“I cannot tell. He certainly did not go away immediately after the settlement of accounts, but it has not been possible to us to keep up a knowledge of his movements, or something might have turned up to justify Edward. Oh, what it is to be helpless women! You are the very first person, Colin, who has not looked at me pityingly, like a creature to be forborne with an undeniable delusion!”
“They must be very insolent people, then, to look at that brow and eyes, and think even sisterly love could blind them,” he said. “Yes, Ermine, I was certain that unless Edward were more changed than I could believe, there must be some such explanation. You have never seen him since?”
“No, he was too utterly broken by the loss of his wife to feel anything else. For a long time we heard nothing, and that was the most dreadful time of all! Then he wrote from a little German town, where he was getting his bread as a photographer’s assistant. And since that he has cast about the world, till just now he has some rather interesting employment at the mines in the Oural Mountains, the first thing he has really seemed to like or care for.”
“The Oural Mountains! that is out of reach. I wish I could see him. One might find some means of clearing him. What directed your suspicion to Maddox?”
“Chiefly that the letters professed to have been sent in a parcel to him to be posted from the office. If it had been so, Edward and Lucy would certainly have written to us at the same time. I could have shown, too, that Maddox had written to me the day before to ascertain where Edward was, so as to be sure of the date. It was a little country village, and I made a blunder in copying the spelling from Lucy’s writing. Ailie found that very blunder repeated in Dr. Long’s letter, and we showed him that Edward did not write it so. Besides, before going abroad, Edward had lost the seal-ring with his crest, which you gave him. You remember the Saxon’s head?”
“I remember! You all took it much to heart that the engraver had made it a Saracen’s head, and not a long-haired Saxon.”
“Well, Edward had renewed the ring, and taken care to make it a Saxon. Now Ailie could get no one to believe her, but she is certain that the letter was sealed with the old Saracen not the new Saxon. But—but—if you had but been there—”
“Tell me you wished for me, Ermine.”
“I durst not wish anything about you,” she said, looking up through a mist of tears.
“And you, what fixed you here?”
“An old servant of ours had married and settled here, and had written to us of her satisfaction in finding that the clergyman was from Hereford. We thought he would recommend Ailie as daily governess to visitors, and that Sarah would be a comfortable landlady. It has answered very well; Rose deserves her name far more than when we brought her here, and it is wonderful how much better I have been since doctors have become a mere luxury.”
“Do you, can you really mean that you are supporting yourselves?”
“All but twenty-five pounds a year, from a legacy to us, that Mr. Beauchamp would not let them touch. But it has been most remarkable, Colin,” she said, with the dew in her eyes, “how we have never wanted our daily bread, and how happy we have been! If it had not been for Edward, this would in many ways have been our happiest time. Since the old days the little frets have told less, and Ailie has been infinitely happier and brighter since she has had to work instead of only to watch me. Ah, Colin, must I not own to having been happy? Indeed it was very much because peace had come when the suspense had sunk into belief that I might think of you as—, where you would not be grieved by the sight of what I am now—”
As she spoke, a knock, not at the house, but at the room door, made them both start, and impel their chairs to a more ordinary distance, just as Rachel Curtis made her entrance, extremely amazed to find, not Mr. Touchett, but a much greater foe and rival in that unexpected quarter. Ermine, the least disconcerted, was the first to speak. “You are surprised to find a visitor here,” she said, “and indeed only now, did we find out that ‘our military secretary,’ as your little cousins say, was our clear old squire’s nephew.”
There was a ring of gladness in the usually patient voice that struck even Rachel, though she was usually too eager to be observant, but she was still unready with talk for the occasion, and Ermine continued: “We had heard so much of the Major before-hand, that we had a sort of Jupiter-like expectation of the coming man. I am not sure that I shall not go on expecting a mythic major!”
Rachel, never understanding playfulness, thought this both audacious and unnecessary, and if it had come from any one else, would have administered a snub, but she felt the invalid sacred from her weapons.
“Have you ever seen the boys?” asked Colonel Keith. “I am rather proud of Conrade, my pupil; he is so chivalrous towards his mother.”
“Alison has brought down a division or two to show me. How much alike they are.”
“Exactly alike, and excessively unruly and unmanageable,” said Rachel. “I pity your sister.”
“More unmanageable in appearance than in reality,” said the colonel: “there’s always a little trial of strength against the hand over them, and they yield when they find it is really a hand. They were wonderfully good and considerate when it was an object to keep the house quiet.”
Rachel would not encourage him to talk of Lady Temple, so she turned to Ermine on the business that had brought her, collecting and adapting old clothes for emigrants.—It was not exactly gentlemen’s pastime, and Ermine tried to put it aside and converse, but Rachel never permitted any petty consideration to interfere with a useful design, and as there was a press of time for the things, she felt herself justified in driving the intruder off the field and outstaying him. She succeeded; he recollected the desire of the boys that he should take them to inspect the pony at the “Jolly Mariner,” and took leave with—“I shall see you to-morrow.”
“You knew him all the time!” exclaimed Rachel, pausing in her unfolding of the Master Temples’ ship wardrobe. “Why did you not say so?”
“We did not know his name. He was always the ‘Major.’”
“Who, and what is he?” demanded Rachel, as she knelt before her victim, fixing those great prominent eyes, so like those of Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, that Ermine involuntarily gave a backward impulse to her wheeled chair, as she answered the readiest thing that occurred to her,—“He is brother to Lord Keith of Gowan-brae.”
“Oh,” said Rachel, kneeling on meditatively, “that accounts for it. So much the worse. The staff is made up of idle honourables.”
“Quoth the ‘Times!’” replied Ermine; “but his appointment began on account of a wound, and went on because of his usefulness—”
“Wounded! I don’t like wounded heroes,” said Rachel; “people make such a fuss with them that they always get spoilt.”
“This was nine years ago, so you may forget it if you like,” said Ermine, diversion suppressing displeasure.
“And what is your opinion of him?” said Rachel, edging forward on her knees, so as to bring her inquisitorial eyes to bear more fully.
“I had not seen him for twelve years,” said Ermine, rather faintly.
“He must have had a formed character when you saw him last. The twelve years before five-and-forty don’t alter the nature.”
“Five-and-forty! Illness and climate have told, but I did not think it was so much. He is only thirty-six—”
“That is not what I care about,” said Rachel, “you are both of you so cautious that you tell me what amounts to nothing! You should consider how important it is to me to know something about the person in whose power my cousin’s affairs are left.”
“Have you not sufficient guarantee in the very fact of her husband’s confidence?”
“I don’t know. A simple-hearted old soldier always means a very foolish old man.”
“Witness