Chapter VI.

“WE were interrupted in our talk yesterday,” said Aunt Milly, “but I have not forgotten what you said about your little maid. My dear, I don’t think it is worth your while to warn her against talking about such matters. When they think a thing’s important, they are all the more likely to talk.”

“But you don’t know Lizzie,” said I.

“No,” said Aunt Milly, doubtfully. “I always have heard the Scotch were faithful servants; but it’s undeniable that they do love to talk. Besides, she’s only a child. My dear, has she any particular claim upon you?”

“Only that she is an orphan,” said I, “like Harry and me.”

“Ah, dear child! there’s two of you; it does not matter to you,” cried Aunt Milly; then she continued, rather anxiously, “I’d like to know, however, what she can tell about this, Milly. Ellis told me a confused story about a foreign man coming with a letter, and that he insisted on seeing the lady—the lady! and couldn’t talk no more sense, Ellis says. I understood by the description, it must be that man. There couldn’t be two fat foreign serving-men in a quiet county like this; and Carson, ‘as happened to be in the hall at the moment,’ Ellis tells me, spoke to him, ‘and they arguifyed for long in a queer language,’ and then he went away. I don’t know any more of it, my dear. This Lizzie of yours, if she can understand that man, and he told her of it, I wonder does she know any more?”

Then I told her of the further particulars which had come under Lizzie’s observation, the letter returned and destroyed. Aunt Milly once more grew a good deal excited. She walked about the room with a troubled face, and many exclamations; but on the whole it gave her comfort. “My dear, she can’t be afraid of him now,” said Aunt Milly; and with this piece of consolation she went away strengthened to her many businesses, for everything evidently is in her hands. That eldest sister of hers, whom I cannot call by any name of love, takes no share{285} in anything. When she does talk, she talks as if she were the sole mistress and ruler of the house; but Aunt Milly, though I understand they are quite equal in their rights, has all the trouble. It is very strange, but I could not feel so comfortable about her sending back that letter as Aunt Milly did. To tell the plain truth, a very distinct suspicion had entered into my mind about her. It flashed upon me when Mr. Luigi was speaking of her, and it grew stronger and stronger every hour I spent in the same room, though how it could be, was more than by any amount of thinking I could divine. I will not say what my fancy was; I was always too imaginative. I don’t want to commit myself till I see whether anything will occur to bear me out.

The next day was wet, and I had abundant means of seeing Miss Mortimer. I think my foolish faint that first day had quite settled me in her opinion. She saw I was a nobody from that moment. Accordingly all that rainy afternoon I sat by her in the strangest unsocial way. The fire was still kept up, though the weather was warm; and Aunt Milly had stationed me in her own easy chair, opposite her sister, and commanding the entire length of the room so that I could see who entered at the door, though Miss Mortimer could neither see or be seen by any one coming in. The five great windows were all very naked and bare, the curtains drawn back, and the blinds drawn up, according to Miss Mortimer’s fancy; she had always an amount of twilight at her command by movement of her screen. These five long lines of cold broad light, the cloudy sky looking full down upon us, and the blasts of rain driving against the cold transparent fence of glass which separated us from that outdoor world, where the early flowers hung their heads in the rain, and the shrubs cowered and drew together in the fitful gusts of wind, gave an extraordinary atmosphere to the picture. Then that long great mirror at the end of the room repeated the five windows in strange perspective, and reflected all the maze of space and crowd of furniture in bars of light and shadow; while here, in the centre, played the uncertain glow of the fire, much too warm, and making the air feel unnatural; and close before me sat Miss Mortimer with the screen carefully drawn round her chair. She had on her usual dress—her muslin scarf or shawl, I forget which, lined with pale blue silk, and ribbons of the same colour in her cap, and black lace mits upon her thin hands, which, when she happened to stop for a moment, she rubbed slowly before the fire. She did not talk to me. I{286} understand it was very rarely she talked to any one. Silently, as if it were some weird work she was about, she knitted on; but sometimes, as I was conscious, lifted her eyes from her knitting, and continuing her work all the time, surveyed me as I sat helpless before her. Every time the door of the room happened to open she repeated this. I felt her stare at me, as she might have stared at a mirror, to see who had entered the room; and it is impossible to describe how I felt under that look. I durst not answer it by turning my eyes upon her; but looking past her at the door, as one naturally does when the door of the room opens—and knowing her gaze to be fixed on me, I faltered, I trembled, my face burned in spite of myself. This went on till, in desperation, I fairly answered her look; then my feelings changed. Those blue eyes, which must have paled and chilled with age, were gazing with a watchful dread in my face. It was not me she was looking at. Her hands went on, in their dreadful inhuman occupation, while she found in my face a reflection of who it was that went in, or out, by that door behind her. It might be a habit she had got into; but I could read in her eyes that she sat there in full expectation of somebody or something arriving suddenly, which might startle and distress everybody else, but which she knew. Again, I saw the same contrast which I had seen between Aunt Milly and Mr. Luigi. This woman, like the Italian, was in no perplexity. She was not confused with a mystery she could not comprehend, as Aunt Milly was. She knew something was coming, and what was coming, and was prepared to defend herself, and hide her shame to the death.

Hide her shame! oh, how do I dare say it; how could I venture to say that she had disgraced herself, or even to think so? There she sat, clothed in a double respect, even by reason of all that made her so unlovely and distasteful to me, the real great lady of the house, served by everybody, imagining herself quite supreme; the head of the house, though she transferred all the trouble of it to other shoulders; Miss Mortimer, of the Park, a spotless maiden lady, who might have been, as the common story went, had she chosen to marry, almost of any rank she pleased. All that I knew; but as I gazed at her, the wild sudden fancy that had seized me before, grew stronger and stronger. A kind of loathing took possession of me. Shame may be dreadful, must be dreadful; but to deserve it, and yet to escape it—to know one’s self guilty, and fight all one’s life against the penalty—to shut one’s self up, heart and voice, like{287} that in a corner, waiting for the discovery and exposure which has become inevitable—and resolute by every lie and expedient of falsehood to resist and baffle it—the sight was hideous to me. I turned away from her with a feeling of sickness—then in the impulse of the moment I spoke.

“Should not you like to take this seat, Miss Mortimer, if you wish to see who comes in at the door?”

“How do you know,” she cried, in her strangled voice, “that I wish to see who comes in at the door?”

“I can see it in your eyes,” said I. I could not help a little shudder as I spoke. Her only answer was to draw a little further back into the twilight of her screen. I don’t think she looked at me again; but she did something else when Ellis came in the next time, which was quite as characteristic. She listened visibly, with an extraordinary intentness; her knitting stopped, though her eyes were bent on it. I could fancy she must have heard the very vibration of the man’s foot upon the floor, and satisfied herself by its sound what it was.

“Miss Milly’s compliments, ma’am, and will you please step into the library a moment,” said Ellis to me.

“Who’s in the library, eh?” interrupted Miss Mortimer, before I could speak.

Ellis faced round upon her slowly, with evident surprise: “I don’t know as it’s nobody, ma’am,” said the man; “Miss Milly has something to show the young lady.”

“Who’s in the house? why don’t you answer me? You are making up a story,” cried Miss Mortimer, almost with a shriek.

“Nobody, as I know on, but the Captain, as is in the stables, ma’am, looking at the colt,” said Ellis, doggedly, “and Miss Milly, as is waiting in the library for the young lady, with some pictures to show to her, as it looked to me; nor likely to come neither on such a day.”

Instead of resenting this speech as I supposed, Miss Mortimer smiled to herself with a nod. She gave a glance out from her screen at the blank of cloudy sky and the falling rain. It seemed to soothe her somehow. She relapsed back again, and resumed her knitting, without looking at or speaking to me. Did it relieve her to be told that nobody was likely to come on such a day? Could she imagine a spring shower was motive enough to keep the avenging truth away? I cannot tell. Who could tell? I might be wronging her cruelly to think of any avenger on his way. But I left the room, leaving her there with the blank clouds and rain, with the solitary{288} gleam of the decaying fire, in the heavy silence and broad light of the vast room. She was standing at bay, grim and desperate; but she could actually imagine that the fate which pursued her would be kept away by the April shower! I cannot express all the wonder, pity, and horror that come over my heart—such strange, strange, inconsequent blendings of the dreadful and the foolish were not in any philosophy of mine.