CHAPTER IX. HIS STORY.
That face,—that poor little white, patient face! How she is changed!
I wish to write down how it was I chanced to see you, though chance is hardly the right word. I would have seen you, even if I had waited all day and all night, like a thief, outside your garden-wall. If I could have seen you without your seeing me (as actually occurred) all the better; but in any case I would have seen you. So far as relates to you, the will of heaven only is strong enough to alter this resolute “I will,” of mine.
You had no idea I was so near you. You did not seem to be thinking of anybody or anything in particular, but came to your bedroom-window, and stood there a minute, looking wistfully across the moorlands; the still, absorbed, hopeless look of a person who has had some heavy loss, or resigned something very dear to the heart—Dallas's look, almost, as I remember it when he quietly told me that instead of preaching his first sermon, he must go away at once abroad, or give up hope of ever living to preach at all. Child, if you should slip away and leave me as Dallas did!
You must have had a severe illness. And yet, if so, surely I should have heard of it, or your father and sister would have mentioned it when I met them. But no mere bodily illness could account for that expression—it is of the mind. You have been suffering mentally also. Can it be out of pity for that young man, who, I hear, has left England? Why, it is not difficult to guess, nor did I ever expect otherwise, knowing him and you. Poor fellow! But he was honest, and rich, and your friends would approve him. Have they been urging you on his behalf? Have you had family feuds to withstand? Is it this which has made you waste away, and turn so still and pale? You would just do that; you would never yield, but only break your heart quietly, and say nothing about it. I know you; nobody knows you half so well. Coward that I was, not to have taken care of you. I might have done it easily, as the friend of the family—the doctor—a grim fellow of forty. There was no fear for anybody save myself. Yes, I have been a coward. My child,—my gentle, tender, childlike child—they have been breaking your heart, and I have held aloof and let them do it.
You had a cough in autumn, and your eyes are apt to get that bright, limpid look, dilated pupils, with a dark shade under the lower eye-lid, which is supposed to indicate the consumptive tendency. Myself, I differ; believing it in you, as in many others, merely to indicate that which for want of a clearer term we call the nervous temperament; exquisitely sensitive, and liable to slight derangements, yet healthy and strong at the core. I see no trace of disease in you, no reason why, even fragile as you are, you should not live to be an old woman. That is, if treated as you ought to be, judiciously, tenderly; watched over, cared for, given a peaceful, cheerful life with plenty of love in it. Plenty of anxieties also, maybe; no one could shield you from these—but the love would counter-balance all, and you would feel that—you should feel it—I could make you feel it.
I must find out what has ailed you and who has been attending you. Doctor Black, probably. You disliked him, had almost a terror of him, I know. Yet they would of course have placed you in his hands, my little tender thing, my dove, my flower. It makes me mad.
Forgive! Forgive also that word “my,” though in one sense you are even now mine. No one understands you as I do, or loves you. Not selfishly either; most solemnly do I here protest that if I could find myself now your father or your brother, through the natural tie of blood, which for ever prevents any other, I would rejoice in it, rather than part with you, rather than that you should slip away like Dallas, and bless my eyes no more.
You see now what you are to me, that a mere apparition of your little face at a window, could move me thus.
I must go to work now. To-morrow I shall have found out all about you.
I wish you to know how the discovery was made; since, be assured, I have ever guarded against the remotest possibility of friends or strangers finding out my secret, or gossipping neighbours coupling my name with yours.
Therefore, instead of going to Mrs. Granton,
I paid a visit to Widow Cartwright, whom I had news to give concerning her daughter. And here, lest at any time evil or careless tongues should bring you a garbled statement, let me just name all I have had to do with this matter of Lydia Cartwright, which your sister once spoke of as my “impertinent interference.”
Widow Cartwright, in her trouble, begged me to try and learn something about her child, who had disappeared from the family where by Miss Johnston's recommendation, she went as parlour-maid, and in spite of various inquiries set on foot by Mr. Charteris and others, had, to your sister's great regret, never more been heard of. She was believed not to be dead, for she once or twice sent money to her mother; and lately she was seen in a private box at the theatre by a person named Turton, who recognized her, having often dined at the house where she once was servant. This information was what I had to give to her mother.
I would not have mentioned such a story to you, but that long ere you read these letters, if ever you do read them, you will have learnt that such sad and terrible facts do exist, and that even the purest woman dare not ignore them. Also, who knows, but in the infinite chances of life, you may have opportunities of doing in other cases, what I would fain have done, and one day entreated your sister to do—to use every effort for the redemption of this girl, who, from all I hear, must have been unusually pretty, affectionate and simple-minded.
Her poor old mother being a little comforted, I learnt tidings of you. Three weeks of fever and ague, or something, like it, nobody quite knew what; they, your family, had no notion till lately that there was anything ailing you.
No—they never would. They would let you go on in your silent, patient way, sick or well, happy or sorry, till you suddenly sunk, and then they would turn round astonished:—“Really, why did she not say she was ill? Who would have guessed there was anything the matter with her?”
And I—I who knew every change in your little face, every mood in that strange, quaint, variable spirit—I have let you slip, and been afraid to take care of you. Coward!
I proceeded at once to Rockmount, but learnt from the gardener that your father and sister were out, and “Miss Dora was ill in her room.” So I waited, hung about the road for an hour or more, till at last it struck me to seek for information at the Cedars.
Mrs. Granton was glad to see me. She told me all about her son's departure—gentle heart! you have kept his secret—and, asking if I had seen you lately, poured out in a stream all her anxieties concerning you.
So, something must be done for you—something sudden and determined. They may all think what they like—act as they choose—and so shall I.
I advised Mrs. Granton to fetch you at once to the Cedars, by persuasion if she could; if not, by compulsion—bringing you there as if for a drive and keeping you. She has a will, that good old lady, when she sees fit to use it—and she has considerable influence with your father. She said, she thought she could persuade him to let her have you, and nurse you.
“And if the poor child herself is obstinate—she has been rather variable of temper lately—I may say that you ordered me to bring her here? She has a great respect for your opinion. I may tell her I acted by Dr. Urquhart's desire?”
I considered a moment, and then said she might.
We arranged everything as seemed best for your removal—a serious undertaking for an invalid. You, an invalid, my bright-eyed, lightfooted, moorland girl!
I do not think Mrs. Granton had a shadow of suspicion. She thanked me continually, in her warm-hearted fashion for my “great kindness.” Kindness! She also begged me to call immediately—as her friend, lest I might have any professional scruples of etiquette about interfering with Doctor Black.
Scruples! I cast them all to the winds. Come what will, I must see you, must assure myself that there is no danger, that all is done for you which gives you a fair chance of recovery.
If not—if with the clear vision that I know
I can use on occasion, I see you fading from me—I shall snatch at you. I will have you—be it only for a day or an hour, I will have you, I say,—on my heart, in my arms. My love, my darling, my wife that ought to have been—you could not die out of my arms. I will make you live—I will make you love me. I will have you for my wife yet. I will——
God's will be done!