“And look here,” said Aunt Milly, thrusting a purse into my pocket—not into my hand, to give me a chance of putting it back again—“he is our representative, dear. He is not to go a step till he has everything—everything you can so much as think upon to make him comfortable. Now, Milly, don’t say a word. I’ll think you don’t love me if you say a word. Will it be any comfort to you, or me, to think here’s some paltry money left, and Harry gone to fight for us all without something that would make him comfortable? You’d work your fingers off to get it for him, and you have no excuse for denying me. Don’t say anything to Harry, child. Men don’t understand these things. It’s between you and me; and, please God, we’ll tell him all our schemes when we get him back safe, the dear fellow. But, dear, what is that on the table? Sarah’s diamond! that one she has always had such a fancy for. Has she sent it to you?”
“To Harry,” said I.
“To Harry! Dear, dear, what creatures we are!” cried Aunt Milly, much agitated, and bursting in tears again. “Poor Sarah! she’s not so hard-hearted as you and me were thinking, Milly. Oh, God help her; if He would only bring her to deal true and fair, and have out this trouble in the face of day, there might be some comfort yet for her in this very life!”
I made no answer. I did not love Miss Mortimer, as I suppose, in some sort of way, her sister did; and, besides, my thoughts were all turned in another direction again. I had ceased to see the Park and its troubles so acutely as I had done for some days past. My mind was returned to my own private burden. I had little to say to anybody after that. I turned away even from Aunt Milly, with a dreadful feeling that I was not to see her again till Harry was gone. For I knew in my heart, though they never said anything to me, that this was how it was to be.
I had not the heart to talk even to Harry, as we drove slowly back to Chester—slowly, as I fancied. We went in the carriage all the way. We had no railway or tunnel to go through this time. Nothing to help me to a moment’s delusion of plunging away to the end of the world, or into the bowels of the earth, it did not matter which, all together. That was impossible. Miss Mortimer’s carriage put nothing in my mind but the inevitable parting, and all that was to happen to me after Harry was gone.
When we got to our Chester lodgings, Domenico was there, as usual, full of the noisiest, kindest bustle, to help in getting everything in, as if he had belonged to us, instead of belonging to a stranger, who, most likely, had little reason to bear the heirs of the Mortimers any good will. Mr. Luigi was standing at the window all the time, looking at the carriage, the horses, the servants; thinking, perhaps, they might all have been his under different circumstances. How can I tell what he was thinking? I am sure at that moment, though I observed him at the window, I took no pains to imagine what his thoughts were, and did not care. I did not care for anything just then.
It was one of my bad times. It was one of the hundred partings which I had with Harry before the real parting came. When the things were lifted out of the carriage, I could see them all in my own mind lifted in again, all but Harry’s share of them, and myself sitting blind in that corner with all the world dark before me. Well, well; it is no use reasoning over it, as if that would make things any better. Thousands and thousands were just the same as me; did that make it any better, do you suppose? I thought of the poor woman in the Edinburgh High Street, and her hard damp hand that pressed mine. I was a soldier’s wife like all the rest. I went up into my own room and got Harry’s old sash again, and bound it tight over my heart. It gave me a kind of ease, somehow. And to hear baby shouting at sight of his old toys, and Harry calling for his Milly darling, downstairs! It was an agony of happiness and anguish; it was life.
Chapter XII.
THE very next day Sara Cresswell came to see me. I cannot say that I was very glad, for I grudged everything now that did not belong to the one business which was engrossing us. I had been out that morning with Harry trying to get things that were necessary for him. I don’t mean the common articles of his outfit, for these, now that we had money enough, could be ordered at once without contriving; but the little conveniences that might make him more comfortable. He protested that I would load him with so many contrivances for comfort that comfort would be impossible; and, I daresay I was foolish. But he let me do it without more than just laughing at me. He knew it was a sort of consolation. When Sara came the room was in a litter with all sorts of portable apparatus; things for cooking, and lamps, and portable dressing things, and the wonderful convenient portmanteaus they make now-a-days. I was putting them all together, and comparing, and thinking all how he would do when, instead of home, where everything came naturally, without being asked for, he should have only these skeletons to make himself comfortable with. I had lighted the lamp, and was boiling the little kettle over it, to see how it would do. Ah, if we only had been going all together! If I could have imagined myself there to boil the kettle and have everything warm and nice for him when he came in from the trenches, how pleasant all these contrivances would have been! As it was I had just had his servant up and been showing him the things we had bought; he looking grim and half amused, touching his cap and saying, “Yes, ma’am,” to every word I said, but laughing in his mind at all my womanish nonsense. I could see that perfectly, and I had a good cry after the man was gone; and was just rousing up from that, to boil the little kettle, when Sara Cresswell came in.
In this short week there was a good deal of change upon Sara. Her eyes had a quick kind of fitful light in them gleaming about everywhere, as if she were somehow dissatisfied, either with herself or her own circumstances, and sought a kind of relief in external things. There was a change in her appearance too; her little short curls had either grown too long to cluster about her neck as she had worn them, or she had taken another caprice about this fashion of hers, for they were now all gathered into a net, a thing which changed her appearance, somehow, without one being able to see for the first minute how it was. She flushed up wonderfully when she saw my occupation. She came and kissed me, and sat down by me to watch the lamp. I had to explain to her all about it, how it was arranged, and everything; and after she had sat with me watching till the little kettle boiled, all at once it seemed to flash upon her what dreadful thing was implied to me in that little apparatus, and she suddenly looked up in my face and took hold of my hand, and burst out crying. I gave way just for one moment too, but even her presence and her sympathy kept me from breaking down altogether. But it warmed my heart to Sara to see her crying for my trouble. I took the little teapot out of the place it was fitted into and made some tea, and gave her some without saying anything. We sat by the table where that little lamp was still burning, throwing the steady, cheerful little flame that showed so strange in the daylight, upon us. We drank that tea together without saying anything, till Sara, not being able to contain herself, her heart quite running over with pity for me, took the cup out of my hand and threw her arms round me. “We shall be sisters while he is away!” cried Sara, not knowing what to say to comfort me. I don’t think I said anything; but we were real fast friends from that day.