“Don’t go till Lovel comes home, Miss. These ain’t your mistresses. Lady Baker don’t pay your salary. If you go, I go, too. There!” calls out Bedford, and mumbles something in her ear about the end of the world.
“You go, too; and a good riddance, you insolent brute!” exclaims the dowager.
“O, Captain Clarence! you have made a pretty morning’s work,” I say.
“I don’t know what the doose all the sherry—all the shinty’s about,” says the captain, playing with the empty decanter. “Gal’s a very good gal—pretty gal. If she choosesh dansh shport her family, why the doosh shouldn’t she dansh shport a family?”
“That is exactly what I recommend this person to do,” says Lady Baker, tossing up her head. “And now I will thank you to leave the room. Do you hear?”
As poor Elizabeth obeyed this order, Bedford darted after her; and I know ere she had gone five steps he had offered her his savings and everything he had. She might have had mine yesterday. But she had deceived me. She had played fast and loose with me. She had misled me about this doctor. I could trust her no more. My love of yesterday was dead, I say. That vase was broke, which never could be mended. She knew all was over between us. She did not once look at me as she left the room.
The two dowagers—one of them, I think, a little alarmed at her victory—left the house, and for once went away in the same barouche. The young maniac who had been the cause of the mischief staggered away, I know not whither.
About four o’clock, poor little Pinhorn, the child’s maid, came to me, well nigh choking with tears, as she handed me a letter. “She’s goin’ away—and she saved both them children’s lives, she did. And she’ve wrote to you, sir. And Bedford’s a-goin’. And I’ll give warnin’, I will, too!” And the weeping handmaiden retires, leaving me, perhaps somewhat frightened, with the letter in my hand.
“Dear Sir,” she said—“I may write you a line of thanks and farewell. I shall go to my mother. I shall soon find another place. Poor Bedford, who has a generous heart, told me that he had given you a letter of mine to Mr. D. I saw this morning that you knew everything. I can only say now that for all your long kindnesses and friendship to my family I am always your sincere and grateful—E. P.”
Yes: that was all. I think she was grateful. But she had not been candid with me, nor with the poor surgeon. I had no anger: far from it: a great deal of regard and goodwill, nay admiration, for the intrepid girl who had played a long, hard part very cheerfully and bravely. But my foolish little flicker of love had blazed up and gone out in a day; I knew that she never could care for me. In that dismal, wakeful night, after reading the letter, I had thought her character and story over, and seen to what a life of artifice and dissimulation necessity had compelled her. I did not blame her. In such circumstances, with such a family, how could she be frank and open? Poor thing! poor thing! Do we know anybody? Ah! dear me, we are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God. I went into the hall towards evening: her poor trunks and packages were there, and the little nurserymaid weeping over them. The sight unmanned me; and I believe I cried myself. Poor Elizabeth! And with these small chests you recommence your life’s lonely voyage! I gave the girl a couple of sovereigns. She sobbed a God bless me! and burst out crying more desperately than ever. Thou hast a kind heart, little Pinhorn!