“Who is he going to see there?” asked I, with some anxiety.
Domenico held up his hand with many elaborate gestures of caution and silence. Then he bent his enormous person forward and stooped to my ear. When he spoke it was in a whisper. “It is need to speak silent—silent! The signora contessa,” said Domenico, with half-important, half-guilty air of one who communicates a secret. I drew back from him in utter bewilderment—what could he mean?
“There is no contessa there, Domenico,” said I, in my ordinary tone; “your master is deceived.”
Domenico held up his hand with an evident entreaty that I would be cautious. Then he looked back upon Lizzie, the only person in sight. “I not fear for the Lizzie,” said Domenico; and then launched forth into a half-whispered description of the contessa, whoever that might be. But I confess that Domenico’s description, being Italian whenever he warmed, and only when he slackened and recollected himself falling into such English as he was capable of, was difficult to make out. I fully entered into Lizzie’s feeling, that it was “awfu’ fickle to ken what he meant when it was a long story.” I remained profoundly bewildered, and unable to make out one word in ten.
As for learning anything about the contessa—poor fellow!—or, rather, it was his master that was to be pitied—evidently here was some new mistake, some additional impediment to the finding out of this mystery. I left Lizzie with little Harry on the common, and went rather sadly home. This little bit of apparent foolishness naturally set me all astray as to the mysterious business which had cost us so much thought. Was it a mistake of Domenico’s perhaps? for Luigi and Miss Mortimer had actually met, and there could be no mistake there.
When I looked back that great white apparition was keeping Lizzie company on the common. They were a strange couple; but I cannot say I had any such doubts or fears concerning Domenico’s attendance, as a proper mistress ought to have had. I flattered myself Lizzie was a great deal too young to take any harm. She stood with her red-brown hair a little blown about her eyes: her clear, sanguine complexion, her angular and still awkward figure, looking up at the man-monster beside her, and holding up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun, which was shining in her face. While Domenico, with all his great proportions expanded by his white dress, impended over her, his smiling mouth opening in the midst of his black beard, an outre extraordinary foreign figure, enough to drive any staid English village out of its propriety. I remember the picture they made as distinctly as possible, with the green common surrounding them, and the gorse bushes all bursting into flower; and my own beautiful baby tottering about the fragrant grass. I was quite secure in Lizzie’s love and Domenico’s kindness. I went away with a smile at the curious group upon that soft English common—both figures alien to the soil—and with a tenderness in my breast to them both. Domenico had made himself well understood in another language, if not in that of ordinary spoken communications. I shall always have a kindness to his whole nation for that good fellow’s sake.
As I paused at the gate of the Park, I saw another figure advancing by an opposite road. I recognised Luigi in a moment. He was coming hurriedly down between the green hedges, no doubt coming to pay that visit of which Domenico had warned me. I rushed in, with all the eagerness of a child, to get my bonnet off and be in the drawing-room before he came.
Chapter XV.
WHEN I reached the drawing-room, after throwing off my bonnet and arranging my hair in the most breathless haste, terrified to hear the summons at the door before I was downstairs, I was thunderstruck to find Sara Cresswell there. The sight of her made an end of my awkward feeling of shame for my own haste and curiosity. Surely this was nothing less than a crisis that was coming. Sara had just arrived, and was explaining the reasons for her visit in such a very fluent and demonstrative way, that I could see at once they were all made up, and some motive entirely different from those she mentioned had brought her. She was still in her hat and velvet jacket, seated rather on the edge of her chair, talking very volubly, but looking breathless and anxious, while Aunt Milly, who was sitting in her own place, opposite her sister, and near the fireplace, looked at her, perplexed and uncertain, evidently rather suspicious of the many motives which had procured us this visit; which, if Sara had only said nothing about it, would have been received as a delightful surprise, and wanted no accounting for. It was evidently a great relief to Sara when I came in; she came to kiss me, turning her face away from Aunt Milly, and caught hold of me so tight, and gave me such a troubled, emphatic look, that even if I had not heard before, I should have known something was coming. I stood by her breathless for a moment, wondering why the door-bell did not ring,—Luigi had certainly had abundant time to have got to the door,—and then went up to the other end of the room on pretence of finding my work; while Sara, instead of following me, dropped into her chair again, evidently too nervous, too anxious, too eager to see the first of it and lose nothing, to do anything but sit still. We were both traitors and plotters. She had come to watch something that was about to happen, but which the principal person concerned did not know. While I, more cruel still, took my trembling way up to the other end of the apartment, and stationed myself behind Aunt Milly, that I might not lose a look or word from Miss Mortimer. I felt ashamed of myself, but I could not help it. I felt a kind of conviction that this was to be the decisive day.
But still there was no sound at the door; there was time to look round all the peaceable vast room, and be struck by the quietness, the repose of the scene in which some act of this mysterious drama was about to be enacted. It was always very light here, but the bright day and the sunshine out of doors, made it now even lighter than usual, and refused to any of us the slightest shade for our faces, whatever undue expression might come to them. Sara had adopted the only expedient possible, by turning her back upon the light, and had, besides, a little shelter in her hat. But dear Aunt Milly, looking at her favourite with a troubled inquiring expression, and laying down the work she had in hand in order to examine Sara’s countenance the better, was so fully set forth in all her looks, movements, and almost feelings, by that broad clear day-light, that I shrank back from it in spite of myself, fearing that it would betray me too. The only shadow in the room was that afforded by Miss Mortimer’s screen. She sat there just as usual, in her violet-coloured dress, her light muslin embroidered scarf, worn without any lining, now that the weather was warm, and her pretty cap, with ribbons corresponding to her dress; her head moving so slightly that it was difficult to perceive the motion; her pattern-book open on her knee, her head bent over it. At this moment, when the thunders of Providence were just about to break over her, she sat there, with her head over her knitting-book, counting her stitches, and trying a new pattern. When I saw how she was occupied, my own trembling pretence at work fell from my hands. I gazed at her openly with a wonder which was almost awe. My heart cried out against her in her dread composure. The Avenger was coming, and there she sat, all conscious, aware, in every nerve, of her guilt, and yet able to maintain that hideous calm. Yes! it would have been sublime had she been a good woman, threatened by some undeserved doom. I declare it was ghastly, devilish, dreadful to me!