The Last of the Mortimers

“And, Milly, what is to be done with the sprite?” said Harry.

“Lizzie? what should be done with her? She is an orphan, she has nobody belonging to her, she has taken shelter with me. Harry, no; we’re poor, but we’re not free to think of ourselves alone. Lizzie shall go too. She is God’s child, and He sent her to me.”

Harry did not say anything, but he kept slowly shaking his head and drumming upon the table. Harry had the common people’s ideas rather about responsibility. He was afraid of the responsibility. For all the kindness in his heart he did not like to step into what might be other people’s business, or to take up any burdens that did not lie in his way.

“Besides, she is the best servant in the world. She is worth all Aunt Connor’s three maids. I can trust her with baby almost as well as I can trust myself; and, besides,” said I, rather hypocritically, “look at the creature’s laundry work; you never were so pleased before.”

“Well, that is rather astonishing, I confess,” said Harry, looking at his fresh wristband with a little admiration. “I don’t believe those awkward red fingers ever did it. She must keep some private fairy in a box, or have made an agreement with a nameless personage. What if poor Lizzie’s soul were in danger on account of your fine linen, you hard-hearted Milly! I do not believe you would care.”

“Ah! you can’t deny her talents in the laundry,” cried I, with a little injudicious laughter. “What a triumph that is! You never were content with anybody’s work before.”

Harry looked at me rather doubtfully. “You look very much as if you were a little cheat,” he said. “I’ll have a peep into the laundry one of these days myself.”

“But Lizzie must go with us,” said I. “I have taken very much to the strange creature. You and I are God’s orphans too. We have a right to be good to her; and it is not all on one side—don’t think it, Harry; she is very good to me. She helps me with all her might, and stands by me whenever I want, or tries to do it. I had rather have her than half-a-dozen common servants. Leave this to me.”

“But consider, Milly, what you are making yourself responsible for,” cried Harry.

I stopped his mouth; I would not let him speak; and danced away with baby all in my joy and comfort to put him to bed. We met Mrs. Saltoun on the stairs in the dark, and as she kissed the child, I kissed my good old lady out of the fulness of my heart. “We are going away, but it is only to Chester; we shall be together still,” I said in her ear. I never thought how strange she would think it that I should be pleased to leave her, or how she might wonder at my spirits getting up so easily. I was very happy that night.

Lizzie was putting all baby’s things away when I went into the room. She folded and laid them all aside more nicely than I could have done it myself; not, so far as I know, because orderliness came natural to her, but because, with all her heart, she had wanted to please me, and saw with her quick eyes how it was to be done best. When anybody looked at Lizzie, and she knew it, she was just as awkward as ever. How I had laboured to make her hands and her feet look as if they belonged to her, without twisting up or going into angles! but it was all of no use. Whenever anybody looked at Lizzie, she would stand on one foot, and seek refuge of an imaginary pinafore for her hands; but just now, in the firelight, when you could only half see her, you cannot think how tidily and nicely the uncouth creature was going about her work.

I paused before the fire after the child was in bed. “Lizzie,” said I, standing in the warm light, and looking down into it, “do you like Edinburgh very much?” I did not look round for her answer, I waited till she should come to me; and yet felt pleased to see her, with “the tail of my eye,” as Mrs. Saltoun would have said, flitting about after one thing and another, through the pleasant darkness, with the firelight all glimmering and shooting gleams of reflection into it, shining in the drawers, and chairs, and furniture, which Lizzie’s hands had rubbed so bright. I could not help thinking, with a little pride and self-complacency, that it was all my doing. If I had not taught her, and taken pains with her—but then, to be sure, if she had not been wonderfully clever and capable; the one thing had just as much to do with it as the other. But, between her exertions and my own, I had been very successful in my little maid.

“Edinburey?” said Lizzie, coming up to me, with a lingering sound in that genuine Edinburgh tone of hers, “eh, mem, isn’t it rael bonnie? They say there’s no such another bonnie town in the world.”

“But there are, though,” said I; “they say quantities of foolish things. Lizzie, the regiment is ordered away.”

Lizzie clasped her hands together, and gave a shrill shriek. “I’ll waken the wean, but I canna help it. Eh, what will we do?” cried Lizzie, in a voice of suppressed and sharp despair. “I heard you say once you would die, and if you die, so will the bairn, and so will I; and what heart would the Captain have to come hame again? He would throw himself upon the spears, the way they do in the ballads, and get his death. Mem!” cried the excited girl, seizing my arm and stamping her foot upon the floor in an impassioned appeal to my weakness, “if ye dinna bide alive, and keep up your heart, he’ll never come hame!”

I cannot explain what an extraordinary effect this had upon me. The sudden flush of excitement and desperate necessity for doing something to inspire and hold up my weakness, which animated Lizzie, cast a new light upon myself and my selfish terror. She cared nothing about affronting or offending me, the brave primitive creature; she thought only of rousing, pricking me up to exert what strength I had. Her grasp on my arm, her stamp on the floor, were nature’s own bold suggestions to arrest the evil she dreaded. I should not give way, or break down—I should not send away my soldier unworthily, nor peril the life on which another hung, if Lizzie could help it. What I had escaped for the moment—what I should have to go through with by and by, came all up before me at her words. She whom I was proud of having trained for my service had a braver heart than me.

But when I could explain to her the real nature of the case our position changed immediately. Lizzie’s countenance fell; she hung her head, and relapsed into all her old awkwardness. It was neither the bold young soul, resolved, come what might, to inspire me with needful courage, nor the handy little maid busied with her work, but the old uncouth Lizzie, not knowing how to stand or look for extreme awkwardness and eagerness, that stood gazing wistful at me in the firelight. She stood with her lips apart, looking at me, breathless with silent anxiety, muttering as she stood, with an incessant nervous unconscious motion, the physical utterance of extreme anxiety. She made no appeal to me then; but, like a faithful dog, or dumb creature, kept gazing in my face.

“And so we shall have to go away,” said I, somewhat confused by her eyes; “and you are an Edinburgh girl, and people know you here. I could recommend you very well, and you might get a better place; you must think it all over, and decide what we must do.”

Lizzie’s face showed that she only understood me by degrees; that she should have any choice in the matter not seeming to have occurred to her. When she fairly made it out, she gave a joyful shout, and another little cry; but plunged me into the wildest amazement, the moment after, by the following question, in which I could find no connection whatever with the subject under hand.

“Mem,” said Lizzie, “is a’ the Bible true alike—the auld Testament as weel as the New?”

“Surely,” said I, in the most utter surprise.

“Then I know what I’ll do,” cried the girl; “I’ll bring you a hammer and a nail, and you’ll drive it into the doorpost through my ear.”

“What in the world do you mean, child?” cried I,—“are you laughing at me, Lizzie? or is the girl crazed.”

“Me laughing? if you would do it I would greet with joy; for the Bible says them that have the nail driven through, never gang out ony mair for ever, but belong to the house. Mrs. Saltoun mightna be pleased if it was done in the parlour, but down at the outer door it might be nae harm. Eh, mem, will ye ask the Captain?” cried Lizzie, “and then I’ll never leave ye mair!”

Just then Harry called me downstairs, and all laughing, and with tears in my eyes, I hurried down to him, not knowing whether to be most amused or melted.

Harry had something to consult me about, which he plunged into immediately, so that I had still had no opportunity of propounding Lizzie’s petition, when, all at once, about an hour after, she made her appearance at the door. I never saw the creature look so bright; her eyes were shining, her colour high, her breath coming quick with agitation, excitement, and a mingled thrill of joy and terror. In one hand she carried Mrs. Saltoun’s great hammer, in another a rusty iron nail; and her resolution had removed at once her awkwardness and her reverential dread of Harry. She came up to him with a noiseless air of excitement, and touched him on the sleeve; she held out the hammer and the nail without being able to speak a word. He, on his side, looked at her with the utmost amazement. Lizzie was too much excited to explain herself, or even to remark his astonished look; she had come to prove her allegiance in the only way that occurred to her. I believe, in my heart, that she longed for the grotesque extraordinary pang which was to make her my bondslave for ever; the spirit of a martyr was in the child’s heart.

When Harry understood the creature’s meaning you may imagine what a scene followed. I had to send Lizzie away lest her highly-wrought feelings should be driven desperate, by the agonies of laughter it threw him into. I took her outside the door and put away the hammer, and gave her a kiss in the dark. I whispered in her ear, “That shall be our bond, Lizzie; we will take it out of the New Testament rather than the Old,” and left her sitting on the stairs, with her apron thrown over her head, crying her heart out. No one, from that day forward, has ever spoken of leaving Lizzie behind again.

PART III.

THE LADIES AT THE HALL

(Continued)

Chapter I

I CANNOT tell what it was that made me silent about this adventure while we were having tea. My mind was naturally full of it, but when, having the words just on my lips, I looked at Sarah, some strange influence held me back. That reluctance to speak of a matter which will turn out painful to somebody I have felt come across me like a sort of warning more than once in my life; and this time it was so powerful, that during our meal I said nothing whatever about the matter. You are not to suppose, though, that I was so good a dissembler as not to show that I had something on my mind. Little Sara found me out in a moment. She said, “What are you thinking of, godmamma?” before we had been two minutes at table, and persecuted me the whole time,—finding out whenever I made any little mistake; and, indeed, I made several, my mind being so much occupied. Sarah, on the contrary, took no notice; she seemed, indeed, to have recovered herself a good deal, and had a very good appetite. She never talked much at any time, and had said less than usual since ever little Sara arrived. So what with my abstraction and Sarah’s quiet occupation with herself, there was not much talk, you may suppose. Little Sara Cresswell’s eyes, however, quite danced with mischief when she saw me so deep in thought. She kept asking me all sorts of questions; whether there was any bit of the road haunted between the Park and the village? whether I had got some sermons from the rector to read? whether Dr. Appleby had been trying some of his new medicines (the doctor was certainly too much given to experiments) upon me? whether I had met anybody to frighten me? Tea was all but finished, and I had just rung the bell, when the little plague asked this last question; and you may imagine I was quite as much inclined to tell all my story as Sara was to draw me out.

“Now I’ll just tell you what I think has happened, godmamma,” cried Sara. “One of your old lovers has appeared to you, and told you that, but for you, he might have been a happy man; and that all his troubles began when you refused him. Now haven’t I guessed right?”

“Right? Why, I have told you a dozen times, Sara, that I never had any lovers,” said I,—“not till I was forty, at least.”

“But that is no answer at all,” cried the little puss. “And the poor man might die for you, when you were forty, all the same. Was it himself, quite pined away and heart-broken, that you saw, godmamma, or was it his ghost?”

“Hush, you little provoking thing,” said I; “you and I had a quarrel about an Italian the other evening. Now I know a deal better about him than you do, Sara. He is all the ghost I met.”

I gave a glance at Sarah, sidelong, as I spoke. I am sure what I said was light enough, and not very serious, but her ear had caught it; it was a sign to me that she was still as much on the watch as ever. She did not speak, nor lift up her head, except with a little momentary start, but she stopped knitting, which was something extraordinary to me.

And little Sara flushed up; whether it was with the recollection of our quarrel, or a private interest of her own in the young stranger, who, to be sure, being a handsome young man, and mysterious, and romantic, was quite likely to excite a foolish young imagination, I cannot tell; but her cheeks certainly reddened up at a great rate, and she looked exactly as if she were ready to pounce and bite, what between curiosity and wrath.

“I met him on the road; it is my belief he passed the gate the other evening when I was looking out. Poor young man! he speaks very good English for an Italian,” said I.

Then Sarah’s whisper interfered and stopped me; she spoke very sharply. “Who are you speaking of?” she said; “there are no Italians here.”

“There is one,” said I; “poor fellow. Little Sara there knows about him. It appears he came expecting to find a lady hereabouts, and can’t find her. I can’t think on the name myself; I never heard it that I know of; but I must allow that the young man looks like a gentleman; and for an Italian–”

“Be silent, Milly! What can a person like you know?” said Sarah, in an irritated shrill tone. “They’re a double-minded, deceitful, intriguing race; they’re vile story-tellers, every one; they’re a people no more fit to be considered like other Christians than dogs are, or slaves. Bah! What do you mean talking to me of Italians? None of you are the least aware of what you are speaking of. I know them well.”

Here little Sara struck boldly into the breach, and saved me from the necessity of struggling out an answer.

“Godmamma, you are frightfully unjust!” cried little Sara. “I wonder how you can speak of a whole people so; and such a people! as if everybody in the world did not know who they are, and what they have done!”

“They have done every kind of fraud and falsehood in existence,” said Sarah, so earnest that her voice sounded like a sort of smothered shriek. “I tell you, child, whoever trusts or believes in them gets deceived and betrayed. Don’t speak to me of Italians—I know them; and if any Italian comes here pretending to ask anything,” she said, suddenly turning round upon me, and catching at me, if I may say so, with her eye, “mind you, Milly, it’s a cheat! I say, recollect it’s a cheat! He does not want any living creature; he wants money, and profit, and what you have to give.”

If she had said all this quietly, and there had been nothing beforehand to rouse my attention, I should not have been surprised; for to be sure, that was very much like what I had always believed; and as for lying, and seeking their own advantage, I rather think that is just about what an English person, who knows no better, thinks of most foreigners, right or wrong. But Sarah’s way of speaking was breathless and excited. She was no more thinking of Italians in general than I was, or than little Sara was. She was thinking on some one thing, and some one person; she alone knew who and what. All her anger, and her quickness, and her dreadful look of being in earnest, were personal to herself; and I cannot describe to anybody how my sister’s unexplainable anxiety and excitement bewildered and excited me.

“But, Sarah, you don’t know anything of this poor friend man; he may be as honest as ever was. I do believe he is, for my part,” said I; “and what he wants is–”

“Don’t tell me!” cried Sarah. “I don’t want to hear what he wants. How should I know anything about him? Hold your tongue, Milly, I tell you. What! you go and take a fancy to a young villain and impostor, and neglect me!”

“Neglect you! but, dear, not for the poor young Italian gentleman’s sake; you can’t think that!” said I, more and more amazed.

“You all neglect me!” said Sarah, throwing down her knitting, and rising up in her passion. “I don’t want to hear of reasons or causes. You are not to tell me what young impostors you may fish up in the streets, or what ridiculous things your protégés may want. Don’t say anything to me, I tell you! I desire to hear nothing about it. Make up what pretty romance you please, you are quite fit to do it; but I clear my hands of all such matters—you shall not even tell them to me!”

And as she said this,—could I believe my eyes?—Sarah thrust her footstool out of the way, pushed back her screen, and making a momentary pause to search round all the dim depths of the room with her eyes, went out, leaving us two, Sara and me, staring at each other. What had affronted her? What could be the cause of her displeasure. She left her knitting thrown down into the basket, and the Times lying on the chair beside her seat. Nobody had done or said anything to displease her, unless my mention of the young Italian had done it. What strange secret irritation could be working in her, to produce these outbursts of passion without any cause?

Little Sara stared at me with her bright eyes wide open, till Sarah had quite gone out of the room; then the wicked little creature, struck, I suppose, with something comic in my blank distressed look, burst out laughing. I cannot tell you how the sound of her laugh, thoughtless as she was, jarred upon me.

“Is this how you live so amicably at the Park, godmamma?” cried Sara. “The people say you have the temper of an angel, and that nobody else could live with godmamma Sarah. I never believed it was true till now. You have the temper of an angel, godmamma. You forgave me the other night when I was so naughty; you kissed me, though I did not expect you would. And now here you have been kind to poor Italian Mr. Luigi, and you have got paid for it. What have the Italians done to godmamma Sarah to make her so savage at their very name?”

“Ah! that is the question—what is it?” said I. “God knows!”

“Then you don’t know?” said little Sara. “Yet I could have thought you did, you looked so.”

“How did I look?” cried I.

“As if there were a secret somewhere; as if you were thinking how godmamma Sarah would take it; as if you were—well, just watching her a little, and trying to see whether she cared,” said the observant little girl.

“Was I, indeed? was I so? Ah! I deserve to be punished. What right have I to go and dream over anybody’s looks and frame romances, as she says? Heaven forgive me! I’ll go and beg her pardon. I did not mean to do it. To think I should be so mean and suspicious! Little Sara, let me go.”

Sara held me fast, clinging with her arms round my waist—and her provoking little face the little witch turned up close to mine. “Tell me first what the romance was, godmamma?” said Sara. “She accused you of it, and you confess; and I am sure a romance is far more in my way than yours. Tell me, please, this very moment, what romance you are making up? Has Mr. Luigi anything to do with it? Is it all about godmamma Sarah? Tell me directly, or I don’t know what I shall do. Sit down in this great chair, and begin—romance of real life.”

“Ah, you foolish little girl! there’s many a romance of real life you durst not listen to, and I durst not tell you,” cried I. “I am not making up any romance. Nonsense! Child, get up. I’ll tell you about your Mr. Luigi, which is the only story in my head. He is looking for a lady; but that you know–”

“Oh yes, and he can’t find her; the Countess Sermoneta,” said Sara, in her careless way.

Just then, to my still greater wonder, Sarah returned to the room. Evidently she had heard the child’s words. I saw her come to a dead stop in the shadow close by the door, and put her hand upon her side, as if she were out of breath and had to recover herself. What did this strange flitting about mean? In her usual way she never moved from her seat, except to go to dinner. Her going away was extraordinary, and her coming back more extraordinary still. I could but gaze at her in amazement as she came slowly up, threading through the furniture in the half light. But Sara, who had still her arms clasped round me, had of course her back to her godmamma, and did not see that she had come back to the room.

“Wasn’t it the Countess Sermoneta?” said Sara, “I know he was asking all over Chester for such a person, and was so disappointed. Did you never hear of a Countess Sermoneta, godmamma? If you heard it once you surely would remember the name.”

Sarah had stopped again while the girl was speaking. Could she have been running up and downstairs that her breath came so quick, and she had to make such pauses to recover herself? I could not answer Sara for watching my sister, feeling somehow fascinated; but then, remembering that Sara had detected me in anxious observation of her godmother, I hurried on with the conversation to avoid any suspicion of that.

“That is just what I told the young man, my dear child—that I never had heard the name,” said I; “but I promised to try all I could to get some news for him. It is very sad he should be disappointed, poor young fellow. I promised to ask Ellis, who has been centuries with the Mortimers, you know; and I thought, perhaps, your godmamma and I, if we had a talk together, might recollect somebody that married a foreigner–”

Here I made a dead pause in spite of myself. Sarah had somehow managed to get back into her seat. She was wonderfully pale and haggard, and looked like a different creature. She looked to me as if all her powers were strained for some purpose, and that at any moment the pressure might be too much, and she might give way under it. I could not go on; I stopped short all at once, with a feeling that somehow I had been cruel. “Not to-night,” I said softly to Sara, “another time.” Sara was obedient for a miracle. We broke off the conversation just at that point, with an uneasy feeling among us that it had been far more interesting and exciting than it ought to have been; and that the best thing to be done was to bury it up, and conceal what we had been talking about. Such was the immediate result of my easy promise to consult my sister. Sarah sat very steadily through all that evening, remaining up even later than usual. She took no notice of anything that was said, nor mentioned why she went away. We were all very quiet, and had little to say for ourselves. What was this forbidden ground?

Chapter II

IT is very odd, when there happens to be any one bit of tabooed ground in a family, how impossible it is to keep off it. I daresay every member of a household, above childhood, knows that, more or less. If there is one matter that some two people are quite sure to disagree upon, whom it is quite the business of your life to keep comfortable and on good terms, isn’t that matter always turning up somehow? Doesn’t it float about in the air, and hover over your head, always ready to poke in when it is not wanted, and do what mischief it can? That is my experience, at least. And it was so much the worse in our case, because little Sara had no idea of keeping quiet, and no notion that her innocent mischief and meddling could do any real harm, or have any worse effect than putting her godmamma “in a passion.” Putting people in a passion was fun to the thoughtless little girl; it never came into her little saucy inconsiderate head that Sarah’s passion was not a flash of harmless lightning like her own, or that it meant anything which could disturb and overturn all my sister’s quiet life, and put me into a fever of bewilderment and anxiety. For days after I kept carefully off the subject, thinking it would be better to leave a polite message with Ellis for the Italian young gentleman if he called, and say I was sorry I could not get him any information, than to worry my poor sister, who was so unaccountably disturbed by hearing of him. Not that Sarah said anything about it; but she looked so haggard and anxious that it went to my heart. She came down even earlier than usual and sat up later; listened eagerly to all the conversation going on; sometimes, even, missed her drive; sat on the watch, as one might have supposed; but when she had gone out for her airing one day, I met the carriage,—and, can you believe it, the very blinds were down! If, when all was quiet, and nothing had happened, I used to wonder sometimes what sort of life she had led when she was younger, what friends she might have had, and what was her history when she was abroad, you may fancy how busy my mind was on that subject now.