The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

II

The old nurse had watched Penelope drive off alone that afternoon with deep misgiving and fear, for she was quite sure that her mistress was bound for Kingpole Farm.

Motey had soon become aware that Mrs. Robinson received no letters from Downing, and this, to a mind sharpened by jealousy and semi-maternal instinct, only the more indicated the closeness and the thorough understanding between them, and showed, or so the maid believed, that all their plans as to the future were already arranged.

Again and again she had been on the point of attacking her mistress, of asking Penelope to confirm or to deny her suspicions, and many a night, while lying awake listening through the closed door to Mrs. Robinson's restless movements, always aware when her nursling was not asleep, Mrs. Mote would make up long homely phrases in which to formulate her appeal. But when daylight came, when she found herself face to face with Penelope, her courage ebbed away, and she became afraid—for herself.

What if anything said by her provoked a sudden separation from her mistress? More than once in the last ten years Motey and Mrs. Robinson had come to moments of sudden warfare, when the younger woman's affection for her old nurse had been sorely tried, and yet on those occasions, as Mrs. Mote was only too well aware, no feeling even approaching that which now bound Penelope to Sir George Downing had been in question.

Sometimes the old woman told herself that she was a fool, and that her terrors were vain terrors, for the actual proofs of what she feared was about to happen were few.

Again and again, during Mrs. Robinson's brief absences from the villa, Motey had sought to find—what?

She hardly knew.

Never had Penelope, careless as she had always been hitherto of such things, left one of Downing's letters about in her room, or, forgotten, in a pocket. In the matter of her searching, the old nurse was troubled by no scruples. She would have smiled grimly had some accident made known to her how some of the people about her would have regarded this turning out of pockets, this trying of locked places with stray keys.

Poor Motey! She felt like a mother whose child has been given a packet of poisoned sweets, and who knows that they must be found at all costs before evil befalls. But so far her unscrupulous seeking had yielded little or nothing to confirm what she was fast coming to believe an absolute certainty—namely, that Penelope was on the eve of forming with Downing what both intended should be a lifelong tie.

Many little incidents, deepening this conviction, crowded on her day by day, as it grew increasingly clear that Mrs. Robinson was silently preparing for some great change in her life. The maid marvelled at the blindness of Penelope's mother, of Wantley, even of Cecily Wake—how could they help noting that Penelope never now spoke of the future, that she made no plans, as she was so fond of doing, for the coming winter?

Then, late in the afternoon which saw Mrs. Robinson at Kingpole Farm, Motey at last found something which provided, to her mind, undoubted proof. This was a formal business letter from a great London firm, celebrated for the perfection of its Eastern outfits, and it contained answers to a number of questions evidently written by one contemplating a long sojourn in Teheran.

Penelope, before starting out that afternoon, had shown considerable annoyance at having mislaid a paper she wished to take with her. She had made no secret of the fact, and both she and Motey had searched for the envelope all over the large room. After her mistress had left, Mrs. Mote had continued the search, and she had at last found this letter, laid under some gloves which Penelope had at first intended to take, but had rejected in favour of a thicker pair.

The maid carried off this, to her, most sinister sheet of paper into her own room, and as the evening closed in, and Penelope did not come back, she saw in it, or rather in her mistress's desire to take it with her that day, an indication that perhaps Mrs. Robinson had gone, not intending to return, and that she might be at this very moment on her way, and not alone, to London.