“I don’t know about such rights,” said I. “Now tell me, Carson;—you know a great deal more about her than I do. Don’t you think I can see how nervous and disturbed she is?—what’s the matter with my sister? what is she afraid of? and what do you and she expect to see upon the road, that you go out to look that the way is clear, before she ventures beyond the gate? Don’t tell me about rain, I know better; what did you expect to see?”
Carson was taken entirely by surprise; she faltered, she grew red, she wrung her hands; she stammered forth something quite unintelligible, consisting of exclamations.—“Ma’am! Miss Milly!” and “My missis!” all confused and run into each other. She had no time to invent anything; and her fright and nervousness for the moment quite betrayed her.
“I don’t want you to be false to your mistress,” said I, getting excited, in my turn, at finding myself so near a clue to this mystery, as I thought. “I don’t want you to tell me her secret, if she has one—only let me know. Is there some danger apprehended? Is there some one in the country that Sarah is afraid to see? What is wrong? Her limbs are trembling under her, and her face growing thinner. Only think of her going out with the blinds down, poor forlorn soul; What is wrong? It would mend matters, somehow, if I knew.”
“Miss Milly,” said Carson, with a great many little coughs and clearings of her throat, “my missis has an attack on her nerves, that’s what it is; when she haves them attacks, she grows fidgety, as you say, ma’am. A little nice strengthening medicine, now, or a change of air, would be a nice thing. I said that to my missis just this very morning. I said ‘A few months at Brighton, now, or such like, would do you a world of good, ma’am.’ It’s on her nerves, that’s what it is.”
Carson had got quite glib and fluent before she ended this speech; the difficulty had only been how to begin.
“Now, Carson!” cried I, “if your mistress’s health suffers, and it turns out to be something you could have told me, you may be certain I shall call you to account for it. Think what you are saying. We Mortimers never have nervous attacks. I know you’re deceiving me. Think again. Will you tell me what is wrong?”
“Ma’am, Miss Milly, it’s an attack on the nerves,” cried Carson; “my missis has had them before. I couldn’t say more if I was to talk till to-morrow. I’ve got my caps to see to, I ask your pardon;—my missis is very particular about her caps.”
Upon which Carson somehow managed to elude me, with a mixture of firmness and cunning quite extraordinary; and while I had still my eyes fixed on her, and was calling her to stay with all the authority of my position as acting mistress of the house, contrived to melt in at a back door and escape out of my hands, I never could explain how. Talk about controlling people with your eye, and swaying them by force of character, and all that! I defy anybody to sway a servant in a great house who is trained to the sort of thing, and knows how to recollect her work at a critical moment, and the nearest way to the back stairs. Carson had proved herself too many for me.
Chapter V.
IT seems I was destined to hear of nothing but this Italian. I had not kept faith to him, certainly. I had been startled and thrown back by finding out how the idea of him got to be involved in Sarah’s trouble; and really I did not care much about the Countess Sermoneta, whom I had never heard of. I had been interested in him, I allow; but how could I keep up an interest in strangers, with so much closer an anxiety near home?