Then followed more reassuring speeches from Charles, and more raptures from poor Alice. And the end was that for a time Charles was quite turned away from his purpose. I don’t know, however, that he was able to keep his promise about more cheerful looks, certainly not beyond a day or two.
A few days later he heard a tragic bit of news. Tom related to him that the miller’s young wife, down at Raxleigh, hearing on a sudden that her husband was drowned in the mill-stream, though ’twas nothing after all but a ducking, was “took wi’ fits, and died in three days time.”
So much for surprising young wives with alarming stories! Charles Fairfield listened, and made the application for himself.
A few days later a letter was brought into the room, where rather silently Charles and his wife were at breakfast. It came when he had almost given up the idea of receiving one for some days, perhaps weeks, and he had begun to please himself with the idea that the delay augured well, and Harry’s silence was a sign that the alarm was subsiding.
Here, however, was a letter addressed to him in Harry’s bold hand. His poor little wife sitting next the tea things, eyed her husband as he opened it, with breathless alarm; she saw him grow pale as he glanced at it; he lowered it to the table cloth, and bit his lip, his eye still fixed on it.
As he did not turn over the leaf, she saw it could not be a long one, and must all be comprised within one page.
“Ry, darling,” she asked, also very pale, in a timid voice, “it’s nothing very bad. Oh, darling, what is it?”
He got up and walked to the window silently.
“What do you say, darling?” he asked, suddenly, after a little pause.
She repeated her question.
“No, darling, nothing, but — but possibly we may have to leave this. You can read it, darling.”
He laid the letter gently on the tablecloth beside her, and she picked it up, and read —
“MY DEAR CHARLIE,
“The old soldier means business. I think you must go up to London, but be sure to meet me tomorrow at Hatherton, say the Commercial Hotel, at four o’clock, P.M.
“Your affectionate brother,
“HARRY FAIRFIELD.”
“Who does he mean by the old soldier?” asked Alice, very much frightened, after a silence.
“One of those d —— d people who are plaguing me,” said Charles, who had returned to the window, and answered, still looking out.
“And what is his real name, darling?”
“I’m ashamed to say that Harry knows ten times as well as I all about my affairs. I pay interest through his hands, and he watches those people’s movements; he’s a rough diamond, but he has been very kind, and you see his note — where is it? Oh, thanks. I must be off in half an hour, to meet the coach at the ‘Pied Horse.’”
“Let me go up, darling, and help you to pack, I know where all your things are,” said poor little Alice, who looked as if she was going to faint.
“Thank you, darling, you are such a good little creature, and never think of yourself — never, never — half enough.”
His hands were on her shoulders, and he was looking in her face, with sad strange eyes, as he said this, slowly, like a man spelling out an inscription.
“I wish — I wish a thousand things. God knows how heavy my heart is. If you cared for yourself Alice, like other women, or that I weren’t a fool — but — but you, poor little thing, it was such a venture, such a sea, such a crazy boat to sail in.”
“I would not give up my Ry, my darling, my husband, my handsome, clever, noble Ry — I’d lose a thousand lives if I had them, one by one, for you, Charlie; and oh, if you left me, I should die.”
“Poor little thing,” he said, drawing her to him with a trembling strain, and in his eyes, unseen by her, tears were standing.
“If you leave this, won’t you take me, Charlie? won’t you let me go wherever you go? and oh, if they take my man — I’m to go with you, Charlie, promise that, and oh, my darling, you’re not sorry you married your poor little Alley.”
“Come, darling, come up; you shall hear from me in a day or two, or see me. This will blow over, as so many other troubles have done,” he said, kissing her fondly.
And now began the short fuss and confusion of a packing on brief notice, while Tom harnessed the horse, and put him to the dog-cart.
And the moment having arrived, down came Charles Fairfield, and Tom swung his portmanteau into its place, and poor little Alice was there with, as Old Dulcibella said, “her poor little face all cried,” to have a last look, and a last word, her tiny feet on the big unequal paving stones, and her eyes following Charlie’s face, as he stepped up and arranged his rug and coat on the seat, and then jumped down for the last hug; and the wild, close, hurried whisperings, last words of love and cheer from laden hearts, and pale smiles, and the last, really the last look, and the dog-cart and Tom, and the portmanteau and Charlie, and the sun’s blessed light, disappear together through the old gateway under the wide stone arch, with tufted ivy and careless sparrows, and little Alice stands alone on the pavement for a moment, and runs out to have one last wild look at the disappearing “trap,” under the old trees, as it rattled swiftly down to the narrow road of Carwell Valley.
It vanished — it was gone — the tinkling of the wheels was heard no more. The parting, for the present, was quite over, and poor little Alice turned at last, and threw her arms about the neck of kind old Dulcibella, who had held her when a baby in her arms in the little room at Wyvern Vicarage, and saw her now a young wife, “wooed and married, and a’,” in the beauty and the sorrows of life; and the light air of autumn rustled in the foliage above her, and a withered leaf or two fell from the sunlit summits to the shadow at her feet; and the old woman’s kind eyes filled with tears, and she whispered homely comfort, and told her she would have him back again in a day or two, and not to take on so; and with her gentle hand, as she embraced her, patted her on the shoulder, as she used in other years — that seemed like yesterday — to comfort her in nursery troubles. But our sorrows outgrow their simple consolations, and turn us in their gigantic maturity to the sympathy and wisdom that is sublime and eternal.
Days passed away, and a precious note from Charlie came. It told her where to write to him in London, and very little more.
The hasty scrawl added, indeed emphatically, that she was to tell his address to no one. So she shut it up in the drawer of the oldfashioned dressing-table, the key of which she always kept with her.
Other days passed. The hour was dull at Carwell Grange for Alice. But things moved on in their dull routine without event or alarm.
Old Mildred Tarnley was sour and hard as of old, and up to a certain time neither darker nor brighter than customary. Upon a day, however, there came a shadow and a fear upon her.
Two or three times on that day and the next, was Mrs. Tarnley gliding, when old Dulcibella with her mistress was in the garden, about Alice’s bedroom, noiselessly as a shadow. The little girl downstairs did not know where she was. It was known but to herself — and what she was about. Coming down those dark stairs, and going up, she went on tiptoe, and looked black and stern as if she was “laying out” a corpse upstairs.
Accidentally old Dulcibella, coming into the room on a message from the garden, surprised lean, straight Mrs. Tarnley, feloniously trying to turn a key, from a bunch in her hand, in the lock of the dressing-table drawer.
“Oh, la! Mrs. Tarnley,” cried old Dulcibella, very much startled.
The two women stood perfectly still, staring at one another. Each looked scared. Stiff Mildred Tarnley, without, I think, being the least aware of it, dropped a stiff short courtesy, and for some seconds more the silence continued.
“What be you a-doing here, Mrs. Tarnley?” at length demanded Dulcibella Crane.
“No occasion to tell you,” replied Mildred, intrepidly. “Another one, that owed her as little as I’m like ever to do, would tell your young mistress. But I don’t want
to break her heart — what for should I? There’s dark stories enough about the Grange without no one hangin’ theirself in their garters. What I want is where to direct a letter to Master Charles — that’s all.”
“I can’t say, I’m sure,” said old Dulcibella.
“She got a letter from him o’ Thursday last; ‘twill be in it no doubt, and that I take it, ma’am, is in this drawer, for she used not to lock it; and I expect you, if ye love your young mistress, to help me to get at it,” said Mrs. Tarnley, firmly.
“Lor, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am! me to pick a lock, ma’am! I’d die first. Ye can’t mean it?”
“I knowd ye was a fool. I shouldn’t ‘a said nothing to ye about it,” said Mildred, with sharp disdain.
“Lawk! I never was so frightened in my life!” responded Dulcibella.
“Ye’ll be more so, mayhap. I wash my hands o’ ye,” said Mrs. Tarnley, with a furious look, and a sharp little stamp on the floor. “I thought o’ nothing but your mistress’s good, and if ye tell her I was here, I’ll explain all, for I won’t lie under no surmises, and I think ‘twill be the death of her.”
“Oh, this place, this hawful place! I never was so frightened in my days,” said Dulcibella, looking very white.
“She’s in the garden now, I do suppose,” said Mildred, “and if ye mean to tell her what I was about, ‘taint a pin’s head to me, but I’ll go out and tell her myself, and even if she lives through it, she’ll never hold up her head more, and that’s all you’ll hear from Mildred Tarnley.”
“Oh, dear! dear! dear! my heart, how it goes!”
“Come, come, woman, you’re nothin’ so squeamish, I dare say.”
“Well,” said Dulcibella; “it may be all as you say, ma’am, and I’ll say ye this justice, I ha’n’t missed to the value of a pennypiece since we come here, but if ye promise me, only ye won’t come up here no more while we’re out, Mrs. Tarnley, I won’t say nothing about it.”
“That settles it, keep your word, Mrs. Crane, and I’ll keep mine; I’ll burn my fingers no more in other people’s messes;” and she shook the key with a considerable jingle of the whole bunch from the keyhole, and popped it grimly into her pocket.
“Your sarvant, Mrs. Crane.”
“Yours, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am,” replied Dulcibella.
And the interview which had commenced so brusquely, ended with ceremony, as Mildred Tarnley withdrew.
That old woman was in a sort of fever that afternoon and the next day, and her temper, Lilly Dogger thought, grew more and more savage as night approached. She had in her pocket a friendly fulsome little letter, which had reached her through the post, announcing an arrival for the night that was now approaching. The coach that changed horses at the “Pied Horse,” was due there at halfpast eleven, P.M., but might not be there till twelve, and then there was a long drive to Carwell Grange.
“I’m wore out wi’ them, I’m tired to death; I’m wore off my feet wi’ them; I’m worked like a hoss. ‘Twould be well for Mildred Tarnley, I’m thinkin’, she was under the mould wi’ a stone at her head, and shut o’ them all.”
CHAPTER II.
LILLY DOGGER IS SENT TO BED.
That night the broad-shouldered child, Lilly Dogger, was up later than usual. An arrear of pots and saucepans to scour, along with customary knives and forks to clean, detained her.
“Bustle, you huzzy, will ye?” cried the harsh voice of old Mildred, who was adjusting the kettle on the kitchen fire, while in the scullery the brown-eyed little girl worked away at the knife-board. A mutton-fat, fixed in a tin sconce on the wall, so as to command both the kitchen and the scullery, economically lighted each, the old woman and her drudge, at her work.
“Yes’m, please,” she said, interrogatively, for the noise of her task prevented her hearing distinctly.
“Be alive, I say. It’s gone eleven, you slut; ye should a bin in your bed an hour,” screeched Mildred, and then relapsed into her customary grumble.
“Yes, Mrs. Tarnley, please’m,” answered the little girl, resuming with improved energy.
Drowsy enough was the girl. If there had been a minute’s respite from her task, I think she would have nodded.
“Be them things rubbed up or no, or do you mean to ‘a done tonight, huzzy?” cried Mrs. Tarnley, this time so near as to startle her, for she had unawares put her wrinkled head into the scullery. “Stop that for tonight, I say. Leave ‘em lay, ye’ll finish in the morning.”
“Shall I take down the fire, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am, please?” asked Lilly Dogger, after a little pause.
“No, ye shan’t. What’s that ye see on the fire; have ye eyes in your head? Don’t ye see the kettle there? How do I know but your master’ll be home tonight, and want a cup o’ tea, or — law knows what?”
Mrs. Tarnley looked put about, as she phrased it, and in one of those special tempers which accompanied that state. So Lilly Dogger, eyeing her with wide open eyes, made her a frightened little courtesy.
“Why don’t ye get up betimes in the morning, huzzy, and then ye needn’t be mopin’ about half the night? All the colour’s washed out o’ your big, ugly, platter face, wi’ your laziness — as white as a turnip. When I was a girl, if I left my work over so, I’d ‘a the broomstick across my back, I promise ye, and bread and water next day too good for my victuals; but now ye thinks ye can do as ye like, and all’s changed! An’ every upstart brat is as good as her betters. But don’t ye think ye’ll come it over me, lass, don’t ye. Look up there at the clock, will ye, or do ye want me to pull ye up by the ear — ten minutes past eleven — wi’ your dawdling, ye limb!”
The old woman whisked about, and putting her hand on a cupboard door, she turned round again before opening it, and said —
“Come on, will ye, and take your bread if you want it, and don’t ye stand gaping there, ye slut, as if I had nothing to do but attend upon you, with your impittence. I shouldn’t give ye that.”
She thumped a great lump of bread down on the kitchen table by which the girl was now standing.
“Not a bit, if I did right, and ye’ll not be sittin’ up to eat that, mind ye; ye’ll take it wi’ ye to yer bed, young lady, and tumble in without delay, d’ye mind? For if I find ye out o’ bed when I go in to see all’s right, I’ll just gi’e ye that bowl o’ cold water over yer head. In wi’ ye, an’ get ye twixt the blankets before two minutes — get along.”
The girl knew that Mrs. Tarnley could strike as well as “jaw,” and seldom threatened in vain, so with eyes still fixed upon her, she took up her fragment of loaf, with a hasty courtesy, of which the old woman took no notice, and vanished frightened through a door that opened off the kitchen.
The old woman holding the candle over her head, soon peeped in as she had threatened.
Lilly Dogger lay close affecting to be asleep, though that feat in the time was impossible, and was afraid that the thump, thump of her heart, for she greatly feared Mrs. Tarnley, might be audible to that severe listener.
Out she went, however, without anything more, to the great relief of the girl.
Lilly Dogger lay awake, for fear is vigilant, and Mrs. Tarnley’s temper she knew was capricious as well as violent.
Through the door she heard the incessant croak of the old woman’s voice, as she grumbled and scolded in soliloquy, poking here and there about the kitchen. The girl lay awake, listening vaguely in the dark, and watching the one bright spot on the whitewashed wall at the foot of her bed, which Mrs. Tarnley’s candle in the kitchen transmitted through the keyhole. It flitted and glided, now hither, now thither, now up, now down, like a white butterfly in a garden, silently indicating the movements of the old woman, and illustrating the clatter of her clumsy old shoes.
In a little while the door opened again, and the old woman entered, having left her candle on the dresser outside.
Mrs. Tarnley listened for a while, and you may be sure Lilly Dogger lay still. Then the old woman in a hard whisper asked, “Are you awake?” and
listened.
“Are ye awake, lass?” she repeated, and receiving no answer she came close to the bed, by way of tucking in the coverlet, in reality to listen.
So she stood in silence by the bed for a minute, and then very quickly withdrew and closed the door.
Then Lilly Dogger heard her make some arrangements in the kitchen, and move, as she rightly concluded, a table which she placed against her door.
Then the white butterfly having made a sudden sweep round the side wall, hovered no longer on Lilly Dogger’s darkened walls, and old Mildred Tarnley and her candle glided out of the kitchen.
The girl had grown curious, and she got up and peeped, and found that a clumsy little kitchen table had been placed against her door, which opened outward.
Through the keyhole she also saw that Mildred had not taken down the fire. On the contrary, she had trimmed and poked it, and a kettle was simmering on the bar.
She did not believe that Mrs. Tarnley expected the arrival of her master, for she had said early in the day that she thought he would come next evening. Lilly Dogger was persuaded that Mrs. Tarnley was on the look out for some one else, and guarding that fact with a very jealous secrecy.
She went again to her bed; wondering she listened for the sounds of her return, and looked for the little patch of light on the whitewashed wall; but that fluttering evidence of Mrs. Tarnley’s candle did not reappear before the tired little girl fell asleep.
She was wakened in a little time by Mrs. Tarnley’s somewhat noisy return. She was grumbling bitterly to herself, poking the fire, and pitching the fire-irons and other hardware about with angry recklessness.
The girl turned over, and notwithstanding all Mildred’s noisy soliloquy was soon asleep again.
Again she awoke — I suppose recalled to consciousness by some noise in the kitchen. The little white light was in full play on the wall at the foot of her bed, and Mrs. Tarnley was talking fluently in an undertone. Then came a silence, during which the old Dutch clock struck one.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 494