“And now, what can you tell me, sir?” she said, breaking in upon his dribbling speech. “I am just as curious as I can be. That dear little old lady! Why is she in uncle’s house?”
“Ah, Miss! I fancy she will not be there for long, but she was an encumbrance upon it when Mr. Willets Starkweather came with his family to occupy it.”
“What do you mean?” cried the girl.
“Mary Boyle served in the Starkweather family long, long ago. Before I came to valet for Mr. Cornelius, Mary Boyle had her own room and was a fixture in the house. Mr. Cornelius took her more—more philosophically, as you might say, Miss. My present master and his daughters look upon poor Mary Boyle as a nuisance. They have to allow her to remain. She is a life charge upon the estate—that, indeed, was fixed before Mr. Cornelius’s time. But the present family are ashamed of her. Perhaps I ought not to say it, but it is true. They have relegated her to a suite upon the top floor, and other people have quite forgotten Mary Boyle—yes, oh, yes, indeed! Quite forgotten her—quite forgotten her——”
Then, with the aid of some questioning, Helen heard the whole sad story of Mary Boyle, who was a nurse girl in the family of the older generation of Starkweathers. It was in her arms the last baby of the family had panted his weakly little life out. She, too, had watched by the bed of the lady of the mansion, who had borne these unfortunate children only to see them die.
And Mary Boyle was one of that race who often lose their own identity in the families they serve. She had loved the lost babies as though they had been of her own flesh. She had walked the little passage at the back of the house (out of which had opened the nursery in those days) so many, many nights with one or the other of her fretful charges, that by and by she thought, at night, that she had them yet to soothe.
Mary Boyle, the weak-minded yet harmless ex-nurse, had been cherished by her old master. And in his will he had left her to the care of Mr. Cornelius, the heir. In turn she had been left a life interest in the mansion—to the extent of shelter and food and proper clothes—when Willets Starkweather became proprietor.
He could not get rid of the old lady. But, when he refurnished the house and made it over, he had banished Mary Boyle to the attic rooms. The girls were ashamed of her. She sometimes talked loudly if company was about. And always of the children she had once attended. She spoke of them as though they were still in her care, and told how she had walked the hall with one, or the other, of her dead and gone treasures the very night before!
For it was found necessary to allow Mary Boyle to have the freedom of that short corridor on the chamber floor late at night. Otherwise she would not remain secluded in her own rooms at the top of the house during the daytime.
As the lower servants came and went, finally only Mrs. Olstrom and Mr. Lawdor knew about the old lady, save the family. And Mr. Starkweather impressed it upon the minds of both these employés that he did not wish the old lady discussed below stairs.