was actually handsome! Women may say what they please and write what they please: their natural instinct is to find their master in a man–especially when they like him. Sinking lower and lower in her own estimation, Emily tried to turn the current of her thoughts in another direction. She took up a book–opened it, looked into it, threw it across the room.
If Alban had returned at that moment, resolved on a reconciliation–if he had said, “My dear, I want to see you like yourself again; will you give me a kiss, and make it up”–would he have left her crying, when he went away? She was crying now.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS.
If Emily’s eyes could have followed Alban as her thoughts were following him, she would have seen him stop before he reached the end of the road in which the cottage stood. His heart was full of tenderness and sorrow: the longing to return to her was more than he could resist. It would be easy to wait, within view of the gate, until the doctor’s visit came to an end. He had just decided to go back and keep watch–when he heard rapid footsteps approaching. There (devil take him!) was the doctor himself.
“I have something to say to you, Mr. Morris. Which way are you walking?”
“Any way,” Alban answered–not very graciously.
“Then let us take the turning that leads to my house. It’s not customary for strangers, especially when they happen to be Englishmen, to place confidence in each other. Let me set the example of violating that rule. I want to speak to you about Miss Emily. May I take your arm? Thank you. At my age, girls in general–unless they are my patients–are not objects of interest to me. But that girl at the cottage–I daresay I am in my dotage–I tell you, sir, she has bewitched me! Upon my soul, I could hardly be more anxious about her, if I was her father. And, mind, I am not an affectionate man by nature. Are you anxious about her too?”
“Yes.”
“In what way?”
“In what way are you anxious, Doctor Allday?”
The doctor smiled grimly.
“You don’t trust me? Well, I have promised to set the example. Keep your mask on, sir–mine is off, come what may of it. But, observe: if you repeat what I am going to say–“
Alban would hear no more. “Whatever you may say, Doctor Allday, is trusted to my honor. If you doubt my honor, be so good as to let go my arm–I am not walking your way.”
The doctor’s hand tightened its grasp. “That little flourish of temper, my dear sir, is all I want to set me at my ease. I feel I have got hold of the right man. Now answer me this. Have you ever heard of a person named Miss Jethro?”
Alban suddenly came to a standstill.
“All right!” said the doctor. “I couldn’t have wished for a more satisfactory reply.”
“Wait a minute,” Alban interposed. “I know Miss Jethro as a teacher at Miss Ladd’s school, who left her situation suddenly–and I know no more.”
The doctor’s peculiar smile made its appearance again.
“Speaking in the vulgar tone,” he said, “you seem to be in a hurry to wash your hands of Miss Jethro.”
“I have no reason to feel any interest in her,” Alban replied.
“Don’t be too sure of that, my friend. I have something to tell you which may alter your opinion. That ex-teacher at the school, sir, knows how the late Mr. Brown met his death, and how his daughter has been deceived about it.”
Alban listened with surprise–and with some little doubt, which he thought it wise not to acknowledge.
“The report of the inquest alludes to a ‘relative’ who claimed the body,” he said. “Was that ‘relative’ the person who deceived Miss Emily? And was the person her aunt?”
“I must leave you to take your own view,” Doctor Allday replied. “A promise binds me not to repeat the information that I have received. Setting that aside, we have the same object in view–and we must take care not to get in each other’s way. Here is my house. Let us go in, and make a clean breast of it on both sides.”
Established in the safe seclusion of his study, the doctor set the example of confession in these plain terms:
“We only differ in opinion on one point,” he said. “We both think it likely (from our experience of the women) that the suspected murderer had an accomplice. I say the guilty person is Miss Jethro. You say–Mrs. Rook.”
“When you have read my copy of the report,” Alban answered, “I think you will arrive at my conclusion. Mrs. Rook might have entered the outhouse in which the two men slept, at any time during the night, while her husband was asleep. The jury believed her when she declared that she never woke till the morning. I don’t.”
“I am open to conviction, Mr. Morris. Now about the future. Do you mean to go on with your inquiries?”
“Even if I had no other motive than mere curiosity,” Alban answered, “I think I should go on. But I have a more urgent purpose in view. All that I have done thus far, has been done in Emily’s interests. My object, from the first, has been to preserve her from any association–in the past or in the future–with the woman whom I believe to have been concerned in her father’s death. As I have already told you, she is innocently doing all she can, poor thing, to put obstacles in my way.”
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor; “she means to write to Mrs. Rook–and you have nearly quarreled about it. Trust me to take that matter in hand. I don’t regard it as serious. But I am mortally afraid of what you are doing in Emily’s interests. I wish you would give it up.”
“Why?”
“Because I see a danger. I don’t deny that Emily is as innocent of suspicion as ever. But the chances, next time, may be against us. How do you know to what lengths your curiosity may lead you? Or on what shocking discoveries you may not blunder with the best intentions? Some unforeseen accident may open her eyes to the truth, before you can prevent it. I seem to surprise you?”
“You do, indeed, surprise me.”
“In the old story, my dear sir, Mentor sometimes surprised Telemachus. I am Mentor–without being, I hope, quite so long-winded as that respectable philosopher. Let me put it in two words. Emily’s happiness is precious to you. Take care you are not made the means of wrecking it! Will you consent to a sacrifice, for her sake?”
“I will do anything for her sake.”
“Will you give up your inquiries?”
“From this moment I have done with them!”
“Mr. Morris, you are the best friend she has.”
“The next best friend to you, doctor.”
In that fond persuasion they now parted–too eagerly devoted to Emily to look at the prospect before them in its least hopeful aspect. Both clever men, neither one nor the other asked himself if any human resistance has ever yet obstructed the progress of truth–when truth has once begun to force its way to the light.
For the second time Alban stopped, on his way home. The longing to be reconciled with Emily was not to be resisted. He returned to the cottage, only to find disappointment waiting for him. The servant reported that her young mistress had gone to bed with a bad headache.
Alban waited a day, in the hope that Emily might write to him. No letter arrived. He repeated his visit the next morning. Fortune was still against him. On this occasion, Emily was engaged.
“Engaged with a visitor?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. A young lady named Miss de Sor.”
Where had he heard that name before? He remembered immediately that he had heard it at the school. Miss de Sor was the unattractive new pupil, whom the girls called Francine. Alban looked at the parlor window as he left the cottage. It was of serious importance that he should set himself right with Emily. “And mere gossip,” he thought contemptuously, “stands in my way!”
If he had been less absorbed in his own interests, he might have remembered that mere gossip is not always to be despised. It has worked fatal mischief in its time.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
FRANCINE.
“You’re surprised to see me, of course?” Saluting Emily in those terms, Francine looked round the parlor with an air of satirical curiosity. “Dear me, what a little place to live in!”
“What brings you to London?” Emily inquired.
“You ought to know, my dear, without asking. Why did I try to make friends with you at school? And why have I been trying ever since? Because I hate you–I mean because I can’t resist you–no! I mean because I hate myself for liking you. Oh, never mind my reasons. I insisted on going to London with Miss Ladd–when that horrid woman announced that she had an appointment with her lawyer. I said, ‘I want to see Emily.’ ‘Emily doesn’t like you.’ ‘I don’t care whether she likes me or not; I want to see her.’ That’s the way we snap at each other, and that’s how I always carry my point. Here I am, till my duenna finishes her business and fetches me. What a prospect for You! Have you got any cold meat in the house? I’m not a glutton, like Cecilia–but I’m afraid I shall want some lunch.”
“Don’t talk in that way, Francine!”
“Do you mean to say you’re glad to see me?”
“If you were only a little less hard and bitter, I should always be glad to see you.”
“You darling! (excuse my impetuosity). What are you looking at? My new dress? Do you envy me?”
“No; I admire the color–that’s all.”
Francine rose, and shook out her dress, and showed it from every point of view. “See how it’s made: Paris, of course! Money, my dear; money will do anything–except making one learn one’s lessons.”
“Are you not getting on any better, Francine?”
“Worse, my sweet friend–worse. One of the masters, I am happy to say, has flatly refused to teach me any longer. ‘Pupils without brains I am accustomed to,’ he said in his broken English; ‘but a pupil with no heart is beyond my endurance.’ Ha! ha! the mouldy old refugee has an eye for character, though. No heart–there I am, described in two words.”
“And proud of it,” Emily remarked.
“Yes–proud of it. Stop! let me do myself justice. You consider tears a sign that one has some heart, don’t you? I was very near crying last Sunday. A popular preacher did it; no less a person that Mr. Mirabel–you look as if you had heard of him.”
“I have heard of him from Cecilia.”
“Is _she_ at Brighton? Then there’s one fool more in a fashionable watering place. Oh, she’s in Switzerland, is she? I don’t care where she is; I only care about Mr. Mirabel. We all heard he was at Brighton for his health, and was going to preach. Didn’t we cram the church! As to describing him, I give it up. He is the only little man I ever admired–hair as long as mine, and the sort of beard you see in pictures. I wish I had his fair complexion and his white hands. We were all in love with him–or with his voice, which was it?–when he began to read the commandments. I wish I could imitate him when he came to the fifth commandment. He began in his deepest bass voice: ‘Honor thy father–‘ He stopped and looked up to heaven as if he saw the rest of it there. He went on with a tremendous emphasis on the next word. ‘_And_ thy mother,’ he said (as if that was quite a different thing) in a tearful, fluty, quivering voice which was a compliment to mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment–I wonder whether I can remember the sermon.”
“You needn’t attempt it on my account,” Emily said.
“My dear, don’t be obstinate. Wait till you hear him.”
“I am quite content to wait.”
“Ah, you’re just in the right state of mind to be converted; you’re in a fair way to become one of his greatest admirers. They say he is so agreeable in private life; I am dying to know him.–Do I hear a ring at the bell? Is somebody else coming to see you?”
The servant brought in a card and a message.
“The person will call again, miss.”
Emily looked at the name written on the card.
“Mrs. Ellmother!” she exclaimed.
“What an extraordinary name!’ cried Francine. “Who is she?”
“My aunt’s old servant.”
“Does she want a situation?”
Emily looked at some lines of writing at the back of the card. Doctor Allday had rightly foreseen events. Rejected by the doctor, Mrs. Ellmother had no alternative but to ask Emily to help her.
“If she is out of place,” Francine went on, “she may be just the sort of person I am looking for.”
“You?” Emily asked, in astonishment.
Francine refused to explain until she got an answer to her question. “Tell me first,” she said, “is Mrs. Ellmother engaged?”
“No; she wants an engagement, and she asks me to be her reference.”
“Is she sober, honest, middle-aged, clean, steady, good-tempered, industrious?” Francine rattled on. “Has she all the virtues, and none of the vices? Is she not too good-looking, and has she no male followers? In one terrible word–will she satisfy Miss Ladd?”
“What has Miss Ladd to do with it?”
“How stupid you are, Emily! Do put the woman’s card down on the table, and listen to me. Haven’t I told you that one of my masters has declined to have anything more to do with me? Doesn’t that help you to understand how I get on with the rest of them? I am no longer Miss Ladd’s pupil, my dear. Thanks to my laziness and my temper, I am to he raised to the dignity of ‘a parlor boarder.’ In other words, I am to be a young lady who patronizes the school; with a room of my own, and a servant of my own. All pr ovided for by a private arrangement between my father and Miss Ladd, before I left the West Indies. My mother was at the bottom of it, I have not the least doubt. You don’t appear to understand me.”
“I don’t, indeed!”
Francine considered a little. “Perhaps they were fond of you at home,” she suggested.
“Say they loved me, Francine–and I loved them.”
“Ah, my position is just the reverse of yours. Now they have got rid of me, they don’t want me back again at home. I know as well what my mother said to my father, as if I had heard her. ‘Francine will never get on at school, at her age. Try her, by all means; but make some other arrangement with Miss Ladd in case of a failure–or she will be returned on our hands like a bad shilling.’ There is my mother, my anxious, affectionate mother, hit off to a T.”
“She _is_ your mother, Francine; don’t forget that.”
“Oh, no; I won’t forget it. My cat is my kitten’s mother–there! there! I won’t shock your sensibilities. Let us get back to matter of fact. When I begin my new life, Miss Ladd makes one condition. My maid is to be a model of discretion–an elderly woman, not a skittish young person who will only encourage me. I must submit to the elderly woman, or I shall be sent back to the West Indies after all. How long did Mrs. Ellmother live with your aunt?”
“Twenty-five years, and more.’
“Good heavens, it’s a lifetime! Why isn’t this amazing creature living with you, now your aunt is dead? Did you send her away?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then why did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you mean that she went away without a word of explanation?”
“Yes; that is exactly what I mean.”
“When did she go? As soon as your aunt was dead?”
“That doesn’t matter, Francine.”
“In plain English, you won’t tell me? I am all on fire with curiosity–and that’s how you put me out! My dear, if you have the slightest regard for me, let us have the woman in here when she comes back for her answer. Somebody must satisfy me. I mean to make Mrs. Ellmother explain herself.”
“I don’t think you will succeed, Francine.”
“Wait a little, and you will see. By-the-by, it is understood that my new position at the school gives me the privilege of accepting invitations. Do you know any nice people to whom you can introduce me?”
“I am the last person in the world who has a chance of helping you,” Emily answered. “Excepting good Doctor Allday–” On the point of adding the name of Alban Morris, she checked herself without knowing why, and substituted the name of her school-friend. “And not forgetting Cecilia,” she resumed, “I know nobody.”
“Cecilia’s a fool,” Francine remarked gravely; “but now I think of it, she may be worth cultivating. Her father is a member of Parliament–and didn’t I hear that he has a fine place in the country? You see, Emily, I may expect to be married (with my money), if I can only get into good society. (Don’t suppose I am dependent on my father; my marriage portion is provided for in my uncle’s will. Cecilia may really be of some use to me. Why shouldn’t I make a friend of her, and get introduced to her father–in the autumn, you know, when the house is full of company? Have you any idea when she is coming back?”
“No.”
“Do you think of writing to her?”
“Of course!”
“Give her my kind love; and say I hope she enjoys Switzerland.”
“Francine, you are positively shameless! After calling my dearest friend a fool and a glutton, you send her your love for your own selfish ends; and you expect me to help you in deceiving her! I won’t do it.”
“Keep your temper, my child. We are all selfish, you little goose. The only difference is–some of us own it, and some of us don’t. I shall find my own way to Cecilia’s good graces quite easily: the way is through her mouth. You mentioned a certain Doctor Allday. Does he give parties? And do the right sort of men go to them? Hush! I think I hear the bell again. Go to the door, and see who it is.”
Emily waited, without taking any notice of this suggestion. The servant announced that “the person had called again, to know if there was any answer.”
“Show her in here,” Emily said.
The servant withdrew, and came back again.
“The person doesn’t wish to intrude, miss; it will be quite sufficient if you will send a message by me.”
Emily crossed the room to the door.
“Come in, Mrs. Ellmother,” she said. “You have been too long away already. Pray come in.”
CHAPTER XXIX
“BONY.”
Mrs. Ellmother reluctantly entered the room.
Since Emily had seen her last, her personal appearance doubly justified the nickname by which her late mistress had distinguished her. The old servant was worn and wasted; her gown hung loose on her angular body; the big bones of her face stood out, more prominently than ever. She took Emily’s offered hand doubtingly. “I hope I see you well, miss,” she said–with hardly a vestige left of her former firmness of voice and manner.
“I am afraid you have been suffering from illness,” Emily answered gently.
“It’s the life I’m leading that wears me down; I want work and change.”
Making that reply, she looked round, and discovered Francine observing her with undisguised curiosity. “You have got company with you,” she said to Emily. “I had better go away, and come back another time.”
Francine stopped her before she could open the door. “You mustn’t go away; I wish to speak to you.”
“About what, miss?”
The eyes of the two women met–one, near the end of her life, concealing under a rugged surface a nature sensitively affectionate and incorruptibly true: the other, young in years, with out the virtues of youth, hard in manner and hard at heart. In silence on either side, they stood face to face; strangers brought together by the force of circumstances, working inexorably toward their hidden end.
Emily introduced Mrs. Ellmother to Francine. “It may be worth your while,” she hinted, “to hear what this young lady has to say.”
Mrs. Ellmother listened, with little appearance of interest in anything that a stranger might have to say: her eyes rested on the card which contained her written request to Emily. Francine, watching her closely, understood what was passing in her mind. It might be worth while to conciliate the old woman by a little act of attention. Turning to Emily, Francine pointed to the card lying on the table. “You have not attended yet to Mr. Ellmother’s request,” she said.
Emily at once assured Mrs. Ellmother that the request was granted. “But is it wise,” she asked, “to go out to service again, at your age?”
“I have been used to service all my life, Miss Emily–that’s one reason. And service may help me to get rid of my own thoughts–that’s another. If you can find me a situation somewhere, you will be doing me a good turn.”
“Is it useless to suggest that you might come back, and live with me?” Emily ventured to say.
Mrs. Ellmother’s head sank on her breast. “Thank you kindly, miss; it _is_ useless.”
“Why is it useless?” Francine asked.
Mrs. Ellmother was silent.
“Miss de Sor is speaking to you,” Emily reminded her.
“Am I to answer Miss de Sor?”
Attentively observing what passed, and placing her own construction on looks and tones, it suddenly struck Francine that Emily herself might be in Mrs. Ellmother’s confidence, and that she might have reasons of her own for assuming ignorance when awkward questions were asked. For the moment at least, Francine decided on keeping her suspicions to herself.
“I may perhaps offer you the employment you want,” she said to Mrs. Ellmother. “I am staying at Brighton, for the present, with the lady who was Miss Emily’s schoolmistress, and I am in need of a maid. Would you be willing to consider it, if I proposed to engage you?”
“Yes, miss.”
“In that case, you can hardly object to the customary inquiry. Why did you leave your last place?”
Mrs. Ellmother appealed to Emily. “Did you tell this young lady how long I remained in my last place?”
Melancholy remembrances had been revived in Emily by the turn which the talk had now taken. Francine’s cat-like patience, stealthily feeling its way to its end, jarred on her nerves. “Yes,” she said; “in justice to you, I have mentioned your long term of service.”
M rs. Ellmother addressed Francine. “You know, miss, that I served my late mistress for over twenty-five years. Will you please remember that–and let it be a reason for not asking me why I left my place.”
Francine smiled compassionately. “My good creature, you have mentioned the very reason why I _should_ ask. You live five-and-twenty years with your mistress–and then suddenly leave her–and you expect me to pass over this extraordinary proceeding without inquiry. Take a little time to think.”
“I want no time to think. What I had in my mind, when I left Miss Letitia, is something which I refuse to explain, miss, to you, or to anybody.”
She recovered some of her old firmness, when she made that reply. Francine saw the necessity of yielding–for the time at least, Emily remained silent, oppressed by remembrance of the doubts and fears which had darkened the last miserable days of her aunt’s illness. She began already to regret having made Francine and Mrs. Ellmother known to each other.
“I won’t dwell on what appears to be a painful subject, “Francine graciously resumed. “I meant no offense. You are not angry, I hope?”
“Sorry, miss. I might have been angry, at one time. That time is over.”
It was said sadly and resignedly: Emily heard the answer. Her heart ached as she looked at the old servant, and thought of the contrast between past and present. With what a hearty welcome this broken woman had been used to receive her in the bygone holiday-time! Her eyes moistened. She felt the merciless persistency of Francine, as if it had been an insult offered to herself. “Give it up!” she said sharply.
“Leave me, my dear, to manage my own business,” Francine replied. “About your qualifications?” she continued, turning coolly to Mrs. Ellmother. “Can you dress hair?”
“Yes.”
“I ought to tell you,” Francine insisted, “that I am very particular about my hair.”
“My mistress was very particular about her hair,” Mrs. Ellmother answered.
“Are you a good needlewoman?”
“As good as ever I was–with the help of my spectacles.”
Francine turned to Emily. “See how well we get on together. We are beginning to understand each other already. I am an odd creature, Mrs. Ellmother. Sometimes, I take sudden likings to persons–I have taken a liking to you. Do you begin to think a little better of me than you did? I hope you will produce the right impression on Miss Ladd; you shall have every assistance that I can give. I will beg Miss Ladd, as a favor to me, not to ask you that one forbidden question.”
Poor Mrs. Ellmother, puzzled by the sudden appearance of Francine in the character of an eccentric young lady, the creature of genial impulse, thought it right to express her gratitude for the promised interference in her favor. “That’s kind of you, miss,” she said.
“No, no, only just. I ought to tell you there’s one thing Miss Ladd is strict about–sweethearts. Are you quite sure,” Francine inquired jocosely, “that you can answer for yourself, in that particular?”
This effort of humor produced its intended effect. Mrs. Ellmother, thrown off her guard, actually smiled. “Lord, miss, what will you say next!”
“My good soul, I will say something next that is more to the purpose. If Miss Ladd asks me why you have so unaccountably refused to be a servant again in this house, I shall take care to say that it is certainly not out of dislike to Miss Emily.”
“You need say nothing of the sort,” Emily quietly remarked.
“And still less,” Francine proceeded, without noticing the interruption–“still less through any disagreeable remembrances of Miss Emily’s aunt.”
Mrs. Ellmother saw the trap that had been set for her. “It won’t do, miss,” she said.
“What won’t do?”
“Trying to pump me.”
Francine burst out laughing. Emily noticed an artificial ring in her gayety which suggested that she was exasperated, rather than amused, by the repulse which had baffled her curiosity once more.
Mrs. Ellmother reminded the merry young lady that the proposed arrangement between them had not been concluded yet. “Am I to understand, miss, that you will keep a place open for me in your service?”
“You are to understand,” Francine replied sharply, “that I must have Miss Ladd’s approval before I can engage you. Suppose you come to Brighton? I will pay your fare, of course.”
“Never mind my fare, miss. Will you give up pumping?”
“Make your mind easy. It’s quite useless to attempt pumping _you_. When will you come?”
Mrs. Ellmother pleaded for a little delay. “I’m altering my gowns,” she said. “I get thinner and thinner–don’t I, Miss Emily? My work won’t be done before Thursday.”
“Let us say Friday, then,” Francine proposed.
“Friday!” Mrs. Ellmother exclaimed. “You forget that Friday is an unlucky day.”
“I forgot that, certainly! How can you be so absurdly superstitious.”
“You may call it what you like, miss. I have good reason to think as I do. I was married on a Friday–and a bitter bad marriage it turned out to be. Superstitious, indeed! You don’t know what my experience has been. My only sister was one of a party of thirteen at dinner; and she died within the year. If we are to get on together nicely, I’ll take that journey on Saturday, if you please.”
“Anything to satisfy you,” Francine agreed; “there is the address. Come in the middle of the day, and we will give you your dinner. No fear of our being thirteen in number. What will you do, if you have the misfortune to spill the salt?”
“Take a pinch between my finger and thumb, and throw it over my left shoulder,” Mrs. Ellmother answered gravely. “Good-day, miss.”
“Good-day.”
Emily followed the departing visitor out to the hall. She had seen and heard enough to decide her on trying to break off the proposed negotiation–with the one kind purpose of protecting Mrs. Ellmother against the pitiless curiosity of Francine.
“Do you think you and that young lady are likely to get on well together?” she asked.
“I have told you already, Miss Emily, I want to get away from my own home and my own thoughts; I don’t care where I go, so long as I do that.” Having answered in those words, Mrs. Ellmother opened the door, and waited a while, thinking. “I wonder whether the dead know what is going on in the world they have left?” she said, looking at Emily. “If they do, there’s one among them knows my thoughts, and feels for me. Good-by, miss–and don’t think worse of me than I deserve.”
Emily went back to the parlor. The only resource left was to plead with Francine for mercy to Mrs. Ellmother.
“Do you really mean to give it up?” she asked.
“To give up–what? ‘Pumping,’ as that obstinate old creature calls it?”
Emily persisted. “Don’t worry the poor old soul! However strangely she may have left my aunt and me her motives are kind and good–I am sure of that. Will you let her keep her harmless little secret?”
“Oh, of course!”
“I don’t believe you, Francine!”
“Don’t you? I am like Cecilia–I am getting hungry. Shall we have some lunch?”
“You hard-hearted creature!”
“Does that mean–no luncheon until I have owned the truth? Suppose _you_ own the truth? I won’t tell Mrs. Ellmother that you have betrayed her.”
“For the last time, Francine–I know no more of it than you do. If you persist in taking your own view, you as good as tell me I lie; and you will oblige me to leave the room.”
Even Francine’s obstinacy was compelled to give way, so far as appearances went. Still possessed by the delusion that Emily was deceiving her, she was now animated by a stronger motive than mere curiosity. Her sense of her own importance imperatively urged her to prove that she was not a person who could be deceived with impunity.
“I beg your pardon,” she said with humility. “But I must positively have it out with Mrs. Ellmother. She has been more than a match for me–my turn next. I mean to get the better of her; and I shall succeed.”
“I have already told you, Francine–you will fail.”
“My dear, I am a dunce, and I don’t deny it. But let me tell you one thing. I haven’t lived all my life in the West Indies, among black servants, without learning something.”
“What do you mean?”
“More, my clever friend, than you are likely to guess. In the meantime, don’t forget the duties of hospitality. Ring the bell for luncheon.”
CHAPTER XXX.
LADY DORIS.
The arrival of Miss Ladd, some time before she had been expected, interrupted the two girls at a critical moment. She had hurried over her business in London, eager to pass the rest of the day with her favorite pupil. Emily’s affectionate welcome was, in some degree at least, inspired by a sensation of relief. To feel herself in the embrace of the warm-hearted schoolmistress was like finding a refuge from Francine.
When the hour of departure arrived, Miss Ladd invited Emily to Brighton for the second time. “On the last occasion, my dear, you wrote me an excuse; I won’t be treated in that way again. If you can’t return with us now, come to-morrow.” She added in a whisper, “Otherwise, I shall think you include _me_ in your dislike of Francine.”
There was no resisting this. It was arranged that Emily should go to Brighton on the next day.
Left by herself, her thoughts might have reverted to Mrs. Ellmother’s doubtful prospects, and to Francine’s strange allusion to her life in the West Indies, but for the arrival of two letters by the afternoon post. The handwriting on one of them was unknown to her. She opened that one first. It was an answer to the letter of apology which she had persisted in writing to Mrs. Rook. Happily for herself, Alban’s influence had not been without its effect, after his departure. She had written kindly–but she had written briefly at the same time.
Mrs. Rook’s reply presented a nicely compounded mixture of gratitude and grief. The gratitude was addressed to Emily as a matter of course. The grief related to her “excellent master.” Sir Jervis’s strength had suddenly failed. His medical attendant, being summoned, had expressed no surprise. “My patient is over seventy years of age,” the doctor remarked. “He will sit up late at night, writing his book; and he refuses to take exercise, till headache and giddiness force him to try the fresh air. As the necessary result, he has broken down at last. It may end in paralysis, or it may end in death.” Reporting this expression of medical opinion, Mrs. Rook’s letter glided imperceptibly from respectful sympathy to modest regard for her own interests in the future. It might be the sad fate of her husband and herself to be thrown on the world again. If necessity brought them to London, would “kind Miss Emily grant her the honor of an interview, and favor a poor unlucky woman with a word of advice?”
“She may pervert your letter to some use of her own, which you may have reason to regret.” Did Emily remember Alban’s warning words? No: she accepted Mrs. Rook’s reply as a gratifying tribute to the justice of her own opinions.
Having proposed to write to Alban, feeling penitently that she had been in the wrong, she was now readier than ever to send him a letter, feeling compassionately that she had been in the right. Besides, it was due to the faithful friend, who was still working for her in the reading room, that he should be informed of Sir Jervis’s illness. Whether the old man lived or whether he died, his literary labors were fatally interrupted in either case; and one of the consequences would be the termination of her employment at the Museum. Although the second of the two letters which she had received was addressed to her in Cecilia’s handwriting, Emily waited to read it until she had first written to Alban. “He will come to-morrow,” she thought; “and we shall both make apologies. I shall regret that I was angry with him and he will regret that he was mistaken in his judgment of Mrs. Rook. We shall be as good friends again as ever.”
In this happy frame of mind she opened Cecilia’s letter. It was full of good news from first to last.
The invalid sister had made such rapid progress toward recovery that the travelers had arranged to set forth on their journey back to England in a fortnight. “My one regret,” Cecilia added, “is the parting with Lady Doris. She and her husband are going to Genoa, where they will embark in Lord Janeaway’s yacht for a cruise in the Mediterranean. When we have said that miserable word good-by–oh, Emily, what a hurry I shall be in to get back to you! Those allusions to your lonely life are so dreadful, my dear, that I have destroyed your letter; it is enough to break one’s heart only to look at it. When once I get to London, there shall be no more solitude for my poor afflicted friend. Papa will be free from his parliamentary duties in August–and he has promised to have the house full of delightful people to meet you. Who do you think will be one of our guests? He is illustrious; he is fascinating; he deserves a line all to himself, thus:
“The Reverend Miles Mirabel!
“Lady Doris has discovered that the country parsonage, in which this brilliant clergyman submits to exile, is only twelve miles away from our house. She has written to Mr. Mirabel to introduce me, and to mention the date of my return. We will have some fun with the popular preacher–we will both fall in love with him together.
“Is there anybody to whom you would like me to send an invitation? Shall we have Mr. Alban Morris? Now I know how kindly he took care of you at the railway station, your good opinion of him is my opinion. Your letter also mentions a doctor. Is he nice? and do you think he will let me eat pastry, if we have him too? I am so overflowing with hospitality (all for your sake) that I am ready to invite anybody, and everybody, to cheer you and make you happy. Would you like to meet Miss Ladd and the whole school?
“As to our amusements, make your mind easy.
“I have come to a distinct understanding with Papa that we are to have dances every evening–except when we try a little concert as a change. Private theatricals are to follow, when we want another change after the dancing and the music. No early rising; no fixed hour for breakfast; everything that is most exquisitely delicious at dinner–and, to crown all, your room next to mine, for delightful midnight gossipings, when we ought to be in bed. What do you say, darling, to the programme?
“A last piece of news–and I have done.
“I have actually had a proposal of marriage, from a young gentleman who sits opposite me at the table d’hote! When I tell you that he has white eyelashes, and red hands, and such enormous front teeth that he can’t shut his mouth, you will not need to be told that I refused him. This vindictive person has abused me ever since, in the most shameful manner. I heard him last night, under my window, trying to set one of his friends against me. ‘Keep clear of her, my dear fellow; she’s the most heartless creature living.’ The friend took my part; he said, ‘I don’t agree with you; the young lady is a person of great sensibility.’ ‘Nonsense!’ says my amiable lover; ‘she eats too much–her sensibility is all stomach.’ There’s a wretch for you. What a shameful advantage to take of sitting opposite to me at dinner! Good-by, my love, till we meet soon, and are as happy together as the day is long.”
Emily kissed the signature. At that moment of all others, Cecilia was such a refreshing contrast to Francine!
Before putting the letter away, she looked again at that part of it which mentioned Lady Doris’s introduction of Cecilia to Mr. Mirabel. “I don’t feel the slightest interest in Mr. Mirabel,” she thought, smiling as the idea occurred to her; “and I need never have known him, but for Lady Doris–who is a perfect stranger to me.”
She had just placed the letter in her desk, when a visitor was announced. Doctor Allday presented himself (in a hurry as usual).
“Another patient waiting?” Emily asked mischievously. “No time to spare, again?”
“Not a moment,” the old gentleman answered. “Have you heard from Mrs. Ellmother?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t mean to say you have answered her?”
“I have done better than that, doctor–I have seen her this morning.”
“And consented to be her reference, of course?”
“How well you know me!”
Doctor Allday was a philosopher: he kept his temper. “Just what I might have expected,” he said. “Eve and the apple! Only forbid a woman to do anything, and she does it directly–be cause you have forbidden her. I’ll try the other way with you now, Miss Emily. There was something else that I meant to have forbidden.”
“What was it?”
“May I make a special request?”
“Certainly.”
“Oh, my dear, write to Mrs. Rook! I beg and entreat of you, write to Mrs. Rook!”
Emily’s playful manner suddenly disappeared.
Ignoring the doctor’s little outbreak of humor, she waited in grave surprise, until it was his pleasure to explain himself.
Doctor Allday, on his side, ignored the ominous change in Emily; he went on as pleasantly as ever. “Mr. Morris and I have had a long talk about you, my dear. Mr. Morris is a capital fellow; I recommend him as a sweetheart. I also back him in the matter of Mrs. Rook.–What’s the matter now? You’re as red as a rose. Temper again, eh?”
“Hatred of meanness!” Emily answered indignantly. “I despise a man who plots, behind my back, to get another man to help him. Oh, how I have been mistaken in Alban Morris!”
“Oh, how little you know of the best friend you have!” cried the doctor, imitating her. “Girls are all alike; the only man they can understand, is the man who flatters them. _Will_ you oblige me by writing to Mrs. Rook?”
Emily made an attempt to match the doctor, with his own weapons. “Your little joke comes too late,” she said satirically. “There is Mrs. Rook’s answer. Read it, and–” she checked herself, even in her anger she was incapable of speaking ungenerously to the old man who had so warmly befriended her. “I won’t say to _you_,” she resumed, “what I might have said to another person.”
“Shall I say it for you?” asked the incorrigible doctor. “‘Read it, and be ashamed of yourself’–That was what you had in your mind, isn’t it? Anything to please you, my dear.” He put on his spectacles, read the letter, and handed it back to Emily with an impenetrable countenance. “What do you think of my new spectacles?” he asked, as he took the glasses off his nose. “In the experience of thirty years, I have had three grateful patients.” He put the spectacles back in the case. “This comes from the third. Very gratifying–very gratifying.”
Emily’s sense of humor was not the uppermost sense in her at that moment. She pointed with a peremptory forefinger to Mrs. Rook’s letter. “Have you nothing to say about this?”
The doctor had so little to say about it that he was able to express himself in one word:
“Humbug!”
He took his hat–nodded kindly to Emily–and hurried away to feverish pulses waiting to be felt, and to furred tongues that were ashamed to show themselves.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MOIRA.
When Alban presented himself the next morning, the hours of the night had exercised their tranquilizing influence over Emily. She remembered sorrowfully how Doctor Allday had disturbed her belief in the man who loved her; no feeling of irritation remained. Alban noticed that her manner was unusually subdued; she received him with her customary grace, but not with her customary smile.
“Are you not well?” he asked.
“I am a little out of spirits,” she replied. “A disappointment–that is all.”
He waited a moment, apparently in the expectation that she might tell him what the disappointment was. She remained silent, and she looked away from him. Was he in any way answerable for the depression of spirits to which she alluded? The doubt occurred to him–but he said nothing.
“I suppose you have received my letter?” she resumed.
“I have come here to thank you for your letter.”
“It was my duty to tell you of Sir Jervis’s illness; I deserve no thanks.”
“You have written to me so kindly,” Alban reminded her; “you have referred to our difference of opinion, the last time I was here, so gently and so forgivingly–“
“If I had written a little later,” she interposed, “the tone of my letter might have been less agreeable to you. I happened to send it to the post, before I received a visit from a friend of yours–a friend who had something to say to me after consulting with you.”
“Do you mean Doctor Allday?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“What you wished him to say. He did his best; he was as obstinate and unfeeling as you could possibly wish him to be; but he was too late. I have written to Mrs. Rook, and I have received a reply.” She spoke sadly, not angrily–and pointed to the letter lying on her desk.
Alban understood: he looked at her in despair. “Is that wretched woman doomed to set us at variance every time we meet!” he exclaimed.
Emily silently held out the letter.
He refused to take it. “The wrong you have done me is not to be set right in that way,” he said. “You believe the doctor’s visit was arranged between us. I never knew that he intended to call on you; I had no interest in sending him here–and I must not interfere again between you and Mrs. Rook.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You will understand me when I tell you how my conversation with Doctor Allday ended. I have done with interference; I have done with advice. Whatever my doubts may be, all further effort on my part to justify them–all further inquiries, no matter in what direction–are at an end: I made the sacrifice, for your sake. No! I must repeat what you said to me just now; I deserve no thanks. What I have done, has been done in deference to Doctor Allday–against my own convictions; in spite of my own fears. Ridiculous convictions! ridiculous fears! Men with morbid minds are their own tormentors. It doesn’t matter how I suffer, so long as you are at ease. I shall never thwart you or vex you again. Have you a better opinion of me now?”
She made the best of all answers–she gave him her hand.
“May I kiss it?” he asked, as timidly as if he had been a boy addressing his first sweetheart.
She was half inclined to laugh, and half inclined to cry. “Yes, if you like,” she said softly.
“Will you let me come and see you again?”
“Gladly–when I return to London.”
“You are going away?”
“I am going to Brighton this afternoon, to stay with Miss Ladd.”
It was hard to lose her, on the happy day when they understood each other at last. An expression of disappointment passed over his face. He rose, and walked restlessly to the window. “Miss Ladd?” he repeated, turning to Emily as if an idea had struck him. “Did I hear, at the school, that Miss de Sor was to spend the holidays under the care of Miss Ladd?”
“Yes.”
“The same young lady,” he went on, “who paid you a visit yesterday morning?”
“The same.”
That haunting distrust of the future, which he had first betrayed and then affected to ridicule, exercised its depressing influence over his better sense. He was unreasonable enough to feel doubtful of Francine, simply because she was a stranger.
“Miss de Sor is a new friend of yours,” he said. “Do you like her?”
It was not an easy question to answer–without entering into particulars which Emily’s delicacy of feeling warned her to avoid. “I must know a little more of Miss de Sor,” she said, “before I can decide.”
Alban’s misgivings were naturally encouraged by this evasive reply. He began to regret having left the cottage, on the previous day, when he had heard that Emily was engaged. He might have sent in his card, and might have been admitted. It was an opportunity lost of observing Francine. On the morning of her first day at school, when they had accidentally met at the summer house, she had left a disagreeable impression on his mind. Ought he to allow his opinion to be influenced by this circumstance? or ought he to follow Emily’s prudent example, and suspend judgment until he knew a little more of Francine?
“Is any day fixed for your return to London?” he asked.
“Not yet,” she said; “I hardly know how long my visit will be.”
“In little more than a fortnight,” he continued, “I shall return to my classes–they will be dreary classes, without you. Miss de Sor goes back to the school with Miss Ladd, I suppose?”
Emily was at a loss to account for the depression in his looks and tones, while he was making these unimportant inquiries. She tried to rouse him by speaking lightly in reply.
“Miss de Sor returns in quite a new character; she is to be a guest instead of a pupil. Do you wish to be better acquainted with her?”
“Yes,” he said grave ly, “now I know that she is a friend of yours.” He returned to his place near her. “A pleasant visit makes the days pass quickly,” he resumed. “You may remain at Brighton longer than you anticipate; and we may not meet again for some time to come. If anything happens–“
“Do you mean anything serious?” she asked.
“No, no! I only mean–if I can be of any service. In that case, will you write to me?”
“You know I will!”
She looked at him anxiously. He had completely failed to hide from her the uneasy state of his mind: a man less capable of concealment of feeling never lived. “You are anxious, and out of spirits,” she said gently. “Is it my fault?”
“Your fault? oh, don’t think that! I have my dull days and my bright days–and just now my barometer is down at dull.” His voice faltered, in spite of his efforts to control it; he gave up the struggle, and took his hat to go. “Do you remember, Emily, what I once said to you in the garden at the school? I still believe there is a time of fulfillment to come in our lives.” He suddenly checked himself, as if there had been something more in his mind to which he hesitated to give expression–and held out his hand to bid her good-by.
“My memory of what you said in the garden is better than yours,” she reminded him. “You said ‘Happen what may in the interval, I trust the future.’ Do you feel the same trust still?”
He sighed–drew her to him gently–and kissed her on the forehead. Was that his own reply? She was not calm enough to ask him the question: it remained in her thoughts for some time after he had gone.
. . . . . . . .
On the same day Emily was at Brighton.
Francine happened to be alone in the drawing-room. Her first proceeding, when Emily was shown in, was to stop the servant.
“Have you taken my letter to the post?”
“Yes, miss.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She dismissed the servant by a gesture, and burst into such effusive hospitality that she actually insisted on kissing Emily. “Do you know what I have been doing?” she said. “I have been writing to Cecilia–directing to the care of her father, at the House of Commons. I stupidly forgot that you would be able to give me the right address in Switzerland. You don’t object, I hope, to my making myself agreeable to our dear, beautiful, greedy girl? It is of such importance to me to surround myself with influential friends–and, of course, I have given her your love. Don’t look disgusted! Come, and see your room.–Oh, never mind Miss Ladd. You will see her when she wakes. Ill? Is that sort of old woman ever ill? She’s only taking her nap after bathing. Bathing in the sea, at her age! How she must frighten the fishes!”
Having seen her own bed-chamber, Emily was next introduced to the room occupied by Francine.
One object that she noticed in it caused her some little surprise–not unmingled with disgust. She discovered on the toilet-table a coarsely caricatured portrait of Mrs. Ellmother. It was a sketch in pencil–wretchedly drawn; but spitefully successful as a likeness. “I didn’t know you were an artist,” Emily remarked, with an ironical emphasis on the last word. Francine laughed scornfully–crumpled the drawing up in her hand–and threw it into the waste-paper basket.
“You satirical creature!” she burst out gayly. “If you had lived a dull life at St. Domingo, you would have taken to spoiling paper too. I might really have turned out an artist, if I had been clever and industrious like you. As it was, I learned a little drawing–and got tired of it. I tried modeling in wax–and got tired of it. Who do you think was my teacher? One of our slaves.”
“A slave!” Emily exclaimed.
“Yes–a mulatto, if you wish me to be particular; the daughter of an English father and a negro mother. In her young time (at least she said so herself) she was quite a beauty, in her particular style. Her master’s favorite; he educated her himself. Besides drawing and painting, and modeling in wax, she could sing and play–all the accomplishments thrown away on a slave! When her owner died, my uncle bought her at the sale of the property.”
A word of natural compassion escaped Emily–to Francine’s surprise.
“Oh, my dear, you needn’t pity her! Sappho (that was her name) fetched a high price, even when she was no longer young. She came to us, by inheritance, with the estates and the rest of it; and took a fancy to me, when she found out I didn’t get on well with my father and mother. ‘I owe it to _my_ father and mother,’ she used to say, ‘that I am a slave. When I see affectionate daughters, it wrings my heart.’ Sappho was a strange compound. A woman with a white side to her character, and a black side. For weeks together, she would be a civilized being. Then she used to relapse, and become as complete a negress as her mother. At the risk of her life she stole away, on those occasions, into the interior of the island, and looked on, in hiding, at the horrid witchcrafts and idolatries of the blacks; they would have murdered a half-blood, prying into their ceremonies, if they had discovered her. I followed her once, so far as I dared. The frightful yellings and drummings in the darkness of the forests frightened me. The blacks suspected her, and it came to my ears. I gave her the warning that saved her life (I don’t know what I should have done without Sappho to amuse me!); and, from that time, I do believe the curious creature loved me. You see I can speak generously even of a slave!”
“I wonder you didn’t bring her with you to England,” Emily said.
“In the first place,” Francine answered, “she was my father’s property, not mine. In the second place, she’s dead. Poisoned, as the other half-bloods supposed, by some enemy among the blacks. She said herself, she was under a spell!”
“What did she mean?”
Francine was not interested enough in the subject to explain. “Stupid superstition, my dear. The negro side of Sappho was uppermost when she was dying–there is the explanation. Be off with you! I hear the old woman on the stairs. Meet her before she can come in here. My bedroom is my only refuge from Miss Ladd.”
On the morning of the last day in the week, Emily had a little talk in private with her old schoolmistress. Miss Ladd listened to what she had to say of Mrs. Ellmother, and did her best to relieve Emily’s anxieties. “I think you are mistaken, my child, in supposing that Francine is in earnest. It is her great fault that she is hardly ever in earnest. You can trust to my discretion; leave the rest to your aunt’s old servant and to me.”
Mrs. Ellmother arrived, punctual to the appointed time. She was shown into Miss Ladd’s own room. Francine–ostentatiously resolved to take no personal part in the affair–went for a walk. Emily waited to hear the result.
After a long interval, Miss Ladd returned to the drawing-room, and announced that she had sanctioned the engagement of Mrs. Ellmother.
“I have considered your wishes, in this respect,” she said. “It is arranged that a week’s notice, on either side, shall end the term of service, after the first month. I cannot feel justified in doing more than that. Mrs. Ellmother is such a respectable woman; she is so well known to you, and she was so long in your aunt’s service, that I am bound to consider the importance of securing a person who is exactly fitted to attend on such a girl as Francine. In one word, I can trust Mrs. Ellmother.”
“When does she enter on her service?” Emily inquired.
“On the day after we return to the school,” Miss Ladd replied. “You will be glad to see her, I am sure. I will send her here.”
“One word more before you go,” Emily said.
“Did you ask her why she left my aunt?”
“My dear child, a woman who has been five-and-twenty years in one place is entitled to keep her own secrets. I understand that she had her reasons, and that she doesn’t think it necessary to mention them to anybody. Never trust people by halves–especially when they are people like Mrs. Ellmother.”
It was too late now to raise any objections. Emily felt relieved, rather than disappointed, on discovering that Mrs. Ellmother was in a hurry to get back to London by the next train. Sh e had found an opportunity of letting her lodgings; and she was eager to conclude the bargain. “You see I couldn’t say Yes,” she explained, “till I knew whether I was to get this new place or not–and the person wants to go in tonight.”
Emily stopped her at the door. “Promise to write and tell me how you get on with Miss de Sor.”
“You say that, miss, as if you didn’t feel hopeful about me.”
“I say it, because I feel interested about you. Promise to write.”
Mrs. Ellmother promised, and hastened away. Emily looked after her from the window, as long as she was in view. “I wish I could feel sure of Francine!” she said to herself.
“In what way?” asked the hard voice of Francine, speaking at the door.
It was not in Emily’s nature to shrink from a plain reply. She completed her half-formed thought without a moment’s hesitation.
“I wish I could feel sure,” she answered, “that you will be kind to Mrs. Ellmother.”
“Are you afraid I shall make her life one scene of torment?” Francine inquired. “How can I answer for myself? I can’t look into the future.”
“For once in your life, can you be in earnest?” Emily said.
“For once in your life, can you take a joke?” Francine replied.
Emily said no more. She privately resolved to shorten her visit to Brighton.
BOOK THE THIRD–NETHERWOODS.
CHAPTER XXXII.
IN THE GRAY ROOM.
The house inhabited by Miss Ladd and her pupils had been built, in the early part of the present century, by a wealthy merchant–proud of his money, and eager to distinguish himself as the owner of the largest country seat in the neighborhood.
After his death, Miss Ladd had taken Netherwoods (as the place was called), finding her own house insufficient for the accommodation of the increasing number of her pupils. A lease was granted to her on moderate terms. Netherwoods failed to attract persons of distinction in search of a country residence. The grounds were beautiful; but no landed property–not even a park–was attached to the house. Excepting the few acres on which the building stood, the surrounding land belonged to a retired naval officer of old family, who resented the attempt of a merchant of low birth to assume the position of a gentleman. No matter what proposals might be made to the admiral, he refused them all. The privilege of shooting was not one of the attractions offered to tenants; the country presented no facilities for hunting; and the only stream in the neighborhood was not preserved. In consequence of these drawbacks, the merchant’s representatives had to choose between a proposal to use Netherwoods as a lunatic asylum, or to accept as tenant the respectable mistress of a fashionable and prosperous school. They decided in favor of Miss Ladd.
The contemplated change in Francine’s position was accomplished, in that vast house, without inconvenience. There were rooms unoccupied, even when the limit assigned to the number of pupils had been reached. On the re-opening of the school, Francine was offered her choice between two rooms on one of the upper stories, and two rooms on the ground floor. She chose these last.
Her sitting-room and bedroom, situated at the back of the house, communicated with each other. The sitting-room, ornamented with a pretty paper of delicate gray, and furnished with curtains of the same color, had been accordingly named, “The Gray Room.” It had a French window, which opened on the terrace overlooking the garden and the grounds. Some fine old engravings from the grand landscapes of Claude (part of a collection of prints possessed by Miss Ladd’s father) hung on the walls. The carpet was in harmony with the curtains; and the furniture was of light-colored wood, which helped the general effect of subdued brightness that made the charm of the room. “If you are not happy here,” Miss Ladd said, “I despair of you.” And Francine answered, “Yes, it’s very pretty, but I wish it was not so small.”
On the twelfth of August the regular routine of the school was resumed. Alban Morris found two strangers in his class, to fill the vacancies left by Emily and Cecilia. Mrs. Ellmother was duly established in her new place. She produced an unfavorable impression in the servants’ hall–not (as the handsome chief housemaid explained) because she was ugly and old, but because she was “a person who didn’t talk.” The prejudice against habitual silence, among the lower order of the people, is almost as inveterate as the prejudice against red hair.
In the evening, on that first day of renewed studies–while the girls were in the grounds, after tea–Francine had at last completed the arrangement of her rooms, and had dismissed Mrs. Ellmother (kept hard at work since the morning) to take a little rest. Standing alone at her window, the West Indian heiress wondered what she had better do next. She glanced at the girls on the lawn, and decided that they were unworthy of serious notice, on the part of a person so specially favored as herself. She turned sidewise, and looked along the length of the terrace. At the far end a tall man was slowly pacing to and fro, with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Francine recognized the rude drawing-master, who had torn up his view of the village, after she had saved it from being blown into the pond.
She stepped out on the terrace, and called to him. He stopped, and looked up.
“Do you want me?” he called back.
“Of course I do!”
She advanced a little to meet him, and offered encouragement under the form of a hard smile. Although his manners might be unpleasant, he had claims on the indulgence of a young lady, who was at a loss how to employ her idle time. In the first place, he was a man. In the second place, he was not as old as the music-master, or as ugly as the dancing-master. In the third place, he was an admirer of Emily; and the opportunity of trying to shake his allegiance by means of a flirtation, in Emily’s absence, was too good an opportunity to be lost.
“Do you remember how rude you were to me, on the day when you were sketching in the summer-house?” Francine asked with snappish playfulness. “I expect you to make yourself agreeable this time–I am going to pay you a compliment.”
He waited, with exasperating composure, to hear what the proposed compliment might be. The furrow between his eyebrows looked deeper than ever. There were signs of secret trouble in that dark face, so grimly and so resolutely composed. The school, without Emily, presented the severest trial of endurance that he had encountered, since the day when he had been deserted and disgraced by his affianced wife.
“You are an artist,” Francine proceeded, “and therefore a person of taste. I want to have your opinion of my sitting-room. Criticism is invited; pray come in.”
He seemed to be unwilling to accept the invitation–then altered his mind, and followed Francine. She had visited Emily; she was perhaps in a fair way to become Emily’s friend. He remembered that he had already lost an opportunity of studying her character, and–if he saw the necessity–of warning Emily not to encourage the advances of Miss de Sor.
“Very pretty,” he remarked, looking round the room–without appearing to care for anything in it, except the prints.
Francine was bent on fascinating him. She raised her eyebrows and lifted her hands, in playful remonstrance. “Do remember it’s _my_ room,” she said, “and take some little interest in it, for _my_ sake!”
“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“Come and sit down by me.” She made room for him on the sofa. Her one favorite aspiration–the longing to excite envy in others–expressed itself in her next words. “Say something pretty,” she answered; “say you would like to have such a room as this.”
“I should like to have your prints,” he remarked. “Will that do?”
“It wouldn’t do–from anybody else. Ah, Mr. Morris, I know why you are not as nice as you might be! You are not happy. The school has lost its one attraction, in losing our dear Emily. You feel it–I know you feel it.” She assisted this expression of sympathy to produce the right effect by a sigh. “What would I not give to inspire such devotion as yours! I don’t envy Emily; I only wish–” She pau sed in confusion, and opened her fan. “Isn’t it pretty?” she said, with an ostentatious appearance of changing the subject. Alban behaved like a monster; he began to talk of the weather.
“I think this is the hottest day we have had,” he said; “no wonder you want your fan. Netherwoods is an airless place at this season of the year.”
She controlled her temper. “I do indeed feel the heat,” she admitted, with a resignation which gently reproved him; “it is so heavy and oppressive here after Brighton. Perhaps my sad life, far away from home and friends, makes me sensitive to trifles. Do you think so, Mr. Morris?”
The merciless man said he thought it was the situation of the house.
“Miss Ladd took the place in the spring,” he continued; “and only discovered the one objection to it some months afterward. We are in the highest part of the valley here–but, you see, it’s a valley surrounded by hills; and on three sides the hills are near us. All very well in winter; but in summer I have heard of girls in this school so out of health in the relaxing atmosphere that they have been sent home again.”
Francine suddenly showed an interest in what he was saying. If he had cared to observe her closely, he might have noticed it.
“Do you mean that the girls were really ill?” she asked.
“No. They slept badly–lost appetite–started at trifling noises. In short, their nerves were out of order.”
“Did they get well again at home, in another air?”
“Not a doubt of it,” he answered, beginning to get weary of the subject. “May I look at your books?”
Francine’s interest in the influence of different atmospheres on health was not exhausted yet. “Do you know where the girls lived when they were at home?” she inquired.
“I know where one of them lived. She was the best pupil I ever had–and I remember she lived in Yorkshire.” He was so weary of the idle curiosity–as it appeared to him–which persisted in asking trifling questions, that he left his seat, and crossed the room. “May I look at your books?” he repeated.
“Oh, yes!”
The conversation was suspended for a while. The lady thought, “I should like to box his ears!” The gentleman thought, “She’s only an inquisitive fool after all!” His examination of her books confirmed him in the delusion that there was really nothing in Francine’s character which rendered it necessary to caution Emily against the advances of her new friend. Turning away from the book-case, he made the first excuse that occurred to him for putting an end to the interview.
“I must beg you to let me return to my duties, Miss de Sor. I have to correct the young ladies’ drawings, before they begin again to-morrow.”
Francine’s wounded vanity made a last expiring attempt to steal the heart of Emily’s lover.
“You remind me that I have a favor to ask,” she said. “I don’t attend the other classes–but I should so like to join _your_ class! May I?” She looked up at him with a languishing appearance of entreaty which sorely tried Alban’s capacity to keep his face in serious order. He acknowledged the compliment paid to him in studiously commonplace terms, and got a little nearer to the open window. Francine’s obstinacy was not conquered yet.
“My education has been sadly neglected,” she continued; “but I have had some little instruction in drawing. You will not find me so ignorant as some of the other girls.” She waited a little, anticipating a few complimentary words. Alban waited also–in silence. “I shall look forward with pleasure to my lessons under such an artist as yourself,” she went on, and waited again, and was disappointed again. “Perhaps,” she resumed, “I may become your favorite pupil–Who knows?”
“Who indeed!”
It was not much to say, when he spoke at last–but it was enough to encourage Francine. She called him “dear Mr. Morris”; she pleaded for permission to take her first lesson immediately; she clasped her hands–“Please say Yes!”
“I can’t say Yes, till you have complied with the rules.”
“Are they _your_ rules?”
Her eyes expressed the readiest submission–in that case. He entirely failed to see it: he said they were Miss Ladd’s rules–and wished her good-evening.
She watched him, walking away down the terrace. How was he paid? Did he receive a yearly salary, or did he get a little extra money for each new pupil who took drawing lessons? In this last case, Francine saw her opportunity of being even with him “You brute! Catch me attending your class!”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ST. DOMINGO.
The night was oppressively hot. Finding it impossible to sleep, Francine lay quietly in her bed, thinking. The subject of her reflections was a person who occupied the humble position of her new servant.
Mrs. Ellmother looked wretchedly ill. Mrs. Ellmother had told Emily that her object, in returning to domestic service, was to try if change would relieve her from the oppression of her own thoughts. Mrs. Ellmother believed in vulgar superstitions which declared Friday to be an unlucky day; and which recommended throwing a pinch over your left shoulder, if you happened to spill the salt.
In themselves, these were trifling recollections. But they assumed a certain importance, derived from the associations which they called forth.
They reminded Francine, by some mental process which she was at a loss to trace, of Sappho the slave, and of her life at St. Domingo.
She struck a light, and unlocked her writing desk. From one of the drawers she took out an old household account-book.
The first page contained some entries, relating to domestic expenses, in her own handwriting. They recalled one of her efforts to occupy her idle time, by relieving her mother of the cares of housekeeping. For a day or two, she had persevered–and then she had ceased to feel any interest in her new employment. The remainder of the book was completely filled up, in a beautifully clear handwriting, beginning on the second page. A title had been found for the manuscript by Francine. She had written at the top of the page: _Sappho’s Nonsense_.
After reading the first few sentences she rapidly turned over the leaves, and stopped at a blank space near the end of the book. Here again she had added a title. This time it implied a compliment to the writer: the page was headed: _Sappho’s Sense_.
She read this latter part of the manuscript with the closest attention.
“I entreat my kind and dear young mistress not to suppose that I believe in witchcraft–after such an education as I have received. When I wrote down, at your biding, all that I had told you by word of mouth, I cannot imagine what delusion possessed me. You say I have a negro side to my character, which I inherit from my mother. Did you mean this, dear mistress, as a joke? I am almost afraid it is sometimes not far off from the truth.
“Let me be careful, however, to avoid leading you into a mistake. It is really true that the man-slave I spoke of did pine and die, after the spell had been cast on him by my witch-mother’s image of wax. But I ought also to have told you that circumstances favored the working of the spell: the fatal end was not brought about by supernatural means.
“The poor wretch was not in good health at the time; and our owner had occasion to employ him in the valley of the island far inland. I have been told, and can well believe, that the climate there is different from the climate on the coast–in which the unfortunate slave had been accustomed to live. The overseer wouldn’t believe him when he said the valley air would be his death–and the negroes, who might otherwise have helped him, all avoided a man whom they knew to be under a spell.
“This, you see, accounts for what might appear incredible to civilized persons. If you will do me a favor, you will burn this little book, as soon as you have read what I have written here. If my request is not granted, I can only implore you to let no eyes but your own see these pages. My life might be in danger if the blacks knew what I have now told you, in the interests of truth.”
Francine closed the book, and locked it up again in her desk. “Now I know,” she said to herself, “what reminded me of St. Domingo.”
When Francine rang her bell the next morning, so long a time elapsed without producing an answer that she began to think of sending one of the house-servants to make inquiries. Before she could decide, Mrs. Ellmother presented herself, and offered her apologies.
“It’s the first time I have overslept myself, miss, since I was a girl. Please to excuse me, it shan’t happen again.”
“Do you find that the air here makes you drowsy?” Francine asked.
Mrs. Ellmother shook her head. “I didn’t get to sleep,” she said, “till morning, and so I was too heavy to be up in time. But air has got nothing to do with it. Gentlefolks may have their whims and fancies. All air is the same to people like me.”
“You enjoy good health, Mrs. Ellmother?”
“Why not, miss? I have never had a doctor.”
“Oh! That’s your opinion of doctors, is it?”
“I won’t have anything to do with them–if that’s what you mean by my opinion,” Mrs. Ellmother answered doggedly. “How will you have your hair done?”