She took up the candle, and herself listened for a moment at the door, and again turned her earnest and sinister face on Tom.
“And again, I say, Tom, if ever ye was quick, be quick now,” and she clapped her lean hand down on his shoulder with a sort of fierce shake; “and if ever ye trod soft, go softly now, mind.”
Tom, who was scratching his head, and staring in her face, nodded.
“And mind you, the kitchen way, and afraid o’ slips, say ye the message over again to me”.
This he did, glibly enough.
“Here, light your candle from this, and if ye fail your master now, never call yourself man again.”
Having thus charged him, she went softly from this nook with its slanting roof, and thinking of the thankless world, and all the trouble her old bones and brain were put to, she lost her temper, at the foot of the great staircase, and was near turning back again to the kitchen, or perhaps whisking out of the door herself, and marching off to Cressley Common to meet her master, and shock and scare him all she could, and place her resignation, as more distinguished functionaries sometimes do theirs, in the hands of her employer, to prove his helplessness and her own importance, and so assert herself for time past and to come.
Her interview with Tom had not occupied much time. She knocked at the Vrau’s door, and entering, found that person at the close of a greedy repast.
Emotions of fear, I suppose, disturb the appetite, much more than others. Not caring one farthing about Charles, she did not grieve at his infidelity; taking profligacy for granted as the rule of life, it did not even shock her. But she was stung with a furious pang of jealousy, for that needs no love, being in its essence the sense of property invaded, supremacy insulted, and self despised. In this sort of jealousy there is neither the sublimity of despair nor the pathos of sorrow, but simply the malice, fury, and revenge of outraged egotism.
There she sat, unconscious of the glimmer of the firelight, feeding as a beast will bleeding after a blow. Beast she was, with the bestial faculty of cherishing a long revenge, with bestial treachery and seeming unconcern.
“Ho oh! you’ve come back,” she cried, with playful reproach, “cruel old girl! you leave your poor vrau alone, alone among the ghosts — now, sit down, are you sitting? and tell me everything, and all the news — did you bring a little brandy or what?”
Her open hand was extended, and gently moving over the tray at about the level of the top of a bottle.
“No, ma’am, I haven’t none in my charge, but there’s a smell o’ brandy about,” said Mildred, who liked saying a disagreeable thing.
“So there ought,” said the gaunt woman placidly, and lifted a big black bottle that lay in her lap, like a baby, folded in a grey shawl. “But I’ll want this, don’t you see, when I’m on my rambles again — get a little, there’s a good girl, or if you can’t get that, there’s rum or gin, there never was a country-house without something in it; you know very well where Harry Vairvield is there will be liquor — I know him well.”
“But he baint here now, as is well known to you, ma’am,” said Mildred, dryly.
“I’m not going to waste my drink, while I think there’s drink in the house. Who has a right before me, old girl?” said the stranger, grimly.
“Tut, ma’am, ’tis childish talkin’ so, there’s none in my charge, never a drop. Master Harry, I dare say, has summat under lock and key, but not me, and why should I tell you a lie about the like?”
“You never tell lies, old Mildred, I forgot that — but young as she is, I lay my life the woman, Mrs. Harry Vairvield, upstairs, likes a nip now and then, hey? and she has a boddle, I’ll be bound, in her wardrobe, or if she’s shy, ‘twixt her bed and her mattress, ole rogue! you know very well, I think, does she? and if she likes it she sleeps sound, and go you, and while she snores, borrow you the bottle.”
“She’s nothing of the sort, she drinks nothing nowhere, much less in her bedroom, she’s a perfect lady,” said Mrs. Tarnley, in no mood to flatter her companion.
“Oh ho! that’s so like old Mildred Tarnley! Dear old cat, I’m so amused, I could stroke her thin ribs, and pet her for making me laugh so by her frisks and capers instead of throwing you by the neck out of the window for scratching and spitting — I’m so goodnatured. Do you tell lies, Mildred?”
“I ‘a told a shameful lot in my day, ma’am, but not more mayhap than many a one that hasn’t grace to say so.”
“You read your Bible, Mildred,” said the lady, who with a knife and fork was securing on her plate the morsels to which old Mildred helped her.
“Ay, ma’am, a bit now, and a bit again, never too late to repent, ma’am.”
“Repentance and grace, you’ll do, Mrs. Tarnley. It’s a pleasure to hear you,” said the lady, with her mouth rather full; “and you never see my husband?”
“Now and again, now and again, once and away he looks in.”
“Never stays a week or a month at a time?”
“Week or a month!” echoed Mrs. Tarnley, looking quickly in the serene face of the lady, and then laughing off the suggestion scornfully. “You’re thinking of old times, ma’am.”
“Thinking, thinking, I don’t think I was thinking at all,” said the lady, answering Mildred’s laugh with one more careless; “old times when he had a wife here, eh? old times! How old are they? Eh — that’s eighteen years ago — you hardly knew me when I called here?”
“There was a change surely. I’d like to know who wouldn’t in eighteen years, there’s a change in me since then.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the lady, quietly. “Did he ever tell you how we quarreled?”
“Not he,” answered Mildred.
“He’s very close,” said the stranger.
“A deal closer than Mr. Harry,” acquiesced Mildred.
“Not like you and me, Mrs. Tarnley, that can’t keep a secret — never. That tell truth, and shame the devil. I, because I don’t care a snap of my fingers for you, or him, or the Archbishop of Canterbury; and you, because you’re all for grace and repentance. How am I looking tonight — tired?”
“Tired, to be sure; you ought to be in your bed, ma’am, an hour ago; you’re as white as that plate, ma’am.”
“White are they? — so they used to be long ago,” said the visitor.
“The same set, ma’am. ’Twas a long set in my mother’s time, though ’tis little better than a short set now; but I don’t think there’s more than three plates, and the cracked butter-boat, that had a stitch in it. You’ll mind, although ye may ‘a forgot, for I usen’t to send it up to table — only them three, and the butter-boat broke since; and that butter-boat, ‘twouldn’t a brought three ha’pence by auction, and ’twas that little slut downstairs, that doesn’t never do nothing right, that knocked it off the shelf, with her smashing.”
“And I’m not looking well tonight?” said this pallid woman.
“You’d be the better of a little blood to your cheeks; you’re as white as paper, ma’am,” answered Mildred.
“I never have any colour now, they tell me — always pale, pale, pale; but it isn’t muddy; ‘taint what you call putty?”
“Well, no.”
“Ha! no; I knew that — no, and I’d rather be a little pale. I don’t like your great, coarse peony-faced women; it’s seven years in May last since I lost my sight. Some people are persecuted; one curse after another — rank injustice! Why should I lose my sight, that never did anything to signify — not half what others have, who enjoy health, wealth, rank — everything. Things are topsy-turvey a bit just now, but we’ll see them righted yet.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE OLD SOLDIER GROWS MORE FRIENDLY, AND FRIGHTENS MRS. TARNLEY.
The “Dutchwoman” resumed in a minute, and observed, —
“Well, old Tarnley, there’s no good in talking where you can’t right yourself, and where you can revenge, there’s no good in talk either; but gone it is, and the doctors say no cutting, nothing
safe in my case; no cure, so let it be. I liked dress once; I dressed pretty well.”
“Beautiful!” exclaimed old Mildred, kindling for a moment into her earlier admiration of the French and London finery, with which once this tall and faded beauty had amazed the solitudes of Carwell.
The bleached, big woman smiled — almost laughed with gratified vanity.
“Yes, I was well dressed — something better than the young dowdies and old fromps, in this part of the world. How I used to laugh at them! I went to church, and to the races, to see them. Well, we’ll have better times yet at Wyvern; the old man there can’t live for ever; he’s not the Wandering Jew, and he can’t be far from a hundred; and so sure as Charles is my husband, I’ll have you there, if you like it, or give you a snug house, and a bit of ground, and a garden, and a snug allowance monthly, if you like this place best. I love my own, and you’ve been true to me, and I never failed a friend.”
“I’m growing old and silly, ma’am — never so strong as I was took for. The will was ever stronger with Mildred than the body, bless ye — no, no; two or three quiet years to live as I should a lived always, wi’ an eye on my Bible and an eye on my ways — not that I ever did aught I need be one bit ashamed on — no, not I; honest and sober, and most respectable, thank God, as the family will testify, and the neighbours; but I’ll not deny, ‘twould be something not that bad, if my old bones could rest a bit,” said old Mildred.
“Ha, girl, they shall; your old bones shall rest, my child,” said the lady.
“They’ll rest some day in the old churchyard o’ Carwell, but not much sooner, I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Tarnley.
“Folly, folly! ole girl; you’ve many a year to go before that journey; you’ll live to see me, Mrs. Vairvield of Wyvern, and it won’t be a bad day for you, old Mildred.”
The “Dutchwoman,” or the old soldier, as they used to call her long ago in this sequestered nook, drawled this languidly, and yawned a long, listless yawn.
“Well, ma’am, if you’re tired, so am I,” said Mildred, a little tartly; “and as for dreamin’ o’ quiet in this world, I ha’ cleared my head o’ that nonsense many a year ago. There’s little good can happen old Mildred now, and less I look for, and none I’ll seek, ma’am; and as for a roof over my head for nothing, and that bit o’ ground ye spoke of, and wages to live on without no work, I don’t believe there’s no such luck going for no one.”
“Listen to me, Mildred,” said the stranger, more sternly than before; “is it because I don’t swear you won’t believe? Hear, now, once for all, and understand: I’ll make that a good day for you that makes me the lady of Wyvern. Sharp and hard I’ve been with those I owed a knock to, but I never yet forgot a friend; you may do me a service tomorrow or next day, mind, and if you stand by me, I’ll stand by you; you need but ask and have, ask what you will.”
“Well, now, ma’am — bah! what talk it is! Lawk, ma’am; don’t I know the world, ma’am, and what sort o’ place it is? I a’ bin promised many a fine thing in my day, and here I am still — old and weary — among the pots and pans every night and mornin’, and up to my elbows in suds every Saturday; that’s all that ever came o’ fine promises to Mildred Tarnley.”
“Well, you used to say, it’s a long lane that has no turn. You’ll have a glass of this?” and she popped the brandy-bottle on the table beside her, with her hand fast on its neck.
“No brandy — no nothing, ma’am, I thank ye.”
“What! no brandy? Pish, girl, nonsense.”
“No, ma’am, I thank ye, I never drinks nothing o’ the sort — a mug o’ beer after washing or the like — but my headache never would abear brandy.”
“Once and away — come,” solicited the old soldier.
“No, I thank ye, ma’am; I’ll swallow nothing o’ the kind, please.”
“What a mule! You won’t have a nip with an old friend, after so long an absence — come, Mildred, come; where’s the glass?”
“Here’s the glass,’m, but not a drop for me, ma’am; I won’t drink nothing o’ the sort, please.”
“Not from me, I suppose; but if you mean to say you never do, I don’t believe you,” said the Dutchwoman, more nettled, it seemed, than such a failure of good fellowship in Mrs. Tarnley would naturally have warranted. Perhaps she had particularly strong reasons for making old Mildred frank, genial, and intimate that night.
“I don’t tell lies,” said Mildred.
“Don’t you?” said the “old soldier,” and elevated the brows of her sightless eyes, and screwed her lips with ugly ridicule.
Mrs. Tarnley looked with a dark shrewdness upon this meaning mask, trying to discover the exact force of its significance. She felt very uncomfortable.
The blind woman’s face expanded into a broad smile. She shrugged, shook her head, and laughed. How odiously wide her face looked as she laughed! Mildred did not know exactly what to make of her.
“But if you did tell lies,” drawled the lady, “even to me, what does it matter, if you promised to tell no more? So let us shake hands — where’s your hand?”
And she kept shuffling her big hand upon the table, palm upward, with its fingers groping in the air like the claws of a crab upon its back.
“Give me — give me — give me your hand, I say,” said she.
“‘Tain’t for the like o’ me,” replied Mildred, with grim formality.
“You’d better be friendly. Come, give me your hand.”
“Well, ma’am, ‘tain’t for me to dispute your pleasure,” answered the old servant, and she slipped her hard fingers upon the upturned palm of the Dutchwoman, who clutched them with a strenuous friendship, and held them fast.
“I like you, Tarnley; we’ve had rough words, sometimes, but no ill blood, and I’ll do what I said. I never failed a friend, as you will see, if only you be my friend; and why or for whom should you not? Tut, we’re not fools!”
“The time is past for me to quarrel, being to the wrong side o’ sixty more than you’d suppose, and quiet all I wants — quiet, ma’am.”
“Yes, quiet and comfort, too, and both you shall have, Mildred Tarnley, if you don’t choose to quarrel with those who would be kind to you, if you’d let them. Yes, indeed, who would be kind, and very kind, if you’d only let them. No, leave your hand where it is, I can’t see you, and it’s sometimes dull work talking only to a voice. If I can’t see you I’ll feel you, and hold you, old girl — hold you fast till I know what terms we’re on.”
All this time she had Mildred Tarnley’s hand between hers, and was fondling and kneading it as a rustic lover in the agonies of the momentous question might have done fifty years ago.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, ma’am, no more than the plate there. Little good left in Mildred Tarnley now, and small power to help or hurt anyone, great or small, at these years.”
“I want you to be friendly with me, that’s all; I ask no more, and it ain’t a great deal, all things considered. Friendly talk, of course, ain’t all I mean, that’s civility, and civility’s very well, very pleasant, like a lady’s fan, or her lap-dog, but nothing at a real pinch, nothing to fight a wolf with. Come, old Mildred, Mildred Tarnley, good Mildred, can I be sure of you, quite sure?”
“Sure and certain, ma’am, in all honest service.”
“Honest service! Yes, of course; what else could we think of? You used to like, I remember, Mildred, a nice ribbon in your bonnet. I have two pieces quite new. I brought them from London. Satin ribbon — purple one is — I know you’ll like it, and you’ll drink a glass of this to please me.”
“Thanks for the ribbons, ma’am, I’ll not refuse ‘em; but I won’t drink nothing, ma’am, I thank you.”
“Well, please yourself in that. Pour out a little for me, there’s a glass, ain’t there?”
“Yes,’m. How much will you have, ma’am?”
“Half a glass. There’s a dear. Stingy half glass,” she continued, putting her finger in to gauge the qua
ntity. “Go on, go on, remember my long journey to-day. Do you smoke, Mildred?”
“Smoke, ‘m? No, ‘m! Dear me, there’s no smell o’ tobacco, is there?” said Mildred, who was always suspecting Tom of smoking slily in his crib under the stairs.
“Smell, no; but I smoke a pinch of tobacco now and again myself, the doctor says I must, and a breath just of opium when I want it. You can have a pipe of tobacco if you like, child, and you needn’t be shy. Well?”
“Ho, Fau! No, ma’am, I thank ye.”
“Fau!” echoed the Dutchwoman, with a derisive, chilling laugh, which apprized old Mildred of her solecism. But the lady did not mean to quarrel.
“What sort of dress have you for Sundays, going to church, and all that?”
“An old dress it is now. I had the material, ye’ll mind, when ye was here, long ago; but it wasn’t made up till long after. It’s very genteel, the folk all says. Chocolate colour — British cashmere— ’twas old Mrs. Hartlepool, the parson’s widow, made me a compliment o’t when she was goin’, and I kept it all the time, wi’ whole pepper and camphor, in my box, by my bed, and it looked as fresh when I took it out to give it to Miss Maddox to make up as if ’twas just put new on the counter. She did open her eyes, that’s nigh seven years gone, when I told her how old it was.”
“Heyday! Hi! I think I do remember that old chocolate thing. Why, it can’t be that, that’s twenty years old. Well, look in my box, here’s the key. You’ll see two books with green leather backs and gold. Can ye read? I’m going to make you a present.”
“I can read, ma’am; but I scarce have time to read my Bible.”
“The Bible’s a good book, but that’s a better,” said the lady, with one of her titters. “But it ain’t a book I’m going to give you. Look it out, green and gold, there are only two in the box. It is the one that has an I and a V on the back, four, the fourth volume. I have little else to amuse me. I have the news of the neighbours, but I don’t like ‘em, who could? A bad lot, they hate one another; ‘twouldn’t be a worse world if they were all hanged. They hate me because I’m a lady, so I don’t cry when baby takes the croup, nor break my heart when papa gets into the ‘Gazette.’ Have you found it? Why, it’s under your hand, there. They would not cry their eyes out for me, so I can see the funny side of their adventures, bless them!”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 497