Why, I wondered? but indeed I had very little inclination to speak.
“I want to see your husband particularly. I should like you to live here. Milly says he is going to the Crimea,” said Miss Mortimer. “I hope he’s a reasonable man. Why shouldn’t he leave the army at once? I want him here. You were not the heir to an estate like the Park when he got orders for the Crimea. I see no reason in the world why he should not sell out and stay at home.”
I think she went on saying more, but I did not hear her; the great room swam in my eyes; she seemed all fading away into pale circles. I lost hold of the chair or something I was standing by. I don’t remember anything else till I felt some water dashed on my face, and gradually the pale circles cleared away, and I was in the same room again. I had no idea what had happened to me. I was lying on a sofa, though, now, with my face all wet, and a dreadful singing and buzzing in my ears, and Harry was there. I found out I had fainted. I never did such a thing in all my life before; how very foolish of me! and just when she was talking, too, about that—that chance. I caught hold of Harry’s fingers tight: “Go and speak to her!” I cried out. I could not keep still until he went, for I could see the screen, and knew she was there.
When he disappeared behind the screen, and when, after a moment, Aunt Milly followed, always keeping her eyes on me, I lay perfectly still, grasping my two hands in each other. My mind was all seething up, as if in a fever, round what she had said. I was conscious of nothing else. I could not hear what they were saying now for the noise in my ears; but as I lay still a strange succession of feelings came over me. It was like so many breezes of wind, each cooler,—nay, I mean colder,—than the other. First it occurred to me what other people would say of him, of Harry, whom no one now durst breathe a doubt upon; then I thought of him fighting with himself for my sake, trying to put down his manhood and his honour to save breaking his wife’s heart; then I came to myself last of all. Would I? could I? I groaned aloud in my anguish. Oh, Russian woman, what would you say? There are plenty to be killed and sacrificed. Shall we let our children’s fathers go, to be lost in that smoke and battle? Harry burst out to me from behind the screen when I was in this darkness. I never saw him look as he looked then. He took my two hands and cried out in an appeal and remonstrance, “Milly, do you say so?” looking down at me with his eyes all in a blaze. I could not bear it. I put him away—thrust him away. They say I cried out to God in my despair. I cannot tell anything that I said but “Go!” Oh, Russian woman, I wonder if you made up your mind as I did! No, not if it were to break my heart; we could die, all of us, when the good Lord pleased; but the good Lord never pleased that one of us should make the other fail.
Chapter V.
I FELT ill and shaken all the rest of that day. It was some time before they would let me get up from the sofa, and I quite remember how very strange it was to lie there in the great daylight room, with the sky looming in through the great window, and to watch, always so close by, and yet so distant, that screen which was drawn out by the side of the fire. I could not keep my eyes from that harmless piece of furniture. Aunt Milly kept coming and going, constantly talking to cheer me up, and bring things to show me. But no sound came from the screen. There, in that little space, shut off and shaded out of the centre of her home, sat the woman who already fascinated me with an influence I could not explain. Without knowing what I was doing—indeed, even I may say against my will,—strange recollections of stories I had read came up to my mind; about people in masks going whispering through an evil life, about the veiled prophet in the poem, about secret hidden creatures suspected of all manner of harm, but never found out, or betrayed. There she was, within three paces of me, concealed and silent,—or was it not rather watchful, lurking, with her bloodless smile and her shut up heart? My imagination, perhaps, is always too active; somehow it quite overpowered me that day. It seized upon Miss Sarah Mortimer’s looks and her voice, and the strange separation which she made by that screen between herself and the world. She was different—entirely different—from that old ghastly Miss Mortimer whom I used to dream of in my grandfather’s house; that one with her hair all mixed with grey, and her dark careless dress, sitting by the fire with the ghosts of the past about her, was a pleasant recollection in face of this. The great beauty, deserted of all the world and fallen into solitude, had something pathetic in her loneliness. But behind that screen there was no pathos that I could see; nothing human, I had almost said. What folly to speak so! To anybody’s eyes but mine, I daresay there was only an old lady very prettily and carefully dressed, everything about her looking as if it were intended to repeat and reproduce the effect of her white hair; soft colours with clouds of something white coming over them. But I could not look at her in that way. I was in awe and afraid when I looked at the screen. It was a comfort to get out of the room, to go upstairs, where after a while Aunt Milly took me. But I could not forget her even upstairs. There she sat in her armchair, stony-eyed, knitting like one of the Fates,—or was it spin they did?—and that screen drawing a magical, dreadful shadow round her chair.
Aunt Milly had prepared our rooms for us with the greatest care, that was very evident. There was the daintiest little bed for baby, all new and fresh, evidently bought for him, and quite a basketful of new toys, which already he was doing his best to pull all to pieces. Oh, such bright, luxurious rooms! I felt my heart grow a little cold as I looked at them. Neither Harry nor Aunt Milly had said a word to me on the subject. They thought they could deceive me, I suppose; but the moment I saw these apartments, don’t you think I could see what they were planned out for? I was to be taken there when he went away.
“And, my dear, what do you think of your Aunt Sarah?” said her kind sister, looking rather wistfully into my face.
I was so foolish that I was half afraid to answer. How could I tell that our words were not heard behind the screen yonder? And as for meeting her eyes I could not have done that for the world.
“But you know she is not my Aunt Sarah,” said I. “It is a love name, dear Aunt Milly. I—I don’t know Miss Mortimer yet; you must let me keep it for you.”