CHAPTER XXII.
MARY’S INVESTIGATIONS.
MRS. ASQUITH kept to all appearance perfectly tranquil during the rest of that evening. It was a strange and affecting sight to see her by the side of Hetty’s chair, talking with a smiling countenance and every appearance of ease and an unburdened heart. She kept telling all the nursery stories, all the little family jokes, every kind of trifling happy circumstance, the commonplaces of the family, to her daughter’s dulled and heavy ear. The spectators could not understand this strange sight. They were anxious, but she seemed free from care. They contemplated that little marble image of poor little Hetty with piteous eyes, shaking their heads aside, and saying to each other that, after all, the appearance of her mother had not done what was hoped. But the mother sat and smiled and talked as if she had been altogether unconscious that Hetty was not as she had been. Miss Hofland, though she could not understand, though she could not approve, this strange mode of action, got interested in spite of herself in all those unknown children, and found herself softly laughing in the background at the tricks of the boys, and Janey’s matronly demeanour, and the sweet little sayings of the baby. It all looked so pretty, and tender, and sweet. But how that woman could talk, and talk, and smile, and tell those stories with poor Hetty blanched and unresponsive like marble, wax—anything that you can think of which is most unlike flesh and blood, was what Miss Hofland could not understand. She felt very angry. She said to herself, “That woman has so many, she has no heart for this one;” and felt as if she loved poor Hetty better than her mother did, who showed so little feeling. Rhoda, who had stolen in when no one was looking, was, on the contrary, fascinated by Mrs. Asquith. She crept closer and closer, and at last curled herself up on the skirt of the stranger’s gown like a little dog, and listened, and laughed, and clapped her hands at all those stories. “Oh, tell me a little more about little Mary! Oh! what did baby say?” Rhoda cried, pushing closer and closer. Mrs. Asquith put one arm round the child, though without looking at her. She could think even of that strange child, who had been the cause of it all, with Hetty lying motionless there!
But all this had no effect upon Hetty, the lookers-on thought. An occasional faint smile came to the corners of her mouth, something so faint, so evanescent, that it could scarcely be called a smile; a faint little colour, almost imperceptible, came upon her marble paleness; now and then she said, “Mamma!” quite inconsequently, not as an answer to anything, and the tiny hands that had been folded in her lap were folded now in one of her mother’s hands, which seemed to communicate a little warmth, a little life—a poor result to have effected by the heroic measure of sending for her, and admitting a stranger, against every rule, to this secluded house. The housekeeper was very impatient of the whole business. “You did it against everything I could say; and nothing has come of it,” she said.
“As for that, we can’t tell yet,” said the doctor, naturally taking his own part; but he was very anxious, and did not seem to have taken much comfort from the new arrival. He had gone into the library to talk it over with his coadjutor, while Hetty was being conveyed to bed. The house was very quiet, the room badly lighted, the lamp on the table bringing out the anxious expression on the young man’s troubled face, and half showing the figure of the housekeeper, who stood on the other side of the table. The light fell upon her hands clasped in front, and showed her person vaguely, but her face was in the shade.
“The right thing to do would have been to send the girl off to that man who treats hysteria,” she said; “he would soon have brought her to her senses. What good can the mother do?—a silly woman telling all that nonsense that the girl can’t hear, and would not care for if she did! Rhoda likes it, to be sure,” she said, with a short laugh; “and perhaps she thinks that to make an impression upon Rhoda, who will be an heiress, is always worth her while.”
“It is no part of your business, or mine either, to judge Mrs. Asquith,” young Darrell said impatiently; but there could be little doubt that he was disappointed too. The effect of the mother’s first appearance had not been what he hoped.
“And here we’ve brought in, against all our promises, just the last person in the world that ought to be admitted into this house.”
“I made no promises,” said the young doctor hurriedly. “How could I on this subject? No one could have foreseen such a combination of circumstances—a near relation when we expected a stranger.”
“Only a cousin,” the housekeeper said quickly; “but now the thing is to get rid of her as soon as possible, and in the meantime to keep her completely in the—— Good gracious! I beg your pardon, ma’am,” cried Mrs. Mills, quickly stepping out of the way.
“I knocked, but you did not hear me,” said Mary. “You forget that I know my way about this house.” She passed the housekeeper by, and came up to where Darrell was sitting, and drew a chair to the table near him. “I have got my poor child to bed. She looks as if she had fallen asleep; whether it is sleep or stupor I can’t tell, but she is very quiet. Now will you tell me how it happened?” Mary said. Her voice was very quiet, but very serious—not the voice of one who was to be trifled with. Instinctively both the listeners perceived this. Darrell cast an anxious, almost imploring glance into the surrounding dimness of the half-lighted room, and the housekeeper stirred from one foot to the other with an involuntary motion. She had not thought much of Mrs. Asquith as an antagonist, but now she began to change her mind.
“How it happened?” said the young doctor, faltering. “I am afraid it was a fright. She got a—fright.”
“We cannot tell exactly how it happened,” said the housekeeper quickly, “for it happened in the middle of the night.”
“But you must have some sort of understanding. A thing like that can’t happen in a house without some one knowing. How was it? even if you can’t tell me what it was.”
“It all arose from this, ma’am,” said the housekeeper, “that Miss Asquith would have her window open at night. Some people I know have fads on that subject; if I asked her once, I asked her a dozen times not to do it, but she would. She would not be guided by me.”
“She left her window open all night? Well, and what happened?” Mary said.
Mr. Darrell cleared his throat. A kind of loathing of the glib woman, who was so ready to answer for him, quickened his speech. “So far as we can tell, something came into her room and frightened her,” he said.
“Something? Oh! this is trifling,” cried Mary impatiently. “Many, many a night have I slept in this house with my window open. The windows were always open. What is there about, to come in at an open window in the middle of the night?”
The two culprits exchanged a glance across the table. The housekeeper could see the doctor’s pale face full of revelations, but he could not see hers. “That’s what we don’t know,” she said. “Miss Hofland will tell you that she warned her just as I did. Supposing it was something quite innocent—as harmless as you please—one of the sheep in the park, or a cow! A cow’s an innocent thing, but it would give you a terrible fright in the middle of the night; or even a rabbit or a squirrel,” continued Mrs. Mills, getting confidence as she went on; “it was one of the animals about the place, for anything we know.”
“What do you know? will you tell me exactly? What roused you first? and when you went to her what did you see?”
The housekeeper shivered a little. “We found her lying on her bed, poor dear! with her eyes staring, the bedclothes clenched in her hands as if she had tried to cover her face. Oh, Mrs. Asquith! I thought the child was dead.” She stopped with a half sob. “And the half of the French window wide open—it’s not a sash window in that room—standing wide open, showing how it had come in.”
“How what had come in?” said Mary huskily, scarcely able to command her voice.
“How can I tell? Some wild creature out of the woods—some of the animals that had got loose about the farm.”
“Was there any trace of an animal? There must have been some trace!”
“Or it might,” said the housekeeper with a sob, the strong excitement of the moment gaining upon her, “have been a tramp that had hidden about the place.”
Mary pushed her chair from the table, and covered her face with her hands. But it was only for a moment. She came back to herself, and to the examination of these unwilling witnesses, before they could draw breath, but not before a low indignant outcry, “No, no!” had burst from the young doctor’s lips. She turned upon him with the speed of lightning. “Mr. Darrell!” she cried, “was it a tramp that got into my child’s room in the middle of the night? Speak the truth before God!”
What did she suspect or fear? The question flashed through his mind with a shock of strange sensation. “No,” he said, looking at her, “it was no tramp.”
“And you know who it was?”
She rose up and confronted him with her pale, set face, holding him with her eyes, which were like Hetty’s eyes, in the strain of the horrible gaze that had settled in them that night. He was helpless in her hands like a child. “Yes,” he said, “I know.”
She could not speak, but she made him an imperative gesture to go on. He was no longer the unwilling witness, he was the conscious criminal at the bar.
“Mrs. Asquith,” he said, with a shiver of nervous emotion, “it needs a long explanation. I would have to tell you many things to make you understand.”
“Many things which you have no right to tell any one, Mr. Darrell,” the housekeeper said.
Mary once more insisted with an imperious wave of her hand. The young man made a nervous pause. “I have an—invalid gentleman under my charge,” he said.
“Mr. Darrell!” cried the housekeeper again, “do you remember all you’ve promised? You’ve no right to go against them that support you, them that pay you.”
“What is that to me?” cried Mary quickly. “What do I want with your secrets? Tell me about my child!”
“I will tell you everything,” he said. “It has been against my conscience always. I’ll have this burden no longer. He wanders about at night, we can’t help it, he slips from our hands. And I suppose he saw the open window. I—I was too late to keep him back. I found him there. He thought she was his child, whom he thinks he has lost. When I heard her scream I knew how it was, and I got him away.”
“Is this the truth?” Mrs Asquith said; “is this all the truth?”
“It is everything,” cried the young man; “there is nothing more to tell you, but there is more for me to do. I give up this charge, Mrs. Mills. I will do it no more, it is against my conscience. If he only knew a little better he could bring us both up for conspiracy. I will clear my conscience of it this very day.”
“If you are such a fool!” the housekeeper said in her excitement. She went round to him and caught him by the arm, and led him aside, talking eagerly. “She’ll pay no attention. What does she care for anything but her girl?” the woman said.
Mary had seated herself again suddenly, her brain swimming, her heart beating. Thank God! she said to herself. She did not know what she had feared, but something more dreadful, worse than this; her relief was greater than words could say. She sat down to recover herself. What the housekeeper said was true. She cared for nothing but her girl. What were their secrets to her? If somebody was wronged Mary did not feel that it was her business to set it right. It was her child or whom, and of whom alone, she was thinking; and in all probability no further thoughts of the mysterious invalid would have crossed her mind, but for this incident which now occurred, and which for the moment was nothing but an annoyance to her, detaining her from Hetty. There was a knock at the door, to which the others in their preoccupation paid no attention. After a second knock the door was softly opened, and one of the women servants came in, a tidy person, in the dark gown and white cap and apron, which is a respectable maid-servant’s livery. She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Oh, please, is Mrs. Asquith here?”
“Yes, I am here,” cried Mary, quickly getting up, with the idea that she was being called to Hetty. The woman came in, hurried forward, and made curtsey after curtsey—a little sniff of suppressed crying attending each—“Oh, ma’am, don’t you know me? Oh, ma’am, I’ve never forgotten you! Oh, please, I am Bessie Brown,” she said.
“Are you indeed Bessie Brown? I am very glad to see you,” said Mrs. Asquith. “And are you here in service? And how is it I never heard about you from my Hetty? You were the first nurse she ever had.”
“Oh, ma’am, is that our baby? and me never to know! I never heard her name right. I never knew. Oh, to think that poor young lady is our baby! And the dreadful, dreadful fright she got! But oh! ma’am, perhaps now you’ve come it is all for the best.”
“How can it be for the best that my child should be so ill?” said Mary. “Oh, she is so ill! To see her is enough to break one’s heart.”
And in the softness of this sympathy, the first touch of the old naturalness and familiarity which she had yet felt, Mary too began to cry in the fulness of her heart.
“The house is dreadful changed, ma’am, and everything going wrong, I think, though it mayn’t be a servant’s place to speak.”
“I am afraid,” Mrs. Asquith said, “I am selfish. I think too much of my own. I can’t enter into the troubles of the new family. It’s only of the old I can think when I am here.”
“But oh! it’s no new family, ma’am; it’s the same family, it’s your own, own family,” cried Bessie Brown. “If you’re married ever so, you can’t give your natural relations up.”
“My natural relations!” Mary cried.
But the conversation by this time had caught the watchful ear of the housekeeper, who left Darrell and came back to see what was going on here.
“Brown,” she said, “what are you doing in this room? who told you to come and talk to a lady who is paying a visit in the house? I hope, Mrs. Asquith, you’ll excuse her. There is no rudeness meant,” the housekeeper said.
“My natural relations,” Mary repeated. “I don’t know what you mean. The house has passed into other hands. I don’t suppose there are any of my relations here.”
“Brown, you had better go to your work. I’ll answer the lady’s questions. We did not know till the other day that there was any relationship.”
“But,” said Mary bewildered, “it is Mrs. Rotherham——”
“Mrs. Prescott-Rotherham. My lady was an heiress. She married Mr. Prescott——”
The discovery was too bewildering and strange to convey itself distinctly to Mary’s troubled brain. She said only something which she felt to be entirely irrelevant.
“Who, then, is the invalid gentleman?” she cried.