“I can’t think it’s as bad as that,” Vaughan said.
XXIX
AUTUMN LEAVES
Miss Sibson paused to listen, but heard nothing. And disappointed, and with a sigh, she spread a clean handkerchief over the lap of her gown and helped herself to part of a round of buttered toast.
“She’ll not come,” she muttered. “I was a fool to think it! An old fool to think it!” And she bit viciously into the toast.
It was long past her usual tea-time, yet she paused a second time to listen, before she raised her first cup of tea to her lips. A covered dish which stood on a brass trivet before the bright coal fire gave forth a savoury smell, and the lamplight which twinkled on sparkling silver and old Nantgarw, discovered more than the tea-equipage. The red moreen curtains were drawn before the windows, a tabby cat purred sleepily on the hearth; in all Bristol was no more cosy or more cheerful scene. Yet Miss Sibson left the savoury dish untouched, and ate the toast with less than her customary appetite.
“I shall set,” she murmured, “‘The Deceitfulness of Riches’ for the first copy when the children return. And for the second ‘Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds!’ And” — she continued with determination, though there was no one to be intimidated— “for the third, ‘There’s No Fool Like an Old Fool!’”
She had barely uttered the words when she set down her cup. The roll of distant wheels had fallen on her ears. She listened for a few seconds, then she rose in haste and rang the bell. “Martha,” she said when the maid appeared, “are the two warming-pans in the bed?”
“To be sure, Ma’am.”
“And well filled?” Miss Sibson spoke suspiciously.
“The sheets are as nigh singeing as you’d like, Ma’am,” the maid answered. “You can smell ‘em here! I only hope,” she continued, with a quaver in her voice, “as we mayn’t smell fire before long!”
“Smell fiddlesticks!” Miss Sibson retorted. Then “That will do,” she continued. “I will open the door myself.”
When she did so the lights of the hackney-coach which had stopped before the house disclosed first Mary Vermuyden in her furs, standing on the step; secondly, Mr. Flixton, who had placed himself as near her as he dared; and thirdly and fourthly, flanking them at a distance of a pace or two, a tall footman and a maid.
“Good gracious!” Miss Sibson exclaimed, dismay in her tone.
“Yes,” Mary answered, almost crying. “They would come! I said I wished to come alone. Good-night, Mr. Flixton!”
“Oh, but I — I couldn’t think of leaving you like this!” the Honourable Bob answered. He had derived a minimum of satisfaction from his ride on the coach, for Mary had shown herself of the coldest. And if he was to part from her here he might as well have travelled with Brereton. Besides, what the deuce was afoot? What was she doing here?
“And Baxter is as bad,” Mary said plaintively. “As for Thomas — —”
“Beg pardon, Ma’am,” the man said, touching his hat, “but it is as much as my place is worth.”
The maid, a woman of mature years, said nothing, but held her ground, the image of stolid disapproval. She knew Miss Sibson. But Bristol was strange to her; and the dark windy square, with its flickering lights, its glimpses of gleaming water and skeleton masts, and its unseen but creaking windlasses, seemed to her, fresh from Lady Worcester’s, a most unfitting place for her young lady.
Miss Sibson cut the knot after her own fashion. “Well, I can’t take you in,” she said bluffly. “This gentleman,” pointing to Mr. Flixton, “will find quarters for you at the White Lion or the Bush. And your mistress will see you to-morrow. Thomas, bring in your young lady’s trunk. Good-night, sir,” she added, addressing the Honourable Bob. “Miss Vermuyden will be quite safe with me.”
“Oh, but I say, Miss Sibson!” he remonstrated. “You can’t mean to take the moon out of the sky like this, and leave us in the dark? Miss Vermuyden — —”
“Good-night,” Mary said, not a whit placated by the compliment. And she slipped past Miss Sibson into the passage.
“Oh, but it’s not safe, you know!” he cried. “You’re not a hundred yards from the Mansion House here. And if those beggars make trouble to-morrow — positively there’s no knowing what will happen!”
“We can take care of ourselves, sir,” Miss Sibson replied curtly. “Good-night, sir!” And she shut the door in his face.
The Honourable Bob glared at it for a time, but it remained closed and dark. There was nothing to be done save to go. “D —— n the woman!” he cried. And he turned about.
It was something of a shock to him to find the two servants still at his elbow, patiently regarding him. “Where are we to go, sir?” the maid asked, as stolid as before.
“Go?” cried he, staring. “Go? Eh? What? What do you mean?”
“Where are we to go, sir, for the night? If you’ll please to show us, sir. I’m a stranger here.”
“Oh! This is too much!” the Honourable Bob cried, finding himself on a sudden a family man. “Go? I don’t care if you go to — —” But there he paused. He put the temptation to tell them to go to blazes from him. After all, they were Mary’s servants. “Oh, very well! Very well!” he resumed, fuming. “There, get in! Get in!” indicating the hackney-coach. “And do you,” he continued, turning to Thomas, “tell him to drive to the White Lion. Was there ever? That old woman’s a neat artist, if ever I saw one!”
And a moment later Flixton trundled off, boxed in with the mature maid, and vowing to himself that in all his life he had never been so diddled before.
Meanwhile, within doors — for farce and tragedy are never far apart — Mary, with her furs loosened, but not removed, was resisting all Miss Sibson’s efforts to restrain her. “I must go to her!” she said with painful persistence. “I must go to her at once, if you please, Miss Sibson. Where is she?”
“She is not here,” Miss Sibson said, plump and plain.
“Not here!” Mary cried, springing from the chair into which Miss Sibson had compelled her. “Not here!”
“No. Not in this house.”
“Then why — why did she tell me to come here?” Mary cried dumbfounded.
“Her ladyship is next door. No, my dear!” And Miss Sibson interposed her ample form between Mary and the door. “You cannot go to her until you have eaten and drunk. She does not expect you, and there is no need of such haste. She may live a fortnight, three weeks, a month even! And she must not, my dear, see you with that sad face.”
Mary gave way at that. She sat down and burst into tears.
The schoolmistress knew nothing of the encounter in Parliament Street, nothing of the meeting on the coach. But she was a sagacious woman, and she discerned something more than the fatigue of the journey, something more than grief for her mother, in the girl’s depression. She said nothing, however, contenting herself with patting her guest on the shoulder and gently removing her wraps and shoes. Then she set a footstool for her in front of the fire and poured out her tea, and placed hot sweetbread before her, and toast, and Sally Lunn. And when Mary, touched by her kindness, flung her arms round her neck and kissed her, she said only, “That’s better, my dear, drink your tea, and then I will tell you all I know.”
“I cannot eat anything.”
“Oh, yes, you can! After that you are going to see your mother, and then you will come back and take a good night’s rest. To-morrow you will do as you like. Her ladyship is with an old servant next door, through whom she first heard of me.”
“Why did she not remain in Bath?” Mary asked.
“I cannot tell you,” Miss Sibson answered. “She has whims. If you ask me, I should say that she thought Sir Robert would not find her here, and so could not take you from her.”
“But the servants?” Mary said in dismay. “They will tell my father. And indeed — —”
“Indeed what, my dear?”
“I do not wish to hide from him.”
“Quite right!” Miss Sibson said. “Quite right
, my dear. But I fancy that that was her ladyship’s reason. Perhaps she thought also that when she — that afterwards I should be at hand to take care of you. As a fact,” Miss Sibson continued, rubbing her cheek with the handle of a teaspoon, a sure sign that she was troubled, “I wish that your mother had chosen another place. You don’t ask, my dear, where the children are.”
Mary looked at her hostess. “Oh, Miss Sibson!” she exclaimed, conscience-stricken. “You cannot have sent them away for my sake?”
“No, my dear,” Miss Sibson answered, noting with satisfaction that Mary was making a meal. “No, their parents have removed them. The Recorder is coming to-morrow, and he is so unpopular on account of this nasty Bill — which is setting everyone on horseback whether they can ride or not — and there is so much talk of trouble when he enters, that all the foolish people have taken fright and removed their children for the week. It’s pure nonsense, my dear,” Miss Sibson continued comfortably. “I’ve seen the windows of the Mansion House broken a score of times at elections, and not another house in the Square a penny the worse! Just an old custom. And so it will be to-morrow. But the noise may disturb her ladyship, and that’s why I wish her elsewhere.”
Mary did not answer, and the schoolmistress, noting her spiritless attitude and the dark shadows under her eyes, was confirmed in her notion that here was something beyond grief for the mother whom the girl had scarcely known. And Miss Sibson felt a tug at her own heartstrings. She was well-to-do and well considered in Bristol, and she was not conscious that her life was monotonous. But the gay scrap of romance which Mary’s coming had wrought into the dull patchwork of days, long toned to the note of Mrs. Chapone, was welcome to her. Her little relaxations, her cosy whist-parties, her hot suppers to follow, these she had: but here was something brighter and higher. It stirred a long-forgotten youth, old memories, the ashes of romance. She loved Mary for it.
To rouse the girl, she rose from her chair. “Now, my dear,” she said, “you can go to your room, if you will. And in ten minutes we will step next door.”
Mary looked at her with grateful eyes. “I am glad now,” she said, “I am glad that she came here.”
“Ah!” the schoolmistress answered, pursing up her lips. And she looked at the girl uncertainly. “It’s odd,” she said, “I sometimes think that you are just — Mary Smith.”
“I am!” the other answered warmly. “Always Mary Smith to you!” And the old woman took the young one to her arms.
A quarter of an hour later Mary came down, and she was Mary Smith in truth. For she had put on the grey Quaker-like dress in which she had followed her trunk from the coach-office six months before. “I thought,” she said, “that I could nurse her better in this than in my new clothes!” But she blushed deeply as she spoke: for if she had this thought she had others also in her mind. She might not often wear that dress, but she would never part with it. Arthur Vaughan’s eyes had worshipped it; his hands had touched it. And in the days to come it would lie, until she died, in some locked coffer, perfumed with lavender, and sweet with the dried rose-leaves of her dead romance. And on one day in the year she would visit it, and bury her face in its soft faded folds, and dream the old dreams.
It was but a step to the door of the neighbouring house. But the distance, though short, steadied the girl’s mind and enabled her to taste that infinity of the night, that immensity of nature, which, like a fathomless ocean, islands the littleness of our lighted homes. The groaning of strained cordage, the creaking of timbers, the far-off rattle of a boom came off the dark water that lipped the wharves which still fringe three sides of the Square. Here and there a rare gas-lamp, lately set up, disclosed the half-bare arms of trees, or some vague opening leading to the Welsh Back. But for all the two could see, as they glided from the one door to the other, the busy city about them, seething with so many passions, pregnant with so much danger, hiding in its entrails the love, the fear, the secrets of a myriad lives, might have been in another planet.
Mary owned the calming influence of the night and the stars, and before the door opened to Miss Sibson’s knock, the blush had faded from her cheek. It was with solemn thoughts that she went up the wide oaken staircase, still handsome, though dusty and fallen from its high estate. The task before her, the scene on the threshold of which she trod, brought the purest instincts of her nature into play. But her guide knocked, someone within the room bade them enter, and Mary advanced. She saw lights and a bed — a four-poster, heavily curtained. And half blinded by her tears, she glided towards the bed — or was gliding, when a querulous voice arrested her midway.
“So you are come!” it said. And Lady Sybil, who, robed in a silken dressing-gown, was lying on a small couch in a different part of the room, tossed a book, not too gently, to the floor. “What stuff! What stuff!” she ejaculated wearily. “A schoolgirl might write as good! Well, you are come,” she continued. “There,” as Mary, flung back on herself, bent timidly and kissed her, “that will do! That will do! I can’t bear anyone near me! Don’t come too near me! Sit on that chair, where I can see you!”
Mary beat back her tears and obeyed with a quivering lip. “I hope you are better,” she said.
“Better!” her mother retorted in the same peevish tone. “No, and shall not be!” Then, with a shrill scream, “Heavens, child, what have you got on?” she continued. “What have you done to yourself? You look like a sœur de Charité!”
“I thought that I could nurse you better in this,” Mary faltered.
“Nurse me!”
“Yes, I — —”
“Rubbish!” Lady Sybil exclaimed with petulant impatience. “You nurse? Don’t be silly! Who wants you to nurse me? I want you to amuse me. And you won’t do that by dressing yourself like a dingy death’s-head moth! There, for Heaven’s sake,” with a catch in her voice which went to Mary’s heart, “don’t cry! I’m not strong enough to bear it. Tell me something! Tell me anything to make me laugh. How did you trick Sir Robert, child? How did you escape? That will amuse me,” with a mirthless laugh. “I wish I could see his solemn face when he hears that you are gone!”
Mary explained that the summons had found her in London; that her father was not there, but that still she had had to beat down Lady Worcester’s resistance before she could have her way and leave.
“I don’t know her,” Lady Sybil said shortly.
“She was very kind to me,” Mary answered.
“I dare say,” in the same tone.
“But she would not let me go until I gave her my address.”
Lady Sybil sat up sharply. “And you did that?” she shrieked. “You gave it her?”
“I was obliged to give it,” Mary stammered, “or I could not have left London.”
“Obliged? Obliged?” Lady Sybil retorted, in the same passionate tone. “Why, you fool, you might have given her fifty addresses! Any address! Any address but this! There!” Lady Sybil continued sullenly, as she sank back and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. “You’ve done it now. You’ve excited me. Give me those drops! There! Are you blind? Those! Those! And — and sit farther from me! I can’t breathe with you close to me!”
After which, when Mary, almost heartbroken, had given her the medicine, and seated herself in the appointed place, she turned her face to the wall and lay silent and morose, uttering no sound but an occasional sigh of pain.
Meantime, to eyes that could read, the room told her story, and told it eloquently. The table beside the couch was strewn with rose-bound Annuals and Keepsakes, and a dozen volumes bearing the labels of more than one library; books opened only to be cast aside. Costly toys and embroidered nothings, vinaigrettes and scent-bottles, lay scattered everywhere; and on other tables, on the mantelpiece, on the floor, a litter of similar trifles elbowed and jostled the gloomy tokens of illness. Near the invalid’s hand lay a miniature in a jewelled frame, while a packet of letters tied with a fragment of gold lace, and a buhl desk half-closed upon a broken fan told the same tale o
f ennui, and of a vanity which survived the charms on which it had rested. The lesson was not lost on the daughter’s heart. It moved her to purest pity; and presently, wrung by a sigh more painful than usual, she crept to the couch, sank on her knees, and pressed her cool lips to the wasted hand which hung from it. Even then for a time her mother did not move or take notice. But slowly the weary sighs grew more frequent, grew to sobs — how much less poignant! — and her weak arm drew Mary’s head to her bosom.
And by-and-by the arm tightened its hold and gripped her convulsively, the sobs grew deeper and shook the worn form at each respiration; and presently, “Ah, God, what will become of me?” burst from the depths of the poor quaking heart, too proud hitherto to make its fear known. “What will become of me?”
That cry pierced Mary like a knife, but its confession of weakness made mother and daughter one. Her feeble arms could not avert the approach of the dark shadow, whose coming terrified though it could not change. But what human love could do, what patient self-forgetfulness might teach, she vowed that she would do and teach; and what clinging hands might compass to delay the end, her hands should compass. When Miss Sibson’s message, informing her that it was time to return, was brought to her, she shook her head, smiling, and locked the door. “I shall be your nurse, after all!” she said. “I shall not leave you.” And before midnight, with a brave contentment, for which Lady Sybil’s following eyes were warrant, she had taken possession of the room and all its contents; she had tidied as much as it was good to tidy, she had knelt to heat the milk or brush the hearth, she had smoothed the pillow, and sworn a score of times that nothing, no Sir Robert, no father, no force should tear her from this her duty, this her joy — until the end.
No memory of her dull childhood, or of the days of labour and servitude which she owed to the dying woman, no thought of the joys of wealth and youth which she had lost through her, rose to mar the sincerity of her love. Much less did such reflections trouble her on whose flighty mind they should have rested so heavily. So far indeed was this from being the case, that when Mary stooped to some office which the mother’s fastidiousness deemed beneath her, “How can you do that?” Lady Sybil cried peevishly. “I’ll not have you do it! Do you hear me, girl? Let some servant see to it! What else are they for!”
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