Harry understood my sigh. He repeated the very words I was saying in my mind. “And then——” said Harry, “and then, darling, to see which of us two is bravest! But it will come hardest upon you, my poor little wife.”
“Harry,” cried I, “don’t speak!” and I went away, and would have no more of such talk. It was enough that it was coming; it would be enough when it came.
Perhaps the last few words of this conversation were not the best preparation possible for sleep. I know I awoke a great many times during that long dark night, and once in its deepest darkness and stillness I fancied I heard a groan faintly sounding through the wall. Miss Mortimer’s rooms were near ours. This sound set all my imagination busy again. It was she who groaned under that veil of night. She, so dreadfully on her guard all day long, who relieved her miserable heart thus when nobody watched her. It was impossible not to feel excited in the neighbourhood of such mysterious secrecy. The sound of that groan moved me to pity;—she had not escaped without retribution. Was not that dread of the consequences under which she was suffering, worse than the very hardest shape the consequences were likely to assume, if they themselves ever overtook the sinner?
Chapter IX.
THE next day began much like the previous day; it was still showery and damp; and though Harry was out of doors I was prevented, by Aunt Milly’s care, from joining him. In the afternoon we were to go out with her on a round of inspection to see the neighbourhood, Miss Mortimer having volunteered to give up the carriage to us for that purpose, though it was the day on which she generally took her drive; and the rector and some other near neighbours were to come to dinner in the evening. I was once more alone with Miss Mortimer. We sat much as we had done on the previous day, opposite each other, the moments passing over us in a certain excited silence. She did not say anything to me; she did not even look at me. She showed none of that voiceless anxiety to know who had come in when the door opened, which struck me before. She was much calmed down; the person she expected had come; the blow, whatever it was, had been borne; and for the present moment there was an end of it. She actually knitted her pattern correctly, and counted her stitches, and referred to her book to see if she was correct, as she sat there before me in her inhuman calm. Was she a creature of flesh and blood, after all? or a witch, like those of the old stories, without any human motives in her heart of stone?
I could not help thinking so as I sat beside her. Her head still trembled slightly; but I suppose that was an habitual motion. She sat there shut up in herself,—her misery and her relief, and the cold dauntless spirit that must have risen from that smart encounter yesterday, and gained strength by the very struggle—hidden from everybody round her, as if they had been a world away. I gazed and wondered, almost trembled, at that extraordinary death in life. She who had all the tumult of passion and guilt in her memory; she who must have entered into the fullest excitement of life, and got entangled in its most dreadful perplexities; she who was no ascetic, nor even pretended to that rival excitement of the devotee which might have replaced the other; how could she have lived silent and obdurate through those dreadful years? The very thought of them struck me aghast. After her life of flattery, admiration, and universal homage; after her experience, whatever that might be, of more personal passions, to drop for a longer time than my whole life behind that screen into that chair! As I sat opposite to her, my thoughts turned back to that other Miss Mortimer, whom I had placed in imagination in my grandfather’s house. Once more I thought I could see that large low room which I never had seen, except in fancy, with the ancient beauty sitting silent by the fire amid the ghosts of the past. Was this the true impersonation of that dream of mine? Was this the Miss Mortimer, with her foreign count, whom Mrs. Saltoun remembered? As this recurred to me I could scarcely help a little start of quickened curiosity and eagerness. It seemed to flicker before me as a possible interpretation of all this dark enigma, could only the connecting link be found. As I was wandering deeper and deeper into these thoughts—so deep as to forget the strange position I stood in, and the possibility of being taken for a kind of domestic spy, which had embarrassed me at first—I heard a little commotion outside. The door, perhaps, was ajar, or it might be simply that my ears were quickened by hearing a little cry from baby, and Lizzie’s voice belligerent and full of determination. I got up hastily and went to the door. I don’t think Miss Mortimer even lifted her eyes to notice my movement. It was certainly Lizzie in some conflict with one of the authorities of the house; and Lizzie, as the natural and primitive method of asserting her own way, had unconsciously elevated her voice; a proceeding which alarmed baby, and also, as it appeared, her antagonist. I ran and threw the door open as I heard another cry from my little boy. There, outside, was a curious scene. Lizzie, in her out-of-doors dress, just returned from a walk in the garden with baby, with her face a little flushed, and her plentiful hair somewhat blown about by the wind, was resolutely pressing forward to enter the drawing-room, where, to be sure, she had no business to come; while holding her back by her cloak, and whispering threats and dissuasions, was a person whom I had scarcely seen before, but whom I knew at once to be Carson, Miss Mortimer’s maid. Lizzie was greatly excited; and what with managing the baby and resisting this woman, while at the same time possessed with some mission which she was evidently determined to perform, looked fatigued and exhausted too.
“But I will,” cried Lizzie, with her eyes flashing. “I’m no heeding whether it’s my place or no. I promised I would gi’e it into her ain very hand; and do ye think I’m gaun back o’ my word? I tell ye I will gie’t to the leddy mysel’. Eh, mem!” she exclaimed, breathlessly, with a sudden change of her tone as she saw me, “I met Menico at the gate, and I promised to gi’e it into the leddy’s ain hand.”
When I approached, Carson fell back; she shrank, I could fancy, from meeting my eyes. Her hand dropped from Lizzie’s cloak; she was as much afraid to be supposed to interfere as she was anxious to interfere in reality.
“My missis’s nerves, ma’am,” said Carson, glibly, but in a half whisper, “is not as strong as might be wished. If the young person, ma’am, would give it to me, or——. You see the ladies at the Park they’re known for charity, and beggars’ letters, or such like, they’re too excitin’ for my missis’; they puts her all in a tremble—it’s on her nerves.”
“But, mem,” cried Lizzie, “I canna go back o’ my word.”