CHAPTER XXVIII.—ALICE SUCCOURS THE DISTRESSED.
Mr. Hazlehurst’s progress towards recovery was so satisfactory that Alice, when the carriage arrived to fetch her home, felt not the smallest scruple in leaving him. As Harry considered the distance between the Grange and Coverdale Park too great for his carriage-horses to perform twice in one day, the equipage had been dispatched the previous evening, and the servants were consequently unacquainted with the events of the past night. Having taken leave of her mother—who, roused by the necessity of becoming a nurse instead of a patient, appeared rather benefited than otherwise by the unusual demand upon her energies—and of Emily, now fast developing into a very pretty girl, Alice started on her return home, and accomplished the greater portion of the transit without let or hindrance. When within about five miles of the Park, however, one of the horses was discovered to have cast a shoe; and as it would have been worth more than his situation to have taken it farther in so defenceless a condition, the coachman drew up at a village blacksmith’s, where the evil might be remedied. Under these circumstances, Alice determined to walk on till the carriage should overtake her, which, as the morning was fine, she considered the reverse of a hardship. Pondering many things—for Alice was no longer the careless, light-hearted girl we once described her—she trudged on, at first briskly, then more leisurely, as the road began to ascend, until she might have proceeded some two miles; and yet the carriage did not make its appearance. Toiling up hill, attired as ladies usually are from November to April, with an amount of merino, velvet, and fur, which might defy the severities of a Siberian winter, and is clearly de trop under the influence of a sunshiny morning in March, not unnaturally rendered Alice hot and tired; and fancying, from her imperfect knowledge of the locality, that she must be upon her husband’s territory, she determined to make acquaintance with the inmates of a cottage which she perceived by the roadside a short distance higher up the hill, and, with their permission, to rest herself until the carriage should arrive. With this intention she approached the cottage, and finding the door closed, rapped at it with first her knuckles, then the handle of a most frivolous and ephemeral little parasol; but neither of these applications producing the desired effect, she, like little Red Riding-hood, raised the latch and opened the door. The sight which met her eyes was one calculated alike to stimulate her curiosity and interest her sympathies. In a cradle, on the opposite side of the room, lay an unconscious and remarkably pretty and comfortable-looking baby fast asleep, while near it, with the light from the casement streaming full upon her smooth dark hair, only partially concealed beneath her neat white cap, sat the young mother, her face hidden in her hands, weeping bitterly. Starting at the sound of the opening door, she removed her hands, and disclosed features which, swollen and disfigured as they were by grief, yet evinced tokens of unusual beauty. She rose as Alice entered, and hastily drying her tears, stood regarding her with a wild eager glance of inquiry.
“What have you come to tell me?” she said: “they have not relented—not set him at liberty again?—or the other one—he is not worse—oh, God!—not dead?”
Surprised and embarrassed by the strange eagerness of her manner, and interested by her appearance and evident distress, Alice hastened to assure her that she was not the bearer of any tidings, good or evil, and having explained the object of her intrusion, continued—
“But you are anxious or unhappy about something; will you not tell me why you were crying so bitterly when I came in—perhaps I may be able to assist you?”
Thus appealed to, the girl (for she appeared scarcely above twenty) fixed her dark eyes on Alice’s face, and reading therein her kind and loving nature, which indeed was so legibly depicted that the veriest dullard at deciphering character could scarcely fail to discover it, answered more gently than she had before spoken—
“I beg pardon, lady; but I’m amost crazy with grief this morning, and my head’s so a-running on it, that I hardly know what I’m a-saying or a-doing on. Ye’re welcome to rest, lady, as long as you please;” and as she spoke she dusted a chair with her apron, and placed it for Alice, who, seating herself, resumed—
“You say you are unhappy, but you do not tell me what about.”