I FOUND Aunt Milly in the library with some miniatures spread out before her. She wanted to show them to me. I can’t tell very well what had suggested this to her. She was kept indoors by the rain, and with this standing uneasiness in her mind, Aunt Milly naturally sought for some means of returning to a discussion of the subject that engaged all her thoughts. She made me sit down by her, and silently put one after another before me. I could see clearly enough what she meant. A certain family resemblance ran through them all, a resemblance which Aunt Milly herself had escaped, and of which I believe there was not a trace in my features. But one after another these portraits recalled to me the young Italian’s face.
“I ought to tell you,” said Aunt Milly in a tremulous tone, “what has occurred to my own mind. I have thought of it for some time, but it’s so very unlikely that I never could allow myself to think it. I do believe he must be my father’s son. Yes, you may well be surprised. I can’t think anything else but that my father must have married and had a son, and Sarah somehow had bullied him into leaving the child behind, and we’ve been deceivers all this time, and the Park has never been ours.”
“But, dear Aunt Milly,” cried I, “with all these terrible thoughts, why don’t you satisfy yourself. If you tell Miss Mortimer how much you have found out, she certainly cannot help clearing up the rest.”
“Ah! but she can help it—she is not carried away by her feelings; she knows better than to be surprised or anything like that. I have asked her and been none the better for it,” cried Aunt Milly, “and the young man will not tell me either. Milly, hush! there is certainly some one at the door.”
The door bell at the Park was a peculiar one—it had a solemn cathedral sort of sound that rolled through the whole house, and it was only used by strangers or visitors on ceremony. Both of us started violently when we heard it; it came upon our consultations like a sudden alarm of battle.
“It rains as bad as ever; on such a day who can ring the great bell at our door?” cried Aunt Milly. “God help us! if my father walked in at that door, I should not feel it was anything out of the way. Nothing would surprise me now.”
I could not make her any answer. We both sat perfectly silent, waiting for what was to come. As if to heighten the excitement of the moment, the rain, which had been falling steadily all day, suddenly became violent, and dashed against the windows in torrents. Through all this we could hear the great door opened and the sound of voices. My thoughts travelled into the great vacant drawing-room where these sounds could not fail to reach Miss Mortimer within her screen. What was she doing? Could she be sitting there still, dumb and desperate, listening but not looking, with a pride and resistance more dreadful in its self-control than the wildest passions! I trembled with suspense and wondering anxiety in spite of myself. As for Aunt Milly, the miniatures she was looking at fell out of her hands. She covered her eyes for an instant, and then lifted her scared and pallid face to the door, as if she could hear the approaching sounds better, for having her eyes fixed that way. There was a pause that I suppose did not endure a minute, but which looked like an hour. Then a soft tap at the door; then Ellis entered, looking half as pale and anxious as we did—vaguely frightened he could not tell how.
“Miss Milly,” he said, in a hasty troubled voice, “the gentleman is here as wants Miss Mortimer; what am I to do?”
The old mistress and the old servant looked at each other. The man did not know anything, but he knew the involuntary suspicion and dread that had somehow gathered about the house.
“What are we to do? God help us, Ellis, I know no more than the baby!” cried Aunt Milly under her breath.
She was carried by her excitement beyond her usual discretion. I interposed as I best could.
“Let it come to the crisis!” cried I, not being well aware what I said; “it must be best to know clearly Aunt Milly—hush!—recollect, you know nothing—let him go in.”
She made a convulsive pause and restrained herself; and then the usual keeping up of appearances recurred to her mind. “My sister’s voice! you know, Milly,” she said, turning to me as if with a kind of apology,—“who—who is it, Ellis?”
“It’s—it’s the foreign gentleman, ma’am,” said Ellis, with a sympathetic faltering of his voice.
“Then show him in to Miss Mortimer?” cried Aunt Milly with a gasp over the words. “You shouldn’t have spoken so, my dear,” she said as soon as he was gone, “servants have nothing to do with our private affairs. Dear, dear, it’s surely very cold. It’s the storm come on so suddenly—a hail-storm, I declare. Don’t you feel, Milly, how cold the air has grown?”
I made no answer, and she did not expect any. She went up close to the library door, and stood there as if listening, shivering now and then with the nervous chill of her own emotion. We heard the drawing-room door open and shut,—then silence, silence, something positive, not merely an absence of sound. I stood by the table trembling, fancying I saw the stranger pass, as if through a picture, up that empty-seeming room, with the cold chill daylight spying in, and the motionless, conscious creature who feared and yet defied him lurking behind that screen. Would she speak to him? If she did it would not be with that stifled whispering voice. What communication would pass between them? Would the old walls groan with some dark secret fatal to their honour? The very air tingled round us in the dead calm of the house. Surely it never was so noiseless before. As for Aunt Milly, she stood before me shivering at the door, sometimes putting her hand upon the lock, then drawing back in irresolute terror. This lasted for some time, though most likely for not half so long as I imagined it did; then she turned to me, wringing her hands and bursting out into tears and cries.
“I cannot leave her alone any longer, Milly,” she said in broken words. “I cannot desert her in time of need;” and made as though she would leave the room, and then returned and sank into a chair and hid her face in her hands.
She was entirely overwhelmed and broken down. All I could do for her, was to get a shawl which hung over the sofa, and wrap it round her. All this had been too much for her strength.
In the midst of our suspense, Harry came suddenly in upon us. The sound of his honest frank step ringing into the library, startled me back to life again, and even Aunt Milly lifted up her blanched face expecting him to bring some news. Harry looked startled and curious, and did not grow less so as he looked at our agitated faces.
“What is the matter, Milly?” he cried. “I passed the drawing-room windows just now, and looked in thinking to see you. Miss Mortimer was standing at a table looking over some papers, and by her side was Luigi, talking very earnestly. By Jove! to see them standing there you would have said they were mother and son.”
At these words Aunt Milly lifted up her head, listening,—but Harry’s expression did not seem to strike her; she held up her finger and cried “Hark!”
The silence was broken. A bell evidently rung—a door hastily opened—startled us all three standing together. “Shall Harry go after him?” cried I, seeing how it was and pointing Harry to the door; but Aunt Milly would not, or perhaps could not, suppose that the visitor was merely going away. She sprang up, crying, “She must be ill!” and rushed out of the library. I followed her, alarmed, but not for Miss Mortimer. I saw Luigi standing at the open door, just about to go out into the cold rainy world out of doors, but Aunt Milly did not see him. She rushed forward blindly into the room where she supposed her sister to be ill.
When I rushed in after her I found the usual positions of the two ladies much reversed. Miss Mortimer was standing between the fire and the window, looking at her sister with a certain fierce scorn. Aunt Milly had sunk down in utter exhaustion and bewilderment upon a large ottoman. The two were looking at each other, Aunt Milly all trembling, pallid, and anxious. Miss Mortimer, with her head more erect than usual, her muslin mantle hanging back from her shoulders, her attitude very rigid and exact, and no symptom of excitement about her, save in the slight hurried incessant movement of her head and hands. A mere spectator would have said she was the judge and the other the culprit. It was an extraordinary scene.
“What did he say? Who is he? What does he want? Sarah, tell me for the love of heaven,” cried Aunt Milly in her agony of distress and terror.
“Who is he? I am not a girl to distinguish any one person by that name,” said Miss Mortimer.
Then she went back steadily to her chair, and sat down in it and took up her knitting.
“Any one who thinks to surprise me into speaking of my private affairs, is mistaken,” she said after a while. “Gossips like you may talk as they please; but what belongs to me is mine, and nobody in the world has a right to ask what I either do or say.”
That was all. She never opened her lips again that day. She sat there rigid, pretending to work; she did not work however. I noticed that to keep her hands and her head from excessive trembling was almost more than she was able for; but the day passed without any disclosure. I believe now she would die sooner than make any sign.