Chapter XII. Two of Them Sleep Badly.
Waiting for Sydney to come into the bedroom as usual and wish her good-night, Kitty was astonished by the appearance of her grandmother, entering on tiptoe from the corridor, with a small paper parcel in her hand.
“Whisper!” said Mrs. Presty, pointing to the open door of communication with Mrs. Linley’s room. “This is your birthday present. You mustn’t look at it till you wake to-morrow morning.” She pushed the parcel under the pillow—and, instead of saying good-night, took a chair and sat down.
“May I show my present,” Kitty asked, “when I go to mamma in the morning?”
The present hidden under the paper wrapper was a sixpenny picture-book. Kitty’s grandmother disapproved of spending money lavishly on birthday gifts to children. “Show it, of course; and take the greatest care of it,” Mrs. Presty answered gravely. “But tell me one thing, my dear, wouldn’t you like to see all your presents early in the morning, like mine?”
Still smarting under the recollection of her interview with her son-in-law, Mrs. Presty had certain ends to gain in putting this idea into the child’s head. It was her special object to raise domestic obstacles to a private interview between the husband and wife during the earlier hours of the day. If the gifts, usually presented after the nursery dinner, were produced on this occasion after breakfast, there would be a period of delay before any confidential conversation could take place between Mr. and Mrs. Linley. In this interval Mrs. Presty saw her opportunity of setting Linley’s authority at defiance, by rousing the first jealous suspicion in the mind of his wife.
Innocent little Kitty became her grandmother’s accomplice on the spot. “I shall ask mamma to let me have my presents at breakfast-time,” she announced.
“And kind mamma will say Yes,” Mrs. Presty chimed in. “We will breakfast early, my precious child. Good-night.”
Kitty was half asleep when her governess entered the room afterward, much later than usual. “I thought you had forgotten me,” she said, yawning and stretching out her plump little arms.
Sydney’s heart ached when she thought of the separation that was to come with the next day; her despair forced its way to expression in words.
“I wish I could forget you,” she answered, in reckless wretchedness.
The child was still too drowsy to hear plainly. “What did you say?” she asked. Sydney gently lifted her in the bed, and kissed her again and again. Kitty’s sleepy eyes opened in surprise. “How cold your hands are!” she said; “and how often you kiss me. What is it you have come to say to me—good-night or good-by?”
Sydney laid her down again on the pillow, gave her a last kiss, and ran out of the room.
In the corridor she heard Linley’s voice on the lower floor. He was asking one of the servants if Miss Westerfield was in the house or in the garden. Her first impulse was to advance to the stairs and to answer his question. In a moment more the remembrance of Mrs. Linley checked her. She went back to her bed-chamber. The presents that she had received, since her arrival at Mount Morven, were all laid out so that they could be easily seen by any person entering the room, after she had left the house. On the sofa lay the pretty new dress which she had worn at the evening party. Other little gifts were arranged on either side of it. The bracelet, resting on the pedestal of a statue close by, kept a morsel of paper in its place—on which she had written a few penitent words of farewell addressed to Mrs. Linley. On the toilet-table three photographic portraits showed themselves among the brushes and combs. She sat down, and looked first at the likenesses of Mrs. Linley and Kitty.
Had she any right to make those dear faces her companions in the future?
She hesitated; her tears dropped on the photographs. “They’re as good as spoiled now,” she thought; “they’re no longer fit for anybody but me.” She paused, and abruptly took up the third and last photograph—the likeness of Herbert Linley.
Was it an offense, now, even to look at his portrait? No idea of leaving it behind her was in her mind. Her resolution vibrated between two miseries—the misery of preserving her keep-sake after she had parted from him forever, and the misery of destroying it. Resigned to one more sacrifice, she took the card in both hands to tear it up. It would have been scattered in pieces on the floor, but for the chance which had turned the portrait side of the card toward her instead of the back. Her longing eyes stole a last look at him—a frenzy seized her—she pressed her lips to the photograph in a passion of hopeless love. “What does it matter?” she asked herself. “I’m nothing but the ignorant object of his kindness—the poor fool who could see no difference between gratitude and love. Where is the harm of having him with me when I am starving in the streets, or dying in the workhouse?” The fervid spirit in her that had never known a mother’s loving discipline, never thrilled to the sympathy of a sister-friend, rose in revolt against the evil destiny which had imbittered her life. Her eyes still rested on the photograph. “Come to my heart, my only friend, and kill me!” As those wild words escaped her, she thrust the card furiously into the bosom of her dress—and threw herself on the floor. There was something in the mad self-abandonment of that action which mocked the innocent despair of her childhood, on the day when her mother left her at the cruel mercy of her aunt.
That night was a night of torment in secret to another person at Mount Morven.
Wandering, in his need of self-isolation, up and down the dreary stone passages in the lower part of the house, Linley counted the hours, inexorably lessening the interval between him and the ordeal of confession to his wife. As yet, he had failed to find the opportunity of addressing to Sydney the only words of encouragement he could allow to pass his lips: he had asked for her earlier in the evening, and nobody could tell him where she was. Still in ignorance of the refuge which she might by bare possibility hope to find in Mrs. MacEdwin’s house, Sydney was spared the torturing doubts which now beset Herbert Linley’s mind. Would the noble woman whom they had injured allow their atonement to plead for them, and consent to keep their miserable secret? Might they still put their trust in that generous nature a few hours hence? Again and again those questions confronted Linley; and again and again he shrank from attempting to answer them.
Chapter XIII. Kitty Keeps Her Birthday.
They were all assembled as usual at the breakfast-table.
Preferring the request suggested to her by Mrs. Presty, Kitty had hastened the presentation of the birthday gifts, by getting into her mother’s bed in the morning, and exacting her mother’s promise before she would consent to get out again. By her own express wish, she was left in ignorance of what the presents would prove to be. “Hide them from me,” said this young epicure in pleasurable sensations, “and make me want to see them until I can bear it no longer.” The gifts had accordingly been collected in an embrasure of one of the windows; and the time had now arrived when Kitty could bear it no longer.
In the procession of the presents, Mrs. Linley led the way.
She had passed behind the screen which had thus far protected the hidden treasures from discovery, and appeared again with a vision of beauty in the shape of a doll. The dress of this wonderful creature exhibited the latest audacities of French fashion. Her head made a bow; her eyes went to sleep and woke again; she had a voice that said two words—more precious than two thousand in the mouth of a mere living creature. Kitty’s arms opened and embraced her gift with a scream of ecstasy. That fervent pressure found its way to the right spring. The doll squeaked: “Mamma!”—and creaked—and cried again—and said: “Papa!” Kitty sat down on the floor; her legs would support her no longer. “I think I shall faint,” she said quite seriously.
In the midst of the general laughter, Sydney silently placed a new toy (a pretty little imitation of a jeweler’s casket) at Kitty’s side, and drew back before the child could look at her. Mrs. Presty was the only person present who noticed her pale face and the trembling of her hands as she made the effort which preserved her composure.
The doll’s necklace, bracelets, and watch and chain, riveted Kitty’s attention on the casket. Just as she thought of looking round for her dear Syd, her father produced a new outburst of delight by presenting a perambulator worthy of the doll. Her uncle followed with a parasol, devoted to the preservation of the doll’s complexion when she went out for an airing. Then there came a pause. Where was the generous grandmother’s gift? Nobody remembered it; Mrs. Presty herself discovered the inestimable sixpenny picture-book cast away and forgotten on a distant window-seat. “I have a great mind to keep this,” she said to Kitty, “till you are old enough to value it properly.” In the moment of her absence at the window, Linley’s mother-in-law lost the chance of seeing him whisper to Sydney. “Meet me in the shrubbery in half an hour,” he said. She stepped back from him, startled by the proposal. When Mrs. Presty was in the middle of the room again, Linley and the governess were no longer near each other.
Having by this time recovered herself, Kitty got on her legs. “Now,” the spoiled child declared, addressing the company present, “I’m going to play.”
The doll was put into the perambulator, and was wheeled about the room, while Mrs. Linley moved the chairs out of the way, and Randal attended with the open parasol—under orders to “pretend that the sun was shining.” Once more the sixpenny picture-book was neglected. Mrs. Presty picked it up from the floor, determined by this time to hold it in reserve until her ungrateful grandchild reached years of discretion. She put it in the bookcase between Byron’s “Don Juan” and Butler’s “Lives of the Saints.” In the position which she now occupied, Linley was visible approaching Sydney again. “Your own interests are seriously concerned,” he whispered, “in something that I have to tell you.”
Incapable of hearing what passed between them, Mrs. Presty could see that a secret understanding united her son-in-law and the governess. She looked round cautiously at Mrs. Linley.
Kitty’s humor had changed; she was now eager to see the doll’s splendid clothes taken off and put on again. “Come and look at it,” she said to Sydney; “I want you to enjoy my birthday as much as I do.” Left by himself, Randal got rid of the parasol by putting it on a table near the door. Mrs. Presty beckoned to him to join her at the further end of the room.
“I want you to do me a favor,” she began.
Glancing at Linley before she proceeded, Mrs. Presty took up a newspaper, and affected to be consulting Randal’s opinion on a passage which had attracted her attention. “Your brother is looking our way,” she whispered: “he mustn’t suspect that there is a secret between us.”
False pretenses of any kind invariably irritated Randal. “What do you want me to do?” he asked sharply.
The reply only increased his perplexity.
“Observe Miss Westerfield and your brother. Look at them now.”
Randal obeyed.
“What is there to look at?” he inquired.
“Can’t you see?”
“I see they are talking to each other.”
“They are talking confidentially; talking so that Mrs. Linley can’t hear them. Look again.”
Randal fixed his eyes on Mrs. Presty, with an expression which showed his dislike of that lady a little too plainly. Before he could answer what she had just said to him, his lively little niece hit on a new idea. The sun was shining, the flowers were in their brightest beauty—and the doll had not yet been taken into the garden! Kitty at once led the way out; so completely preoccupied in steering the perambulator in a straight course that she forgot her uncle and the parasol. Only waiting to remind her husband and Sydney that they were wasting the beautiful summer morning indoors, Mrs. Linley followed her daughter—and innocently placed a fatal obstacle in Mrs. Presty’s way by leaving the room. Having consulted each other by a look, Linley and the governess went out next. Left alone with Randal, Mrs. Presty’s anger, under the complete overthrow of her carefully-laid scheme, set restraint at defiance.
“My daughter’s married life is a wreck,” she burst out, pointing theatrically to the door by which Linley and Sydney Westerfield had retired. “And Catherine has the vile creature whom your brother picked up in London to thank for it! Now do you understand me?”
“Less than ever,” Randal answered—"unless you have taken leave of your senses.”
Mrs. Presty recovered the command of her temper.
On that fine morning her daughter might remain in the garden until the luncheon-bell rang. Linley had only to say that he wished to speak with his wife; and the private interview which he had so rudely insisted on as his sole privilege, would assuredly take place. The one chance left of still defeating him on his own ground was to force Randal to interfere by convincing him of his brother’s guilt. Moderation of language and composure of manner offered the only hopeful prospect of reaching this end. Mrs. Presty assumed the disguise of patient submission, and used the irresistible influence of good humor and good sense.
“I don’t complain, dear Randal, of what you have said to me,” she replied. “My indiscretion has deserved it. I ought to have produced my proofs, and have left it to you to draw the conclusion. Sit down, if you please. I won’t detain you for more than a few minutes.”
Randal had not anticipated such moderation as this; he took the chair that was nearest to Mrs. Presty. They were both now sitting with their backs turned to the entrance from the library to the drawing-room.
“I won’t trouble you with my own impressions,” Mrs. Presty went on. “I will be careful only to mention what I have seen and heard. If you refuse to believe me, I refer you to the guilty persons themselves.”
She had just got to the end of those introductory words when Mrs. Linley returned, by way of the library, to fetch the forgotten parasol.
Randal insisted on making Mrs. Presty express herself plainly. “You speak of guilty persons,” he said. “Am I to understand that one of those guilty persons is my brother?”
Mrs. Linley advanced a step and took the parasol from the table. Hearing what Randal said, she paused, wondering at the strange allusion to her husband. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Presty answered the question that had been addressed to her.
“Yes,” she said to Randal; “I mean your brother, and your brother’s mistress—Sydney Westerfield.”
Mrs. Linley laid the parasol back on the table, and approached them.
She never once looked at her mother; her face, white and rigid, was turned toward Randal. To him, and to him only, she spoke.
“What does my mother’s horrible language mean?” she asked.
Mrs. Presty triumphed inwardly; chance had decided in her favor, after all! “Don’t you see,” she said to her daughter, “that I am here to answer for myself?”
Mrs. Linley still looked at Randal, and still spoke to him. “It is impossible for me to insist on an explanation from my mother,” she proceeded. “No matter what I may feel, I must remember that she is my mother. I ask you again—you who have been listening to her—what does she mean?”
Mrs. Presty’s sense of her own importance refused to submit to being passed over in this way.
“However insolently you may behave, Catherine, you will not succeed in provoking me. Your mother is bound to open your eyes to the truth. You have a rival in your husband’s affections; and that rival is your governess. Take your own course now; I have no more to say.” With her head high in the air—looking the picture of conscious virtue—the old lady walked out.
At the same moment Randal seized his first opportunity of speaking.
He addressed himself gently and respectfully to his sister-in-law. She refused to hear him. The indignation which Mrs. Presty had roused in her made no allowances, and was blind to all sense of right.
“Don’t trouble yourself to account for your silence,” she said, most unjustly. “You were listening to my mother without a word of remonstrance when I came into the room. You are concerned in this vile slander, too.”
Randal considerately refrained from provoking her by attempting to defend himself, while she was incapable of understanding him. “You will be sorry when you find that you have misjudged me,” he said, and sighed, and left her.
She dropped into a chair. If there was any one distinct thought in her at that moment, it was the thought of her husband. She was eager to see him; she longed to say to him: “My love, I don’t believe a word of it!” He was not in the garden when she had returned for the parasol; and Sydney was not in the garden. Wondering what had become of her father and her governess, Kitty had asked the nursemaid to look for them. What had happened since? Where had they been found? After some hesitation, Mrs. Linley sent for the nursemaid. She felt the strongest reluctance, when the girl appeared, to approach the very inquiries which she was interested in making.
“Have you found Mr. Linley?” she said—with an effort.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where did you find him?”
“In the shrubbery.”
“Did your master say anything?”
“I slipped away, ma’am, before he saw me.”
“Why?”
“Miss Westerfield was in the shrubbery, with my master. I might have been mistaken—” The girl paused, and looked confused.
Mrs. Linley tried to tell her to go on. The words were in her mind; but the capacity of giving expression to them failed her. She impatiently made a sign. The sign was understood.
“I might have been mistaken,” the maid repeated—"but I thought Miss Westerfield was crying.”
Having replied in those terms, she seemed to be anxious to get away. The parasol caught her eye. “Miss Kitty wants this,” she said, “and wonders why you have not gone back to her in the garden. May I take the parasol?”
“Take it.”
The tone of the mistress’s voice was completely changed. The servant looked at her with vague misgivings. “Are you not well, ma’am?”
“Quite well.”
The servant withdrew.
Mrs. Linley’s chair happened to be near one of the windows, which commanded a view of the drive leading to the main entrance of the house. A carriage had just arrived bringing holiday travelers to visit that part of Mount Morven which was open to strangers. She watched them as they got out, talking and laughing, and looking about them. Still shrinking instinctively from the first doubt of Herbert that had ever entered her mind, she found a refuge from herself in watching the ordinary events of the day. One by one the tourists disappeared under the portico of the front door. The empty carriage was driven away next, to water the horses at the village inn. Solitude was all she could see from the windows; silence, horrible silence, surrounded her out of doors and in. The thoughts from which she recoiled forced their way back into her mind; the narrative of the nursemaid’s discovery became a burden on her memory once more. She considered the circumstances. In spite of herself, she considered the circumstances again. Her husband and Sydney Westerfield together in the shrubbery—and Sydney crying. Had Mrs. Presty’s abominable suspicion of them reached their ears? or?—No! that second possibility might be estimated at its right value by any other woman; not by Herbert Linley’s wife.
She snatched up the newspaper, and fixed her eyes on it in the hope of fixing her mind on it next. Obstinately, desperately, she read without knowing what she was reading. The lines of print were beginning to mingle and grow dim, when she was startled by the sudden opening of the door. She looked round.
Her husband entered the room.
Chapter XIV. Kitty Feels the Heartache.
Linley advanced a few steps—and stopped.
His wife, hurrying eagerly to meet him, checked herself. It might have been distrust, or it might have been unreasoning fear—she hesitated on the point of approaching him.
“I have something to say, Catherine, which I’m afraid will distress you.”
His voice faltered, his eyes rested on her—then looked away again. He said no more.
He had spoken a few commonplace words—and yet he had said enough. She saw the truth in his eyes, heard the truth in his voice. A fit of trembling seized her. Linley stepped forward, in the fear that she might fall. She instantly controlled herself, and signed to him to keep back. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “You come from Miss Westerfield!”
That reproach roused him.
“I own that I come from Miss Westerfield,” he answered. “She addresses a request to you through me.”
“I refuse to grant it.”
“Hear it first.”
“No!”
“Hear it—in your own interest. She asks permission to leave the house, never to return again. While she is still innocent—”
His wife eyed him with a look of unutterable contempt. He submitted to it, but not in silence.
“A man doesn’t lie, Catherine, who makes such a confession as I am making now. Miss Westerfield offers the one atonement in her power, while she is still innocent of having wronged you—except in thought.”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Linley asked.
“It rests with you,” he replied, “to say if there is any other sacrifice of herself which will be more acceptable to you.”
“Let me understand first what the sacrifice means. Does Miss Westerfield make any conditions?”
“She has positively forbidden me to make conditions.”
“And goes out into the world, helpless and friendless?”
“Yes.”
Even under the terrible trial that wrung her, the nobility of the woman’s nature spoke in her next words.
“Give me time to think of what you have said,” she pleaded. “I have led a happy life; I am not used to suffer as I am suffering now.”
They were both silent. Kitty’s voice was audible on the stairs that led to the picture-gallery, disputing with the maid. Neither her father nor her mother heard her.
“Miss Westerfield is innocent of having wronged me, except in thought,” Mrs. Linley resumed. “Do you tell me that on your word of honor?”
“On my word of honor.”
So far his wife was satisfied. “My governess,” she said, “might have deceived me—she has not deceived me. I owe it to her to remember that. She shall go, but not helpless and not friendless.”
Her husband forgot the restraints he had imposed on himself.
“Is there another woman in the world like you!” he exclaimed.
“Many other women,” she answered, firmly. “A vulgar termagant, feeling a sense of injury, finds relief in an outburst of jealousy and a furious quarrel. You have always lived among ladies. Surely you ought to know that a wife in my position, who respects herself, restrains herself. I try to remember what I owe to others as well as what they owe to me.”
She approached the writing table, and took up a pen.
Feeling his position acutely, Linley refrained from openly admiring her generosity. Until he had deserved to be forgiven, he had forfeited the right to express an opinion on her conduct. She misinterpreted his silence. As she understood it, he appreciated an act of self-sacrifice on Miss Westerfield’s side—but he had no word of encouragement for an act of self-sacrifice on his wife’s side. She threw down the pen, with the first outbreak of anger that had escaped her yet.
“You have spoken for the governess,” she said to him. “I haven’t heard yet, sir, what you have to say for yourself. Is it you who tempted her? You know how gratefully she feels toward you—have you perverted her gratitude, and led her blindfold to love? Cruel, cruel, cruel! Defend yourself if you can.”
He made no reply.
“Is it not worth your while to defend yourself?” she burst out, passionately. “Your silence is an insult!”
“My silence is a confession,” he answered, sadly. “She may accept your mercy—I may not even hope for it.”
Something in the tone of his voice reminded her of past days—the days of perfect love and perfect confidence, when she had been the one woman in the world to him. Dearly treasured remembrances of her married life filled her heart with tenderness, and dimmed with tears the angry light that had risen in her eyes. There was no pride, no anger, in his wife when she spoke to him now.
“Oh, my husband, has she taken your love from me?”
“Judge for yourself, Catherine, if there is no proof of my love for you in what I have resisted—and no remembrance of all that I owe to you in what I have confessed.”
She ventured a little nearer to him. “Can I believe you?”
“Put me to the test.”
She instantly took him at his word. “When Miss Westerfield has left us, promise not to see her again.”
“I promise.”
“And not even to write to her.”
“I promise.”
She went back to the writing-table. “My heart is easier,” she said, simply. “I can be merciful to her now.”
After writing a few lines, she rose and handed the paper to him. He looked up from it in surprise. “Addressed to Mrs. MacEdwin!” he said.
“Addressed,” she answered, “to the only person I know who feels a true interest in Miss Westerfield. Have you not heard of it?”
“I remember,” he said—and read the lines that followed:
“I recommend Miss Westerfield as a teacher of young children, having had ample proof of her capacity, industry, and good temper while she has been governess to my child. She leaves her situation in my service under circumstances which testify to her sense of duty and her sense of gratitude.”
“Have I said,” she asked, “more than I could honorably and truly say—even after what has happened?”
He could only look at her; no words could have spoken for him as his silence spoke for him at that moment. When she took back the written paper there was pardon in her eyes already.
The last worst trial remained to be undergone; she faced it resolutely. “Tell Miss Westerfield that I wish to see her.”
On the point of leaving the room, Herbert was called back. “If you happen to meet with my mother,” his wife added, “will you ask her to come to me?”
Mrs. Presty knew her daughter’s nature; Mrs. Presty had been waiting near at hand, in expectation of the message which she now received.
Tenderly and respectfully, Mrs. Linley addressed herself to her mother. “When we last met, I thought you spoke rashly and cruelly. I know now that there was truth—some truth, let me say—in what offended me at the time. If you felt strongly, it was for my sake. I wish to beg your pardon; I was hasty, I was wrong.”
On an occasion when she had first irritated and then surprised him, Randal Linley had said to Mrs. Presty, “You have got a heart, after all!” Her reply to her daughter showed that view of her character to be the right one. “Say no more, my dear,” she answered “I was hasty; I was wrong.”
The words had barely fallen from her lips, before Herbert returned. He was followed by Sydney Westerfield.
The governess stopped in the middle of the room. Her head sank on her breast; her quick convulsive breathing was the only sound that broke the silence. Mrs. Linley advanced to the place in which Sydney stood. There was something divine in her beauty as she looked at the shrinking girl, and held out her hand.
Sydney fell on her knees. In silence she lifted that generous hand to her lips. In silence, Mrs. Linley raised her—took the writing which testified to her character from the table—and presented it. Linley looked at his wife, looked at the governess. He waited—and still neither the one nor the other uttered a word. It was more than he could endure. He addressed himself to Sydney first.
“Try to thank Mrs. Linley,” he said.
She answered faintly: “I can’t speak!”
He appealed to his wife next. “Say a last kind word to her,” he pleaded.
She made an effort, a vain effort to obey him. A gesture of despair answered for her as Sydney had answered: “I can’t speak!”
True, nobly true, to the Christian virtue that repents, to the Christian virtue that forgives, those three persons stood together on the brink of separation, and forced their frail humanity to suffer and submit.
In mercy to the woman, Linley summoned the courage to part them. He turned to his wife first.
“I may say, Catherine, that she has your good wishes for happier days to come?”
Mrs. Linley pressed his hand.
He approached Sydney, and gave his wife’s message. It was in his heart to add something equally kind on his own part. He could only say what we have all said—how sincerely, how sorrowfully, we all know—the common word, “Good-by!”—the common wish, “God bless you!”
At that last moment the child ran into the room, in search of her mother.
There was a low murmur of horror at the sight of her. That innocent heart, they had all hoped, might have been spared the misery of the parting scene!
She saw that Sydney had her hat and cloak on. “You’re dressed to go out,” she said. Sydney turned away to hide her face. It was too late; Kitty had seen the tears. “Oh, my darling, you’re not going away!” She looked at her father and mother. “Is she going away?” They were afraid to answer her. With all her little strength, she clasped her beloved friend and play-fellow round the waist. “My own dear, you’re not going to leave me!” The dumb misery in Sydney’s face struck Linley with horror. He placed Kitty in her mother’s arms. The child’s piteous cry, “Oh, don’t let her go! don’t let her go!” followed the governess as she suffered her martyrdom, and went out. Linley’s heart ached; he watched her until she was lost to view. “Gone!” he murmured to himself—"gone forever!”
Mrs. Presty heard him, and answered him:—"She’ll come back again!”
SECOND BOOK
Chapter XV. The Doctor.
As the year advanced, the servants at Mount Morven remarked that the weeks seemed to follow each other more slowly than usual. In the higher regions of the house, the same impression was prevalent; but the sense of dullness among the gentlefolks submitted to circumstances in silence.
If the question had been asked in past days: Who is the brightest and happiest member of the family? everybody would have said: Kitty. If the question had been asked at the present time, differences of opinion might have suggested different answers—but the whole household would have refrained without hesitation from mentioning the child’s name.
Since Sydney Westerfield’s departure Kitty had never held up her head.
Time quieted the child’s first vehement outbreak of distress under the loss of the companion whom she had so dearly loved. Delicate management, gently yet resolutely applied, held the faithful little creature in check, when she tried to discover the cause of her governess’s banishment from the house. She made no more complaints; she asked no more embarrassing questions—but it was miserably plain to everybody about her that she failed to recover her spirits. She was willing to learn her lessons (but not under another governess) when her mother was able to attend to her: she played with her toys, and went out riding on her pony. But the delightful gayety of other days was gone; the shrill laughter that once rang through the house was heard no more. Kitty had become a quiet child; and, worse still, a child who seemed to be easily tired.
The doctor was consulted.
He was a man skilled in the sound medical practice that learns its lessons without books—bedside practice. His opinion declared that the child’s vital power was seriously lowered. “Some cause is at work here,” he said to the mother, “which I don’t understand. Can you help me?” Mrs. Linley helped him without hesitation. “My little daughter dearly loved her governess; and her governess has been obliged to leave us.” That was her reply. The doctor wanted to hear no more; he at once advised that Kitty should be taken to the seaside, and that everything which might remind her of the absent friend—books, presents, even articles of clothing likely to revive old associations—should be left at home. A new life, in new air. When pen, ink, and paper were offered to him, that was the doctor’s prescription.
Mrs. Linley consulted her husband on the choice of the seaside place to which the child should be removed.
The blank which Sydney’s departure left in the life of the household was felt by the master and mistress of Mount Morven—and felt, unhappily, without any open avowal on either side of what was passing in their minds. In this way the governess became a forbidden subject between them; the husband waited for the wife to set the example of approaching it, and the wife waited for the husband. The trial of temper produced by this state of hesitation, and by the secret doubts which it encouraged, led insensibly to a certain estrangement—which Linley in particular was morbidly unwilling to acknowledge. If, when the dinner-hour brought them together, he was silent and dull in his wife’s presence, he attributed it to anxiety on the subject of his brother—then absent on a critical business errand in London. If he sometimes left the house the first thing in the morning, and only returned at night, it was because the management of the model farm had become one of his duties, in Randal’s absence. Mrs. Linley made no attempt to dispute this view of the altered circumstances in home-life—but she submitted with a mind ill at ease. Secretly fearing that Linley was suffering under Miss Westerfield’s absence, she allowed herself to hope that Kitty’s father would see a necessity, in his own case, for change of scene, and would accompany them to the seaside.
“Won’t you come with us, Herbert?” she suggested, when they had both agreed on the choice of a place.
His temper was in a state of constant irritation. Without meaning it he answered her harmless question sharply.
“How can I go away with you, when we are losing by the farm, and when there is nobody to check the ruinous expenses but myself?”
Mrs. Linley’s thoughts naturally turned to Randal’s prolonged absence. “What can be keeping him all this time in London?” she said.
Linley’s failing patience suffered a severe trial.
“Don’t you know,” he broke out, “that I have inherited my poor mother’s property in England, saddled with a lawsuit? Have you never heard of delays and disappointments, and quibbles and false pretenses, encountered by unfortunate wretches like me who are obliged to go to law? God only knows when Randal will be free to return, or what bad news he may bring with him when he does come back.”
“You have many anxieties, Herbert; and I ought to have remembered them.”
That gentle answer touched him. He made the best apology in his power: he said his nerves were out of order, and asked her to excuse him if he had spoken roughly. There was no unfriendly feeling on either side; and yet there was something wanting in the reconciliation. Mrs. Linley left her husband, shaken by a conflict of feelings. At one moment she felt angry with him; at another she felt angry with herself.
With the best intentions (as usual) Mrs. Presty made mischief, nevertheless. Observing that her daughter was in tears, and feeling sincerely distressed by the discovery, she was eager to administer consolation. “Make your mind easy, my dear, if you have any doubt about Herbert’s movements when he is away from home. I followed him myself the day before yesterday when he went out. A long walk for an old woman—but I can assure you that he does really go to the farm.”
Implicitly trusting her husband—and rightly trusting him—Linley’s wife replied by a look which Mrs. Presty received in silent indignation. She summoned her dignity and marched out of the room.
Five minutes afterward, Mrs. Linley received an intimation that her mother was seriously offended, in the form of a little note:
“I find that my maternal interest in your welfare, and my devoted efforts to serve you, are only rewarded with furious looks. The less we see of each other the better. Permit me to thank you for your invitation, and to decline accompanying you when you leave Mount Morven tomorrow.” Mrs. Linley answered the note in person. The next day Kitty’s grandmother—ripe for more mischief—altered her mind, and thoroughly enjoyed her journey to the seaside.
Chapter XVI. The Child.
During the first week there was an improvement in the child’s health, which justified the doctor’s hopeful anticipations. Mrs. Linley wrote cheerfully to her husband; and the better nature of Mrs. Linley’s mother seemed, by some inscrutable process, to thrive morally under the encouraging influences of the sea air. It may be a bold thing to say, but it is surely true that our virtues depend greatly on the state of our health.
During the second week, the reports sent to Mount Morven were less encouraging. The improvement in Kitty was maintained; but it made no further progress.
The lapse of the third week brought with it depressing results. There could be no doubt now that the child was losing ground. Bitterly disappointed, Mrs. Linley wrote to her medical adviser, describing the symptoms, and asking for instructions. The doctor wrote back: “Find out where your supply of drinking water comes from. If from a well, let me know how it is situated. Answer by telegraph.” The reply arrived: “A well near the parish church.” The doctor’s advice ran back along the wires: “Come home instantly.”
They returned the same day—and they returned too late.
Kitty’s first night at home was wakeful and restless; her little hands felt feverish, and she was tormented by perpetual thirst. The good doctor still spoke hopefully; attributing the symptoms to fatigue after the journey. But, as the days followed each other, his medical visits were paid at shorter intervals. The mother noticed that his pleasant face became grave and anxious, and implored him to tell her the truth. The truth was told in two dreadful words: “Typhoid Fever.”
A day or two later, the doctor spoke privately with Mr. Linley. The child’s debilitated condition—that lowered state of the vital power which he had observed when Kitty’s case was first submitted to him—placed a terrible obstacle in the way of successful resistance to the advance of the disease. “Say nothing to Mrs. Linley just yet. There is no absolute danger so far, unless delirium sets in.” “Do you think it likely?” Linley asked. The doctor shook his head, and said “God knows.”
On the next evening but one, the fatal symptom showed itself. There was nothing violent in the delirium. Unconscious of past events in the family life, the poor child supposed that her governess was living in the house as usual. She piteously wondered why Sydney remained downstairs in the schoolroom. “Oh, don’t keep her away from me! I want Syd! I want Syd!” That was her one cry. When exhaustion silenced her, they hoped that the sad delusion was at an end. No! As the slow fire of the fever flamed up again, the same words were on the child’s lips, the same fond hope was in her sinking heart.
The doctor led Mrs. Linley out of the room. “Is this the governess?” he asked.
“Yes!”
“Is she within easy reach?”
“She is employed in the family of a friend of ours, living five miles away from us.”
“Send for her instantly!”
Mrs. Linley looked at him with a wildly-mingled expression of hope and fear. She was not thinking of herself—she was not even thinking, for that one moment, of the child. What would her husband say, if she (who had extorted his promise never to see the governess again) brought Sydney Westerfield back to the house?
The doctor spoke to her more strongly still.
“I don’t presume to inquire into your private reasons for hesitating to follow my advice,” he said; “but I am bound to tell you the truth. My poor little patient is in serious danger—every hour of delay is an hour gained by death. Bring that lady to the bedside as fast as your carriage can fetch her, and let us see the result. If Kitty recognizes her governess—there, I tell you plainly, is the one chance of saving the child’s life.”
Mrs. Linley’s resolution flashed on him in her weary eyes—the eyes which, by day and night alike, had known so little rest. She rang for her maid. “Tell your master I want to speak to him.”
The woman answered: “My master has gone out.”
The doctor watched the mother’s face. No sign of hesitation appeared in it—the one thought in her mind now was the thought of the child. She called the maid back.
“Order the carriage.”
“At what time do you want it, ma’am?”
“At once!”