butterfly within a triangle
sea scene with a fence going into the sea
CHAPTER IX.
Duringthe days that followed she was shut up in the cottage alone; and no one entered save Jane Mitchell, who came in the morning to light the fire while the remnant of coal lasted, and then was sent away.
“I shall not require you any more,” she said to Lucas, when he came to ask if she wanted the pony. She was covered with shame, and could never drive along the roads again.
“No, I do not need any provisions,” she said to Jane Mitchell, who offered to do some shopping for her; “I have sufficient in the house, and I will not trouble you to come again, Jane, until this day week”—and, having securely fastened the outer doors, she went to the drawing-room.
“I shall be dead by then,” she thought, “and Jane will find me.”
She was terribly ill, but she did not know it. The cold and the damp of that long day in London and afterwards had laid hold on her. She coughed, and knew that swift pains went through her, and a load was on her chest, but she had no time to notice these things. She had had no food for days. Save a little milk in a cup, and some bread, there was nothing left when Jane Mitchell took her departure. She was being slowly starved; she knew it, and did not care. The awful shame, the misery, the agony, that had overtaken her, stifled all other feelings, and were killing her; she knew that, too, and waited for death. Everything had gone out of her life; there was nothing to come into it more. She had been proud of her memories, her unsullied past, her own spotlessness—“Now it is all gone,” she said to herself. Every memory was a reproach or was hideous. She sat on one of the chairs before the drawing-room fireplace, and thought and thought and thought, till she could bear it no longer. It seemed as if pain were stamping the life out of her, as if she must be dying; she could feel that she was dying; but life remained by a little, and grew keen, and tortured her again. The key was turned in the lock of Alfred Wimple’s room, but his touch was on everything in the house; and a shrinking from it was her strongest feeling concerning him. Even the sight of a cup from which he had drunk made her shudder more than the bitter cold. “The place is contaminated,” she said to herself; “it is poisoned.” Sometimes for a few minutes a little tenderness would try to push its way into her heart again, but she shrank from that most of all, and with horror and loathing of herself. She was bowed down with disgrace. She felt as if by even living she was committing an offence against the whole world. There was no one she was fit to see; she had no right of any sort left, no business to be in the light; and there was no place in which she could hide. The nights were worst of all, they were so long and still; and when she had used the two candles left in the dining-room she had no means of shortening them even by an hour. Then, quaking, she lay on the hard sofa in the drawing-room, while the darkness gathered round, and the cold fastened its sharpest fangs into her. In those long hours she suffered not only her own reproaches, but the reproaches of the dead—of the dear ones she had loved in bygone years. From every corner they seemed to come—through the closed door and in at the curtained windows; troops of them—till she could bear it no longer, and dared not see the darkness that seemed to be growing white with their faces. But when she closed her eyes it was no better: they came a little closer and touched her with their hands, as if they would push her a little farther into space; she was not fit to be among them. The friends of her girlhood, with whom she had played and shared her little secrets, came from the strange world into which they had carried the memory of their own blameless lives. They looked at her reproachfully, and went away; she would never be one of them now, even in eternity. And there was one more; she could see him coming softly through the shadows. He stood beside her, and she cowered and hid her face. Then she knew that he was sorry and understood that, in some grotesque manner, it had been done half for love of him. It comforted her a little to think this, while she turned her face down to the cushion, and sobbed, “Forgive me, I am so ashamed—so ashamed.” At last, perhaps, she would ache with fever and cold, and the sharp pains went through her again. She welcomed these almost lovingly, thinking that perhaps they meant the coming of the end; and gradually, as the morning broke, she would doze off into a weary sleep.
Sometimes a ghastly fear would seize her that Alfred Wimple was coming back. She could hear his footsteps going round the house; she fancied he was creeping beneath the verandah, that he was trying the window. He wanted to come in and strangle her. She could feel his long hands closing round her throat, and put up her own to draw them, finger by finger, away. It was not the killing she would mind, but the pollution of his touch.
Through the day she wandered from room to room—now looking at the table at which he had sat the last night of all; or seeing him, with his back to the buttery-hatch, eating the sole and the chicken she had brought from London; or standing in the doorway, when he came afterwards and asked her for the evening paper. She went to the window and looked at the garden, and the pathway down to the dip; but this was more than she could bear, and she would turn away and sit down by the empty fireplace again. She grew hungry once; a terrible craving for food came over her. She gathered some sticks together, and made a fire, all the time seeing strange visions and grinning fiends that mocked her. She took them to be the punishment of her sin—for sin she counted all that she had done—but in reality they were but signs of the illness and starvation that were contending for the mastery of her. She put a little water on to boil over the blazing sticks, and watched it greedily. She made some tea, with trembling eagerness, and found a new excitement in the strength it gave her; but when the fire had died away, and an hour had passed, she was prostrate again. Gradually she became so ill that she could scarcely drag herself from the drawing-room to the kitchen; the sense of being unfit to stay in the world grew upon her—a dread of seeing people, a haunting fear of some one coming to the door. But no one came through all those terrible days except, once or twice, Jane Mitchell, only to be told that “her services were not required.”
She thought of Walter and Florence sometimes, and was afraid of their coming back. She could never look them in the face again, or dare to speak to them, or see the children. Just as before she had exaggerated her own importance in the world and her own virtue, now she exaggerated her own disgrace. She knew what the women she had once despised felt like—“I was never lenient,” she said to herself. “I was very harsh, as if they had gone out of their way to do wrong. I ought to have shown them more clemency”—and as she said this, there came before her the face of Mrs. North. She sat and looked at it. “She was young, and there was excuse for her; and I am old, yet could not forgive her. I will make atonement now. I will write and tell her.” Her fingers were so weak she could hardly hold the pen, but she managed to put down a little entreaty for forgiveness. “I ought to have been more gentle to you,” she wrote. “I know that now, for I have been as frail”—she stopped and gave a sad little wink at the word—“as you. I know what your sufferings have been by my own, and can pity your humiliation.” The letter remained on the table—she almost forgot it; fever and blackness filled her life—she could scarcely walk across the room.
The morning brought the postman, with a letter from Walter and Florence. “Would you put a postage-stamp on this for me?” she said, giving him the one for Mrs. North. “I will repay you the next time you come; I have no change for the moment.”
She put the letter with the Monte Carlo postmark on the mantelpiece, and stood looking at the familiar handwriting, and imagining them together beneath the blue sky, Walter in high spirits, and Florence with her pretty hair plaited round her head. “Dear children,” she said. “He is growing more and more like his father.” She closed her eyes for a moment; her limbs swayed and gave way beneath her; and she fell from sheer weakness, and could make no effort to rise. Presently she pulled the cushion down, and lay on the rug again as she had on the night of Alfred Wimple’s departure. She did not know how the day passed—probably most of it went in forgetfulness. The next afternoon came, and she had not noticed the hours.
The click of the gate, and footsteps coming towards the house—Aunt Anne struggled up, panting, and listened—a quick knock at the door. She hesitated, raised herself to her feet by the armchair, and went out, but could not gather courage to undo the lock.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Let me in,” cried a voice that was familiar enough, though she could not identify it. She bowed her head—she was about to be looked at in all her humiliation—and, with trembling hands, opened the door.
Mrs. North walked in, with a happy laugh. She was perfectly dressed, as usual, and carried a white basket.
“My dear old lady,” she said, “what is the matter? Your letter frightened me out of my senses. I came off the moment it arrived. You poor old darling, what is the matter? Why, you can’t stand—I must carry you.” She supported the old lady back into the drawing-room—cheerless and cold enough it looked; that was the first impression Mrs. North had of it—and sat down beside her on the sofa.
“My love,” the old lady said, “I wrote to ask your forgiveness; it was due to you that I should, for I am worse than you. If I was harsh to you once, you may be harsh to me now.”
Mrs. North pressed her hand.
“But you are ill, dear Mrs. Wimple,” she said.
Aunt Anne looked up, with a start of horror.
“I must ask you never to call me by that name again; it is not mine. It is the symbol of my disgrace. It is my greatest punishment to remember that I ever for a single moment bore it.” And then she broke down, and, dropping her head on Mrs. North’s shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break.
“You dear—you poor old dear,” Mrs. North said, stroking the scanty gray hair; “I can’t bear to see you cry—you mustn’t do it; you are ill. Who is here with you?”
“There is no one here. I am not fit to have any one with me. I am all alone.”
“All alone!”
“Yes”—and she shook her head.
“Then I shall stay and take care of you, and nurse you, and make you quite well again. You know I always cared for you, dear old lady”—and Mrs. North kissed her tenderly.
“And I treated you with so much severity,” Aunt Anne said ruefully.
“It was very good for me. And now,” Mrs. North said, in her sweet, coaxing voice, “put your feet up on the sofa; you are trembling and shaking with cold. Why, you have no fire; let us go into another room where there is one.”
“There is no fire in the house,” Aunt Anne answered. “The weather is very mild; moreover, the coal-cellar needs replenishing. I have not been sufficiently well to do it.”
“No fire!—and you evidently suffering from bronchitis. Oh, you do indeed need to be looked after. Have you no servant here?” Mrs. North was rapidly taking in the whole situation.
“No, my dear. I wished to be alone.”
“But this is terrible. We must set everything to rights. You appear to be killing yourself. I don’t believe you have anything to eat and drink in the house.”
“No. I have been too ill to require nourishment; I regret that I cannot ask you to stay——”
“Oh, but I am going to stay——”
“No, my love, I cannot allow it——” Aunt Anne began tremblingly.
Mrs. North looked at her, almost in despair. Then she took off her hat and gloves, and stood for a moment, a lovely picture in the middle of the dreary room, before she knelt down by Aunt Anne.
“Let me stay with you,” she pleaded, taking the two thin hands in hers; “you were always so good to me. I know that something terrible has happened to you; you shall tell me what it is by-and-by, when you are better. Now I want to take care of you; and you will let me, won’t you?”
“You shall do anything you like, my dear,” Aunt Anne gasped, too weak to offer resistance.
Then Mrs. North went out to the fly, which was still waiting at the gate, and found Jane Mitchell, who, attracted by the unusual sight, was talking to the driver.
“I want some coals sent at once, and a servant.”
“I was the servant, if you please, ma’am; only Mrs. Wimple said she didn’t want me,” remarked Jane.
“Then go in immediately and make a fire,” answered Mrs. North, imperiously; “and if there are no coals get some, from a shop or your mother’s cottage or anywhere else. There must be shops in the village. Order tea and sugar, and everything else you can think of. I will send to London for my maid and cook, to come and help you. Make haste and light a fire in the drawing-room. Where is my shawl? Here, driver, take this telegram; and order these things from the village, and say they are wanted instantly”—she had written the list on the leaf of a note-book; “and this is for your trouble,” she added.
“Now, you dear old lady,” she said, going back to her, “let me put this shawl over your feet first, for we must make you warm. Consider that I have adopted you.” In a moment she ran upstairs, and searched for a soft pillow to put under Aunt Anne’s head, and then produced some grapes and jelly from the basket which, with a certain foresight, she had brought with her. Aunt Anne sucked in a little of the jelly almost eagerly, and as she did so Mrs. North realized that she had only just come in time. “We must send for a doctor,” she thought; “but I am afraid that everything is too late.”
In twenty-four hours the cottage looked like another place. Mrs. North’s cook had taken possession of the kitchen; a comfortable-looking, middle-aged maid went up and down the stairs; the windows were open, though there were fires burning in all the grates. There were good things in the larder, and an atmosphere of home was everywhere. Aunt Anne was bewildered, but Mrs. North looked quite happy.
“I have taken possession of you,” she explained, the second morning after she came. “You ought to have sent for me sooner. In fact, you ought never to have left me. You only got into mischief, and so did I.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Aunt Anne, feebly, “we both did.”
Mrs. North’s lips quivered for a moment.
“It shows that we ought to have stayed together,” she said, half crying. “Perhaps I should have been better if you had not gone. Oh, I shall never forget all you told me this morning.”
For Aunt Anne, in sheer desperation, as well as in penitent love and gratitude, had poured out the whole history of her life since she left Cornwall Gardens, and Mrs. North’s keen perception and quick sympathy had filled in any outlines that had been left a little vague.
“We know each other so well now, I don’t think I ought to call you Mrs. Baines any longer. I want to call you something else.”
“Let it be anything you like, my dear.”
“What does the Madon—Mrs. Hibbert, call you? But I know; she calls you ‘Aunt Anne.’ Let me do the same?”
“Yes, dear, you shall call me Aunt Anne.”
“Oh, I am so glad to be with you,” Mrs. North went on. “I have longed sometimes to put down my head on your lap and cry. I have been just as miserable as you have—more, a thousand times more; for my shame”—she liked indulging Aunt Anne in her estimate of her own conduct—“has been all my own wicked doing, but yours was only a sad mistake. I don’t think we ought to be separated any more, Aunt Anne; we ought to live together, and take care of each other.”
“My dear,” said the old lady, still lying on the sofa, “there will be no living for me; I am going to die.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. North answered, with a little gasp, “you are going to live and be taken care of, and loved properly. I wish the doctor would come again. Then I should speak on medical authority. Go to sleep a little while; I will sit by you.”
An hour passed. Aunt Anne opened her eyes.
“Could you put me by the fire, my dear? I am very cold.”
“Yes, of course I can; but wait a moment. Clarke will come and help me. Clarke,” she called, “I want you to come and help me to move Mrs. Baines.
“Now you look more comfortable,” she said, when it was done. “There is a footstool for your feet, and the peacock beside you to keep you company.”
Aunt Anne sat still for a moment, looking at the fire.
“My dear,” she said presently, “I have been thinking of what you said; we have both suffered very much; we ought to be together. Only now you have the hope of a new life before you. But we have both suffered,” she repeated.
Mrs. North knelt down beside her with a long sigh. “Suffered,” she said. “Oh, dear old lady, if you only knew what I have suffered; the loneliness of my girlhood, the misery of my marriage, the perpetual hunger for happiness, the struggle to get it. And oh! the longing to be loved, and the madness when love came, and then—then—but you know,” she whispered, passionately—“I need not go over it; the shame, and the publicity, and the relief I dared not to acknowledge even to myself, when I was set free. And then the awful dread that even he, the man for whom I did it all, would perhaps despise me as the rest of the world did. I am not wicked naturally, I am not, indeed; I don’t think any woman on this green earth has loved beautiful things and longed to do righteous things, more than I have, or felt the misery of failure more bitterly.”
“It will come right now, my love,” Aunt Anne said gently. “You are young; it will all come right. You said you had a telegram, and that he was coming back?”
“Yes, he is coming back,” Mrs. North answered, in a low voice; “but I do not want him to set it right because I did the wrong for him, or just to make reparation from a sense of honour. I do not want to spoil his life; for some people will cut him if he marries me; it is only—only—if he loves me still, and more than all the world, as I do him—that is the only chance of it all coming right. It is time I had a letter. But here is your beef-tea. Let us try and forget all our troubles, and get a little peace together.” She looked up with an April-day smile, took the beef-tea from Clarke, and, holding it before Aunt Anne, watched with satisfaction every mouthful she took.
“I fear I give you a great deal of trouble,” the old lady said gratefully.
“It isn’t trouble”—and the tears came to her eyes; “it is blessedness. I never had any one before to serve and wait on whom I loved; even my hands are sensible of the happiness of everything they do for you. It is new life. But now we have talked too much, and you must go to sleep.”
“Yes, my love,” and Aunt Anne put her head back on the pillow; “I will do as you desire, but you are very autocratic.”
“Of course.” Mrs. North laughed at hearing the familiar word, and then went to the dining-room for a little spell of quietness.
“Clarke,” she said to the maid who had been waiting there, “go in and watch by Mrs. Baines; she must not be left alone.”
Mrs. North sat down on the chair that Aunt Anne had pulled out for Alfred Wimple after her return from London.
“Oh, I wonder if it will come right?” she said to herself. “If it does—if it does—if it does! But I ought to have had a letter by this time; it is long enough since the telegram from Bombay. Something tells me that it will come right; I think that is the meaning of the happiness that has forced itself upon me lately. It is no use trying to be miserable any longer. Happiness seems to be coming near and nearer. I have a sense of forgiveness in my heart; surely I know what it means? Perhaps, as Aunt Anne says, all I have suffered has been an atonement for the wrong. One little letter, and I shall be content. The dear old lady shall never go away from me; she shall just be made as happy as possible.” She got up and went to the window, and leaned out towards the garden. “Those trees at the end,” she said to herself, “surely must hide the way down to the dip, where she listened. It is very lovely to-day”—and she looked up at the sky; “but I wish the doctor would come, I should feel more satisfied.” There was a footstep. “Yes, Clarke; is anything the matter? Why have you come? You look quite pale.”
“Mrs. Baines is going to die, ma’am; I am certain of it.”
“Going to die?” Mrs. North’s face turned white, and she went towards the door.
“I don’t mean this minute, ma’am; but just now she opened her eyes and looked round as if she didn’t see, and then she picked at her dress as dying people do at the sheet—it’s a sure sign. Besides, she is black round the mouth. I don’t believe she will live three days.”
Mrs. North clasped her hands, with fear.
“I wish she would stay in bed; the doctor said she ought to do so yesterday; but she seemed better, and begged so hard to come down this morning that I gave way.”
“It’s another sign,” said the maid; “they always want to get up towards the last.”
“The doctor promised he would be here by twelve, and now it is nearly two.”
He came an hour later. “She must be taken upstairs at once,” he said; so they carried her up, Clarke and the doctor between them, while Mrs. North followed anxiously; and all of them knew that Aunt Anne would never walk down the stairs again.
Then a telegram was sent to Florence and Walter at Monte Carlo.
But she was a little better in the evening, and Mrs. North brightened up as she saw it. Perhaps Clarke was a foolish croaker, and signs were foolish things to trouble one’s self about. The old lady might live, after all, and there would be some happiness yet.
“No, Aunt Anne, you are not going to get up yet,” she said next morning, in answer to an inquiring look; “you must wait until the doctor has been; remember it is my turn to be autocratic.”
“Yes, my love,” and she dozed off. Half her time was spent in sleep. Since Mrs. North’s arrival there had stolen over her a gradual contentment, as if a crisis had occurred, and the blackness of the past grown dim. Perhaps it was giving place to all that was in her heart, or to the sound of Mrs. North’s fresh young voice, and the loving touch of her hand. Be it what it might, Alfred Wimple and the misery that he had caused seemed to have gone farther and farther away, while peacefulness was stealing over her. “It is like being with my dear Florence and Walter,” she said to Mrs. North once—“only perhaps you understand even better than they could, for you have gone through the pain.”
“Yes, dear Aunt Anne, I have gone through the pain”—and Mrs. North sat waiting for the doctor again, not that she was very uneasy to-day, for the old lady was a little better, and hope grows up quickly when youth passes by.
flowers
scene with a castle in the background
CHAPTER X.
Thesound of the door-bell, and of some one being shown into the drawing-room.
“The doctor has come, Aunt Anne,” Mrs. North said. “I will invigorate myself with a talk before I bring him to you, and tell him that you are much better.” But instead of the doctor she found a little, dried-up-looking old gentleman standing in the middle of the room, holding his hat and umbrella in one hand. She looked at him inquiringly.
“I understood that Mrs. Baines was here,” he said. Mrs. North looked up, with expectation. “I have come from London expressly to see her on important business. I was solicitor to the late Sir William Rammage,” he added. Mrs. North’s spirits revived. This looked like a new and exciting phase of the story.
“Are you Mr. Boughton?”
“I am Mr. Boughton,” and he made her a formal little bow. “I see you understand——”
“Oh yes,” she said eagerly; “and the ex-Lord Mayor was the old lady’s cousin. I regret to say that she is very ill in bed, and cannot possibly see you, but I should be happy to deliver any message.” Mr. Boughton looked at her, with benevolent criticism, and thought her a most beautiful young woman. She meanwhile grasped the whole situation to her own satisfaction. That horrid Lord Mayor, as she mentally called Sir William, had probably told his solicitor all about Alfred Wimple; and the little dried-up gentleman before her, who was (as she had instantly remembered) the uncle, had come to see how the land lay. Mrs. North felt as convinced as Sir William had done that the whole affair was a conspiracy between the uncle and nephew, and she promptly determined to make Mr. Boughton as uncomfortable as possible.
“I quite understand the business on which you have come to see Mrs. Baines,” she said, with decision, but with a twinkle of mischief she could not help in her eyes. “You have heard, of course, that the conduct of your delightful nephew, Mr. Alfred Wimple, is entirely found out.”
“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Boughton, astonished out of his senses. “What has he to do with Mrs. Baines?”
“You perhaps approved of his romantic marriage?” Mrs. North inquired politely. She was enjoying herself enormously.
“His romantic marriage!” exclaimed the lawyer. “I know nothing about it. My dear madam, what do you mean? Is that scoundrel married?”
“Most certainly he is married,” Mrs. North went on; “and, as far as I can gather particulars from Mrs. Baines, your charming niece is a dressmaker at Liphook.”
“At Liphook!” exclaimed Mr. Boughton, more and more astonished; “why—why——”
“Where she lives with her grandmother,” continued Mrs. North, in the most amiable voice. “Her mother, I understand, lets lodgings in the Gray’s Inn Road, and it was Mr. Wimple’s kind intention to pay the amount he owes her out of Mrs. Baines’s fortune.”
“Good gracious!—that was the woman who came to me the other day. I never heard of such a thing in my life. How did he get hold of Mrs. Baines?” There was something so genuine in his bewilderment that Mrs. North began to believe in his honesty, but she was determined not to be taken in too easily.
“The details are most exciting, and will be exceedingly edifying in a court of justice. Now may I inquire why you so particularly wish to see the old lady?”
“I came to see her about the late Sir William Rammage,” Mr. Boughton said, finding it difficult to collect his scattered wits after Mrs. North’s information.
“Is he really dead, then?” she asked politely.
“Most certainly; he died on the fifth, and Mrs. Baines——”
“She is much too ill to see anybody; and as I understand he burnt his will, and has not left her any money, it is hardly worth while to worry her with particulars of his unlamented death.”
“Burnt his will? Yes, for some extraordinary reason he did—so Charles, the man-servant, tells me—he did it in her presence. He had no time to make another, for the agitation caused by her visit killed him.”
“Or perhaps it was the mercy of Providence,” remarked Mrs. North.
Mr. Boughton did not heed the remark, but asked—
“May I inquire if you are in Mrs. Baines’s confidence?”
“Entirely,” she answered decisively.
“Then I may tell you that no former will has been found, and she is next-of-kin. There are no other relations at all, I believe, and she will therefore inherit about three times as much as if the burnt will had remained in existence.”
“Really!”—and Mrs. North clapped her hands for joy. And then the tears came into her eyes. “Oh, but it is too late, for she is dying; nothing can save her; she is dying. I have telegraphed to her nephew and niece to come back from Monte Carlo. She has had a terrible shock, from which she will never recover; and besides that she has virtually starved herself and taken a hundred colds. She has not the strength of a fly left. I know she is dying,” Mrs. North added, with almost a sob.
“Don’t you think that the good news I bring might save her life?”
“No; and I am not sure that it would be good to save her life, she has suffered so cruelly. What a wicked old man Sir William Rammage was!” she burst out, and looked up sympathetically at Mr. Boughton.
“He was my client,” the lawyer urged.
“He allowed the poor old lady to starve for want of money, and now that he is dead and she is dying it comes to her.”
“Yes, it is very unfortunate—very unfortunate.”
“Everything seems to be a point of view,” Mrs. North went on, in the eager manner which so often characterized her. “Poverty is the point of view from which we look at the riches we cannot get; from vice we look at virtue which we cannot attain; from hell we look at the heaven we cannot reach. Perhaps Sir William Rammage would appreciate the latter part of the remark now”—she said the last words between laughter and tears.
“My dear madam,” Mr. Boughton exclaimed, in rather a shocked voice, “pray don’t let us begin a discussion. To go back to Mrs. Baines, I think if I could see her——”
“It is quite impossible; you would remind her of your horrible nephew, and that would kill her.”
“What on earth has she got to do with my nephew?”—and this time his manner convinced Mrs. North that he was not an impostor.
“Mr. Boughton,” she said gravely, “the old lady is very, very ill. The doctor says she cannot live, and I fear that the sight of you would kill her straight off; but, if you like, I will go and sound her, and find out if she is strong enough to bear a visit from you”—and, the lawyer having agreed to this, Mrs. North went upstairs.
“Dearest old lady”—her girlish voice had always a tender note in it when she spoke to Aunt Anne—“I have some good news for you—very good news. Do you think you could bear to hear it?”
“Yes, my love,” Aunt Anne answered wheezily, “but you must forgive me if I am sceptical as to its goodness.”
Mrs. North knelt down by the bedside, and stroked the thin hands. “Mr. Boughton is downstairs; he has come to tell you that Sir William Rammage is dead.”
“Then it is true,” Mrs. Baines said sadly. “Poor William! My dear, we once lay in the same cradle together, while our mothers watched beside it—what does Mr. Boughton say about Alfred?”
“He doesn’t appear to know anything about his wickedness.”
“I felt sure he did not; I never believed in the depravity of human nature.”
“Then how would you account for Mr. Wimple?” she asked, with much interest.
The old lady considered for a moment.
“Perhaps he was my punishment for all I did in the past. I have thought that lately, and tried to bear it—only it is more than I can bear. It has humiliated me too much. Tell me why Mr. Boughton has come; is it anything about Alfred?”
“Nothing,” was the emphatic answer; “and if you see him I advise you not to mention Mr. Wimple’s name.”
“My dear,” Aunt Anne said impressively, “except to yourself, his name will never pass my lips again. I feel that it is desecration to my dear Walter and Florence to mention it in their house. I shall never forgive myself for having brought him into it. But perhaps all I have suffered is some expiation; you and I have both felt that about our frailty”—and she shook her head. “What is the good news?”
“Mr. Boughton brought it, and it is about Sir William’s money.”
Mrs. Baines was silent for a moment; then she looked up, with a little wink, and a smile came to her lips. “I should like to see him,” she said. “But will you help me to get up first? I think if I could sit by the open window I should be better.”
“Perhaps you would, you dear; it’s warm enough for summer. Let me help you into your dressing-gown. Stay, you shall wear mine. It is very smart, with lavender bows; quite proper half-mourning for a cousin. There—now—gently”—and she helped the old lady into the easy-chair by the window. It was a long business, but at last she was safely there, with the sunshine falling on her, and the soft lace and lavender ribbons of Mrs. North’s dressing-gown about her poor old neck.
“And are you sure it’s good news, my love?” she asked Mrs. North.
“I am quite sure,” Mrs. North answered, as she tucked an eider-down quilt round Aunt Anne. “He has come from London on purpose to bring it to you.”
“Has he partaken of any refreshment since he arrived?”
“No; but I will have some ready for him when he comes down from his talk with you. Now you shall have yourtête-à-tête”—and Mrs. North went back to the lawyer.
“You must break it to her very, very gently, and you mustn’t be more than five or ten minutes with her,” she said, as she took him up to the bedroom door.
Aunt Anne was so much fatigued with the exertion of getting up that she found it a hard matter to receive Mr. Boughton with all the courtesy she desired to show him. She took the news of her fortune very quietly; it did not even excite her.
“It is too late,” she said. “Nothing can solace me for what I have lost; but it will enable me to make provision for my dear Walter and Florence.” Her eyes closed; her head sank on her breast; she put out her hand towards the window, as if to clutch at something that was not there.
Mr. Boughton saw it, and understood.
“I cannot repay you for your kindness and consideration,” she went on presently. “Even when I have discharged my pecuniary obligation I shall still remain your debtor. But there are some things I should like to do. I wish Mrs. North to have a sum of money; I will tell her my wishes in regard to it.”
“Perhaps I had better return in a day or two. You must forgive me for saying, my dear madam, that, with the vast sum that is now at your disposal, you ought to make a will immediately. I could take instructions now if you like.”
“Instructions?” she repeated, with a puzzled air; “I will give them all to Mrs. North, and you can take them from her. You will not think me inhospitable if I ask you to leave me now, Mr. Boughton? I am very tired. Tell me, did they send for you when William Rammage died?”
“They telegraphed for me immediately, and when I got to the office I found your letter waiting for me—the one you wrote before you left London, giving me your address here.” She did not hear him; her eyes had closed again, and her chin rested down on the lavender ribbons; the sunshine came in and lighted up her face, and that which Mr. Boughton saw written on it was unmistakable.
“You are quite right, my dear madam,” he said to Mrs. North, as he sat partaking of the refreshment Aunt Anne had devised for him; “it has come too late.”
He looked at his watch when he had finished. “I have only a quarter of an hour to stay,” he said. “Before I go, would you give me some explanation of the extraordinary statements you made on my arrival?”
“You shall have it,” Mrs. North answered eagerly; “but wait one moment, till I have taken this egg and wine to Mrs. Baines and seen that the maid is with her.”
“That’s a remarkably handsome girl,” the lawyer thought, when she had disappeared; “I wonder where I have heard her name before, and who she is?” But this speculation was entirely forgotten when he heard the story of his nephew’s doings of the last few months. “God bless my soul!” he exclaimed; “why, he might be sent to prison with hard labour—and serve him right, the scoundrel.”
“I am delighted to hear you say it,” Mrs. North answered impulsively. “Please shake hands with me. I am ashamed to say I thought it all a conspiracy, even after you came, and that is why I was so disagreeable.”
“Conspiracy, my dear madam?—why, the last thing I did to Wimple was to kick him out of my office; and I have been worried by his duns ever since. As for the will she made in his favour, get it destroyed at once, or he may give us no end of trouble yet. She has virtually given me instructions for a new one. I told her I would come in a day or two, but I think it would be safer to come to-morrow. It will have to be rather late in the day, I am afraid, but I can sleep at the inn. In the meantime get the other will destroyed. Why, bless me! if she died to-night it might make an awful scandal; I would not have it happen for all I am worth.”
Mr. Boughton departed; and the doctor came, and gave so bad a report that Mrs. North sent off yet another telegram to Walter and Florence—this time in London—asking them not to waste a moment on their arrival, but to come straight to Witley. And then the second post brought her the morning’s letters which had been sent on. Among them was one with the Naples postmark, which she tore open with feverish haste and could scarcely read for tears of joy.
“I could not write before,” it said. “I am detained here by a friend’s illness; but now that I am thus far I send you just a line to say I shall be with you soon, and I shall never leave you again. I hate to think of it all. The fault was mine, and the suffering has been yours. But I love you, and only live to make you reparation.”
“It is too much happiness to bear,” she said, with a sob. “It is all I wanted, that he should love me—I must write this minute, or he will wonder”—and she got out her blotting-case, just as she did at the hotel at Marseille—it seemed as if that scene had been a suggestion of this—and, kneeling down by the table, wrote—
“I am here with Mrs. Baines, and she is dying. I have just—just had your letter. Oh, the joy of it! What can I say or do?—you know everything that is in my heart better than words can write it down.”
She sealed it up; and, seizing her hat, went once round the garden, for the cottage seemed too small a house to hold so great a happiness as that which had come upon her. She looked up to the sky, and thought how blessed it was to be beneath it, and away at the larches and fir-trees, and wondered if he and she would ever walk between them. Something told her that they would if—if all came right, if she found that he loved her so much that he could not live without her. They would lead such ideal lives; they would do their very best for every one, and make so many people happy, and cover up the past with all the good that love would surely put it into their hearts to do. “It would be too much to bear,” she said to herself; “it is too much to think of yet. I will go back to my dear old lady, and comfort her.”
Aunt Anne was much better for her interview with Mr. Boughton. The excitement had done her good, and some of her little consequential ways had returned with the knowledge of her wealth.
“I am glad to see you, my love,” she said to Mrs. North; “I have many things to discuss with you if you will permit me to encroach on your good nature. Would you mind sitting down on the footstool again beside me, as you did yesterday?” The maid had lifted her on to the old-fashioned sofa at the foot of the bed. She was propped up with pillows, and looked so well and comfortable it seemed almost possible that she might live.
“I will,” Mrs. North answered, still overcome with her own thoughts—“I will sit at your feet, and receive your royal commands. But first permit me to say that you are looking irresistible—my lavender ribbons give you a most ravishing appearance.”
“You are in excellent spirits,” Aunt Anne said, with a pleased smile; “and so am I,” she added. “It has done me a world of good to hear that William Rammage’s iniquitous intentions have been frustrated.”
“I trust he is aware of it,” Mrs. North answered, “and that his soul is delightfully vexed by the enterprising Satan.”
“My love,” said the old lady, with a shocked wink, “you hardly understand the purport of your own words.”
“Yes, I do,” Mrs. North said emphatically; “but now I want to speak about something much more important. I hope you are going to get well—yes, in spite of all the shakes of your dear old head; and that you are going to live to be a hundred and one, in order to scold me with very long words when I offend you.”
“I will endeavour to do so, my love; but I hope that some one else will do it better”—she stopped and closed her eyes.
“I believe you are a witch, and you know about my letter. It has just come, and has made me so happy,” Mrs. North said, between laughing and crying.
“What does he say?” the old lady asked, without opening her eyes.
“He says he is coming,” Mrs. North answered, almost in a whisper. “It’s almost more than I can bear. I think it will all come right. The other was never a marriage—it was cruel to call it one; it was a girl’s body and soul made ready for ruin by those who persuaded her——” and she put her face down.
“My dear, I understand now; I think I was very unsympathetic. But purity counts before all things”—and Aunt Anne’s lips quivered. “Tell me, my love, have you heard—I know it is painful to you to hear his name, but have you heard anything of Mr. North lately?” Mrs. North looked up with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, which a moment before had been full of tears, and answered demurely—
“I am told that he is casting his eyes on an amiable lady of forty-five. She is the sister of an eminent Q.C., has read Buckle’s ‘History of Civilization,’ and her favourite fad is the abolition of capital punishment. But I don’t want to talk of my affairs, Aunt Anne; I want to talk of yours—they are more momentous.” Mrs. North prided herself on picking up Aunt Anne’s words, and using them with great discretion.
“Yes, my love, I am most grateful to you.”
“I am certain—as I tell you—that you are going to live and get well.” Mrs. North meant her words at the moment, for, with the sweet insolence of youth, she was incredulous of death until it was absolutely before her eyes. “But at the same time,” she went on, “now that you are enormously rich, you ought to take precautions in case of an accident. If the cottage were burned down to-night, and we were burned with it, who would inherit your money?”
“I told Mr. Boughton that I would give my instructions to you, and he is coming the day after to-morrow.”
“But have you destroyed the will you made in favour of Alfred Wimple?”
“I have not got it; he took it away with him.” Mrs. North looked quite alarmed.
“We must make another, this minute,” she said; “if the conflagration took place this evening he would get every penny. Let me make it this minute. I can do it on a sheet of note-paper. Don’t agitate your dear old self, I shall be back directly”—and in a moment she had fled downstairs and returned with her blotting-book, and once more she knelt down by a table to write. “You want to leave everything to the Hibberts, don’t you?”
“Yes; but if you would permit me, my love, I should like to leave you something.”
“Then I couldn’t make the will, for it would not be legal; besides, I am rich enough, you kind old lady. Shall I begin?”
“Stop one moment, my dear; will you give me a littlesal volatilefirst, and let me rest for five minutes?”
She closed her eyes, but it was not to sleep; she appeared to be thinking of something that disturbed her. When she looked up again she was almost panting with excitement as well as weakness, and there was the fierce, yet frightened, look in her eyes that had been in them when she opened the front door to turn Alfred Wimple out of the house.
“I want you to do something for me,” she said, almost in a whisper—“I want you to have a sum of money, and to get it to him”—she could not make herself utter his name—“on condition that he goes out of the country with it. Let him go to Australia with the woman——”
“Yes,” Mrs. North said, seeing she hesitated.
“She is not in his position, and could never be received in society.”
“No, dear,” Mrs. North said, reflecting that Mr. Wimple’s own position was not particularly exalted.
“I want him to go out of the country,” Aunt Anne went on—“as far away as possible; I cannot breathe the same air with him, or bear to think that he is beneath the same sky. It is pollution; it is hurrying me out of life; it is most repugnant to me to think that when I am dead he will frequently be within only a few miles of this cottage and of my dear Walter and Florence”—she stopped for a moment, and shuddered, and put her thin hands, one over the other, under her chin. “When I am dead and buried,” she went on, “I believe I should know if his body were put underground, too, in the same country with me, and feel the desecration. It has killed me; it has made me eager to die. But I want to know that he will go away—that none of those I care for will ever see his face again; it will be a sacrilege if he even passes them in the street. I want him to have a sum of money, and to go away.”
“I will take care that he has it,” Mrs. North said gently, “I will speak to the Hibberts. But, Aunt Anne,” she asked, “don’t you think you might forgive him? He shall go away, but you would not like to die without forgiving him?” Mrs. North did not for a moment expect her to do it, or even wish it, but she felt it almost a duty to say what she did from a little notion, as old-fashioned as one of Aunt Anne’s perhaps, about dying in charity with all men.
“No, you must not ask me to do that”—and her voice was determined. “I cannot; it was too terrible.”
“And I am very glad,” Mrs. North said, having eased her conscience with the previous remark—“a slightly revengeful spirit comforts one so much.”
“Don’t let us ever speak of him again, even you and I. I want to shut him out of the little bit of life I have left.”
“We never will,” Mrs. North said. “Let this be the Amen of him. Now I will make the will. Here is a sheet of note-paper and a singularly bad quill pen.”
“This is the last Will and Testament of me, Anne Baines (sometime called Wimple). I revoke all other wills and codicils, and give and bequeath everything that is mine or may be mine to my dear nephew and niece, Walter and Florence Hibbert.”
The maid came and stood on one side and Mrs. North on the other, while Aunt Anne gave a little wink to herself, and pushed aside the end of the lavender ribbon lest it should smudge the paper, and signed “Anne Baines,” looking at every letter as she made it with intense interest.
“I am glad to write that name once more,” she said, and fell back, with a sigh.