That alarmed Rachel. “But you won’t tell her—”
“Why you are leaving us? No, for I trust to your good sense. I am sure that you will have the strength to conquer this fancy. Otherwise it would be my duty to write. As it is, your mother will think it strange that we should part with you so lightly. She will think us very ungrateful, my dear. You must promise me that you will put this unhappy feeling out of your mind.”
Rachel said meekly that she would try. She meant it.
“For that way lies nothing but misery. Nothing can come of it. You see that for yourself?”
“I do, I do!” Rachel answered miserably. “That is why I want to go.”
“Oh, dear, dear!” my lady repeated. “Well, I’ll give the orders, but I don’t know what Ann will say.”
And for some minutes after Rachel had crept away my lady sat in deep thought. In the end she seemed to see compensation. “Perhaps it is for the best,” she reflected. “He may have thought better of it, and, look at it how you will, it is a mesalliance. Yes, it is for the best, no doubt. But I hope that he will not blame me.”
It was Bowles who was this time the first to hear the news, and Bowles who, laden with it, broke in on Mrs. Jemmett’s after-dinner nap. “Well,” he announced, “if I don’t astonish you this time, Mrs. J., I’m d —— — d.”
“You do astonish me!” the housekeeper retorted, as she sat up and straightened her cap. “If I have told you once, my man, I have told you a dozen times — no language in this room!”
“Excuse! But, by gum, ma’am, that girl’s going!” Mrs. Jemmett stared. “Not the governess?”
“You’ve said it, ma’am.”
“Umph! Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Don’t stare, man, like a duck in thunder. They couldn’t let her. Why, I told you myself no longer ago than yesterday that I saw my lady put her hand on her shoulder in the hall as if — why just as if—”
“Well, she’s going,” Bowles persisted. “I met Priscilla on the front stairs, and, ‘You’ve no business here,’ says I, pretty sharp. ‘ I want some string,’ says she, ‘and I saw a piece—’— ‘You’ll see the outside of the door with a flea in your ear!’ I answered. ‘String? What do you want with string? It’s not the governess going this time!’— ‘It’s just that, Mr. Bowles,’ says she, whimpering, ‘and her bag—’
‘Now, none of your lies,’ I said, and I gave the girl a good shake. ‘You are up to some game of your own, you young baggage!’
‘Indeed I’m not, sir,’ says she. ‘It’s gospel truth. She’s going and her bag—’— ‘D — n her bag!’ I said, but I saw that the wench believed it and I came away. I knew that you’d like to hear.”
Mrs. Jemmett ruminated. “It’s odd,” she said, “if so be it’s true. Why should she go? It’s not her ladyship this time, that’s certain.”
“Her ladyship? Why you might light candles at her eyes these days! She wouldn’t hurt a fly. A blind man might see how things are with her! Didn’t she order the Queen’s quilt that my lord sets such store by to be got out of the satinwood chest, and put—”
“Bowles!” Mrs. Jemmett exclaimed. “You trench, man, you trench! If you don’t know by this time that there are things that in well-conducted houses are not noticed—”
“But one can’t help one’s thoughts, ma’am,” Bowles pleaded. “Don’t say now as it don’t set you thinking, Mrs. J.?”
“I hope I am not that kind of person,” Mrs. Jemmett replied stiffly.
Bowles dropped the subject. “Well, anyway, it’s not my lord,” he said. “Honey won’t melt in his mouth. But I am not so certain about the young ladyship. She’s a little devil in her tantrums, and she and miss had a turn-up yesterday.”
“And she went half an hour later,” Mrs. Jemmett rejoined from the height of superior knowledge, “and asked miss to box her ears. Priscilla was there and told me.”
“Then I’m fair flummoxed.”
“It don’t take much to flummox you, Bowles. If you ask me, I think the girl has been setting her cap at my lord, and now she sees it’s no good, she’s off.”
The butler stared. “Well, set a woman to catch a woman,” he said. “I’d not have thought of that in a month of Sundays. But you’ve a powerful mind, Mrs. Jemmett, and if you’d only a softer heart and sometimes thought of yours truly—”
“I think very little of him,” the housekeeper retorted with a heightened colour.
“For, as for quilts, ma’am, and well you know it, it’s not the quilt as matters, it’s the—”
“Bowles!” Mrs. Jemmett rose in her outraged modesty. “I’m surprised at you!”
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOME
SHE was going home, to her mother, to Ruth, to the cottage by the sea. Every turn of the wheels brought her nearer, and already she could picture the rapturous welcome, the loving embrace that awaited her at her journey’s end. Yet the hoof-beat of the horses as the carriage rolled along the road beside the Ringwood water-meadows, where the king-cups already laid golden patches on the green and the new-risen sun drank up the mists above Somerley, failed to elate her. Home? The word did indeed carry her mind back to her departure thence and to the incidents of that first journey; but it was with something like envy that she recalled the fears of that day, the shyness that had enfolded her, her misgivings lest she should miss the coach, her apprehensions of the reception that awaited her. She could smile at them now. They had been but the tremors of youth and inexperience. For, had she but known it, she had been happy then, heart-free, care-free, untouched by the real troubles of life. Now —
She sank lower in her corner, a small, lonely figure staring out with sad eyes, as the chaise rattled over the bridge at Fordingbridge and swerving to the right passed before the Greyhound. For there she recalled another scene, a night scene; and once more she slid, sore and aching, from the saddle; once more crept, too weary to resist, into the shelter of the wondering, awakened inn. How kind he had been to her, how thoughtful, how considerate — though he too must have been racked with weariness! With what care, veiled under rough manners, had he lapped the poor dependant about, fenced her from curiosity, attended to her wants! And, last kindness of all, with what firmness had he enforced her return, and at the Folly had shielded and protected her! Fondly, foolishly, she recalled it all; trifles that she had not seemed to see, words that she had not seemed to hear, touches that set her blood tingling. She shed a few tears in the corner of the chaise, and, “It was time that I came away!” she thought. “A few kind words and I — oh, I am a fool! I am a fool! What would my mother say!”
And at Salisbury, where she had to wait an hour, strolling up and down between the White Hart and the water-channel that ran along the base of the Close Wall, it was the same. She might have visited the Cathedral — it was but a step. But she preferred to pass her time within sight of the yard, and again she saw, but with other eyes, the tall figure in the shabby sea-cloak that talked with the landlord, again she saw the Captain stalk masterfully into the room where she cowered in her corner, saw him tug at the bell, heard him call for “that catlap,” owned the good-nature that made her share it and forced him, in sheer pity, to put up with her company. Nor did her thoughts stop there — for what to the woman who loves is dearer than the man’s foible, the weakness that makes her mother as well as mistress to him? Again she heard him hum his eternal
“Oh, Hood and Howe and Jervis
Are masters of the main,
Cornwallis sweeps the narrow seas
And logs the weather-vane.
And Duncan in his Seventy Four,
His Venerable Seventy Four.”
Her eyes filled. How little had she understood the man, his nobleness, his generosity! How little foreseen the future, or her own weakness!— “But indeed I will conquer it,” she vowed, furtively drying her eyes. And through the long coach-hours, while passengers entered and left unheeded, and Shaftesbury and Crewkerne flitted by unnoticed, she repeated her
vow — yet now and again thought, perforce, of his lost arm and his maimed manhood and shed a few more tears. But that was in the darkness when they were not far short of Exeter; and they were to be the last, the very last. Henceforth she would be sensible!
And beyond Exeter, whence she drove through the night in a fly, giving her orders with an aplomb that a year ago would have astonished her, she flattered herself that she had succeeded. The nearness of her home, the sight of familiar things looming up and passing by, and presently the sound and tang of the sea, and the shimmer of the moon on its waters, shifted the direction of her thoughts. How often in the past months had she pictured her return, how often longed with passion to see the lighted porch and hear the home voices! And now — now they were at hand, ay, they broke upon her. Now in a moment, all that she had pictured was hers; and if the two loved figures silhouetted against the cheerful doorway, if the clinging mother-arms, the loving greeting, the homely room and the tea-board twinkling in her honour — if these had not drawn from her tears of another nature, she had not been Rachel, she had not been the affectionate creature that she was!
For the time, the Folly, its life and its inmates, receded into a dim background, and with a dear hand clasped in each of hers, she rested on the bosom of the love that had been hers from childhood. She looked round with a full heart; she saw the old things, the old greying tabby curled up on a chair, the china dogs on the shelf, the hissing kettle, and asked herself what, what more could she wish for or desire.
And still and withal there were little pin-pricks to be borne, questions to answer that were awkward to answer. Why had she left? And so suddenly? And on what ground? And what had the Countess said? And had she been horrid? With some of these it was easy to deal. It was easy to assure Ruth that there had been no balls and that she had not once danced, that she had sometimes come down in the evening, and that of late she had breakfasted with the family; that my lord did not wear a star, and that my lady only drove with four horses and an outrider when she paid visits. But it was not so easy to answer her mother’s questions as to her leaving; and though Mrs. South in these first moments of rejoicing did not push her inquiries, the mother’s instinct discerned that there was something still to be explained. And presently she fancied that she had the clue to the secret.
For before Rachel had sat many minutes at her tea — and oh, the delicious meal taken in freedom with none but friendly eyes and hands about her! — the girl had herself a shock. “La, Rachel,” Ruth cried, “and we’d forgotten! What do you think? But you know, I suppose? We had a visit from a beau of yours last week!”
“A beau of mine?” Rachel faltered, her hand arrested. “What do you mean, my dear?”
“And such a beau!” Ruth’s eyes were dancing. “The handsomest man! And he talked beautifully. I fell in love with him myself.”
“But who was it?”
Ruth laughed. “What will you give to know? Who, indeed? As if you don’t know, cunning!”
“Indeed, indeed,” Rachel said, avoiding her mother’s eyes, “I don’t. I cannot imagine who would come here.”
“Not Mr. Girardot?”
Rachel’s face flamed. “Mr. Girardot!” she exclaimed. —
“And, oh, the dandy — I never! He hoped to find you here and wished to know when we expected you, and inquired—”
“I hope you did not say that I was coming.”
“We did not know,” her mother replied sedately. Rachel’s confusion had not escaped her. “He was only in the neighbourhood for a night, he said, and we could tell him nothing.”
“I am glad of that,” Rachel said. She had recovered her composure. “I do not like Mr. Girardot, and I do not wish to see him.”
“Oh, but Rachel!” Ruth protested, quite cast down. “He is so good-looking! And he asked so anxiously after you.”
“He is good-looking, but—”
“Perhaps his good looks are his best point,” her mother said soberly.
“Yes, mother, that is so. I hope that he will not come again. “ And Rachel hastened to change the subject.
But naturally Mrs. South drew her conclusions. Pending Rachel’s arrival she had been inclined to connect the girl’s return with the stranger’s visit; and she had given some rein to a mother’s hopes and fears, for she knew from Rachel’s letters who Girardot was and the position he had filled at the Lodge. But she knew little more, for Rachel had shrunk from telling the story. Now Mrs. South still connected the two events, but after a different fashion, and she was troubled; and when the lights had been put out, and the three were climbing the stairs, that seemed to Rachel’s eyes steeper and narrower than of old, she got a word alone with her girl. “There is nothing between you and this gentleman, my dear?” she said. “You will tell me, I am sure, if there is.”
“Nothing, dear mother, nothing!” But the girl’s colour rose. “How could there be? He is married.
“Oh!” Mrs. South averted her eyes. She was startled. “I did not know that, of course.” And she hastened to get away from a subject so dangerous.
“You left Lady Ellingham on good terms, I trust?” she asked anxiously. “There was no trouble?”
“None. She was most kind. She told me that she would give me the best of recommendations, and with that I shall have no difficulty in getting another situation. You see,” Rachel continued, with an affectionate hug, “I am experienced now, mother. But with people not so grand, I hope. I was not” — with a quivering mouth—” very happy there.”
“No, my dear, I understand that. And you were wise to come away. But now you are here we must keep you a little while. Ah, Rachel, how I have missed you!” And the two women laughed and cried in one another’s arms.
But to the fledgling that has once flown from the nest, the nest is never the same again. And so Rachel, hiding a sore heart, discovered in the weeks that followed. Put the best face on it that she could, she was restless and unhappy. The hours that had once been too short for the daily tasks now seemed tedious and vacant. The old occupations no longer satisfied. The very affection that wrapped her about, filled her with self-reproach because it now failed to satisfy her. She longed to be alone, and often she stole away to pass hours by the sea, finding in its wide greyness and the sad, monotonous fall of the waves on the beach a something that suited her mood. She wandered away, only to return ashamed of the selfish feelings in which she had lapped herself. She told herself bravely that time would work a cure, and that by and by she would be again as she had been. But time is a medicine slow to operate, and meanwhile the girl suffered, unable to pluck from her heart the image that haunted it, or to put from her the memories that set her pulses leaping, the dreams that brought the blood to her cheeks.
No, though with shame she owned that she had only herself to blame: that she had given her heart to one who had not sought it nor asked for it, and who was HOME so far above her, so widely removed from her, that, could he be made aware of the gift, he must smile at her folly. And she had given it in return for what? For a few kind words, a service that, the man being what he was, he would have performed for a beggar-woman! And because he, Heaven save the mark, had lost an arm! For that, she told herself with cruel frankness, had put the finishing touch to her surrender!
It was weakness incredible, and with all her strength she strove to be cheerful, strove to be the daughter that she had been! She hid her feelings, and tried to make the best of things; and often her face would burn with shame as she sat with those who deemed her good, who held her sensible, nor in their innocence had it in them to conceive of her as she really was — possessed by this unmaidenly yearning, this feverish longing that racked her heart.
But strive as she might, Mrs. South was not deceived. She saw with clear eyes that all was not well with the girl, and she fancied that in the handsome tutor she held the key to the trouble. For a while she too comforted herself with the reflection that time would work a cure. But when a month had gone by and Rachel, in spite of all
her efforts — and the mother saw that the girl made gallant efforts — still pined and moped, Mrs. South determined that a change must be made. She longed to keep the stricken lamb, never dearer to her than now; but a higher love gave her strength, and one morning, when Rachel had stolen away along the shore, she put on her bonnet and followed her.
“I will walk a little way with you, my dear,” she said. “I want a breath of air. I have had the grocer’s bill and it is larger than I expected. You haven’t” — oh, the cunning mother!—” five pounds left of your salary, have you?”
Rachel fell into the trap. “Of course I have!” she cried. “And more! I will go back and get it mother. How glad I am that I can help you!”
“Well, it is a help,” Mrs. South admitted, and turned with her. “But there is no hurry. We need not go so fast, my dear.”
But Rachel’s thoughts were travelling even more swiftly than her feet, and in the direction that her mother desired. “My dear,” she cried remorsefully. “And I have been living on you! I ought to have looked out for something before this! I will write an advertisement to-day. You know,” she added cheerfully, “I am an experienced young woman now, recommended by the nobility and gentry.”
“I am sorry to lose you, you know that. But —— —”
“But there is that ‘but,’ isn’t there, mother? And I don’t mind a bit going out now! The first time it was rather terrible.”
“Yes, Rachel, I know.” And the mother’s heart ached for her child. But she made no sign. It was better that the girl should go from her, and in a new scene, where she would be forced to exert herself, should win back her peace.
They were within a hundred yards of the cottage, and Rachel was planning her advertisement, when the little maid appeared coming to meet them. “What is it now?” Mrs. South exclaimed, “I am afraid that Deb has burned the potatoes again.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 741