“It is odd how little I have thought about it since that day—very odd,” said I; “and I was quite in earnest before. I wondered if Providence might, maybe, have taken it up now? I have seen such a thing: one falls off one’s anxiety somehow, one can’t tell how; and lo! the reason is, that the thing’s coming about all naturally without any help from you. We’ll be having the heir dropped down at the park gates some of these days, all as right and natural as ever was.”
I said this without thinking much about it; just because it was an idea of mine, that most times, when God lays a kind of lull upon our anxieties and struggles, it really turns out to be because He himself is taking them in hand; but having said this easy and calm, without anything particular in my mind, you may judge how I was startled half out of my wits by Sarah dashing down her knitting-pin out of her hand, stamping her foot on the footstool, and half screaming out in her sharp, strangled whisper, that sounded like the very voice of rage itself— “The fool! the fool! oh, the fool! Shall I be obliged to leave my home and my seclusion and do it myself? I that might have been so different! Good God! shall I be obliged to do it—me! When I was a young girl I might have hoped to die a duchess,—everybody said so,—and now, instead of being cared for and shielded from the envious world,—people were always envious of me since ever I remember,—must I go trudging out to find this wretched cousin? Is this all the gratitude and natural feeling you have? Good heaven! to put such a thing upon me!”
She stopped, all panting and breathless, like a wild creature that had relieved itself somehow with a yell or a cry; but, strange, strange, at that moment Ellis opened the door. I will never think again she does not hear. The sound caught her in a moment. Her passion changed into that new watching look quicker than I can tell; and she sat with her eyes fixed upon me,—for, poor soul, to be sure she could not see through the screen behind her to find out what Ellis came for,—as if she could have killed me for the least motion. I got so excited myself that I could hardly see the name on the card Ellis brought in. Sarah’s looks, not to say her words, had put it so clearly in my mind that something was going to happen, that my self-possession almost forsook me. I let the card flutter down out of my hand when I lifted it off the tray, and did not hear a single syllable of what the man was saying till he had repeated it all twice over. It was only a neighbour who had sent over to ask for Miss Mortimer, having heard somehow that Sarah was poorly. She heard him herself, however, and gave an answer—her compliments, and she was quite well—before I knew what it was all about. If she had boxed me well she could not have muddled my head half so much as she had done now. When Ellis went away again, and left me alone close by her, I quite shook in my chair.
But she had got over her rage as it seemed. She stooped down to pick up her knitting-pin—with a little pettish exclamation that nobody helped her now-a-days—just in her usual way, and took up the dropt stitches in her knitting. But I could very well see that her hand trembled. As she did not say any more, I thought I might venture to draw back my chair. But when she saw the motion she started, looked up at me, and held up her hand. I was not to get so easily away.
“I had no idea you minded it so much. Well, well, Sarah,” cried I, in desperation, “I will write this moment to urge Mr. Cresswell on.”
“And shout it all out, please, that the child may hear!” said Sarah, with a spiteful look as if she could bite me. I was actually afraid of her. I got up as fast as I could, and went off to the writing-table at the other end of the room. There was nothing I would not do to please her in a rational way; but, of all the vagaries she ever took up before, what did this dreadful passion mean?
Chapter XI
THE next day I had something to do in the village, which was only about half a mile from the Park gates; but little Sara, when I asked her to go with me, had got some piece of business to her fancy in the greenhouse, and was not disposed to leave it, so I went off by myself. I went in, as I passed the lodge, to ask for little Mary Williams, who had a cough which I quite expected would turn to hooping-cough, though her mother would not believe it (I turned out to be right, of course). Mrs. Williams was rather in a way, poor body, that morning. Mary was worse and worse, with a flushed face and shocking cough, and nothing would please her mother but that it was inflammation, and the child would die. It is quite the strangest thing in the world, among those sort of people, how soon they make up their minds that their children are to die. I scolded her well, which did her good, and promised her the liniment we always have for hooping-cough, and said I should bring up a picture-book for the child (it’s a good little thing when it is well) from the new little shop in the village. This opened up, as I found out, quite a new phase of poor Williams’ trouble.
“I wouldn’t encourage it ma’am, no sure, I wouldn’t, not for a hundred picture-books. I wouldn’t go for to set up them as ’tices men out of their houses and lads fro’ home. No! I seen enough of that when poor old Williams was alive, and we was all in Liverpool. It’s all as one as the public-houses, ma’am. I can’t see no difference. Williams, it was his chapell; and the boy, it’s his night-school and his reading. I don’t see no good of it. In the old man’s time, many’s the weary night I’ve sat by mysel’ mending their bits o’ things, and never a soul to cheer me up; and now, look’ee here, the boy’s tooken to it; and if I’m to lose Mary–”
“You ridiculous woman,” cried I, while the poor creature fell sobbing and took to her apron, “what’s to make you lose Mary? The child’s going in for hooping-cough, as sure ever child was, and I see no reason in the world why she shouldn’t get over it nicely, with the spring coming on as well. Don’t fret; trouble comes soon enough without going out of the way to meet it. What’s all this story you’ve been telling me about poor Willie, and the shop in the village, and the night-school? Don’t you know, you foolish woman, the night-school may be the making of the boy?”
“I don’t know nothink about it, ma’am, nor I don’t want to know,” said our liberal-minded retainer. “I know it takes the boy out o’ the house most nights in the week; and I sits a-thinking upon my troubles, and listening to all the sounds in the trees, sometimes moidered and sometimes scared. I’d clear away thankful any night, even washing night, when I’m folding for the mangle, to have him write his copy at home; and have a hearth-stone for him, though I say it as shouldn’t, as bright as a king’s. But he’s a deal grander nor the like o’ that, he is—he’ll stay and read the papers and talk. Bother their talk and their papers! I ask you, ma’am, wouldn’t Willie be a deal better at home?”
“I shouldn’t say but what I might perhaps think so too,” said I; “but then the gentlemen say not, and they should know best.”
“The gentlemen! and there’s another worry, sure,” said Mrs. Williams; “who would you think, ma’am, has been in the village, but a Frenchman, a-spying all about, and asking questions; and had the impudence to come to my very door, to the very park gates, to ask if I knowed a lady with a French name that was here or hereabout. I answered him short, and said I knew nothink about the French, and shut the door in his face, begging your pardon, ma’am; for, to be sure, he was after no good, coming asking for outlandish ladies here.”
“Very odd,” said I, “I hope it’s no robber, Williams. You were quite right to shut the door in his face.”
“And if I might make so bold,” said Williams, coming closer and speaking low, “Jacob, he maintains it was a French fellow with a mustache that scared Miss Sarah the day afore yesterday. Jacob seen him, but took no notice; and directly after Miss Sarah up and pulled the string, and told him to drive round by Eden Castle, a good five-mile round, and to go quick. You may depend Miss Sarah took him for a robber, or somethink; and I’m dead sure it was the same man.”
I was very much startled by this, though I could scarcely tell why; but, of course, I would not let Williams suppose there was any mystery in it. “Very likely,” said I; “my sister goes out so little, she’s timid—but I am losing my time. Good-bye, little Mary, I’ll fetch you your picture-book; and be sure you rub her chest well with the liniment.