by Ellen Wood
“I heard the Rushing Water had come in this morning,” answered Miss Saxonbury, in a faltering tone.
“So did I. But it proves to be the Héléne. And the Rushing Water left Iceland days before her.”
She passed on with her pale, severe face, and Maria Saxonbury continued her way.
The days went on, five or six of them. Lady and Miss Saxonbury were sitting in the twilight, the latter expecting Mr. Yorke, whom she was trying, with all her might and main, to like better, as a dutiful bride-elect should, when one of their French servants came in, and said a gentleman was asking to see her.
“Me! To see me?” returned Maria.
“A gentleman-sailor, mademoiselle. I think it is Mr. Janson. He says will you allow him a minute’s conversation?”
“O mamma!” she uttered, “Mr. Janson! Then the Rushing Water must be safe in.”
Lady Saxonbury made some indistinct reply. Her thoughts were buried in other things. What, to her, was the safety of the Rushing Water?
Maria passed through the ante-room and entered the one where he had been shewn. He was in sailor’s attire, his glazed hat carelessly thrown off, looking, or Maria fancied so, handsomer than ever.
“Then you are in safety!” she exclaimed, grasping his hand in her agitated thankfulness, perhaps for his mother’s sake, but forgetful, at the moment, of Mr. Yorke, of the whole world. “We have been counting you as amongst the lost.”
“Our homeward voyage has been bad, perilous, unlucky altogether, save that we have ultimately arrived. Miss Saxonbury, I hear that you have been mourning Harry as dead.”
“Yes, yes. Oh yes!”
“He is safe. He has been with us.”
She did not scream, she suppressed it. Then she thought that he must be dreaming, or that she was.
“He got into some trouble, fell into the water, and was afraid to go home,” proceeded Mr. Janson. “That mischievous imp, Paul, encountered him in his wet plight, persuaded him into making the voyage, brought him on board, coiled him up under some sails and rope, and four-and-twenty hours after we left port, Master Harry came out. I wished the captain to put back, but he laughed at me; so he had to go with us, and I have taken care of him. Paul says Harry bribed him with a five-franc piece; three francs for himself, and two to give to a messenger to take word to his mother where he had gone.”
“No messenger came to us,” eagerly interrupted Maria.
“As I find. When I landed an hour ago, I heard that the boy had been mourned as dead. So I came on at once, after calling in upon my mother. I should not have presumed to ask for you,” he pointedly added, “but that I assumed it might be better to acquaint you first with the news, ere it was broken to Lady Saxonbury.”
“Oh! how shall we ever thank you?” said Maria, attributing all the good to Mr. Janson, in her confused feelings of joy. “Where is Harry?”
“Waiting just inside the cafe at the next door, until I send for him, and being made a lion of.” Maria went into the drawing-room, which was almost dark then, and knelt down beside Lady Saxonbury’s chair.
“Mamma! mamma! I have some joyful news for you. You will not faint if I tell it?”
“What news will ever be joyful to me again, Maria? What is the matter with you, that you kneel in that manner? How you tremble!”
“Mamma — suppose I have news to tell you about Harry? That — he — is — found?”
“Is it? is it?” excitedly uttered Lady Saxonbury.
It! She was thinking of the dead Harry; not the living one.
“Not ‘it,’ mamma. He. Could you bear for me to tell you that he is in life — safe — well?’
“Maria, what do you mean?” faintly asked Lady Saxonbury.
“He is, he is. Dearest Lady Saxonbury, he has been out with Mr. Janson in the Rushing Water.” She did not continue. For the door had opened, and a happy lad stood peeping in, in a nondescript attire, composed partly of his own things, partly of Paul’s. He was browned with the sea air, taller than before, and his fair curls were wild and entangled. With a cry, he flew into his mother’s arms, and she sobbed upon his neck and kissed his pretty face and his untidy hair, and strained him to her as if she could never let him go again.
“Lady Saxonbury, will you forgive my saying that I think you will find him a more dutiful boy than he used to be?” said Mr. Janson, who had followed him. “He has had to rough it, and he now knows the value of a happy home and a mother’s love. I have taken upon myself to discipline him; I have kept him from the sailors, so far as was practicable, and read him lessons on his faults, and I believe you will find him changed for the better.”
“Oh yes, indeed, mamma,” sobbed the lad, “I know now how naughty I was, and I will try and never grieve you and Maria again.”
“Mr. Janson,” cried the mother, rising and speaking in impassioned tones, “how can I reward you for the joy that you have brought me this night? If you asked me for my life in repayment, I almost think it should be yours.”
She left the room as she spoke, too much overcome to remain in it. Harry followed her. Miss Saxonbury was lost in thought.
“Philip Anson has held to it to this day, that Harry was saved,” she said in a musing tone. “He persisted in declaring that he saw Harry after he scrambled out of the water.”
“And now that my task is done, I have only to take my leave,” observed Mr. Janson, holding out his hand. “This house was an interdicted place to me before I left; I conclude that it is so still.”
Miss Saxonbury put her hand in his, and burst into tears.
He held it, and looked at her. “Maria, what do those tears mean? That you hate me, as you did before?”
“I never hated you,” she answered, forgetting prudence in her tumultuously glad feelings! “It was the contrary. I am very miserable.”
“I went this voyage,” he whispered, “striving to forget, if not to hate you. I come from it, loving you more than ever. The child’s being on board was against my project; how, when I constantly saw him, could I forget you? My dearest, why should we separate!” he added, straining her hand to his heart. “Let it be between us as it once was. Your mother has said she would give me a reward, even to her own life: let me ask her to give me you.”
“It may not be,” she gasped, struggling to release herself from him. “It” —— —
“Not just yet can I marry,” he interrupted. “I threw up the prospect opening to me in the spring; and the only position I could at present offer would not” —
“Edward, pray hear me,” she said, in a broken voice, as she drew away from him. “You know not what you ask. I am promised to another.”
“To another!”
“And in less than a month I shall be his wife,” she continued, too agitated to weigh her words, “and I love you, and not him. Do you wonder that I am miserable? There — now that you have the avowal, let us part for ever.”
“Who is this? Mr. Yorke?”
“Mr. Yorke.”
There was a gloomy pause. “Must you fulfil the contract? Can you not give him up for me?”
She shook her head. “I can only be plain with you. I am not fit to be a poor man’s wife. No, I have deliberately entered upon it, and matters have been advanced too far to be broken off now. Forgive me, Edward — forgive me all. We must forget each other.”
“O Maria! must this indeed be the ending?”
“Yes,” she answered, the tears raining from her eyes, and her heart aching with pain. “I wish it had been different, but circumstances are against us. Farewell, Edward; if ever we meet again, it must be as strangers. Not so,” she hastily added, as he drew her face to his for a last embrace, “it is not right to him. Do you not hear me say that in a little space I shall be his wife.”
“For the last time,” he murmured; and she made but a faint resistance. “He ought not to grudge it to us. Now — farewell for ever.”
Mr. Janson turned to leave the room. He saw not that somebody drew away from the
door, and stood bolt upright, in silence, against the wall of the dark ante-room, while he passed out — somebody with a revengeful face, and teeth that glistened like a tiger’s. Not that Mr. Yorke was of a dishonourable nature, or had dishonourably set himself to listen. He had caught somewhat of the scene as he was entering from the ante-room, and surprise, doubt, and rage had chained him there to the end. He followed Mr. Janson from the house, and strode about the old streets of the town till morning; now standing under its high and ancient tower, as it sent forth its sweet chimes on the night air, now pacing under the portico of the church, now slouching round the railings of the famous statue in the Place, the town’s pride; and now striding off to the port, there to surprise the sentinels. But he buried his wrongs within him — very great wrongs indeed they appeared to be to his heated brain — and told them not. Little did Miss Saxonbury think, on the day of her wedding, when she gave her hand without her heart, that the bridegroom, kneeling by her side, knew just as well as she did that she had no heart to give. At the best it was an inauspicious beginning of life. She felt that it was. She felt, too, that should her future existence bring somewhat of retribution, she had only invoked it on herself: as Mrs. Janson had almost predicted that night, outside the little chapel, when she had been praying for the safety of the Rushing Water.
CHAPTER IX.
Alnwick Cottage.
A BLAZING hot day in August. More especially hot it felt at the railway station of Offord, a quiet country village; for it was a small, bare station, with not a tree and but little covering about it, to shade off the sun’s hot glare. The two o’clock train came puffing up, stopped, deposited a few passengers and a good deal of luggage, and went screaming and puffing on again.
Nearly all who had alighted were of one party. Mr and Mrs. Yorke, their two young children, and some servants. She was young and beautiful still, but her manner had grown colder. Little trace remained of the gay lightness of Maria Saxonbury.
From the love, incidental to Englishmen, of temporary change, of new scenes, Mr. Yorke had quitted Saxonbury, its comforts and its elegances, for a “shooting-box” in another county. All he knew of “Alnwick Cottage,” he knew through an advertisement, except what he learnt by two or three letters from Mr. Maskell, who had the charge of letting it, furnished. Excellent fishing and shooting were promised, and Mr. Yorke had taken it for six months. It stood nearly a mile beyond the village.
No one was at the station to meet them, and Mr. Yorke, in his haughty spirit, was not pleased at the omission. He deemed that Mr. Maskell ought to have been there.
“It is a disrespect which he ought not to have shewn me,” he remarked to his wife, when the bustle of their arrival at the cottage was over.
“I wonder he was not there,” she answered. “But something may have prevented him, Arthur; we don’t know.”
“I think I shall take a stroll out, and have a look at the locality,” resumed Mr. Yorke. “Do you want anything ordered in, Maria?”
“Not that I know of,” she answered. “The servants can see about all that.”
Mr. Yorke departed, taking the direction of Offord.
When he reached the village, one of the first houses he saw was Mr. Maskell’s, as the door-plate announced: “Mr. Maskell, Lawyer and Conveyancer.” He rang, and was admitted.
“I am so sorry not to have met you at the station,” began Mr. Maskell, when he learnt who his visitor was. “I was called suddenly out of Offord this morning to make a gentleman’s will, and have not been home half-an-hour. I have despatched my clerk to Alnwick Cottage with the inventory. Sir, I hope you will like Offord.”
“It seems a very poor place,” remarked Mr. Yorke.
“The village can’t boast much, but the neighbourhood is superior: a small society, but excellent. Capital shooting, too!”
“Have you good medical advice?”
“He is a very nice young fellow, our doctor. We have but one: the place would not support more. Not but what he makes a good thing of it.”
Mr. Yorke’s lip curled. He had not been thinking of “nice young fellows,” but of superior medical skill, “I asked you about the doctor before I decided on the cottage, and you wrote me word there was an excellent one,” said he, in a dissatisfied tone. “It is most essential, where there’s a family, to be near a clever medical man.”
“We all think him very clever,” replied the lawyer. “He bought the practice three years ago: our surgeon had died, and I negotiated its sale with this gentleman. He has attended us ever since, and is a great favourite. He was in London for two years before that, qualified assistant to a large medical practitioner. Plenty of experience he had there: it was a large hospital practice. He was smoking his cigar with me yesterday evening; he often runs in, does Janson; and was saying” —
“What is his name?” interrupted Mr. Yorke, his accent shrill and unnatural.
“Janson.”
“What?”
The lawyer wondered whether Mr. Yorke was attacked with sudden deafness, and why his eyes glared, and his teeth shone out, so like fangs.
“Janson,” he repeated— “Edward Janson. Do you know him?”
Mr. Yorke’s mouth closed again, and his manner calmed down. “It is a curious name,” said he. “Is it English?”
“Of Dutch origin, I suppose. Janson is an Englishman.”
“Does he live in the village?”
“A few doors lower down. It is the corner house as you come to Rye Lane: the garden door at the back opens on the lane. I assure you, sir, you may call in this gentleman with every confidence, should you or your family require medical advice.”
Meanwhile, during this walk of Mr. Yorke’s, everybody was busy at Alnwick Cottage, as is the case when going into a fresh residence. Finch, the nurse, a confidential servant, who had been Mrs. Yorke’s maid before her marriage, was deputed to go through the house with the lawyer’s clerk and the inventory. The eldest child, a boy of four years, chose, and he had a will of his own, to attend on Finch: Finch submitting to the companionship, failing in some coaxing attempts to get rid of him. But after a while he grew tired of the process of looking at chairs and tables and cups and saucers, and quitted her to go down-stairs.
“Go to Charlotte, Leo dear,” said Finch. “I shall soon have done. Charlotte,” she called out, over the balustrades, “see to Master Leo.”
When Finch and the clerk had finished the inventory, the former proceeded to the small room on the ground floor, which had been appropriated as the nursery. In the list it was set down as “butler’s pantry.” Charlotte, the under-nurse, sat there, with the youngest child asleep on her lap.
“Where’s Master Leo?” asked Finch, abbreviating, as she usually did, his name, “Leopold.”
“I sent him here, and ordered you to see after him.”
“He didn’t come,” was Charlotte’s answer, “and the little one was just dropping off to sleep. Master Leo wouldn’t come here to me, if he could go to his mamma.”
“You’d let him be with his mamma for ever, you would, if it saved yourself a little trouble,” cried Finch, who of course domineered over Charlotte, upper-nurse fashion. “I hale this moving, I do! such a bother! nothing to be got at, and one’s regular meals and hours upset. I’m as tired as a poor jaded horse. And you sitting here doing nothing, with that child on your lap! you might have laid him down, and got a cup of tea for us.”
“Am I to lay him on the floor?” retorted Charlotte. “I don’t know which is to be the children’s bed.”
Finch flung out of the room in search of Leo: her labours that day, and the discomfort around, made her cross. He was not to be found in-doors, and she went to the garden. Very soon a shriek of fright and horror arose from her. It drew her mistress out: and the lawyer’s clerk, who had been departing, heard it, and ran back in its direction.
Leopold Yorke had met with a ladder, reared against the side of the house, and had climbed up it, in all a boy’s adventurous spirit. He had
fallen off, poor child, it was impossible to say from what height, and now lay insensible on the gravel, with an ugly gash in his forehead, from which the blood was oozing.
Finch stopped her groans and lamentations, and stooped to pick him up. But Mrs. Yorke snatched him from her, and crouched down on the earth, with one knee raised, and laid him upon it. She looked with a hopeless, helpless expression at the lawyer’s clerk. The words, which came from her white lips, were scarcely audible.
“A doctor: where does one live?”
“I’ll fetch him, ma’am; I’ll run every step of the way; I don’t mind the heat,” cried the sympathising clerk.
He did not wait another moment, but sped away. Leopold was conveyed in-doors; and, before the surgeon got there — who also seemed to have come on the run — the child had recovered consciousness, and Finch had washed the wound, which now seemed disarmed of three parts of its terrors. Mr. Janson, handsome, frank, attractive as he used to be, wanting yet a year or so of thirty, bound it up, ordered the boy to be kept quiet, and said he would send in a little calming medicine.
“May I dare to shake hands with you?” he asked, with a frank, pleasant smile, but with a somewhat heightened colour, when he and Mrs. Yorke were left alone.
She placed her hand within his, quite as frankly, though the glow was far deeper on her face than on his. “How strange that we should meet here!” she exclaimed. “I recognised you the moment you came in.”
“As I did you,” he returned. “But I was prepared. It was a matter of speculation in my mind, whether the Mr and Mrs. Yorke who were coming to Alnwick Cottage, could be you and your husband, until Maskell set it at rest by saying it was Mr. Yorke of Saxonbury. I have been settled at Offord these three years.”
“May I ask if you are” — Mrs. Yorke hesitated, but probably thought she must finish her question as she had begun it— “married?”