CHAPTER VI.
BELLA’S REVENGE.
Theblinds were drawn up at the Water House, and the wintry sun shone upon the empty rooms. Miss Scales had come back to her charge, leaving that provoking old lady in Devonshire still undecided whether to live or die, ‘making it so very perplexing as to one’s choice of a winter dress when one might be called upon at any moment to go into mourning,’ Miss Scales complained to her Devonshire acquaintance, when discussing her aunt’s weak-minded oscillation.
But now there was no further difficulty about the mourning question. For Mr. Harefield, her employer of fifteen years, Miss Scales could not assume too deep a sable, especially when the sable would naturally be provided and paid for by her dearest Beatrix.
Banbury and Banbury’s forewoman came to theWater House with boxes of crape and rolls of bombazine, and the governess and her pupil were measured for garments of unutterable woe.
And now, at nineteen, Beatrix found herself on the threshold of a new life, a life of supreme independence. Wealth, and liberty to do what she pleased with it, were hers. Mr. Dulcimer was likely to prove the most indulgent of guardians; Mr. Scratchell was subservient to the last degree, his sole anxiety being to retain his position, and to ingratiate himself and his family in Miss Harefield’s favour.
‘If Mrs. Scratchell can be useful in any way, pray command her,’ said the village lawyer. ‘She will be only too proud to serve you, Miss Harefield, but she would be the last to obtrude her services.’
‘I do not think you need entertain any apprehensions as to Miss Harefield’s being properly taken care of, Mr. Scratchell,’ Miss Scales remarked, stiffly. ‘She has Mr. Dulcimer—and she has me.’
Mr. Scratchell rumpled the scanty bristles at the top of his bald head, and felt himself snubbed.
‘Neither Mrs. Scratchell nor myself would wish to obtrude ourselves,’ he said, ‘but Miss Harefield being fond of Bella might like to make use of Mrs. Scratchell. She is a very clever manager, and might put Miss Harefield in the right way with her servants.’
‘Miss Harefield’s servants know their duties, and do not require managing, Mr. Scratchell. I should be very sorry to live in a household where the servants had to be managed. The bare idea implies a wrong state of things.’
‘Well,’ exclaimed Mr. Scratchell, testily, ‘I don’t want to press myself or my family upon Miss Harefield—although I am joint executor with Mr. Dulcimer, and had the honour to enjoy her father’s confidence for five-and-thirty years. I should be very sorry to be intrusive. And there’s Bella, she has made a very long stay here, and she’s wanted badly elsewhere. If Miss Harefield is agreeable she had better come home.’
‘She must do as she likes,’ Beatrix answered, listlessly. ‘I am a very dull companion for her.’
‘Dear Beatrix, you know I love to be with you,’murmured Bella, in her affectionate way, ‘but I think I ought to go home, as papa says. Poor Mrs. Piper is so ill, and the young Pipers get more troublesome every day. Their holidays are too trying for her. I believe I ought to resume my duties.’
‘I am sure you ought,’ said her father, who was bursting to assert his independence. He did not mind how subservient he made himself to Beatrix, but he was not going to knuckle under to Miss Scales. ‘I met Mr. Piper in the village yesterday, and he told me the house was all at sixes and sevens for want of you.’
Beatrix seemed indifferent as to whether Bella went or stayed, so Miss Scratchell got her goods and chattels together, and departed with her father, after many loving embraces and pretty expressions of gratitude. Perhaps in the book of the recording angel that parting kiss of Bella’s went down in a particular column devoted to such Judas kisses—that traitor kiss of Darnley’s, for instance, on the night of Rizzio’s assassination.
Bella went home with her father, looking slimand pretty in her new black dress and bonnet, and doing her best to soothe her parent’s wrath with sweet deprecating speeches. In the box which she had just packed—to be brought home later—there were many things that she had not taken to the Water House, including a handsome black silk gown, and innumerable trifles in the shape of gloves, collars, and neck-ribbons; but there was one thing which Miss Scratchell carried away in her pocket, and which she held to be of more importance than all her finery.
This was the sealed envelope which she had found upon Mr. Harefield’s writing-table. ‘For my daughter Beatrix.’
She took it from her pocket when she was safely locked in her own room, secure from the intrusion of the family herd. She sat with the packet on her lap, thoughtfully contemplating it.
She had kept it more than a fortnight, and had not broken the seal. She had been sorely tempted to see what was inside the envelope, but had resisted the temptation. To open it would be a crime, she had told herself, and she made a kindof virtue of this self-denial. All she wanted was to keep the document. She had made up her mind that this sealed packet contained the key to the mystery of Christian Harefield’s death. So long as the seal remained unbroken that death would remain a mystery. No one would know whether it was suicide or murder; and this uncertainty would hang like a cloud over Beatrix.
This was Isabella Scratchell’s revenge. That pink and white prettiness of hers was not incompatible with the capacity to seize an opportunity and to persevere in an inexorable hatred.
‘She has beauty and wealth, and a good old name,’ thought Bella; ‘but so long as her father’s death remains unexplained she will hardly have the love of Cyril Culverhouse.’
Bella had heard enough from Mr. Piper and Miss Coyle on Christmas Day to know very well which way opinion was drifting in Little Yafford. It was a settled thing already in the minds of a good many deep thinkers, and profound students of human nature as exhibited in the weekly papers, that Beatrix Harefield knew more abouther father’s death than anybody else. The very horror of the idea that her hand had put the poison in his way gave it a morbid attraction for tea-table conversation. There was a growing opinion that the coroner’s jury had done less than their duty in returning an open verdict.
‘The verdict would have been very different if Miss Harefield had been a labouring man’s daughter,’ said Miss Coyle, who had more to say on this subject than any one else, and who was always uncompromising in her opinions.
Bella was not sorry to leave the Water House, though home looked a little more squalid and untidy than usual, after the subdued splendour of Miss Harefield’s mansion. She had not been able to feel at her ease with Beatrix during this last visit. Even to her essentially false nature there was some effort required to preserve a demeanour of unvarying sweetness towards a person she detested. The old Adam was in danger of breaking out now and then. Between Beatrix and herself there stood the shadowy image of Cyril Culverhouse; and there were moments when Bella couldnot quite command her looks, however sweetly she might attune her voice. And now that Miss Scales was on the scene, with eyes which saw everything, Bella felt that the veneer of affection might be too thin to hide the hardness of the wood underneath it.
So Bella resumed the monotonous order of her home life, breakfasted at eight, and presented herself at the Park upon the stroke of nine, where the Piper children, clustering round the newly-lighted fire in the schoolroom, hated her for her punctuality. But she knew that if the children disapproved, Mr. Piper approved, for he generally looked out of the dining-room, newspaper in hand, to give her a friendly nod of welcome.
‘Good little girl, always up to time,’ he said; ‘those are the ’abits that make success in life. That was Brougham’s way. He might be hard at it, drinking and dissipating far into the small hours, but he was always up to time in the morning. Cobbett was never too late for an appointment in his life. Those are the men for my money.’
‘How is dear Mrs. Piper?’
‘Well, I think the missus is a trifle better this morning; but she mends very slow, poor soul. I don’t believe the doctors can do much for her.’
Bella sighed, and shook her head sadly, and then went tripping upstairs to the schoolroom, leaving Mr. Piper standing at the dining-room door looking after her.
‘A pretty little girl,’ he said to himself, ‘neatly finished off, like a well-made carriage, or an English watch. No scamping about the workmanship. Poor Moggie never had as pretty a figure as that, though she was a trim-built lass when she and me was courting.’
One day, when Bella had finished the weary round of lessons, and had nearly addled her brains in the endeavour to awaken Brougham’s sluggish mind to the difference between the active and the passive voices of the verb ‘amo,’ she paid her usual visit to Mrs. Piper, and found that lady in tears over a book of sermons.
‘Dear Mrs. Piper,’ cried Bella, with a sympathizing look, ‘have you been feeling worse this morning?’
‘No, Bella, bodily I’m much the same, but I’ve been giving way. It’s very wrong of me, I know, but there are times when I do give way. To-day I haven’t been able to feel quite happy in my mind. I don’t feel my calling and election sure. I don’t feel myself sealed with the seal of righteousness. I don’t feel myself a chosen vessel.’
‘You to say this, dear Mrs. Piper! you who have been so good!’
‘If goodness lies in reading sermons, Bella—and in constant attendance at chapel or church, I may say I have done my duty. We were chapel people in Great Yafford, you know, my dear; but when we came to the Park, Piper and me both felt that chapel wasn’t consistent. Such a house as this, and seven indoor servants don’t accord with chapel—so we became Church of England people, as you know, Bella; but I don’t think I ever felt so sure of salvation since. Mr. Dulcimer is a fine preacher, but he has never given me assurance of salvation. No more has Mr. Culverhouse, though his sermons go through my heart like an arrow. Church is very nice, Bella, and I don’t deny that the bonnets and generalappearance of the congregation bear a higher stamp, but chapel is the place to make a sinner comfortable in his mind. Since I have been confined to these rooms, Bella, and my mind has been taken off the housekeeping, I feel there is something wanting. I should so like to have a little talk with Mr. Mowler, of Zion Chapel, our old minister. I know that he would understand me, and——’
‘Not better than Mr. Culverhouse,’ cried Bella, eagerly. ‘You don’t know how good he is, how tender of one’s feelings, how sympathetic. I have visited among his poor, and have heard him talk to sick people. He is an angel of consolation. Do let him come and sit with you, and read or talk to you.’
‘I shouldn’t mind,’ said Mrs. Piper, ‘but I’m afraid his views are not evangelical enough for me.’
‘I don’t know much about his views, but I know it is beautiful to hear him talk. Shall I ask him to come this afternoon?’
‘You may if you like, Bella, if you can take such a liberty. I want some one to strengthen my hope of redemption. There was a time when I believed myself one of the elect, but sitting alone up heremy thoughts have dwelt upon many things that never troubled me when I had the free use of my limbs. I begin to think that church-going and pious reading may not be all in all. I have been like Martha, troubled about many things. I have worried myself too much about the things of this world. I have not considered the lilies of the field, or the birds of the air. I have not been grateful enough for my many blessings, or kind enough to my neighbours. Providence has showered wealth upon me and Piper, and I’m afraid we might have made a better use of it.’
‘I am sure you have been kind to me,’ said Bella.
‘I might have been kinder. I’m afraid I’ve only been kind because you’ve been useful to me. I suppose there’s some spots and stains in the lives of the best of us; but my life seems to me all blackened over with weeds and foul spots when I look back upon it. Oh, Bella, to think of the many things I might have done! There’s my own blood relations! I’ve kept them at arm’s length, only because I thought their clothes and manners would be a blot upon this house. I’ve been a slave to this house, and the slavery has killed me. I was a happier woman whenwe lived in the Great Yafford Road, and when I helped to make the beds and dust the rooms every morning, and made my own pastry and cakes. That was what I was born for, Bella, not to be cheated and made light of by a parcel of stuck-up servants.’
‘I shall pass Mr. Culverhouse’s lodgings as I go home,’ said Bella. ‘I’ll ask him to come and chat with you.’
‘You may, my dear; though I don’t feel that I shall get the same comfort from him that I should from Mr. Mowler.’
Bella walked briskly through the Park, reflecting on the foolishness of human nature. Here was Mrs. Piper, to whom had been given such great prosperity, and who had made so little use of her advantages, frittering away life upon trivial anxieties, and missing the chance of happiness. She looked along the fine old avenue, and thought how much grandeur and importance a sensible young woman like herself might have derived from such surroundings. But on poor Mrs. Piper all these good things had been thrown away. That poor dull bit of agate looked ridiculous in the splendid setting which would havebeen quite in harmony with a shining little gem like Bella Scratchell. It was a clear bright winter day, the sky blue, the moor a warm purple, the leafless woods lightly powdered with snow, white patches lying here and there among the dark trunks of oak and elm. Bella walked quickly through the Park and along the high road leading to the village.