“I have got no maid, child; you know that very well,” said I. “I never was brought up with any such luxury; and when I came to my kingdom I was too old to begin, and liked my own ways. But at all events, though you are so confident in your opinion, I am quite sure your godmamma can have no knowledge of this business, so don’t speak of it any more.”
“Will you ask her?” said Sara; “if she knows nothing about it, she will not mind being asked. Why should you be afraid of speaking if she does not know anything about it? It might be awkward, perhaps, if she knew and would not tell; but it can’t matter if she doesn’t know. Will you ask her, godmamma? or will you let me?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake go away, child, and don’t drive me crazy!” I cried. “Go upstairs and decide what dress you will wear, you velvet kitten; go and gossip with your maid. Here am I in a peck of troubles, and can’t see my way out or in, and you ask me to let you!”
“You wouldn’t mind it in the least if you thought godmamma Sarah did not know,” said the provoking little girl; and so went gliding off, satisfied that I was of her opinion. When I was left to myself I dropped on a chair in utter despair, and could not tell what to think. The safest way was certainly to vow to myself that Sarah had nothing to do with it at all. What could she have to do with it? Her strange anxious looks must spring from some other cause. For once, at least, instinct must have deceived itself. Sarah knew the world and the Italians. She was not so easily taken in as we were—nothing else was possible; and she was only annoyed to see how ready to be imposed upon I was.
Chapter IV.
THIS conversation, of course, set my thoughts all into a ferment again. Little Sara was wonderfully quick-witted, if she was not very wise, as, indeed, was not to be expected at her years; and I confess her idea did return to my mind a great many times. Sarah might have known an Italian Countess in that obscure time of her life which I had no clue to; might even know some reason why persons from Italy might be looking for her, and might be nervous, for old acquaintance’ sake, of any one finding her out. When everything was so blank, any sort of sign-post was satisfactory. It was true that I don’t remember seeing Sarah display so much anxiety for any other person all her life before. But there might be reasons; and if it was a friendly feeling, I should certainly be the last person in the world to worry and aggravate my sister. I wish I could have composed my mind with all the reasonings I went through; but really, when I saw poor Sarah sitting all watchful and conscious at her knitting, not getting on at all with her work, hearing the least rustle in the room, or touch at the door; starting, and trying to conceal her start every time the bell rung, with all the features of her face growing thinner, and her hands and head trembling more than they ever used to do, it was quite impossible for me to persuade myself that her mind was not busy with something which had happened, or which was about to happen. It might be something as completely unconnected with the poor Italian as possible; most likely it was; but something there was which agitated her most unaccountably, which I knew nothing about, and which she was determined I should not know. She was as conscious that I observed this strange change upon her as I was myself; and she faced me with such a resolution and defiance! No! I could read it in her eyes, and the full look she turned upon me whenever I looked at her—she would die rather than I should find it out.
It is quite impossible, however ignorant you may be of the causes of it, to live in the close presence of a person devoured by anxiety without being infected by it, more or less. One gets curious and excited, you know, in spite of one’s self; and all the more, of course, if the cause is quite inexplicable and the trouble sudden. I lived in the kind of feeling that you have just immediately before a thunderstorm—the air all of a hush, so that you could hear the faintest stir of a bird, or rustle of a branch, yet never knowing the moment when, instead of the bird’s motion or the leaves’ tremble, it might be the thunder itself that clamoured in your ears.
In this condition of mind Sara’s little side reference to Carson, and my sister’s acquaintance with everything that passed, did not fail to have its effect upon me, as well as other things. I don’t know that I would have been above questioning Carson if I could have got at her; but I did not see her once in three months, and could not have had any conversation with her without making quite an affair of it, and letting all the house know. Carson was not her right name. She had been Sarah’s maid when she was a young girl, and had married and lost her husband, and come back to the Park just in time to go abroad with her mistress, and being well known in the house by her maiden name, never got any other. I could not help wondering within myself if she knew, or how much she knew, of Sarah’s trouble, and its cause, whatever that might be. When the thought rose in my mind whether I might not try to get to private speech of Carson, I was out in the grounds making a little survey, to see how everything was looking for spring, and had just been at the lodge to see poor little Mary, who (as I had foreseen from the beginning) was bad with the whooping-cough, but no worse than was to be expected, and nothing alarming or out of the way. The carriage had just gone up to take Sarah out for her drive, and I, all in shelter of a clump of holly bushes, became the witness, quite unawares and without any intention, of a most singular scene. A footstep went softly by me upon the gravel. I was just behind the lodge, and within sight of the gate and the road without. I saw Carson, in her cap and in-doors dress, go softly out at the gate. She went out into the road, pretending to hold out her hand and raise her face to see whether it rained; as if it were not perfectly clear to any one that it did not rain, nor would, either, till the glass fell. She looked up and down with an anxious look, and lingered five minutes or more in that same position. Then she came in, and met the carriage just inside the gate, which Williams had come to her cottage door to open. “All’s quite bright and clear, ma’am,” I heard Carson say; “no appearance of rain. I hope you’ll have a pleasant drive.” A moment after the carriage wheeled quickly out, the blind being drawn down just as it turned into the road. Carson stood looking after it with a kind of grieved, compassionate expression, which made me like her better. She answered Williams’ question, “Whatever had come over Miss Sarah to make her so particklar about the weather; in the carriage, too, as she wouldn’t be none the wiser, wet nor dry!” very shortly, sighed, and turned to go back, mincing with true lady’s-maid nicety, along the road. The sigh and the pitying look on her face determined me. I took a quick step through the bushes and came up to her. The holly branches tore a bit of trimming, as long as my finger, off my garden hood (I think a hood a great deal more suitable than a hat for a person of my years); but I did not mind. Here was a chance if I could only use it well.
“Carson,” said I, not to give her time to think, “my sister has surely grown very fidgety of late?”
Carson stared at me in an alarmed, confused way; but soon got back her self-possession. “My missis was always a bit fidgety, ma’am, though no more than she had a right to be,” said this one real, true, faithful adherent, whom Sarah had secured to her cause.