"HE HAD JUST TURNED THE RASHER, WHEN THE DOOR OPENED, AND SHROWL ENTERED THE ROOM."
"HE HAD JUST TURNED THE RASHER, WHEN THE DOOR OPENED, AND SHROWL ENTERED THE ROOM."
Neither master nor servant exchanged a word or took the smallest notice of each other on first meeting. Shrowl stood stolidly contemplative, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for his turn at the gridiron. Mr. Treverton finished his cooking, took his bacon to the table, and, cutting a crust of bread, began to eat his breakfast. When he had disposed of the first mouthful, he condescended to look up at Shrowl, who was at that moment opening his clasp-knife and approaching the side of bacon with slouching steps and sleepily greedy eyes.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Mr. Treverton, pointing with indignant surprise at Shrowl's breast. "You ugly brute, you've got a clean shirt on!"
"Thankee, Sir, for noticing it," said Shrowl, with a sarcastic affectation of humility. "This is a joyful occasion, this is. I couldn't do no less than put a clean shirt on, when it's my master's birthday. Many happy returns, Sir. Perhaps you thought I should forget that to-day was your birthday? Lord bless your sweet face, I wouldn't have forgot it on any account. How old are you to-day? It's a long time ago, Sir, since you was a plump smiling little boy, with a frill round your neck, and marbles in your pocket, and trowsers and waistcoat all in one, and kisses and presents from Pa and Ma and uncle and aunt, on your birthday. Don't you be afraid of me wearing out this shirt by too much washing. I mean to put it away in lavender against your next birthday; or against your funeral, which is just as likely at your time of life—isn't it, Sir?"
"Don't waste a clean shirt on my funeral," retorted Mr. Treverton. "I hav'n't left you any money in my will, Shrowl. You'll be on your way to the work-house when I'm on my way to the grave."
"Have you really made your will at last, Sir?" inquired Shrowl, pausing, with an appearance of the greatest interest, in the act of cutting off his slice of bacon. "I humbly beg pardon, but I always thought you was afraid to do it."
The servant had evidently touched intentionally on one of the master's sore points. Mr. Treverton thumped his crust of bread on the table, and looked up angrily at Shrowl.
"Afraid of making my will, you fool!" said he. "I don't make it, and I won't make it, on principle."
Shrowl slowly sawed off his slice of bacon, and began to whistle a tune.
"On principle," repeated Mr. Treverton. "Rich men who leave money behind them are the farmers who raise the crop of human wickedness. When a man has any spark of generosity in his nature, if you want to put it out, leave him a legacy. When a man is bad, if you want to make him worse, leave him a legacy. If you want to collect a number of men together for the purpose of perpetuating corruption and oppression on a large scale, leave them a legacy under the form of endowing a public charity. If you want to give a woman the best chance in the world of getting a bad husband, leave her a legacy.Make my will!I have a pretty strong dislike of my species, Shrowl, but I don't quite hate mankind enough yet to do such mischief among them as that!" Ending his diatribe in those words, Mr. Treverton took down one of the battered pewter pots, and refreshed himself with a pint of beer.
Shrowl shifted the gridiron to a clear place in the fire, and chuckled sarcastically.
"Who the devil would you have me leave my money to?" cried Mr. Treverton, overhearing him. "To my brother, who thinks me a brute now; who would think me a fool then; and who would encourage swindling, anyhow, by spending all my money among doxies and strolling players? To the child of that player-woman, whom I have never set eyes on, who has been brought up to hate me, and who would turn hypocrite directly by pretending, for decency's sake, to be sorry for my death? Toyou, you human baboon!—you, who would set up a usury office directly, and prey upon the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate generally, all over the world? Your good health, Mr. Shrowl! I can laugh as well as you—especially when I know I'm not going to leave you sixpence."
Shrowl, in his turn, began to get a little irritated now. The jeering civility which he had chosen to assume on first entering the room gave place to his habitual surliness of manner and his natural growling intonation of voice.
"You just let me alone—will you?" he said, sitting down sulkily to his breakfast. "I've done joking for to-day; suppose you finish too. What's the use of talking nonsense about your money? You must leave it to somebody."
"Yes, I will," said Mr. Treverton. "I will leave it, as I have told you over and over again, to the first Somebody I can find who honestly despises money, and who can't be made the worse, therefore, by having it."
"That means nobody," grunted Shrowl.
"I know it does!" retorted his master.
Before Shrowl could utter a word of rejoinder, there was a ring at the gate-bell of the cottage.
"Go out," said Mr. Treverton, "and see what that is. If it's a woman visitor, show her what a scarecrow you are, and frighten her away. If it's a man visitor—"
"If it's a man visitor," interposed Shrowl, "I'll punch his head for interrupting me at my breakfast."
Mr. Treverton filled and lit his pipe during his servant's absence. Before the tobacco was well alight, Shrowl returned, and reported a man visitor.
"Did you punch his head?" asked Mr. Treverton.
"No," said Shrowl. "I picked up his letter. He poked it under the gate and went away. Here it is."
The letter was written on foolscap paper, superscribed in a round legal hand. As Mr. Treverton opened it, two slips cut from newspapers dropped out. One fell on the table before which he was sitting; the other fluttered to the floor. This last slip Shrowl picked up and looked over its contents, without troubling himself to go through the ceremony of first asking leave.
After slowly drawing in and slowly puffing out again one mouthful of tobacco-smoke, Mr. Treverton began to read the letter. As his eye fell on the first lines, his lips began to work round the mouth-piece of the pipe in a manner that was very unusual with him. The letter was not long enough to require him to turn over the first leaf of it—it ended at the bottom of the opening sheet. He read it down to the signature—then looked up to the address, and went through it again from the beginning. His lips still continued to work round the mouth-piece of the pipe, but he smoked no more. When he had finished the second reading, he set the letter down very gently on the table, looked at his servant with an unaccustomed vacancy in the expression of his eyes, and took the pipe out of his mouth with a hand that trembled a little.
"Shrowl," he said, very quietly, "my brother, the Captain, is drowned."
"I know he is," answered Shrowl, without looking up from the newspaper-slip. "I'm reading about it here."
"The last words my brother said to me when we quarreled about the player-woman," continued Mr. Treverton, speaking as much to himself as to his servant, "were that I should die without one kind feeling in my heart toward any living creature."
"So you will," muttered Shrowl, turning the slip over to see if there was any thing worth reading at the back of it.
"I wonder what he thought about me when he was dying?" said Mr. Treverton, abstractedly, taking up the letter again from the table.
"He didn't waste a thought on you or any body else," remarked Shrowl. "If he thought at all, he thought about how he could save his life. When he had done thinking about that, he had done living too." With this expression of opinion Mr. Shrowl went to the beer-barrel, and drew his morning draught.
"Damn that player-woman!" muttered Mr. Treverton. As he said the words his face darkened and his lips closed firmly. He smoothed the letter out on the table. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind whether he had mastered all its contents yet—some idea that there ought to be more in it than he had yet discovered. In going over it for the third time, he read it to himself aloud and very slowly, as if he was determined to fix every separate word firmly in his memory. This was the letter:
"Sir,—As the old legal adviser and faithful friend of your family, I am desired by Mrs. Frankland, formerly Miss Treverton, to acquaint you with the sad news of your brother's death. This deplorable event occurred on board the ship of which he was captain, during a gale of wind in which the vessel was lost on a reef of rocks off the island of Antigua. I inclose a detailed account of the shipwreck, extracted fromThe Times, by which you will see that your brother died nobly in the performance of his duty toward the officers and men whom he commanded. I also send a slip from the local Cornish paper, containing a memoir of the deceased gentleman."Before closing this communication, I must add that no will has been found, after the most rigorous search, among the papers of the late Captain Treverton. Having disposed, as you know, of Porthgenna, the only property of which he was possessed at the time of his death was personal property, derived from the sale of his estate; and this, in consequence of his dying intestate, will go in due course of law to his daughter, as his nearest of kin."I am, Sir, your obedient servant,"Alexander Nixon."
"Sir,—As the old legal adviser and faithful friend of your family, I am desired by Mrs. Frankland, formerly Miss Treverton, to acquaint you with the sad news of your brother's death. This deplorable event occurred on board the ship of which he was captain, during a gale of wind in which the vessel was lost on a reef of rocks off the island of Antigua. I inclose a detailed account of the shipwreck, extracted fromThe Times, by which you will see that your brother died nobly in the performance of his duty toward the officers and men whom he commanded. I also send a slip from the local Cornish paper, containing a memoir of the deceased gentleman.
"Before closing this communication, I must add that no will has been found, after the most rigorous search, among the papers of the late Captain Treverton. Having disposed, as you know, of Porthgenna, the only property of which he was possessed at the time of his death was personal property, derived from the sale of his estate; and this, in consequence of his dying intestate, will go in due course of law to his daughter, as his nearest of kin.
"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,"Alexander Nixon."
The newspaper-slip, which had fallen on the table, contained the paragraph fromThe Times. The slip from the Cornish paper, which had dropped to the floor, Shrowl poked under his master's eyes, in a fit of temporary civility, as soon as he had done reading it. Mr. Treverton took not the slightest notice either of the one paragraph or the other. He still sat looking at the letter, even after he had read it for the third time.
"Why don't you give the strip of print a turn, as well as the sheet of writing?" asked Shrowl. "Why don't you read about what a great man your brother was, and what a good life he led, and what a wonderful handsome daughter he's left behind him, and what a capital marriage she's made along with the man that's owner of your old family estate?Shedon't want your money now, at any rate! The ill wind that blowed her father's ship on the rocks has blowed forty thousand pounds of good into her lap. Why don't you read about it? She and her husband have got a better house in Cornwall than you have got here. Ain't you glad of that? They were going to have repaired the place from top to bottom for your brother to go and live along with 'em in clover when he came back from sea. Who will ever repair a place for you? I wonder whether your niece would knock the old house about for your sake, now, if you was to clean yourself up and go and ask her?"
At the last question, Shrowl paused in the work of aggravation—not for want of more words, but for want of encouragement to utter them. For the first time since they had kept house together, he had tried to provoke his master and had failed. Mr. Treverton listened, or appeared to listen, without moving a muscle—without the faintest change to anger in his face. The only words he said when Shrowl had done were these two—
"Go out!"
Shrowl was not an easy man to move, but he absolutely changed color when he heard himself suddenly ordered to leave the room.
"Go out!" reiterated Mr. Treverton. "And hold your tongue henceforth and forever about my brother and my brother's daughter. I neverhaveset eyes upon the player-woman's child, and I never will. Hold your tongue—leave me alone—go out!"
"I'll be even with him for this," thought Shrowl as he slowly withdrew from the room.
When he had closed the door, he listened outside of it, and heard Mr. Treverton push aside his chair, and walk up and down, talking to himself. Judging by the confused words that escaped him, Shrowl concluded that his thoughts were still running on the "player-woman" who had set his brother and himself at variance. He seemed to feel a barbarous sense of relief in venting his dissatisfaction with himself, after the news of Captain Treverton's death, on the memory of the woman whom he hated so bitterly, and on the child whom she had left behind her.
After a while the low rumbling tones of his voice ceased altogether. Shrowl peeped through the key-hole, and saw that he was reading the newspaper-slips which contained the account of the shipwreck and the Memoir of his brother. The latter adverted to some of those family particulars which the vicar of Long Beckley had mentioned to his guest; and the writer of the Memoir concluded by expressing a hope that the bereavement which Mr. and Mrs. Frankland had suffered would not interfere with their project for repairing Porthgenna Tower, after they had gone the length already of sending a builder to survey the place. Something in the wording of that paragraph seemed to take Mr. Treverton's memory back to his youth-time when the old family house had been his home. He whispered a few words to himself which gloomily referred to the days that were gone, rose from his chair impatiently, threw both the newspaper-slips into the fire, watched them while they were burning, and sighed when the black gossamer ashes floated upward on the draught, and were lost in the chimney.
The sound of that sigh startled Shrowl as the sound of a pistol-shot might have startled another man. His bull-terrier eyes opened wide in astonishment, and he shook his head ominously as he walked away from the door.
The housekeeper at Porthgenna Tower had just completed the necessary preparations for the reception of her master and mistress, at the time mentioned in Mrs. Frankland's letter from St. Swithin's-on-Sea, when she was startled by receiving a note sealed with black wax, and surrounded by a thick mourning border. The note briefly communicated the news of Captain Treverton's death, and informed her that the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland to Porthgenna was deferred for an indefinite period.
By the same post the builder, who was superintending the renovation of the west staircase, also received a letter, requesting him to send in his account as soon as the repairs on which he was then engaged were completed; and telling him that Mr. Frankland was unable, for the present, to give any further attention to the project for making the north rooms habitable. On the receipt of this communication, the builder withdrew himself and his men as soon as the west stairs and banisters had been made secure; and Porthgenna Tower was again left to the care of the housekeeper and her servant, without master or mistress, friends or strangers, to thread its solitary passages or enliven its empty rooms.
From this time eight months passed away, and the housekeeper heard nothing of her master and mistress, except through the medium of paragraphs in the local newspaper, which dubiously referred to the probability of their occupying the old house, and interesting themselves in the affairs of their tenantry, at no very distant period. Occasionally, too, when business took him to the post-town, the steward collected reports about his employers among the old friends and dependents of the Treverton family.
From these sources of information, the housekeeper was led to conclude that Mr. and Mrs. Frankland had returned to Long Beckley, after receiving the news of Captain Treverton's death, and had lived there for some months in strict retirement. When they left that place, they moved (if the newspaper report was to be credited) to the neighborhood of London, and occupied the house of some friends who were traveling on the Continent. Here they must have remained for some time, for the new year came and brought no rumors of any change in their place of abode. January and February passed without any news of them. Early in March the steward had occasion to go to the post-town. When he returned to Porthgenna, he came back with a new report relating to Mr. and Mrs. Frankland, which excited the housekeeper's interest in an extraordinary degree. In two different quarters, each highly respectable, the steward had heard it facetiously announced that the domestic responsibilities of his master and mistress were likely to be increased by their having a nurse to engage and a crib to buy at the end of the spring or the beginning of the summer. In plain English, among the many babies who might be expected to make their appearance in the world in the course of the next three months, there was one who would inherit the name of Frankland, and who (if the infant luckily turned out to be a boy) would cause a sensation throughout West Cornwall as heir to the Porthgenna estate.
In the next month, the month of April, before the housekeeper and the steward had done discussing their last and most important fragment of news, the postman made his welcome appearance at Porthgenna Tower, and brought another note from Mrs. Frankland. The housekeeper's face brightened with unaccustomed pleasure and surprise as she read the first line. The letter announced that the long-deferred visit of her master and mistress to the old house would take place early in May, and that they might be expected to arrive any day from the first to the tenth of the month.
The reasons which had led the owners of Porthgenna to fix a period, at last, for visiting their country seat, were connected with certain particulars into which Mrs. Frankland had not thought it advisable to enter in her letter. The plain facts of the case were, that a little discussion had arisen between the husband and wife in relation to the next place of residence which they should select, after the return from the Continent of the friends whose house they were occupying. Mr. Frankland had very reasonably suggested returning again to Long Beckley—not only because all their oldest friends lived in the neighborhood, but also (and circumstances made this an important consideration) because the place had the advantage of possessing an excellent resident medical man. Unfortunately this latter advantage, so far from carrying any weight with it in Mrs. Frankland's estimation, actually prejudiced her mind against the project of going to Long Beckley. She had always, she acknowledged, felt an unreasonable antipathy to the doctor there. He might be a very skillful, an extremely polite, and an undeniably respectable man; but she never had liked him, and never should, and she was resolved to oppose the plan for living at Long Beckley, because the execution of it would oblige her to commit herself to his care.
Two other places of residence were next suggested; but Mrs. Frankland had the same objection to oppose to both—in each case the resident doctor would be a stranger to her, and she did not like the notion of being attended by a stranger. Finally, as she had all along anticipated, the choice of the future abode was left entirely to her own inclinations; and then, to the amazement of her husband and her friends, she immediately decided on going to Porthgenna. She had formed this strange project, and was now resolved on executing it, partly because she was more curious than ever to see the place again; partly because the doctor who had been with her mother in Mrs. Treverton's last illness, and who had attended her through all her own little maladies when she was a child, was still living and practicing in the Porthgenna neighborhood. Her father and the doctor had been old cronies, and had met for years at the same chess-board every Saturday night. They had kept up their friendship, when circumstances separated them, by exchanges of Christmas presents every year; and when the sad news of the Captain's death had reached Cornwall, the doctor had written a letter of sympathy and condolence to Rosamond, speaking in such terms of his former friend and patron as she could never forget. He must be a nice, fatherly old man now, the man of all others who was fittest, on every account, to attend her. In short, Mrs. Frankland was just as strongly prejudiced in favor of employing the Porthgenna doctor as she was prejudiced against employing the Long Beckley doctor; and she ended, as all young married women with affectionate husbands may, and do end, whenever they please—by carrying her own point, and having her own way.
On the first of May the west rooms were all ready for the reception of the master and mistress of the house. The beds were aired, the carpets cleaned, the sofas and chairs uncovered. The housekeeper put on her satin gown and her garnet brooch; the maid followed suit, at a respectful distance, in brown merino and a pink ribbon; and the steward, determining not to be outdone by the women, arrayed himself in a black brocaded waistcoat, which almost rivaled the gloom and grandeur of the housekeeper's satin gown. The day wore on, evening closed in, bed-time came, and there were no signs yet of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland.
But the first was an early day on which to expect them. The steward thought so, and the housekeeper added that it would be foolish to feel disappointed, even if they did not arrive until the fifth. The fifth came, and still nothing happened. The sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth followed, and no sound of the expected carriage-wheels came near the lonely house.
On the tenth, and last day, the housekeeper, the steward, and the maid, all three rose earlier than usual; all three opened and shut doors, and went up and down stairs oftener than was needful; all three looked out perpetually toward the moor and the high road, and thought the view flatter and duller and emptier than ever it had appeared to them before. The day waned, the sunset came; darkness changed the perpetual looking-out of the housekeeper, the steward, and the maid into perpetual listening; ten o'clock struck, and still there was nothing to be heard when they went to the open window but the wearisome beating of the surf on the sandy shore.
The housekeeper began to calculate the time that would be consumed on the railway journey from London to Exeter, and on the posting journey afterward through Cornwall to Porthgenna. When had Mr. and Mrs. Frankland left Exeter?—that was the first question. And what delays might they have encountered afterward in getting horses?—that was the second. The housekeeper and the steward differed in debating these points; but both agreed that it was necessary to sit up until midnight, on the chance of the master and mistress arriving late. The maid, hearing her sentence of banishment from bed for the next two hours pronounced by the superior authorities, yawned and sighed mournfully—was reproved by the steward—and was furnished by the housekeeper with a book of hymns to read to keep up her spirits.
Twelve o'clock struck, and still the monotonous beating of the surf, varied occasionally by those loud, mysterious, cracking noises which make themselves heard at night in an old house, were the only audible sounds. The steward was dozing; the maid was fast asleep under the soothing influence of the hymns; the housekeeper was wide awake, with her eyes fixed on the window, and her head shaking forebodingly from time to time. At the last stroke of the clock she left her chair, listened attentively, and still hearing nothing, shook the maid irritably by the shoulder, and stamped on the floor to arouse the steward.
"We may go to bed," she said. "They are not coming. This is the second time they have disappointed us. The first time the Captain's death stood in the way. What stops them now? Another death? I shouldn't wonder if it was."
"Now I think of it, no more should I," said the steward, ominously knitting his brows.
"Another death!" repeated the housekeeper, superstitiously. "If itisanother death, I should take it, in their place, as a warning to keep away from the house."
If, instead of hazarding the guess that a second death stood in the way of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's arrival at Porthgenna, the housekeeper had, by way of variety, surmised this time that a birth was the obstacle which delayed them, she might have established her character as a wise woman, by hitting at random on the actual truth. Her master and mistress had started from London on the ninth of May, and had got through the greater part of their railway journey, when they were suddenly obliged to stop, on Mrs. Frankland's account, at the station of a small town in Somersetshire. The little visitor, who was destined to increase the domestic responsibilities of the young married couple, had chosen to enter on the scene, in the character of a robust boy-baby, a month earlier than he had been expected, and had modestly preferred to make his first appearance in a small Somersetshire inn, rather than wait to be ceremoniously welcomed to life in the great house of Porthgenna, which he was one day to inherit.
Very few events had ever produced a greater sensation in the town of West Winston than the one small event of the unexpected stoppage of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's journey at that place. Never since the last election had the landlord and landlady of the Tiger's Head Hotel bustled about their house in such a fever of excitement as possessed them when Mr. Frankland's servant and Mrs. Frankland's maid drew up at the door in a fly from the station, to announce that their master and mistress were behind, and that the largest and quietest rooms in the hotel were wanted immediately, under the most unexpected circumstances. Never since he had triumphantly passed his examination had young Mr. Orridge, the new doctor, who had started in life by purchasing the West Winston practice, felt such a thrill of pleasurable agitation pervade him from top to toe as when he heard that the wife of a blind gentleman of great fortune had been taken ill on the railway journey from London to Devonshire, and required all that his skill and attention could do for her without a moment's delay. Never since the last archery meeting and fancy fair had the ladies of the town been favored with such an all-absorbing subject for conversation as was now afforded to them by Mrs. Frankland's mishap. Fabulous accounts of the wife's beauty and the husband's fortune poured from the original source of the Tiger's Head, and trickled through the highways and byways of the little town. There were a dozen different reports, one more elaborately false than the other, about Mr. Frankland's blindness, and the cause of it; about the lamentable condition in which his wife had arrived at the hotel; and about the painful sense of responsibility which had unnerved the inexperienced Mr. Orridge from the first moment when he set eyes on his patient. It was not till eight o'clock in the evening that the public mind was relieved at last from all suspense by an announcement that the child was born, and screaming lustily; that the mother was wonderfully well, considering all things; and that Mr. Orridge had covered himself with distinction by the skill, tenderness, and attention with which he had performed his duties.
On the next day, and the next, and for a week after that, the accounts were still favorable. But on the tenth day a catastrophe was reported. The nurse who was in attendance on Mrs. Frankland had been suddenly taken ill, and was rendered quite incapable of performing any further service for at least a week to come, and perhaps for a much longer period.
In a large town this misfortune might have been readily remedied, but in a place like West Winston it was not so easy to supply the loss of an experienced nurse at a few hours' notice. When Mr. Orridge was consulted in the new emergency, he candidly acknowledged that he required a little time for consideration before he could undertake to find another professed nurse of sufficient character and experience to wait on a lady like Mrs. Frankland. Mr. Frankland suggested telegraphing to a medical friend in London for a nurse, but the doctor was unwilling for many reasons to adopt that plan, except as a last resource. It would take some time to find the right person, and to send her to West Winston and, moreover, he would infinitely prefer employing a woman with whose character and capacity he was himself acquainted. He therefore proposed that Mrs. Frankland should be trusted for a few hours to the care of her maid, under supervision of the landlady of the Tiger's Head, while he made inquiries in the neighborhood. If the inquiries produced no satisfactory result, he should be ready, when he called in the evening, to adopt Mr. Frankland's idea of telegraphing to London for a nurse.
On proceeding to make the investigation that he had proposed, Mr. Orridge, although he spared no trouble, met with no success. He found plenty of volunteers for the office of nurse, but they were all loud-voiced, clumsy-handed, heavy-footed countrywomen, kind and willing enough, but sadly awkward, blundering attendants to place at the bedside of such a lady as Mrs. Frankland. The morning hours passed away, and the afternoon came, and still Mr. Orridge had found no substitute for the invalided nurse whom he could venture to engage.
At two o'clock he had half an hour's drive before him to a country-house where he had a child-patient to see. "Perhaps I may remember somebody who may do, on the way out or on the way back again," thought Mr. Orridge, as he got into his gig. "I have some hours at my disposal still, before the time comes for my evening visit at the inn."
Puzzling his brains, with the best intention in the world, all along the road to the country-house, Mr. Orridge reached his destination without having arrived at any other conclusion than that he might just as well state his difficulty to Mrs. Norbury, the lady whose child he was about to prescribe for. He had called on her when he bought the West Winston practice, and had found her one of those frank, good-humored, middle-aged women who are generally designated by the epithet "motherly." Her husband was a country squire, famous for his old politics, his old stories, and his old wine. He had seconded his wife's hearty reception of the new doctor, with all the usual jokes about never giving him any employment, and never letting any bottles into the house except the bottles that went down into the cellar. Mr. Orridge had been amused by the husband and pleased with the wife; and he thought it might be at least worth while, before he gave up all hope of finding a fit nurse, to ask Mrs. Norbury, as an old resident in the West Winston neighborhood, for a word of advice.
Accordingly, after seeing the child, and pronouncing that there were no symptoms about the little patient which need cause the slightest alarm to any body, Mr. Orridge paved the way for a statement of the difficulty that beset him by asking Mrs. Norbury if she had heard of the "interesting event" that had happened at the Tiger's Head.
"You mean," answered Mrs. Norbury, who was a downright woman, and a resolute speaker of the plainest possible English—"You mean, have I heard about that poor unfortunate lady who was taken ill on her journey, and who had a child born at the inn? We have heard so much, and no more—living as we do (thank Heaven!) out of reach of the West Winston gossip. How is the lady? Who is she? Is the child well? Is she tolerably comfortable? poor thing! Can I send her any thing, or do any thing for her?"
"You would do a great thing for her, and render a great assistance to me," said Mr. Orridge, "if you could tell me of any respectable woman in this neighborhood who would be a proper nurse for her."
"You don't mean to say that the poor creature has not got a nurse!" exclaimed Mrs. Norbury.
"She has had the best nurse in West Winston," replied Mr. Orridge. "But, most unfortunately, the woman was taken ill this morning, and was obliged to go home. I am now at my wit's end for somebody to supply her place. Mrs. Frankland has been used to the luxury of being well waited on; and where I am to find an attendant, who is likely to satisfy her, is more than I can tell."
"Frankland, did you say her name was?" inquired Mrs. Norbury.
"Yes. She is, I understand, a daughter of that Captain Treverton who was lost with his ship a year ago in the West Indies. Perhaps you may remember the account of the disaster in the newspapers?"
"Of course I do! and I remember the Captain too. I was acquainted with him when he was a young man, at Portsmouth. His daughter and I ought not to be strangers, especially under such circumstances as the poor thing is placed in now. I will call at the inn, Mr. Orridge, as soon as you will allow me to introduce myself to her. But, in the mean time, what is to be done in this difficulty about the nurse? Who is with Mrs. Frankland now?"
"Her maid; but she is a very young woman, and doesn't understand nursing duties. The landlady of the inn is ready to help when she can; but then she has constant demands on her time and attention. I suppose we shall have to telegraph to London and get somebody sent here by railway."
"And that will take time, of course. And the new nurse may turn out to be a drunkard or a thief, or both—when you have got her here," said the outspoken Mrs. Norbury. "Dear, dear me! can't we do something better than that? I am ready, I am sure, to take any trouble, or make any sacrifice, if I can be of use to Mrs. Frankland. Do you know, Mr. Orridge, I think it would be a good plan if we consulted my housekeeper, Mrs. Jazeph. She is an odd woman, with an odd name, you will say; but she has lived with me in this house more than five years, and she may know of somebody in our neighborhood who might suit you, though I don't." With those words, Mrs. Norbury rang the bell, and ordered the servant who answered it to tell Mrs. Jazeph that she was wanted up stairs immediately.
After the lapse of a minute or so a soft knock was heard at the door, and the housekeeper entered the room.
Mr. Orridge looked at her, the moment she appeared, with an interest and curiosity for which he was hardly able to account. He judged her, at a rough guess, to be a woman of about fifty years of age. At the first glance, his medical eye detected that some of the intricate machinery of the nervous system had gone wrong with Mrs. Jazeph. He noted the painful working of the muscles of her face, and the hectic flush that flew into her cheeks when she entered the room and found a visitor there. He observed a strangely scared look in her eyes, and remarked that it did not leave them when the rest of her face became gradually composed. "That woman has had some dreadful fright, some great grief, or some wasting complaint," he thought to himself. "I wonder which it is?"
"This is Mr. Orridge, the medical gentleman who has lately settled at West Winston," said Mrs. Norbury, addressing the housekeeper. "He is in attendance on a lady who was obliged to stop, on her journey westward, at our station, and who is now staying at the Tiger's Head. You have heard something about it, have you not, Mrs. Jazeph?"
Mrs. Jazeph, standing just inside the door, looked respectfully toward the doctor, and answered in the affirmative. Although she only said the two common words, "Yes, ma'am," in a quiet, uninterested way, Mr. Orridge was struck by the sweetness and tenderness of her voice. If he had not been looking at her, he would have supposed it to be the voice of a young woman. His eyes remained fixed on her after she had spoken, though he felt that they ought to have been looking toward her mistress. He, the most unobservant of men in such things, found himself noticing her dress, so that he remembered, long afterward, the form of the spotless muslin cap that primly covered her smooth gray hair, and the quiet brown color of the silk dress that fitted so neatly and hung around her in such spare and disciplined folds. The little confusion which she evidently felt at finding herself the object of the doctor's attention did not betray her into the slightest awkwardness of gesture or manner. If there can be such a thing, physically speaking, as the grace of restraint, that was the grace which seemed to govern Mrs. Jazeph's slightest movements; which led her feet smoothly over the carpet, as she advanced when her mistress next spoke to her; which governed the action of her wan right hand as it rested lightly on a table by her side, while she stopped to hear the next question that was addressed to her.
"Well," continued Mrs. Norbury, "this poor lady was just getting on comfortably, when the nurse who was looking after her fell ill this morning; and there she is now, in a strange place, with a first child, and no proper attendance—no woman of age and experience to help her as she ought to be helped. We want somebody fit to wait on a delicate woman who has seen nothing of the rough side of humanity. Mr. Orridge can find nobody at a day's notice, and I can tell him of nobody. Can you help us, Mrs. Jazeph? Are there any women down in the village, or among Mr. Norbury's tenants, who understand nursing, and have some tact and tenderness to recommend them into the bargain?"
Mrs. Jazeph reflected for a little while, and then said, very respectfully, but very briefly also, and still without any appearance of interest in her manner, that she knew of no one whom she could recommend.
"Don't make too sure of that till you have thought a little longer," said Mrs. Norbury. "I have a particular interest in serving this lady, for Mr. Orridge told me just before you came in that she is the daughter of Captain Treverton, whose shipwreck—"
The instant those words were spoken, Mrs. Jazeph turned round with a start, and looked at the doctor. Apparently forgetting that her right hand was on the table, she moved it so suddenly that it struck against a bronze statuette of a dog placed on some writing materials. The statuette fell to the ground, and Mrs. Jazeph stooped to pick it up with a cry of alarm which seemed strangely exaggerated by comparison with the trifling nature of the accident.
"Bless the woman! what is she frightened about?" exclaimed Mrs. Norbury. "The dog is not hurt—put it back again! This is the first time, Mrs. Jazeph, that I ever knew you do an awkward thing. You may take that as a compliment, I think. Well, as I was saying, this lady is the daughter of Captain Treverton, whose dreadful shipwreck we all read about in the papers. I knew her father in my early days, and on that account I am doubly anxious to be of service to her now. Do think again. Is there nobody within reach who can be trusted to nurse her?"
The doctor, still watching Mrs. Jazeph with that secret medical interest of his in her case, had seen her turn so deadly pale when she started and looked toward him that he would not have been surprised if she had fainted on the spot. He now observed that she changed color again when her mistress left off speaking. The hectic red tinged her cheeks once more with two bright spots. Her timid eyes wandered uneasily about the room; and her fingers, as she clasped her hands together, interlaced themselves mechanically. "That would be an interesting case to treat," thought the doctor, following every nervous movement of the housekeeper's hands with watchful eyes.
"Do think again," repeated Mrs. Norbury. "I am so anxious to help this poor lady through her difficulty, if I can."
"I am very sorry," said Mrs. Jazeph, in faint, trembling tones, but still always with the same sweetness in her voice—"very sorry that I can think of no one who is fit; but—"
She stopped. No shy child on its first introduction to the society of strangers could have looked more disconcerted than she looked now. Her eyes were on the ground; her color was deepening; the fingers of her clasped hands were working together faster and faster every moment.
"But what?" asked Mrs. Norbury.
"I was about to say, ma'am," answered Mrs. Jazeph, speaking with the greatest difficulty and uneasiness, and never raising her eyes to her mistress's face, "that, rather than this lady should want for a nurse, I would—considering the interest, ma'am, which you take in her—I would, if you thought you could spare me—"
"What, nurse her yourself!" exclaimed Mrs. Norbury. "Upon my word, although you have got to it in rather a roundabout way, you have come to the point at last, in a manner which does infinite credit to your kindness of heart and your readiness to make yourself useful. As to sparing you, of course I am not so selfish, under the circumstances, as to think twice of the inconvenience of losing my housekeeper. But the question is, are you competent as well as willing? Have you ever had any practice in nursing?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Mrs. Jazeph, still without raising her eyes from the ground. "Shortly after my marriage" (the flush disappeared, and her face turned pale again as she said those words), "I had some practice in nursing, and continued it at intervals until the time of my husband's death. I only presume to offer myself, Sir," she went on, turning toward the doctor, and becoming more earnest and self-possessed in her manner as she did so—"I only presume to offer myself, with my mistress's permission, as a substitute for a nurse until some better qualified person can be found."
"What do you say, Mr. Orridge?" asked Mrs. Norbury.
It had been the doctor's turn to start when he first heard Mrs. Jazeph propose herself for the office of nurse. He hesitated before he answered Mrs. Norbury's question, then said:
"I can have but one doubt about the propriety of thankfully accepting Mrs. Jazeph's offer."
Mrs. Jazeph's timid eyes looked anxiously and perplexedly at him as he spoke. Mrs. Norbury, in her downright, abrupt way, asked immediately what the doubt was.
"I feel some uncertainty," replied Mr. Orridge, "as to whether Mrs. Jazeph—she will pardon me, as a medical man, for mentioning it—as to whether Mrs. Jazeph is strong enough, and has her nerves sufficiently under control to perform the duties which she is so kindly ready to undertake."
In spite of the politeness of the explanation, Mrs. Jazeph was evidently disconcerted and distressed by it. A certain quiet, uncomplaining sadness, which it was very touching to see, overspread her face as she turned away, without another word, and walked slowly to the door.
"Don't go yet!" cried Mrs. Norbury, kindly, "or, at least, if you do go, come back again in five minutes. I am quite certain we shall have something more to say to you then."
Mrs. Jazeph's eyes expressed her thanks in one grateful glance. They looked so much brighter than usual while they rested on her mistress's face, that Mrs. Norbury half doubted whether the tears were not just rising in them at that moment. Before she could look again, Mrs. Jazeph had courtesied to the doctor, and had noiselessly left the room.
"Now we are alone, Mr. Orridge," said Mrs. Norbury, "I may tell you, with all submission to your medical judgment, that you are a little exaggerating Mrs. Jazeph's nervous infirmities. She looks poorly enough, I own; but, after five years' experience of her, I can tell you that she is stronger than she looks, and I honestly think you will be doing good service to Mrs. Frankland if you try our volunteer nurse, at least for a day or two. She is the gentlest, tenderest creature I ever met with, and conscientious to a fault in the performance of any duty that she undertakes. Don't be under any delicacy about taking her away. I gave a dinner-party last week, and shall not give another for some time to come. I never could have spared my housekeeper more easily than I can spare her now."
"I am sure I may offer Mrs. Frankland's thanks to you as well as my own," said Mr. Orridge. "After what you have said, it would be ungracious and ungrateful in me not to follow your advice. But will you excuse me if I ask one question? Did you ever hear that Mrs. Jazeph was subject to fits of any kind?"
"Never."
"Not even to hysterical affections, now and then?"
"Never, since she has been in this house."
"You surprise me, there is something in her look and manner—"
"Yes, yes; every body remarks that at first; but it simply means that she is in delicate health, and that she has not led a very happy life (as I suspect) in her younger days. The lady from whom I had her (with an excellent character) told me that she had married unhappily, when she was in a sadly poor, unprotected state. She never says any thing about her married troubles herself; but I believe her husband ill-used her. However, it does not seem to me that this is our business. I can only tell you again that she has been an excellent servant here for the last five years, and that, in your place, poorly as she may look, I should consider her as the best nurse that Mrs. Frankland could possibly wish for, under the circumstances. There is no need for me to say any more. Take Mrs. Jazeph, or telegraph to London for a stranger—the decision of course rests with you."
Mr. Orridge thought he detected a slight tone of irritability in Mrs. Norbury's last sentence. He was a prudent man; and he suppressed any doubts he might still feel in reference to Mrs. Jazeph's physical capacities for nursing, rather than risk offending the most important lady in the neighborhood at the outset of his practice in West Winston as a medical man.
"I can not hesitate a moment after what you have been good enough to tell me," he said. "Pray believe that I gratefully accept your kindness and your housekeeper's offer."
Mrs. Norbury rang the bell. It was answered on the instant by the housekeeper herself.
The doctor wondered whether she had been listening outside the door, and thought it rather strange, if she had, that she should be so anxious to learn his decision.
"Mr. Orridge accepts your offer with thanks," said Mrs. Norbury, beckoning to Mrs. Jazeph to advance into the room. "I have persuaded him that you are not quite so weak and ill as you look."
A gleam of joyful surprise broke over the housekeeper's face. It looked suddenly younger by years and years, as she smiled and expressed her grateful sense of the trust that was about to be reposed in her. For the first time, also, since the doctor had seen her, she ventured on speaking before she was spoken to.
"When will my attendance be required, Sir?" she asked.
"As soon as possible," replied Mr. Orridge. How quickly and brightly her dim eyes seemed to clear as she heard that answer! How much more hasty than her usual movements was the movement with which she now turned round and looked appealingly at her mistress!
"Go whenever Mr. Orridge wants you," said Mrs. Norbury. "I know your accounts are always in order, and your keys always in their proper places. You never make confusion and you never leave confusion. Go, by all means, as soon as the doctor wants you."
"I suppose you have some preparations to make?" said Mr. Orridge.
"None, Sir, that need delay me more than half an hour," answered Mrs. Jazeph.
"This evening will be early enough," said the doctor, taking his hat, and bowing to Mrs. Norbury. "Come to the Tiger's Head, and ask for me. I shall be there between seven and eight. Many thanks again, Mrs. Norbury."
"My best wishes and compliments to your patient, doctor."
"At the Tiger's Head, between seven and eight this evening," reiterated Mr. Orridge, as the housekeeper opened the door for him.
"Between seven and eight, Sir," repeated the soft, sweet voice, sounding younger than ever, now that there was an under-note of pleasure running through its tones.
As the clock struck seven, Mr. Orridge put on his hat to go to the Tiger's Head. He had just opened his own door, when he was met on the step by a messenger, who summoned him immediately to a case of sudden illness in the poor quarter of the town. The inquiries he made satisfied him that the appeal was really of an urgent nature, and that there was no help for it but to delay his attendance for a little while at the inn. On reaching the bedside of the patient, he discovered symptoms in the case which rendered an immediate operation necessary. The performance of this professional duty occupied some time. It was a quarter to eight before he left his house, for the second time, on his way to the Tiger's Head.
On entering the inn door, he was informed that the new nurse had arrived as early as seven o'clock, and had been waiting for him in a room by herself ever since. Having received no orders from Mr. Orridge, the landlady had thought it safest not to introduce the stranger to Mrs. Frankland before the doctor came.
"Did she ask to go up into Mrs. Frankland's room?" inquired Mr. Orridge.
"Yes, Sir," replied the landlady. "And I thought she seemed rather put out when I said that I must beg her to wait till you got here. Will you step this way, and see her at once, Sir? She is in my parlor."
Mr. Orridge followed the landlady into a little room at the back of the house, and found Mrs. Jazeph sitting alone in the corner farthest from the window. He was rather surprised to see that she drew her veil down the moment the door was opened.
"I am sorry you should have been kept waiting," he said; "but I was called away to a patient. Besides, I told you between seven and eight, if you remember; and it is not eight o'clock yet."
"I was very anxious to be in good time, Sir," said Mrs. Jazeph.
There was an accent of restraint in the quiet tones in which she spoke which struck Mr. Orridge's ear, and a little perplexed him. She was, apparently, not only afraid that her face might betray something, but apprehensive also that her voice might tell him more than her words expressed. What feeling was she anxious to conceal? Was it irritation at having been kept waiting so long by herself in the landlady's room?
"If you will follow me," said Mr. Orridge, "I will take you to Mrs. Frankland immediately."
Mrs. Jazeph rose slowly, and, when she was on her feet, rested her hand for an instant on a table near her. That action, momentary as it was, helped to confirm the doctor in his conviction of her physical unfitness for the position which she had volunteered to occupy.
"You seem tired," he said, as he led the way out of the door. "Surely, you did not walk all the way here?"
"No, Sir. My mistress was so kind as to let one of the servants drive me in the pony-chaise." There was the same restraint in her voice as she made that answer; and still she never attempted to lift her veil. While ascending the inn stairs Mr. Orridge mentally resolved to watch her first proceedings in Mrs. Frankland's room closely, and to send, after all, for the London nurse, unless Mrs. Jazeph showed remarkable aptitude in the performance of her new duties.
The room which Mrs. Frankland occupied was situated at the back of the house, having been chosen in that position with the object of removing her as much as possible from the bustle and noise about the inn door. It was lighted by one window overlooking a few cottages, beyond which spread the rich grazing grounds of West Somersetshire, bounded by a long monotonous line of thickly wooded hills. The bed was of the old-fashioned kind, with the customary four posts and the inevitable damask curtains. It projected from the wall into the middle of the room, in such a situation as to keep the door on the right hand of the person occupying it, the window on the left, and the fire-place opposite the foot of the bed. On the side of the bed nearest the window the curtains were open, while at the foot, and on the side near the door, they were closely drawn. By this arrangement the interior of the bed was necessarily concealed from the view of any person on first entering the room.
"How do you find yourself to-night, Mrs. Frankland?" asked Mr. Orridge, reaching out his hand to undraw the curtains. "Do you think you will be any the worse for a little freer circulation of air?"
"On the contrary, doctor, I shall be all the better," was the answer. "But I am afraid—in case you have ever been disposed to consider me a sensible woman—that my character will suffer a little in your estimation when you see how I have been occupying myself for the last hour."
Mr. Orridge smiled as he undrew the curtains, and laughed outright when he looked at the mother and child.
Mrs. Frankland had been amusing herself, and gratifying her taste for bright colors, by dressing out her baby with blue ribbons as he lay asleep. He had a necklace, shoulder-knots, and bracelets, all of blue ribbon; and, to complete the quaint finery of his costume, his mother's smart little lace cap had been hitched comically on one side of his head. Rosamond herself, as if determined to vie with the baby in gayety of dress, wore a light pink jacket, ornamented down the bosom and over the sleeves with bows of white satin ribbon. Laburnum blossoms, gathered that morning, lay scattered about over the white counterpane, intermixed with some flowers of the lily of the valley, tied up into two nosegays with strips of cherry-colored ribbon. Over this varied assemblage of colors, over the baby's smoothly rounded cheeks and arms, over his mother's happy, youthful face, the tender light of the May evening poured tranquil and warm. Thoroughly appreciating the charm of the picture which he had disclosed on undrawing the curtains, the doctor stood looking at it for a few moments, quite forgetful of the errand that had brought him into the room. He was only recalled to a remembrance of the new nurse by a chance question which Mrs. Frankland addressed to him.
"I can't help it, doctor," said Rosamond, with a look of apology. "I really can't help treating my baby, now I am a grown woman, just as I used to treat my doll when I was a little girl. Did any body come into the room with you? Lenny, are you there? Have you done dinner, darling, and did you drink my health when you were left at dessert all by yourself?"
"Mr. Frankland is still at dinner," said the doctor. "But I certainly brought some one into the room with me. Where, in the name of wonder, has she gone to?—Mrs. Jazeph!"
The housekeeper had slipped round to the part of the room between the foot of the bed and the fire-place, where she was hidden by the curtains that still remained drawn. When Mr. Orridge called to her, instead of joining him where he stood, opposite the window, she appeared at the other side of the bed, where the window was behind her. Her shadow stole darkly over the bright picture which the doctor had been admiring. It stretched obliquely across the counterpane, and its dusky edges touched the figures of the mother and child.
"Gracious goodness! who are you?" exclaimed Rosamond. "A woman or a ghost?"
Mrs. Jazeph's veil was up at last. Although her face was necessarily in shadow in the position which she had chosen to occupy, the doctor saw a change pass over it when Mrs. Frankland spoke. The lips dropped and quivered a little; the marks of care and age about the mouth deepened; and the eyebrows contracted suddenly. The eyes Mr. Orridge could not see; they were cast down on the counterpane at the first word that Rosamond uttered. Judging by the light of his medical experience, the doctor concluded that she was suffering pain, and trying to suppress any outward manifestation of it. "An affection of the heart, most likely," he thought to himself. "She has concealed it from her mistress, but she can't hide it from me."
"Who are you?" repeated Rosamond. "And what in the world do you stand there for—between us and the sunlight?"
Mrs. Jazeph neither answered nor raised her eyes. She only moved back timidly to the farthest corner of the window.
"Did you not get a message from me this afternoon?" asked the doctor, appealing to Mrs. Frankland.
"To be sure I did," replied Rosamond. "A very kind, flattering message about a new nurse."
"There she is," said Mr. Orridge, pointing across the bed to Mrs. Jazeph.
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Rosamond. "But of course it must be. Who else could have come in with you? I ought to have known that. Pray come here—(what is her name, doctor? Joseph, did you say?—No?—Jazeph?)—pray come nearer, Mrs. Jazeph, and let me apologize for speaking so abruptly to you. I am more obliged than I can say for your kindness in coming here, and for your mistress's good-nature in resigning you to me. I hope I shall not give you much trouble, and I am sure you will find the baby easy to manage. He is a perfect angel, and sleeps like a dormouse. Dear me! now I look at you a little closer, I am afraid you are in very delicate health yourself. Doctor, if Mrs. Jazeph would not be offended with me, I should almost feel inclined to say that she looks in want of nursing herself."
Mrs. Jazeph bent down over the laburnum blossoms on the bed, and began hurriedly and confusedly to gather them together.
"I thought as you do, Mrs. Frankland," said Mr. Orridge. "But I have been assured that Mrs. Jazeph's looks belie her, and that her capabilities as a nurse quite equal her zeal."
"Are you going to make all that laburnum into a nosegay?" asked Mrs. Frankland, noticing how the new nurse was occupying herself. "How thoughtful of you! and how magnificent it will be! I am afraid you will find the room very untidy. I will ring for my maid to set it to rights."
"If you will allow me to put it in order, ma'am, I shall be very glad to begin being of use to you in that way," said Mrs. Jazeph. When she made the offer she looked up; and her eyes and Mrs. Frankland's met. Rosamond instantly drew back on the pillow, and her color altered a little.
"How strangely you look at me!" she said.
Mrs. Jazeph started at the words, as if something had struck her, and moved away suddenly to the window.
"You are not offended with me, I hope?" said Rosamond, noticing the action. "I have a sad habit of saying any thing that comes uppermost. And I really thought you looked just now as if you saw something about me that frightened or grieved you. Pray put the room in order, if you are kindly willing to undertake the trouble. And never mind what I say; you will soon get used to my ways—and we shall be as comfortable and friendly—"
Just as Mrs. Frankland said the words "comfortable and friendly," the new nurse left the window, and went back to the part of the room where she was hidden from view, between the fire-place and the closed curtains at the foot of the bed. Rosamond looked round to express her surprise to the doctor, but he turned away at the same moment so as to occupy a position which might enable him to observe what Mrs. Jazeph was doing on the other side of the bed-curtains.
When he first caught sight of her, her hands were both raised to her face. Before he could decide whether he had surprised her in the act of clasping them over her eyes or not, they changed their position, and were occupied in removing her bonnet. After she had placed this part of her wearing apparel, and her shawl and gloves, on a chair in a corner of the room, she went to the dressing-table, and began to arrange the various useful and ornamental objects scattered about it. She set them in order with remarkable dexterity and neatness, showing a taste for arrangement, and a capacity for discriminating between things that were likely to be wanted and things that were not, which impressed Mr. Orridge very favorably. He particularly noticed the carefulness with which she handled some bottles of physic, reading the labels on each, and arranging the medicine that might be required at night on one side of the table, and the medicine that might be required in the day-time on the other. When she left the dressing-table, and occupied herself in setting the furniture straight, and in folding up articles of clothing that had been thrown on one side, not the slightest movement of her thin, wasted hands seemed ever to be made at hazard or in vain. Noiselessly, modestly, observantly, she moved from side to side of the room, and neatness and order followed her steps wherever she went. When Mr. Orridge resumed his place at Mrs. Frankland's bedside, his mind was at ease on one point at least—it was perfectly evident that the new nurse could be depended on to make no mistakes.
"What an odd woman she is," whispered Rosamond.
"Odd, indeed," returned Mr. Orridge, "and desperately broken in health, though she may not confess to it. However, she is wonderfully neat-handed and careful, and there can be no harm in trying her for one night—that is to say, unless you feel any objection."
"On the contrary," said Rosamond, "she rather interests me. There is something in her face and manner—I can't say what—that makes me feel curious to know more of her. I must get her to talk, and try if I can't bring out all her peculiarities. Don't be afraid of my exciting myself, and don't stop here in this dull room on my account. I would much rather you went down stairs, and kept my husband company over his wine. Do go and talk to him, and amuse him a little—he must be so dull, poor fellow, while I am up here; and he likes you, Mr. Orridge—he does, very much. Stop one moment, and just look at the baby again. He doesn't take a dangerous quantity of sleep, does he? And, Mr. Orridge, one word more: When you have done your wine, you will promise to lend my husband the use of your eyes, and bring him up stairs to wish me good-night, won't you?"
Willingly engaging to pay attention to Mrs. Frankland's request, Mr. Orridge left the bedside.
As he opened the room door, he stopped to tell Mrs. Jazeph that he should be down stairs if she wanted him, and that he would give her any instructions of which she might stand in need later in the evening, before he left the inn for the night. The new nurse, when he passed by her, was kneeling over one of Mrs. Frankland's open trunks, arranging some articles of clothing which had been rather carelessly folded up. Just before he spoke to her, he observed that she had a chemisette in her hand, the frill of which was laced through with ribbon.
One end of this ribbon she appeared to him to be on the point of drawing out, when the sound of his footsteps disturbed her. The moment she became aware of his approach she dropped the chemisette suddenly in the trunk, and covered it over with some handkerchiefs. Although this proceeding on Mrs. Jazeph's part rather surprised the doctor, he abstained from showing that he had noticed it. Her mistress had vouched for her character, after five years' experience of it, and the bit of ribbon was intrinsically worthless. On both accounts, it was impossible to suspect her of attempting to steal it; and yet, as Mr. Orridge could not help feeling when he had left the room, her conduct, when he surprised her over the trunk, was exactly the conduct of a person who is about to commit a theft.
"Pray don't trouble yourself about my luggage," said Rosamond, remarking Mrs. Jazeph's occupation as soon as the doctor had gone. "That is my idle maid's business, and you will only make her more careless than ever if you do it for her. I am sure the room is beautifully set in order. Come here and sit down and rest yourself. You must be a very unselfish, kind-hearted woman to give yourself all this trouble to serve a stranger. The doctor's message this afternoon told me that your mistress was a friend of my poor, dear father's. I suppose she must have known him before my time. Any way, I feel doubly grateful to her for taking an interest in me for my father's sake. But you can have no such feeling; you must have come here from pure good-nature and anxiety to help others. Don't go away, there, to the window. Come and sit down by me."
Mrs. Jazeph had risen from the trunk, and was approaching the bedside—when she suddenly turned away in the direction of the fire-place, just as Mrs. Frankland began to speak of her father.
"Come and sit here," reiterated Rosamond, getting impatient at receiving no answer. "What in the world are you doing there at the foot of the bed?"
The figure of the new nurse again interposed between the bed and the fading evening light that glimmered through the window before there was any reply.
"The evening is closing in," said Mrs. Jazeph, "and the window is not quite shut. I was thinking of making it fast, and of drawing down the blind—if you had no objection, ma'am?"
"Oh, not yet! not yet! Shut the window, if you please, in case the baby should catch cold, but don't draw down the blind. Let me get my peep at the view as long as there is any light left to see it by. That long flat stretch of grazing-ground out there is just beginning, at this dim time, to look a little like my childish recollections of a Cornish moor. Do you know any thing about Cornwall, Mrs. Jazeph?"
"I have heard—" At those first three words of reply the nurse stopped. She was just then engaged in shutting the window, and she seemed to find some difficulty in closing the lock.
"What have you heard?" asked Rosamond.
"I have heard that Cornwall is a wild, dreary country," said Mrs. Jazeph, still busying herself with the lock of the window, and, by consequence, still keeping her back turned to Mrs. Frankland.
"Can't you shut the window, yet?" said Rosamond. "My maid always does it quite easily. Leave it till she comes up—I am going to ring for her directly. I want her to brush my hair and cool my face with a little Eau de Cologne and water."
"I have shut it, ma'am," said Mrs. Jazeph, suddenly succeeding in closing the lock. "And if you will allow me, I should be very glad to make you comfortable for the night, and save you the trouble of ringing for the maid."
Thinking the new nurse the oddest woman she had ever met with, Mrs. Frankland accepted the offer. By the time Mrs. Jazeph had prepared the Eau de Cologne and water, the twilight was falling softly over the landscape outside, and the room was beginning to grow dark.
"Had you not better light a candle?" suggested Rosamond.
"I think not, ma'am," said Mrs. Jazeph, rather hastily. "I can see quite well without."
She began to brush Mrs. Frankland's hair as she spoke; and, at the same time, asked a question which referred to the few words that had passed between them on the subject of Cornwall. Pleased to find that the new nurse had grown familiar enough at last to speak before she was spoken to, Rosamond desired nothing better than to talk about her recollections of her native country. But, from some inexplicable reason, Mrs. Jazeph's touch, light and tender as it was, had such a strangely disconcerting effect on her, that she could not succeed, for the moment, in collecting her thoughts so as to reply, except in the briefest manner. The careful hands of the nurse lingered with a stealthy gentleness among the locks of her hair; the pale, wasted face of the new nurse approached, every now and then, more closely to her own than appeared at all needful. A vague sensation of uneasiness, which she could not trace to any particular part of her—which she could hardly say that she really felt, in a bodily sense, at all—seemed to be floating about her, to be hanging around and over her, like the air she breathed. She could not move, though she wanted to move in the bed; she could not turn her head so as to humor the action of the brush; she could not look round; she could not break the embarrassing silence which had been caused by her own short, discouraging answer. At last the sense of oppression—whether fancied or real—irritated her into snatching the brush out of Mrs. Jazeph's hand. The instant she had done so, she felt ashamed of the discourteous abruptness of the action, and confused at the alarm and surprise which the manner of the nurse exhibited. With the strongest sense of the absurdity of her own conduct, and yet without the least power of controlling herself, she burst out laughing, and tossed the brush away to the foot of the bed.
"Pray don't look surprised, Mrs. Jazeph," she said, still laughing without knowing why, and without feeling in the slightest degree amused. "I'm very rude and odd, I know. You have brushed my hair delightfully; but—I can't tell how—it seemed, all the time, as if you were brushing the strangest fancies into my head. I can't help laughing at them—I can't indeed! Do you know, once or twice, I absolutely fancied, when your face was closest to mine, that you wanted to kiss me! Did you ever hear of any thing so ridiculous? I declare I am more of a baby, in some things, than the little darling here by my side!"
Mrs. Jazeph made no answer. She left the bed while Rosamond was speaking, and came back, after an unaccountably long delay, with the Eau de Cologne and water. As she held the basin while Mrs. Frankland bathed her face, she kept away at arm's length, and came no nearer when it was time to offer the towel. Rosamond began to be afraid that she had seriously offended Mrs. Jazeph, and tried to soothe and propitiate her by asking questions about the management of the baby. There was a slight trembling in the sweet voice of the new nurse, but not the faintest tone of sullenness or anger, as she simply and quietly answered the inquiries addressed to her. By dint of keeping the conversation still on the subject of the child, Mrs. Frankland succeeded, little by little, in luring her back to the bedside—in tempting her to bend down admiringly over the infant—in emboldening her, at last, to kiss him tenderly on the cheek. One kiss was all that she gave; and she turned away from the bed, after it, and sighed heavily.
The sound of that sigh fell very sadly on Rosamond's heart. Up to this time the baby's little span of life had always been associated with smiling faces and pleasant words. It made her uneasy to think that any one could caress him and sigh after it.
"I am sure you must be fond of children," she said, hesitating a little from natural delicacy of feeling. "But will you excuse me for noticing that it seems rather a mournful fondness? Pray—pray don't answer my question if it gives you any pain—if you have any loss to deplore; but—but I do so want to ask if you have ever had a child of your own?"
Mrs. Jazeph was standing near a chair when that question was put. She caught fast hold of the back of it, grasping it so firmly, or perhaps leaning on it so heavily, that the woodwork cracked. Her head dropped low on her bosom. She did not utter, or even attempt to utter, a single word.
Fearing that she must have lost a child of her own, and dreading to distress her unnecessarily by venturing to ask any more questions, Rosamond said nothing, as she stooped over the baby to kiss him in her turn. Her lips rested on his cheek a little above where Mrs. Jazeph's lips had rested the moment before, and they touched a spot of wet on his smooth warm skin. Fearing that some of the water in which she had been bathing her face might have dropped on him, she passed her fingers lightly over his head, neck, and bosom, and felt no other spots of wet any where. The one drop that had fallen on him was the drop that wetted the cheek which the new nurse had kissed.
The twilight faded over the landscape, the room grew darker and darker; and still, though she was now sitting close to the table on which the candles and matches were placed, Mrs. Jazeph made no attempt to strike a light. Rosamond did not feel quite comfortable at the idea of lying awake in the darkness, with nobody in the room but a person who was as yet almost a total stranger; and she resolved to have the candles lighted immediately.
"Mrs. Jazeph," she said, looking toward the gathering obscurity outside the window, "I shall be much obliged to you, if you will light the candles and pull down the blind. I can trace no more resemblances out there, now, to a Cornish prospect; the view has gone altogether."
"Are you very fond of Cornwall, ma'am?" asked Mrs. Jazeph, rising, in rather a dilatory manner, to light the candles.
"Indeed I am," said Rosamond. "I was born there; and my husband and I were on our way to Cornwall when we were obliged to stop, on my account, at this place. You are a long time getting the candles lit. Can't you find the match-box?"
Mrs. Jazeph, with an awkwardness which was rather surprising in a person who had shown so much neat-handedness in setting the room to rights, broke the first match in attempting to light it, and let the second go out the instant after the flame was kindled. At the third attempt she was more successful; but she only lit one candle, and that one she carried away from the table which Mrs. Frankland could see, to the dressing-table, which was hidden from her by the curtains at the foot of the bed.
"Why do you move the candle?" asked Rosamond.