CHAPTER VII.GONE.
It was a lovely morning, and every one was going to walk over to Fifield church except Laura, who had almost tearfully entreated to be left in charge of Lally.
“I love her as much as any of you,” she said, “and still I have the least to do with her.”
So it was settled that Laura should remain at home, and all the rest proceed along Berrie Down Lane,—up which we walked slowly and lingeringly in the first chapter in this book—to Fifield.
A large party—for, although the intended festivities had been given up, and no visitors were invited to Berrie Down Hollow, still, the Dudleys themselves made a goodly number—eight, including Bessie—who looked pale and tired whenshe came into the drawing-room, “dressed in all her best;” so shrieked Harry Marsden—and ready to go to church.
“Mayn’t I go too?” asked that young gentleman, pulling at Heather’s dress; “I’d like the walk as well as anybody.”
“Do you think it is only for the sake of the walk we are going to church, Harry?” asked Agnes, virtuously drawing on her gloves as she spoke.
“How should I know? Bessie’s likely going for the sake of the young men; that’s what pa says takes all girls to church,” answered theenfant terrible.
“Well, I daresay Mrs. Dudley will not object to your seeing whether that is what we go for,” said Bessie. “I will brush your hair and put you to rights, for you are a perfect scarecrow now.”
And thus it was settled Master Marsden should accompany the party; and Alick, home for Christmas, had not a chance given him of looking at Agnes to see how she took Harry’s remark about the object for which young ladies went to church.
“What had taken her to North Kemms,” he wondered; “whom could the man be they had met there? what his connection with Bessie?”
These questions Alick stood striving vainly to answer, while Master Marsden was being brushed and made look respectable by Bessie Ormson.
“I am as good as a mother to you, Harry,” she said.
“I am sure you are; but that’s not saying much,” answered the boy. “Mine has always a headache, and is constantly telling us not to make a noise. Noise, indeed! Women can make enough noise themselves, when they want to.”
“Do not say ‘want to,’ Harry, it is vulgar.”
“No more vulgar than you are,” he replied. “I shall talk as I like. What is good enough for pa ought to be good enough for you.”
“It is a fortunate thing for both of us that I am not your pa, as you call him,” Bessie answered, “for I should shake you to death some day. Now, are you ready, or are you going to keep us waiting all day?”
“You think you look so nice in that bonnet,” Harry sneered, “that you want to be off like a flash of lightning. You are none so pretty, some people think, though Harcourt, as my papa says, does imagine there is nobody like you. Pa says hewould not marry you. I heard pa tell ma so, not a week before I came here.”
“I can’t wonder at that,” Bessie replied; “your papa probably finds he has married one too many of the family already.”
But this side stroke Master Marsden seemed unable perfectly to understand; wherefore he asked Bessie what she meant; in reply to which question he received the information that “children should not ask too many questions; and that, if he intended going with them to Fifield church, it was time he got his cap and went downstairs.”
In acknowledgment of all this instruction, Harry, pulling a face at Bessie, that young lady forthwith unceremoniously marched him off and gave him in charge of Cuthbert, who grumbled a little over the trust.
Human nature is much the same on Christmas as on any other day in the week, and every creature in Berrie Down—Heather herself not excepted—felt Harry Marsden to be a burden and a tax.
Never before—never, Heather thought, had Berrie Down Lane looked so lovely as it did on that morning when they all paced it side by side. She had not been out for weeks previously, and the verybranches of the trees seemed to bend and greet her as she passed.
There were few leaves, and there were no wild flowers, yet the banks and hedgerows looked warm and pleasant, the ivy was trailing over the sward and twining fresh and green round the roots of the elms and beeches; the spruce laurel put forth its glossy foliage between the bare boughs of the thorn, and its bluish-black berries formed a contrast to those of the holly, red and glowing in the sunshine.
Everything looked fair and lovely to Heather on that Christmas morning. Arthur had been so kind to her for weeks past, had never grumbled about Lally’s illness, nor complained concerning the child having occupied too much of her time and thoughts.
Alick was back amongst them—not much changed by his sojourn in town—good, and considerate, and helpful as ever. He talked hopefully of a vacant situation in Messrs. Elser’s office, which he thought Cuthbert might fill; and Heather’s secret desire for many a day previously had been that when Cuthbert went forth into the world it might be under Alick’s auspices.
She did not feel quite so certain of the one boy as of the other; she did not think that as Cuthbert grew up she could manage him without Alick’s aid. He was more uncertain in his temper, less to be depended on in any way, weaker for good, stronger for evil than his brother. Altogether, Heather desired that Alick should have the supervision of him; and, behold, there was already a chance of the desire being gratified.
Then Lally was better; though not yet strong, she was certainly better, and the girls were well; even Bessie made no complaint, though Heather thought she looked a trifle pale in her pretty bonnet, made of violet velvet, which was about the most becoming colour and material possible to the complexion of that young belle, Miss Ormson.
“What a shame, dear, that Gilbert is not with us,” Heather had laughingly said the same morning, standing under the misletoe. “Let me kiss you for him.”
“Kiss me for yourself, Heather,” Bessie answered, colouring up to her very temples, “but not for him.”
“And why not for him?” asked Heather.
“I will tell you to-morrow, not to-day,” was the reply. “To-morrow, perhaps.”
And then, irresistibly, there came back to Heather’s mind that passage in “Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia,” where Elizabeth, repeating the word “to-morrow,” sighs.
“You look pale, Bessie,” Heather remarked, when they had almost reached the foot of Berrie Down Lane. “Are you getting tired, dear?”
“I do not feel very well,” Bessie answered; “I think I will go back again, if you have no objection.”
Immediately, every one offered to return with her, even Harry Marsden, who, being debarred from throwing stones at the birds, was beginning to feel weary of the walk.
“I do not mind going to church.” “Let me walk back with you.” “No, I will go.” “No, you have not been out for ever so long.” “Let me”—“me”—“me.”
All of which polite offers Bessie declined, saying, “if any one insisted on returning with her, she should walk on to church.”
“I am not ill,” she finished, “I am only tired; when I get home, I shall lie down and be as bright bythe time you come back as any of you. Good-bye,—au revoir!”—and with that she kissed her hand, and commenced slowly retracing her steps—Heather turning every now and then to watch her progress.
The farther the distance between them became, the silenter grew Heather. She felt a nameless anxiety about Bessie,—an anxiety which she could neither conquer nor analyze, but which, nevertheless, increased until when, almost within sight of Fifield church, she remarked to her husband that she really thought she must return home also.
“I am uneasy about Bessie,” she said; “the girl certainly did not look well.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Arthur, “she is only a little tired. It would vex her if you went home now; I should not think of doing such a thing, I really should not, Heather.”
And so Heather was persuaded not to follow after Bessie, but go on to church.
“You will find her well enough on our return,” remarked Arthur; and his prophecy proved correct, for Bessie met them at the gate looking bright and happy, and with as rich a colour as she had ever boasted mantling in her cheeks.
“Hollo! you’ve been painting,” cried out Master Marsden. “Hasn’t she, Alick? nobody’s face was ever like that, without paint.”
“Harry, I really shall have to write to your mamma if you make such rude remarks,” said Heather, rebukingly. “And so,” she added, addressing Bessie, “you do feel quite well again? I felt so uneasy after you left us that I should have turned, had it not been for Arthur’s remonstrance.”
“I am glad he did remonstrate,” answered Bessie, “it would have been a real grief to me if you had come home on my account. I felt a little tired, that was all, and I am quite rested now.”
So, indeed, it seemed, for never had Bessie been so gay as on that Christmas afternoon. And she was very sweet too, as well as gay; she uttered no sharp speeches; she was ready to play at cat’s-cradle with Leonard, and even refrained from scolding when Harry Marsden, who must needs take a hand in that scientific game also, tore her lace sleeve to shreds.
She made herself agreeable to Arthur likewise, talking to him, while Heather was upstairs, concerning London, and her father’s business, and herfather’s anxieties, and the Squire’s own prospects, as quietly and sensibly, her cousin subsequently declared, as her mother might have done.
“And I think, Heather, she must be very fond of her father,” Arthur informed his wife; “for once when she was speaking about him, and how hard he worked, and of how little help her brothers were to him, her voice quite shook, and the tears came into her eyes. I had not given Bessie credit for so much feeling.”
“She is a dear, sweet girl,” Heather answered. “I am glad she did not insist, as I feared she might, on sitting up with Lally. She is completely worn out, I think. Did you notice how pale she turned when she was bidding us good-night?”
Other people beside Heather had observed this pallor. Mrs. Piggott, who, making a grievous complaint concerning Priscilla Dobbin’s shortcomings and habit of always being out of the way when wanted, was silenced by the sight of Bessie’s wan face, and by Bessie’s entreaty for her not to be hard on Priscilla.
“She was with me a long time, you know, Mrs. Piggott, to-day,” she said; “I did not feel very wellwhen I returned this morning, and Prissy put away my bonnet, and did a few other things for me that I was not inclined to do for myself.”
“There, there, Miss, don’t say another word, but go away to bed; you look like a ghost this minute; you have been trying to kill yourself lately, that is my opinion; but, please God, we will all turn round now.”
“Where shall we turn to, Mrs. Piggott?” asked Bessie, with a smile, and then she re-crossed the hall and ascended the stairs to her own room, only pausing for a moment ere she went, to ask Alick if he would take a letter up to town for her on the following morning.
“It is to papa, and he will receive it earlier if you post it in London. Thank you. I will leave it on the hall table to-night. Good-bye, Alick, good-bye!” and Alick imagined she pressed his hand tighter than ever she had done before, and that there was a very plaintive tone in her voice as she uttered that word, “Good-bye.”
Later on in the night, when every one except Lucy Dudley, who sat up with Lally, was supposed to be in bed, Bessie stole into the nursery, “to have another peep at her child,” she said.
“You ought to have been asleep long ago,” Lucy remarked, rebukingly; but Bessie explained she had been writing to her father a very long letter on an important subject, which Alick was going to take to town with him.
“About your marriage?” Lucy inquired, and Bessie answered, “Yes.”
“If we talk any more, we shall waken Lally,” the girl added. “Good-night, Lucy—good-night, my bad child—my poor little Lally!”
And stooping, she put her lips to Lally’s hand, which lay outside the coverlet, and kissed it softly. When she lifted her head, Lucy saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“Bessie, Bessie, darling, what is the matter?” she whispered, putting her arms round her cousin’s neck, and striving to detain her; but Bessie gently disengaged herself from the embrace, and saying, “we shall waken Lally; there is nothing the matter with me,” left the room—her face buried in her handkerchief, sobbing, sobbing as she went. Lucy would have followed her, but Bessie motioned her not to do so. Then, gliding noiselessly along the passage, she entered herown room, and Agnes heard the key turned in the lock.
Some hours afterwards, when Heather, as was her custom, came to relieve the watcher, Lucy expressed her fear that Bessie could not be well. “She cried so bitterly,” the girl explained.
Hearing this, Mrs. Dudley went to Bessie’s door, and quietly turned the handle.
Contrary to her expectations, the bolt was not drawn inside, and she stepped into the apartment.
In the darkness she stood, holding her breath and listening. Bessie was asleep. Heather heard the regular respiration of what she considered sound slumber, and felt satisfied.
“I do not imagine she can be ill,” Mrs. Dudley remarked, on her return to Lucy. “She is sleeping quietly enough now, at all events. Tell me, dear,” she added, “have you heard any noise at all during the night? I fancied I caught a sound something like footsteps crunching on the gravel, and got up to see. Arthur said it was all my fancy. Did you hear anything?”
“No,” Lucy replied, “nothing whatever. Bessie was downstairs again, you know, leaving out thatletter for Alick to take to town; but she was very quiet. I do not think you could have heard her.”
“It was my fancy, I suppose,” remarked Heather. “I have felt restless and nervous all the night long. I was quite glad when four o’clock struck to get up. Now, go to bed, Lucy, or you will feel ill for want of sleep.”
“No likelihood of that,” Lucy answered, suppressing a yawn, however, as she spoke, and went off, leaving mother and child alone.
Sitting there quite alone with her little girl, the restlessness of which Heather had complained returned upon her with double force. She tried to read; she fetched her work-basket, and commenced sewing; she went and stood by the window looking out into the darkness, and longed for five o’clock, when there would come some sounds of life about the house. It was a still, cold morning, pitch dark. Not a dog barked—not a leaf stirred. The silence was almost insupportable, and Heather felt it to be so, as she left the window and returned to Lally’s side.
Still, the child slept quietly; and now Heather’s thoughts reverted to Bessie. What could be thematter with the girl? Why had she been crying the previous night? Why did she so persistently ignore Mr. Harcourt’s very existence? How did it happen that the time for her marriage seemed no nearer now than it had done in the summer?
That Mr. Harcourt was a devoted correspondent, Heather knew by the evidence of her own eyes. Scarcely a morning passed without the post-bag bringing a long epistle from him to his affianced wife. Bessie’s acknowledgments of these epistles were despatched at much longer and more uncertain intervals; but then Bessie did not profess to be a good correspondent. “She hated letter-writing and letter-writers,” she openly declared; so that her negligence in this particular proved nothing. Besides, her time had been much occupied with Lally, and altogether——
As she reached this point in her mental argument, Mrs. Dudley heard a sound as though a door were being softly opened and closed at the end of the corridor. With that nervous fear upon her, which seems so often the advance courier of some disaster, the messenger spurring on to tell us of the approach of misfortune, Heather went out into thepassage and listened. Yes, there was some one moving stealthily and cautiously in the direction of the back staircase—a woman, for Mrs. Dudley could hear the skirt of her dress brushing against the wall as she stole along.
It could not be any of the servants, because they had no business in that part of the house;—their sleeping-rooms being in the roof, and access to those apartments only possible by means of the back staircase which opened out of the front kitchen.
There was a door of communication, however, between the long south corridor, where the principal bedchambers were situated, and the other portion of the house; and this door Heather now heard close softly, as the first had done.
Satisfied that Bessie must be ill and about to seek Mrs. Piggott’s apartment, Heather hurried after; but when she came to try to open the door, it resisted all her efforts. As a rule, the key remained on the side next the main staircase. Now, Heather found it had been removed, and the door locked from within. Not knowing what all this could mean, she went back to Lally’s room, took a candle, and, descending into the hall, made her way along apassage which led in the direction of the offices. Crossing the front kitchen, she opened the door which led towards the back staircase, and there on the last step stood Priscilla Dobbin.
“What are you doing? where are you going?” asked her mistress.
“I was coming down to look at the clock, ma’am,” answered the girl.
“You have just left Miss Ormson’s room—is she ill?”
“No, ma’am, not as I know of. She told me last night to go to her room when I got up for a letter for Master Alick to take to town.”
“And where is that letter?” asked Mrs. Dudley.
“On the hall table, ma’am, I believe. Miss Bessie left it there herself after she had wrote it.”
“What made you lock the passage-door after you?”
“Miss Bessie told me to, ma’am.”
Heather could not understand the matter at all. She did not believe that there was a sentence of truth in the girl’s statement; but what her object might be in speaking falsely, she was unable to imagine.
“Miss Ormson is awake, then?” she said, at length.
“Yes, ma’am—leastways she was when I saw her.”
Without another word, Mrs. Dudley turned to regain the hall. She wanted to see if the letter were really on the slab, and then she meant to go to Bessie’s room and ascertain whether or not Priscilla had spoken falsely.
The whole thing baffled Heather. But for the locking of the door, she should have thought nothing more about the matter; but what object either Bessie or Priscilla could have in thus cutting off immediate communication between the two parts of the house, she was quite unable to divine.
There on the slab lay Bessie’s letter—a thick letter, for Heather lifted and held it in her hand for a moment; then she laid it down again, and ascended the front staircase, slowly and thoughtfully.
She had not reached the landing, however, before Priscilla was beside her.
“Ma’am—Mrs. Dudley,” began the girl, “you can turn me out of the house this moment, if you like. I told you a lie about that letter. I did not go to Miss Bessie’s room for it. Miss Bessie is gone.”
“Gone!” Heather looked at the girl, and blankly repeated that word after her.
“Yes, ma’am; and there is a letter for you, please, on the toilet-table,” at which point in her confession Prissy began to whimper.
“Don’t do that,” said Mrs. Dudley, almost angrily. “Go on before me to Miss Ormson’s room, and be quiet.”
Thus ordered, Priscilla walked along the passage, and, opening the door of Bessie’s bedchamber, stood aside to allow Mrs. Dudley to enter.
Heather, as she did so, glanced hurriedly round the apartment. There was no disorder, no confusion; everything looked precisely as it might have done, had Bessie been there—only Bessie was not there.
Heather went up to the bed, and put her hand on the sheet. It felt warm, and she turned to Priscilla, saying, interrogatively—
“She has only just left the house?”
“She went at one o’clock, ma’am.”
“Impossible! I have been in the room myself since four o’clock, and she was sleeping then.”
“That was me, ma’am; and I was not asleep. Iheard you come in—I never went to sleep all night. I’d have given anything, ma’am, if I might have told you. I never was so miserable in all my life—and poor Miss Bessie, she were a-crying dreadful.”
“Where is she gone?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Who is she gone with?”
“That gentleman as is so sweet on her.”
“You don’t mean Mr. Harcourt?”
“Lor’! no, ma’am; that other what she came back from church to meet yesterday.”
Utterly bewildered, Heather stood in the middle of the room, confounded and almost stupified.
Had any one come to her and said Bessie was dead, she could not have felt more shocked—more grieved. Under her eyes this thing had been going on—this deception from day to day, and from week to week—and she had never even suspected its existence. Her very servant had been cognisant of it; this girl, this false, cheating, untruthful Prissy Dobbin, had been persuaded by Bessie to conceal the mischief until it was too late to repair it. And Bessie, too, that bright, gay, affectionate creature, was but a hypocrite and a deceiver! Mrs. Dudleyfelt this to be the last drop in the cup, and, covering her face, wept bitterly.
“Don’t ’ee, ma’am,” implored Priscilla, “don’t ’ee take on so! Read what Miss Bessie says, mayhap that ’ill tell you where she’s gone. The gentleman worships the very ground she treads on; and they would have told you, only something about his father, I don’t rightly know what, prevented them. Miss Bessie prayed and begged him yesterday to let her speak to you. He wanted her, right or wrong, to go off with him then, but she wouldn’t; she said she wouldn’t spoil your Christmas Day, not for fifty husbands—she did.”
“You were very fond of Miss Bessie?” Mrs. Dudley said, inquiringly.
“Main fond, ma’am,” answered the girl. “I took to her from the day she talked to me in the field, and give I that harf a crown.”
“Then don’t go chattering about her having gone off with any one, Prissy. If you are fond of her, show your fondness by keeping silence.”
And with that, Mrs. Dudley, first bidding Prissy stay with Lally, in case she wakened, went and roused her husband.
“Arthur,” she said, “Bessie is off—she has eloped. What are we to do?”
“Bessie eloped—Bessie off! Heather, you must be dreaming!”
“I wish I were,” answered his wife. “Is there any use in trying to follow her, do you think?”
“There might be, if we knew where she was gone,” Arthur replied. “What does she say in her letter?” he added, noticing the paper in his wife’s hand.
“She does not give a clue,” said Heather. “She merely states she is gone to be married, and that, whenever her husband allows her, she will write again.”
“Better call up Alick,” suggested Arthur; and, accordingly, Alick was called.
“They have four hours’ start,” said the young man, practically, when he had heard Heather’s story, “and their plans must have been well laid. I will follow if you like, but I think it is useless. They are in London by this time.”
“What makes you think they have gone to London?” asked Heather.
“Because it is the only place in which to be lost,”answered the youth. And the three stood and looked at each other for a few moments in utter silence.
A great blow had suddenly fallen on them, and they felt stunned with its force.
That such a thing should have happened there! that they should all have bidden each other good-night, without a suspicion of coming evil—and that this should have come to pass before morning!
Heather was the first to speak.
“And Mr. Harcourt, too—what will he say?”
“If he be a wise man, ‘that he is well rid of her,’” answered Arthur. “She must be a bad girl—a bad, false girl.”
“But, oh! so good to Lally,” said Heather, deprecatingly; “and I do not think it was of her own free will she went now—I do not—I believe she was driven to it. Read her letter, Arthur—read how she says she tried to like Mr. Harcourt, and how her mother forced her on. If I only knew she were married, I could rest satisfied.”
And so husband and wife talked on, while Alick, standing by, remained resolutely silent.
He would tell nothing about it; he would saynothing concerning the stranger they had met at North Kemms; he would not utterly destroy Heather’s faith, and show her that Bessie had been a deceiver from the beginning. His heart was yearning after the girl, but he would not speak a word that could give a clue as to whom she had eloped with.
She had prayed him not to tell Heather, and he would be faithful to his trust. From him Heather never should know how false this girl had been—this girl with the lovely face, and the sweet, winning manners, which had gained her so many friends.
“The matter should be kept quiet;” each attributing different meanings to that expression, agreed as to the expediency of this course. Arthur said he would go to town with Alick, and take Bessie’s letter on to her father.
“Then, Mr. Ormson can do whatever he thinks best,” said the Squire; and Heather at once went to see that breakfast was got ready for the brothers before their departure.
“I wonder who the devil she can have picked up,” remarked Squire Dudley, when his wife left the room; “you never saw anybody hanging about the place, did you, Alick?”
Very truthfully, Alick answered that he had not; but still in his own soul he felt satisfied Bessie had gone off with the stranger, who sat in the same pew with them, and restored Miss Ormson’s prayer-book on that Sunday when he and his cousin walked across the fields to North Kemms church, talking as they went.