“OH yes, I am very fanciful, I know I am; but if Harry would only be content, and let me be happy while I can,” said I, trying, but without success, to gulp down my tears.
“Mrs. Langham, my dear, the Captain canna be content, and it stands to reason,” said Mrs. Saltoun; “and being anxious, as a good man should, to provide for his wife and his bairn, will no take him away an hour sooner than if he were a reckless ne’er-do-weel, that cared neither for the tane nor the tither. Be reasonable, and let him speak. He’s young and you’re young; and you’re neither o’ ye that wise but ye might thole mending. It’s a real, discreet, sensible thing o’ the young gentleman to try his very utmost for a home for his wife if he has to go away.”
“If you have taken his side I shall give up speaking,” said I. “What do I care for home, or anything else, if he is away?”
“But you care for the Captain’s peace of mind, Mrs. Langham, my dear,” said Mrs. Saltoun; “that’s far different. Maybe the truest love of a’ would make itself content to be left in splendour for the sake of a comfortable thought to them that’s going on a far different road. I wouldna say but the thought o’ your safety would lighten mony an hour of danger. Mony’s the strange thing I’ve seen in my life; but eh! when ye have them that ye maybe mayna have lang, gie them their will! Let him have his ain way, and gang in wi’ him if ye can. There’s mony a young wife like you would die cheerful, or do ony hard thing in the world for her husband, but canna see her way just to do that. Gie him his will! I was ower late learning that mysel’.”
The very tone in which my good old lady spoke plunged me deeper and deeper into my agony of alarm and terror. I did not take her words for what they meant. I went aside to draw terrifying inferences from her tone and the sound of her voice. She thought he would go, I concluded—perhaps she had heard already that marching orders had come—she thought that he would never come back again, if he did leave me. Anxiety and fear seized hold upon me so forcibly that I never stopped to think that Mrs. Saltoun had no means of knowing, any more, or even so much as I knew, and that she could not possibly be better informed on this point than I was.
“And now tell me about your family, Mrs. Langham, my dear. I’ve come across half the folk in the country, I might venture to say, one time and another. I was on the continent for three years with my old gentleman,” said Mrs. Saltoun; “it’s just astonishing to say such a thing, but if you’ll believe me, a person gets better acquaint with their own country folk, that is, meaning the higher ranks o’ life, in foreign parts than at home. It’s maybe just a glance and away, that’s true; but them that has good memories minds.”
“And were you really abroad?” said I, feeling a little interested in spite of all my trouble; “and who was your old gentleman?—not——”
“No, no, nobody belonging to me. I had the charge of his house and his young family, that he had no business to have at his age; an auld fuil of a man that had married a young wife, and lost her, and was left, past seventy, with four young bairns. Mortimer? wasn’t that your name, my dear? Eh? I mind of a Miss Mortimer made a great steer among a’ the English one season; and among mair than the English by bad fortune. She was counted a great beauty; but I canna say she was like you.”
“No, indeed, not likely!” cried I.
“I would rather have your face than hers though,” said kind Mrs. Saltoun. “Bless me, now I think of it, that was a very strange story. There was a Count somebody that followed her about like her shadow. Except her beauty, I canna say I ever had much of an opinion of her. She was very heartless to her servants, and, for all the admirers she had, I think her greatest admirer was herself; but between you and me, my dear, men are great fools; she had ay a train after her. To be sure she was said to be a great fortune as well. I canna think but that poor Count was badly used. Counts are no a’ impostors, like what we think them here. He was a real handsome gentleman, that one. He was with her wherever she went for a year and more. Some folks said they were to be married, and more said they were married already. That was ay my opinion;—when, what do you think, all at once he disappeared from her, and for a while she flirted about more than ever; and then she went suddenly off and home with her father. I would like to hear the rights o’ that story. When a woman’s a witch,—and I canna think a great beauty without a heart is onything else—most other women take a great interest in finding her out. Fools say it’s for envy; but it’s no for envy, my dear. You see beauty doesna blind a woman; we can ay see what’s going on underhand.”
“And what became of her?” said I.
“That is just what I never heard. That is the worst of meeting in with folk abroad; you see them once, and you, maybe, never see them a’ your days again,” said Mrs. Saltoun. “To be sure, you commonly hear of them, one way or other; but I never heard of the beautiful Miss Mortimer again. It’s five-and-twenty years ago, if it’s a day, and she was far from young then. That poor Count—I canna mind his name—was a good five years, if no more, younger than the witch that kept him at her call. I took a real spite against that woman; for you see she was just at the over-bloom, and yet took a’ the airs of a young queen. I wouldna wonder in the least but, after a’, she was married and wouldna own to it. There was nae heart in her.”
“But if she was married, how could she help herself?” said I.
“That is what I canna tell,” said Mrs. Saltoun; “there’s wheels within wheels, especially in foreign parts. Maybe the Count wasna a grand enough match, maybe—I canna tell you; it’s a’ guess-work; but I am very sure of one thing, that she was not an innocent woman, with nothing on her conscience when she went away.”
“I hope she is no relation of mine,” said I. “Harry has found out that I had a grandfather, and all about him. Oh, only suppose, Mrs. Saltoun, this dreadful beauty should turn out to be my aunt! That would be delightful!” I said to myself after a while, with a kind of bitter satisfaction; “not to live in the red-brick house alone, but to live with a dreadful old beauty who would be sure to be haunted. That would be purgatory, enough, to please anybody; and Mortimer is not at all a common name.”
My old lady looked up at me half frightened. “Don’t say such a thing, Mrs. Langham, my dear. I would not say a word against any person’s character, far less one that might turn out a relation of yours. But, for all that I’ve no right to interfere, I would set my face against the like of you setting up house with ony such person. I would speak to the Captain mysel’. Hout! here I’m taking’t up as if it was true; but if it should be so that, in the order of Providence, the Captain was to go, you mustna take up just with ony relation without considering if they would make ye happy. You must be careful where you go—you must——”
“Happy?” cried I. It seemed like mockery and a kind of insult;—as if I could be happy when Harry, perhaps, was in danger, perhaps wounded or ill, in suffering, and away from me!
“Whisht, whisht,” said Mrs. Saltoun. “I ken ye better than ye ken yourself. It’ll be hard, hard work at first; but when the parting’s over you’ll get hopeful, and think o’ the meeting again; and ye’ll ay get letters to cheer ye; and with the baby and the sun shining you’ll be happy before you ken. But I maunna have ye settled down with the like of yon Miss Mortimer. Na! na! naething like that, if she were twenty times an aunt. Far better stay on still with me, that would ay be coming and going to cheer you up. Yon’s a woman without a heart. I must speak to the Captain mysel’.”
Though I was much nearer crying that being amused, I could not but laugh at Mrs. Saltoun’s anxiety about her Miss Mortimer, whom there was not the very slightest reason to suppose any relation of mine. I took up the idea myself, I must say, with quite a ludicrous sort of uncomfortable satisfaction. If I had a grandfather, why should not I have an aunt? Why should there not be an old Miss Mortimer living in the red-brick house, ready to take me in, and kill me slowly by degrees? I formed an immediate picture of her—how she would look, and what she would say to me. I fancied her dressed up in her old fashions, trying to look young and a beauty still. How dreadful it must be to drop from being a great beauty, and having everybody worship you, down to a mere old woman left all by yourself! Poor old Miss Mortimer! If she was my aunt, and was very cross, and discontented, and miserable, there might be something different in the old red-brick house, that quiet, dead comfortable home that poor Harry, in his love and kindness, was so anxious to find for me. There would be some satisfaction in living a miserable life with an ogre in an enchanted castle if Harry were away. Mrs. Saltoun’s words did not alarm me; on the contrary, I grew quite curious about this imaginary Miss Mortimer. I thought I could fancy her going about those faded rooms which yesterday I fancied seeing myself in. Now it was her figure I saw all alone by the fire. Had she got used to it, I wonder? or did she chafe and beat her poor old wings against the cage, and hate the world that had given over admiring her? I tried to spell out what kind of a beauty she had been; but it was always twilight in the old-fashioned room. Tall, to be sure, with grey hair that had been black, and proud eyes all wrinkled up in their sockets. Poor old Miss Mortimer! I wonder did she know that she had an orphan niece who was to be sent to her for a comfortable home? Couldn’t I look again, and see myself come in, and how she greeted me? I think I must have grown quite fantastic in my troubles. I could not keep my thoughts away from Mrs. Saltoun’s great beauty. All alone in the house that was falling into decay, what ghosts must crowd about her! Did she see the Count she had ill-used oftenest, or some other who was more favoured? How did she keep these phantoms off from her in the silence? I kept going over all this as other girls go over imaginary romances of their own; I knew what my own romance was; but still I was only nineteen, and loved to dream.
And, perhaps, the consequence of this new turn to my thoughts was, that I was more tolerant of Harry’s curiosity and anxious musing about my father’s family, which had been revealed to him in that strange, unexpected glimpse by Mr. Pendleton, the regimental doctor. I did not stop him nervously when he began to talk of that favourite subject of his thoughts. He was always coming back to it somehow. I could trace the idea running through all he said. Not fancy and nonsensical imaginations like mine; but serious, simple-minded anxiety, and an earnest concern about the matter which would have broken my heart, had I not begun to get used to it now. There was nothing talked about or heard of but the war and the quantities of soldiers who were being sent away. Harry had no other expectation or hope but to go too, and all his thought was, to find a shelter for me. I could see it haunted his mind constantly, and at last I gave in to it, that he might be eased on the subject. I used to discuss it over with him where I should go—oh, only to go like Lady Fanshawe, and be beside him, though he did not know! That was impossible; so I let him talk, and smiled the best I could. Soon enough, perhaps, we should have land and sea between us. Let him say what he would. Let him arrange what he would. If it was a comfort to him, what did it matter? The old brick house and Miss Mortimer would be better than the happiest of homes. Who could wish to be happy while Harry was away.