And he went away, never thinking that I had seen what was in his mind.
Chapter II
OUR drawing-room was a very large one. The Mortimers had required large rooms in their day; and I will not say, if we had been young people, and disposed to have company, that we could not have kept it up with any of them; for my father, who lived in a very homely way, proud as he was, had laid up a good deal, and so had we. But though we kept no company, we had not the heart to turn the Mortimer family, of which we were the only remaining representatives, out of their old room. So we had a great screen, made of stamped leather, and which was like everything else, of my grandmother’s days, stretched behind Sarah’s chair, and with a very large bright fire, and a good lamp upon the round table, we managed to find the fireside very comfortable, though we were surrounded by all the ranges of old furniture in the old half-dark room. Old Ellis had to come stumbling as slowly as if the distance had been half a mile between us and the door, when he came into the room with anything; and I dare say impatient young people could not have put up with the rumble of chairs rolled aside, and footstools tripped over, with which he always gave us warning of his coming. For my part I was used to it, and took no notice. Where I sat, the prospect before me was, first, Sarah in her easy chair, close within shade of the screen, and beyond a darkling stretch of space, which a stranger might have made very mysterious, but which I knew perfectly well to be filled with just so many tables, chairs, ottomans, and miscellaneous articles, not one of which could have been stolen away without being missed. On the other side of the room, behind my own chair, was a grand piano in a corner and another waste of old furniture. Many people wondered why we did not make a cosy little sitting-room of the boudoir, which had never been used since my mother’s days. But Sarah, and I may say myself also, was of a different way of thinking. We liked the big room which once had not been at all too big for the Mortimers, and I am not sure that I did not even like the dark bit on either side of us, and the two big old-fashioned mirrors, like magic mirrors in a fairy tale, with a faint trembling of light over them, and all the shadowy depths of the room standing out in them, as if to double the size, which was already so much too great. Sometimes I used to stand and watch myself going across one of those big mirrors. It was a strange weird creature wandering about among the still, silent, deserted household gods. It was not surely me.
Not that I mean to represent myself as a sentimental person—not in the very slightest degree. I am past fifty and stout. My own opinion is that people had best be stout when they are past fifty, and I like my own little comforts as well as anybody of my years. When I was young I was far from being pretty. If I am to state frankly my own ideas on this subject, I would say that I think I might have passed for moderately good-looking, if I had not been sister to a beauty. But when we two were described as the beautiful Miss Mortimer and the plain Miss Mortimer, you may suppose how any little poor pretensions of mine were snubbed at once. To be good-looking was something not expected from Sarah’s sister. But however the tables have rather turned of late. If you asked little Sara Cresswell, for example, who was the pretty Miss Mortimer, I do believe the dear child would say, with the greatest of innocence, “Miss Milly.” At our time of life it doesn’t matter very much, to be sure; but dear, dear, vanity does lie deep! I declare honestly it’s a pleasure to me.
When Sarah and I are by ourselves, we don’t have a great deal of conversation. She has lost her voice, as I said, which makes her decline talking: and I must say, though she never yields to acknowledge it, that I think she’s lost her hearing a little, poor dear old soul! Every night in her life (except Sundays) she reads the Times. That paper gets great abuse in many quarters, especially in the country, where our old Squires, to be sure, are always at it for changing its opinions; but I say, great success, and long life to the Times! that is my opinion. How ever Sarah would get over those long evenings without that paper, I don’t know. It quite keeps us in reading; and I do assure you, we know much more about most things that are going on than a great many men do, who are much more in the world. The Times comes in early, but Sarah never looks at it till after tea. I have to keep out of her sight, indeed, when I glance over it myself in the early part of the day, for Sarah does not approve of daylight reading. She thinks it a waste of time. We have not such a very great deal to occupy us either, as you may suppose; at least Sarah has little, except her knitting, for she will rarely allow me to consult her anything about the property, though she is the eldest. I wonder for my part that she does not weary of her life. She never comes down to breakfast, and I don’t know very well what she and Carson find to busy themselves about till noon in her room upstairs; but at twelve o’clock punctually she comes down all dressed for the day. She does not dress as I do, in the ordinary dress that everybody wears, neither are Sarah’s fashions the same as I remember in our youth, when our waists were just under our arms, and our gowns had “gores” in them. On the contrary, she has taken to a very long waist and tight sleeves, with a worked muslin shawl or scarf over her shoulders. In cold weather the muslin is lined with silk of delicate colours, and her cap, which is always light and pretty (Carson has great taste), trimmed to correspond. Her hair, of course, she always wears in curls at the front. It is quite silver-white, and her face, poor dear soul, is a little pinched and sharp nowadays. When she takes her seat within shelter of the screen at twelve o’clock every day, the muslin shawl, lined with peach, is as pretty as possible in itself: to be sure Sara Cresswell might almost wear it to a ball; but I do declare I thought it looked very chilly to-day on Sarah. Nice white Shetland for instance, which is almost as pretty as lace, or, indeed, one of those beautiful soft fine woollen shawls, would look a great deal better over that purple silk gown, if she could only think so. But to be sure, Sarah will have her own way. There she sat knitting all the time Mr. Cresswell was talking with me, and there she does sit all day long with her basket of wools, and knitting-pins, and patterns. Every other day she takes a drive, goes to church once on Sundays, and reads the Times on all the week evenings. That is exactly how she lives.
Now perhaps this does not appear so odd to anybody else as it does to me; and I am sure I might have got used to it after a dozen years; but only Sarah, you see, has very good abilities, and is not the person to fix herself down like this. And she knows a great deal more of life than I do. My father and she were, I think, near upon ten years abroad after my mother died. What she was doing all that time I know no more than Carson does. Many a rumour went about that she was married, and many an anxious hour I had all by myself at the Park. But when she came back just Miss Mortimer, there was not a soul in the county but was surprised. Such a great beauty! and papa’s eldest daughter and co-heiress! people said it was unaccountable. I can’t say I thought it unaccountable. I never saw anybody that I could fancy myself, except perhaps–, and then he never asked me, you know. It might be precisely the same with Sarah, though she was a beauty. But the wonder to me is that after having lived abroad so long, and having, as I have no doubt she had, a life of her own, which did not merely belong to my father’s daughter, she should just have settled down like this. Many and many a time have I thought it all over, sitting opposite to her of an evening, when tea was over and she was reading the Times. There she sat quite straight up, her muslin shawl with the peach-bottom lining dropping down a little over her shoulders, and her thin hands in their black lace mits holding the paper. She had never reposed any confidence in me, you see. I did not know what might have happened to her when she was out upon the big waves of life. I dare say many a time when I wondered why she took no interest in my affairs, she was back upon that reserve of her own which I knew nothing about. But the odd thing to me is, that after having really had something that one could call a life, something happening to her own self,—don’t you know what I mean?—she should have settled down so fixed and motionless here.
We dined early, which was a prejudice of mine; but as Sarah had a very uncertain appetite, we had always “something” to tea, which was the cause of Mr. Cresswell’s allusion to our cook Evans. Further, we indulged ourselves by having this substantial tea in the drawing-room, which we never left after our early dinner. When tea was over on the night of Mr. Cresswell’s visit, I had some little matters to do which kept me about the room, going from one place to another. As I stood in the shadow looking at the bright fire and lamp, and Sarah reading in her easy chair, I could not prevent a great many inquiries rising in my mind. What was Cousin Richard