AFTER what Sara had told me I felt in great doubt as to what I should do. Staying in Chester, even for a night, was against my habits, and might make people talk. Ellis, of course, would be very wise over it among the servants, and the chances were that it might alarm Sarah; but at the same time I could not return there in the same state of uncertainty. I could not meet her face again, and see her going on with her knitting in that dreadful inhuman way. Having once broken out of my patience, it seemed to me quite impossible to return to it. I felt as if I could only go and make a scene with Sarah, and demand to know what it was, and be met by some cruel cold denial that she understood anything about it, which would, of course,—feeling sure that she understood it all, but having no sure ground on which I could contradict her,—put me half out of my senses. On the whole, staying in Chester all night could do no harm. If Ellis talked about it, and pretended that he knew quite well what I had gone about, I dare say it was no more than he had done already, and would be very well inclined to do again. One must always pay the penalty for having faithful old servants, and, really, if my absence frightened Sarah, so much the better. She ought not to be allowed to go on placidly congratulating herself on having shut out this poor young man. If we were wronging him, what a cruel, cruel, miserable thing it was of Sarah to be glad of having balked him and driven him away! It is dreadful to say such things of one’s own only sister, but one does get driven out of patience. Think of all I had come through, and the dreadful doubt hanging over me! I had kept very quiet for a long time and said nothing to nobody; but now that I had broken out, I fear I was in rather an unchristian state of mind.
All that afternoon I kept quiet, and rested behind the green blinds in Mr. Cresswell’s half-lighted drawing-room. How Sara ever has got into the way of enduring that half light I can’t imagine; or rather I should say I don’t believe she uses this room at all, but has the back drawing-room, where the window is from which she could see down into the poor curate’s rooms, and watch his wife dressing the baby, as she told me long ago. You can see the street, too from an end window in that back drawing-room; perhaps that is how she would have known if Mr. Luigi had come back, for I am pretty sure, from the glimpses I had when the doors opened, that the blinds were not down there. She received her visitors in the back drawing-room that afternoon. I heard them come and go, with their dresses rustling about, and their fresh young voices. Of course I neither heard nor listened what they were talking of; but dear, to hear how eager the creatures were in their talk! as if it were anything of any consequence. I sat with that hum now and then coming to my ears, bewildering myself with my own fancies. If I could have read a book or a paper, or given my mind to anything else, it would have been a deal better for me; but my disorder of mind, you see, had come to a crisis, and I was obliged to let it take its way.
It was not without a good deal of difficulty and embarrassment that Mr. Cresswell and I met. He was a little uncomfortable himself with the same feelings he had shown a spark of at the Park, and unduly anxious to let me see that he had lost no time in inquiring about the Langhams,—that was the name of the young people,—as soon as he heard of them, and had meant to come out to us next day and tell us the result. For my part, I was a great deal more embarrassed than he was. I could scarcely help letting him see that this new heiress was a very small part of my excitement and trouble; indeed, had no share in the trouble at all, for as much as I could give my mind to think of her, was pure pleasure; but at the same time my heart revolted from telling him my real difficulty. He, I dare say, had never once connected the young Italian, whom everybody in Chester knew something about, with us or our family; and I was so perfectly unable to say what it was I feared, that a shrewd precise man like Cresswell would have set it down at once merely as a woman’s fancy. At the same time, you know, I was quite unpractised in the art of concealing my thoughts. I betrayed to him, of course, a hundred times that I had something on my mind. I dare say he remembered from the time of our last interview that I looked to have something on my mind, and he made a great many very skilful efforts to draw it out. He talked of Sarah, with private appeals to me in the way of looks and cunning questions to open my mind about her; and, to tell the truth, it cost me a little self-denial, after we really got into conversation, not to say something, and put his shrewdness on the scent. I dare say he might have worried out the secret somehow or another; but I did not commit myself. I kept my own counsel closely, to his great surprise. I could see he went away baffled when it was nearly time for dinner. And he was not at all pleased to be baffled either, or to think that I was too many for him. I felt sure now I should have to be doubly on my guard, for his pride was piqued to find it all out.
I can’t tell anybody what a comfort it was to my heart when my new Milly Mortimer came. If the two had been very bright and elate about finding themselves heirs to a great estate I might have been disgusted, glad as I was to know about them; for, to be sure, one does not like one’s heirs to be very triumphant about wealth they can only have after one’s own death. But something more than houses or lands was in that young creature’s mind. She was wonderfully steady and cheerful, but never for a moment lost out of her eyes what was going to happen to her. It was not mere sympathy, you know, that made me know so well how she was feeling, for, to be sure, I never was in her circumstances nor anything like them; it was because I was her relation, and had a natural insight into her mind. I don’t believe Sara had the least perception of it. When we came upstairs after dinner, leaving that fine young soldier, whom really I felt quite proud of, with Mr. Cresswell, this came out wonderfully, and in a way that went to my heart. Sara, who was extremely affectionate to her, set her in an easy chair and brought her a footstool, and paid her all those caressing little attentions which such kittens can be so nice about when they please. “I am so glad you have come to know my godmamma just now,” said Sara, kissing her, “because she will know to comfort you when Mr. Langham goes away.”
My Milly said nothing for a moment; she rather drew herself away from Sara’s kiss. She did not lean back, but sat upright in her chair, and put away the stool with her foot. “I am a soldier’s wife,” she said the next minute in the most unspeakable tone, with a kind of sob that did not sound, but only showed, in a silent heave of her breast. Ah, the dear child! have not soldiers’ wives a good call to be heroes too? I drew Sara away from her in a sort of passion; that velvet creature with her sympathy and her kisses, when the other was hanging on the edge of such a parting! If one could do nothing for the sweet soul, one might have the charity to leave her alone.
But after a while I drew Milly into talking of herself, for I was naturally anxious to know all about her, and where she had been brought up, and how she had found out that she belonged to us. We all knew that young Langham and Mr. Cresswell were going over the papers that her husband had brought with him, and setting it all straight; but as I never had any doubt from the moment I saw those books of hers, I was much more anxious to know from Milly herself how she had spent her life. She told us with a little reserve about her Irish friends and her odd bringing up, and then how she had met with Harry. She told you all about that herself, I know, a great deal better than I could repeat it, and fuller, too, than she told us. But when she got fully into that story, she could not help forgetting herself and the present circumstances a little. Sara sat on a stool before her, with her hands clasped on her knees, devouring every word. Certainly Sara took a wonderful interest in it. I never saw her so entirely carried away by interest and sympathy. When Milly was done, the creature jumped up and defied me.
“You couldn’t blame her; you couldn’t have the heart to blame her! It was just what she ought to have done!” cried Sara, with her face in such a commotion, all shining, and blushing, and dewy with tears. I was confounded by her earnest looks. It was very interesting, certainly, but there was nothing to transport her into such a little rapture as that.
“Child, be quiet,” said I; “you are determined to do me some harm, surely. I don’t blame Milly. She thought she had nobody belonging to her, though she was mistaken there. My dear, you have one old woman belonging to you that will expect a great deal, I can tell you. I can feel somehow, as if it might have been me you were telling of, if I had ever been as pretty or as young——”
“Godmamma, such nonsense!” cried Sara; “you must have been as young once; and if you were not far prettier than godmamma Sarah, I will never believe my eyes!”
“Your godmamma Sarah was a great beauty,” said I; “but that is nothing to the purpose. If I had ever been as young and as pretty as this Milly Mortimer, I might have fallen in with a Harry too, who knows? and it might not have been any the better for you, my dear child; so it’s just as well that things are as they are. But, all the same, I can’t help thinking that it might have been my story you’re telling. There’s a great deal in a name, whatever people may say. I shall think the second Milly is to go through all the things the first Milly only wondered about. I never had any life of my own to speak of. You have one already. I shall think I have got hold of that life, that always slipped through my fingers, when I see you going through with it. I shall never feel myself an odd person again.”
“Ah! but life is not happiness,” burst from my poor Milly’s lips in spite of herself; then she hastily drew up again: “I mean it is not play,” she said, after a while.
“If it were play, it would be for children; it is heavy work and sore,” cried I; “that much I know, you may be sure; but then there are words said, that one can never forget, about him that endureth to the end.”
Such words were comfort to me; but not just to that young creature in the intolerable hope and anguish she had in her heart. She was not thinking of any end; I was foolish to say it; and after all I knew more of life than she did—far more! and knew very well it did not spring on by means of heartbreaking events like the parting she was thinking of, or joyful ones like the meeting again which already she had set all her heart and life on, but crept into days and days like the slow current it had been to me. Sara, however, as was natural, was impatient of this talk. I believe she had something on her mind too.
“You do not blame your Milly, godmamma?” she cried, a little spitefully; “but I suppose you would blame any other poor girl; as if people were always to do what was told them, and like such people as they were ordered to like! You old people are often very cruel. Of course you would blame every one else in the world?”
“I should certainly blame you,” cried I, “if you should venture to think you might deceive your good father, that never denied you anything in his life. You velvet creature, what do you know about it? You never had an unkind word said to you, nor the most foolish wish in your little perverse heart denied. If you were to do such a thing, I could find it in my heart to lock you up in a garret and give you bread and water. It would not be a simple-hearted young creature with every excuse in the world for her, but a little cheat and traitor, and unnatural little deceiver. There! you are a wicked creature, but you are not so bad as that. If you said it yourself I should not believe it of you!”
But to my amazement the child stood aghast, too much dismayed, apparently, to be angry, and faltered out, “Believe what?” with her cheeks suddenly growing so pale that she frightened me. The next moment she had rushed into the back drawing-room, and from thence disappeared,—for I went to look after her,—fairly flying either from herself or me. I was entirely confounded. I could not tell what to make of it. Was little Sara in a mystery too?
“If I am betraying Sara, I am very sorry,” said Milly, when I looked to her for sympathy; “but I fear, though they don’t know it themselves, that she and the Italian gentleman are thinking more of each other, perhaps, than they ought.”
She had scarcely finished speaking when Sara returned, dauntless and defiant. “I rushed away to see whether your note had gone to godmamma Sarah,” said the daring creature, actually looking into my very eyes. “A sudden dreadful thought struck me that it had been forgotten. But it is all right, godmamma; and now I think we might have some tea.”