CHAPTER XXIVA NEW MOTHER
“One day I received a terrible shock. Child as I was, I felt it severely. It came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it fell like a thunderbolt upon me.
“It was a morning in November when the carrier’s cart stopped at the manor house, and left a box directed to me, in the care of the steward.
“When it was opened, it revealed a beautiful cake wrapped in many folds of silver paper. I was delighted, for I had not tasted cake for months.
“But, oh! I did not taste it even then! The letter that lay on the top of the cake poisoned it.
“That letter told me that my father had married and was spending his honeymoon in Paris. I had a stepmother! A being whom, I knew not how, or why, unless perhaps from the idle talk of servants, I had learned to hate as an evil and to dread as an enemy—though it never occurred to me that my father would give me one. And yet he had married within five months after my mother’s death.
“I could not touch the poisoned cake! I know not what became of it.
“I cried all that day and many days after. The steward and his wife and the two old servants who had known and loved and served my mother, encouraged me with their sympathy and lamentations to yield to my grief and despair; but the governess frowned upon me and lectured me upon my duty to my parents, as it was her business to do—only it seemed to me cruel in her.
“As days passed my passionate grief subsided.
“My father did not bring his bride to Weirdwaste, which was, indeed, no fit place to bring a fine lady.Nor did he send for me to join them wherever they might be.
“He heard regularly from me through the doctor, the vicar, the steward, or my governess. And he seemed to be content with my condition.
“So the year passed away. I was thankful to my father for one thing—that he did not bring my stepmother and myself together.
“This was all wrong, but I did not know it then. I was unconsciously influenced by the sentiments of my own mother’s own old servants who were about me, and who, whenever Miss Murray was out of sight, would commiserate with me on the subject of my stepmother, and then rejoice with me on the fact that no future heir to Enderby that might be born of the second marriage, could deprive me of my inheritance of Weirdwaste, which was mine in right of my own mother.
“Ah me! Enderby Castle and Weirdwaste sounded well enough in the peerage, but in point of fact the united rent roll of both places did not reach over a thousand pounds per annum, and my father, for his rank, was a very poor man.
“I expected to see my father at Christmas. He wrote to the steward to say that he would come and bring Lady Enderby with him, and that the house must be made as comfortable as possible for her reception; and that the suit of rooms pointing south must be fitted up for her especial use.
“This letter filled my soul with dismay. I could have looked forward with delight to the visit of my father, had he been coming alone; but I could only dread the meeting with my stepmother.
“However, both the pleasure and the pain were saved me, for after the servants had got the house ready for the reception of my father and his new wife, there came another letter saying that the delicate health of LadyEnderby obliged him to take her to Italy for the winter. And in place of my father and stepmother’s visit, came a box of presents.
“I was again divided in my feelings—sorry not to see my father, glad not to see my stepmother.
“The Christmas box was a large and well-filled one, packed with flannels and blankets, and tea and sugar for the old women in the huts on the waste, and containing another smaller box with cakes, sweetmeats and sugar plums for me and my small household.
“I heard the steward remark to his wife that the new countess must be well off, or the earl must have come into money some way, for this was the very first Christmas that he had ever sent anything to the poor on the estate. As the guardian of his daughter, the heiress, he forgave many of them their rent, but he never helped them in any other way. And so at Christmas the old people on the waste were made happy. And now let me add here that as long as I remained at the old manor house this Christmas dole came every year.
“After this I heard less of the cruelty of my father in afflicting me with a stepmother. I heard even less of the wickedness of stepmothers in general and the probable enormity of my stepmother in particular.
“The old people from the waste came down in crowds to the manor house on Christmas Day to thank me for the dole that had been sent to them on Christmas Eve. This was the only pleasure we had. There was no merrymaking, and the state of the roads prevented us even from going to church.
“Oh, the dreary winter that followed! No one came to the house except the vicar and the doctor, who made weekly calls to report to my father. And we went nowhere at all. That was my first winter at Weirdwaste. And here let me add that all succeeding winters were like that.
“I had no companions, no amusements, no occupations except my schoolbooks and my piano. I had not even a pet bird, or cat, or dog.
“The steward and his wife were good to me, but they were engaged in their affairs. Miss Murray was faithful, but when she was not hearing my lessons, or guiding my fingers over the keys of the piano, she was busied in reading. I never knew anybody to read so much as she did. She had no other recreation.
“When the spring returned we began to take walks on the sand again when the tide was out; and we drove to church on Sundays when the state of the roads permitted us.
“On the first of August we received news from my father. He was at Enderby Castle, to which he had taken my stepmother for a temporary sojourn. He wrote to the steward to tell him that an heir had been born to Enderby; and he wrote to me to say that my new mother had given me a dear little brother, and that he hoped I would love them both very much.
“I was not quite four years old when my own dear mother died. I was but a few weeks past five now when I was told that I had a little brother by my father’s new wife, and that I must love both.
“I could not do it. You will see what a sensitive and badly trained child I was when I tell you that I fell into hysterical sobs and tears, and refused to be comforted. It seemed to me that I had quite lost my father—that he had been taken away from me by the new woman and the new child. I remember crying aloud to my own mother in heaven to come and take me away, because no one cared for me on earth.
“Miss Murray coaxed, lectured, remonstrated, all in vain. I would not hear reason or receive consolation.
“The two O’Nallys and the two old servants sympathized with me, and petted me, and cried over me.They never said a word against my father or my stepmother, personally or in my presence; but I often overheard them saying it was ‘a burning shame to neglect a child as I was neglected; that I ought to be with my father and stepmother, wherever they were,’ etc., etc. And their words deepened in me the sense of injury I felt.
“And yet, in justice to my father and his wife, I must say that no wrong was intended me. We were all the victims of circumstances, as you will judge as I go on.
“It was on this occasion that I wrote my first letter to my father, with much help from my governess.
“As soon as I had got over my paroxysms of grief, which did not happen for days, Miss Murray insisted that I should answer my father’s letter and wish him joy of his heir, and send my love to my new mother and little brother.
“This I most positively refused to do, declaring, with a new burst of tears, that I did not wish him any joy in his son; that I did not love my new brother, and that I had no new mother. I had but one mother, who was in heaven, and I should never have another.
“My governess insisted, and tried to intimidate me into compliance. Whereupon I told her that she should not wish to make me write falsehoods, and that for my part I was quite ready to be burned at the stake, like Bishop Bonner, for the truth’s sake, rather than write what I did not feel and what was not true.
“You see from this what a morbid, sensitive, extravagant little soul I was even at that tender age, and what exaggerated views I took of every trial.
“My governess had to yield the point. How could she even wish her pupil to write falsely? We compromised the matter by my consenting to write a short note to my father, telling him that I was glad to hearthat he was well, and asking him when he would come to see me.
“A week later I got a most affectionate letter from my father, saying that he would visit his ‘dear little daughter’ as soon as he thought it would be safe to leave his wife, who had lain in a low condition ever since the arrival of her babe.
“But my father did not come.
“It was, in fact, October before the countess was able to leave her room. Then her physicians ordered her to the south of France, whither my father soon took her, with her infant son.
“Another dreary winter followed me at Weirdwaste. The same confinement to the house, without companions, or amusements, or occupations—except my elderly attendants and my schoolbooks and music. No visitors except the vicar and the doctor. No visits except to church on exceptional Sundays when the roads were passable. I grew into a very strange child, precocious in a certain sort of intelligence gained from books, but backward in all knowledge of child life and depressed in spirits.
“I received occasional letters from my father, and wrote others, touched up by my governess.”