The Last of the Mortimers: A Story in Two Voices

Chapter XVII.

It was getting dusk, and the light was pale and ghastly in that little corridor which was close upon the backstairs, and very bare and chill. The door opened without the assistance of the keys. We went into the little luxurious room where the fire burned brightly, warm though the weather was, and which bore all the marks of being lived in and cherished. An easy-chair and footstool were placed at the side of the fire, and close by stood a little table with a raised ornamental rim, like a tray, in which some books and some of Miss Mortimer’s materials for work were placed. At the other end of the room was a window, where stood a plain rush-bottomed chair and a large round basket of work; there was Carson’s place; and the union of the two in this their joint retirement and dwelling-place—the junction of the lady’s luxuries and the servant’s labours in this habitation common to them both—struck me with a pathetic force, now that this old, long, immemorial connection was brought to a close so hurriedly. Aunt Milly did not linger in this room; she went straight to the door leading into the bedchamber which was fastened. “Sarah,” she called softly, “Sarah!” there was no answer. We listened, and the silence round was dreadful; the silence and the gathering twilight, and the terrible mystery of life or death that lay in that closed-up room. Then she tried the keys with her trembling hands. Still not a word from the solitary within, not even of remonstrance or indignation. After what seemed to us a dreadful tedious interval, in which the night appeared visibly to darken round us, the lock at length yielded. The key that had been in it fell, with a dull, heavy sound, inside, making our hearts beat. Then Aunt Milly opened the door. I shall never forget the sensation with which I entered that dark room. What we were to find there, a ghastly corpse or a miserable living creature, nobody could tell; treading on the soft carpets that made our footsteps noiseless, brushing past those soft-drawn curtains which shut out every draught, coming into this atmosphere of care, and comfort, and luxury, the contrast was almost too dreadful to bear. I remember trying to listen for her breath, but could not for the terrified beating of my own heart. The darkness made everything more dreadful still, for the blinds were drawn down, and the little light there was fell so faintly through them that we could scarcely find our way through the room. Aunt Milly was before me; she made a terrified plunge forward, and gave a cry as we came past the head of the bed, which was towards the dressing-room door. Something lay in a heap on the floor by the side of the bed. She threw herself down on the floor beside that heap. I don’t think she was conscious, even when she touched it, what it was; but as I rushed to help her, as I thought, I was suddenly arrested by a gleam of eyes from the bed. “I am not dead,” said Miss Mortimer. I could not help nor command myself. Some scream or shriek came from me in the extremity of my awe and terror. I could hear it answered by a sudden stir and commotion outside the door. “They’re killing my mistress,” was Lizzie’s voice; and with the wildest alarm lest some violent attack on the door should follow, I rushed to it, opened it, and asked for lights.

Outside were half the household grouped at various distances. No precautions could stifle that eager curiosity which knew by instinct that some wonderful mystery was here. They all dispersed when they saw me, frightened and ashamed of themselves. Only Lizzie kept her ground. She seized hold of my sleeve and detained me. “You’re no to stay there!” cried Lizzie. “Oh, no you, no you! You’ll gang and let them kill you, and the bairn’ll perish, and the Captain never come hame! Let me in! I’ll get the drinks and keep up the fire, and never close an e’e; but it’s no you that’s to watch, and you the light o’ folks e’en. It’s no to be you! If I was to gang to my bed and sleep, what would the Captain say to me?” cried poor Lizzie, with a trembling burst of excitement and anxiety, standing close up by me, holding my sleeve, pressing to enter the room. Somehow it comforted me, though it was a piece of folly. I told her again to get the lights, and went back into the dark, solemn room. These sounds of the outside world had not entered there. Miss Mortimer lay on the bed with her eyes wide-awake and gleaming, gathering into them all the little light in the room. Aunt Milly stood beside her, asking how she was; herself scarcely recovered from the shock that had been given her by that heap of clothes upon the floor, trembling, not knowing very well what she said, her great yearning anxiety and curiosity to get at her sister’s heart, overflowing in uneasy questions. Did she feel ill? Would she have anything? How was she? Miss Mortimer took no notice of her questions. She repeated once “I am not dead,” with a strange spitefulness and defiance, and for the rest lay silent, looking at me as I moved about the room, a dark undecipherable figure, and at poor Aunt Milly standing beside me. She took no other notice. It seemed to please her to lie there silent, defying all our curiosity. But she did not complain or find fault with our presence. I believe in my heart she was glad to have her dreadful solitude thus broken, and that it was a comfort to her desolation to see living creatures moving in the darkness. I cannot help thinking so; but after that one expression, twice repeated, not all the anxious questions of her sister could bring a syllable to her lips.

When the candles came she closed her eyes; then, after a little interval, made a wrench at the curtains and gave an impatient sigh. The sigh was for Carson, who doubtless knew exactly what she liked and what she did not like. The fire was laid already in the grate, and I lighted it, and began to put away those things which lay on the floor. Wherever I moved, when it was within her sight, she followed me with her eyes from within the crimson shadow of the curtain. She was perfectly composed and self-possessed. She was even well as it appeared. The ghastly colour had disappeared from her face. She lay there self-absorbed, as she sat over her knitting. All the dread incidents of this day had passed over, and left Sarah Mortimer unchanged. Such a woman could deny, defy, live through any thing. I watched her with indescribable awe and——. Well! I had pitied her while she was alone; but do you suppose I could love such a woman, lying there unmoved and unrepentant, in her dread self-occupation? It was not possible I hated her, loathed her, turned away with sickening and disgust from her dreadful looks. It was hard, even, to pity her now.

Chapter XVIII.

I HAD with difficulty overcome Aunt Milly. I had represented to her how much better I was able to bear it than she, and Aunt Milly herself had sent off Sara Cresswell to bed. It was late at night, and all the house was still. We were both together in the dressing-room. Nothing would persuade dear Aunt Milly to leave me alone to this vigil. She wrapped herself in a shawl and lay down upon the sofa. “I am at hand the moment I am wanted,” she said. I had kissed baby, and said my prayers beside him. I was not frightened or nervous now. I went in, wrapped in my dressing-gown, to look at my patient. She stretched out her hand, and then when she saw me, drew it back again with a fretful groan, and turned her face to the wall. It was Carson, still Carson, whom she missed at every turn. But she did not answer me when I asked if she wanted anything, she only groaned again with a dismal impotence and impatience. I sat and watched her at a distance while she lay in that broad wakefulness, her eyes wandering to and fro, her mind evidently wandering, too, into never-ending thought. It was to me a spirit, somehow, chained and fettered to a body it could not throw off, which lay in irksome confinement on that bed,—a spirit ever active, sleepless, evil. Why was I sitting up with her? she was not even ill. Was it that she had died that day, and some wicked spirit had taken possession of the exhausted frame? I declare that this idea returned to me in spite of myself. I could not escape from it; as the night crept on strange fears came over me. Her eyes fascinated mine. I could not withdraw my gaze from those two gleams of strange light within the crimson curtains, moving about from minute to minute with their restless observation. What was she thinking of? Could she tell that, under this roof, the roof of his fathers, her injured son was sleeping? Was she thinking of her youth, her life, the past, with all its dread, pertinacious, stubborn cruelty? I did not know then how the extraordinary story told by Luigi could be harmonised into possibility. I could not think of any story; I could think of nothing but that solitary woman pursuing those sleepless thoughts, which nobody shared, through all the dread recesses of her conscience, through all the scenes, visible to her only, of her hidden mysterious life.

It must have been about midnight when some one knocked softly at the door. It made me start painfully with a terror I could not subdue. I rose to see who it was, trembling at the summons. It was Carson, who called me anxiously into the drawing room. She did not say anything, but drew me to a little medicine-chest, which she opened, and from which, all silently, with the speed of long custom, she took a little bottle, and dropped some of its contents into a glass of water. “You must put this by her bedside,” whispered Carson, “and here are all her medicines; but don’t drop them yourself, for the love of pity!—you’ve no experience. You might give her her death. When my missis wants her draughts, will you call me?” While I promised to do so, Aunt Milly woke up from a short sleep. “Has anything happened, Milly?” she cried, starting up suddenly. Nothing had happened but that her start had thrown down a footstool, and made a noise which sounded dreadful in the calm of the night. The three of us dispersed hastily upon that sound. Carson disappeared out of the room. Aunt Milly sat up trembling on the sofa. I went back to the patient. The noise had roused her. She had struggled up in bed, and was trying to look round to the dressing-room door.

“Who is it?” she cried, when I went in, her eyes fixing on me with something of the dreadful expression they had in the drawing-room, as if she had lost control over them, and the orbs turned wildly out and fluttered to the light. “If it’s him, let him come here.”

“It was only Carson,” I said.

“Carson? let her not come near me. I will do her an injury,” cried Miss Mortimer with wild exasperation. Then she suffered herself to fall back on her pillows. “They’re all in a plot,” she went on, “all in a plot, the very woman I trusted; I shall never trust anybody any more. But here’s the wonderful thing; she is just as great a coward as she is a fool; and to think she should hate me so much as to be able to go up and down these passages in the middle of the night with a dead man! Hark, there they are!”

I fell back from the bedside at the words, unable to refrain from a shudder of horror.

“You’re afraid,” said Miss Mortimer, looking at me with a kind of contemptuous curiosity. “Yet you saw him come in yesterday and you did not faint. I remember seeing you stare and stare. Ah! it’s strange to see a dead man!”

“I saw nobody but Luigi; nobody but your son,” cried I, in dismay.

When it was said I drew back in alarm, lest the words should rouse her into passion. But they did not. She was beyond that.

“I could not see him, though,” she continued, going on in her dreadful monologue; “it was only a kind of feeling he was there, and the scent of the syringas in the garden. You know it’s very overpowering; those they call the Virgin’s Breast. It was that made me faint.”

Here she fixed her eyes on me again, as if she imagined that she had been setting up a plausible plea and dared me to contradict it.

“I wonder if he’s as handsome now he’s dead,” she went on in a very low tone; “he was never as handsome for a man as I was for a woman. I’ll never, never speak to Carson again; but you might ask her if he’s kept his looks. Ah! I thought I saw some one behind the curtains there; but he’ll never appear to me. For he swore, you know, he swore, he was never to give me any trouble, and he kept his word till he died.”

“Oh, Miss Mortimer,”—I cried, coming forward to the bed with the glass in my hand. She held out hers eagerly, and interrupted me.

“Miss Mortimer! to be sure I am Miss Mortimer; I have always been Miss Mortimer, you know that; then what’s all this made up story about a son? For, you know,” she said, sinking her voice again into a whisper, and holding the glass in her hand, “to be called countess would have been a temptation to many a woman. But I never would have it, not for a day, never after he refused to take our name. That’s what a man calls love, you know. You shall take his name if it’s a beggar’s, and he will not take yours if it brings a kingdom. But I was not the sort of woman to be a beggarly Italian countess. And I’ve beaten him in his grave,” she cried out in ghastly triumph,—“in his grave I’ve got the victory over him! Here’s the child on his knees to me to call him Lewis Mortimer. Ah! you’re Richard Mortimer’s daughter. I might have married Richard if I had known how things were going to turn out. We’ll set it all right to-morrow. Yes; stand by me, and we’ll set it all right. There’s no dead man shall conquer me. Do you hear? There he is pacing about the passage as he used to do when I refused to see him. But he dared not come in; no, not if I had been a thousand times his wife.”

And I cannot help it if people may think me a fool; there were steps outside in the passage. If it was a living creature I cannot tell; but, as certain as I live, there were footsteps going up and down, up and down, with a heavy, melancholy tread. She looked at me full in the face as we heard them going on. She began to tremble so that the bed shook under her; her eyes grew wilder, her colour more ghastly. In spite of all she said, she was stricken to her very heart with fear.

And as for me, I did not feel I had courage to open the door. I called out, “Whoever you are, go away, I beseech,—go away! She cannot rest while you are here.” The steps stopped in a moment, then, after a pause, went on and went away, growing fainter in the distance. Thank heaven it must have been somebody living! perhaps Carson, perhaps her son.

When I came back to the bedside she had dropped asleep—actually, in the midst of her terror, had fallen into an unnatural slumber. It was an opiate that Carson had given her. The little medicine-chest was full of different kinds of opiates. Scarcely one of them that was not marked poison. I looked into the dressing-room for a minute to comfort poor Aunt Milly, who had heard all her sister said, and was in a dreadful state of agitation. She kissed me and blessed me, and leaned her dear kind head upon my shoulder for the moment I dared stay beside her. “She would never have said so much to me,” said Aunt Milly, and wrapped her own shawl round me, and tried to make me take some wine which she had brought upstairs. When I would not take that, lest it should make me sleepy, Aunt Milly got up from the sofa to make some tea for me. Everybody knows such nights—everybody knows how some one always tries to comfort the watcher with such attentions—tender, useless, heartbreaking attempts at outside consolation. I went back to the sick room with a pang both of relief and anguish. If it had been my husband or my baby that I was watching! Thank God it was not so! but the picture came before me with a terrible force just then, when I did not know where Harry was, nor how he might be lying, nor who might be watching over him. I tried to shut out my own thoughts from this room; but who could ever do that? I fancied I could see white soldiers’ huts rising in the darkness, and groans of wounded men. It was a relief to me when my patient groaned and turned in her bed. But she did not wake; She lay all night long in what seemed more like a stupor than a sleep, interrupted by groans and stifled outcries, and long sighs that broke one’s heart. No wonder we had heard of her bad nights.

In the morning, when she woke at last, Miss Mortimer turned round upon me with a half-stupified, wondering stare. Then she recollected herself. She did not speak, but I saw all the thoughts of the previous night come slowly back to her face. She watched me arranging the room in the cheerful morning light; she even permitted me to raise her among her pillows, and swallowed, though with an effort, the tea I brought her. She bore no malice against me for anything I had said. She seemed even pleased to have me beside her; but it was not for my sake; I believe she thought I was doing it for an interested reason. And she—she thought she had found an accomplice in me.

This morning she spoke with difficulty, and her looks were changed. She looked ill, very ill. The morning light showed a strange widening and breadth about her eyes, a solemn fixed expression in her face, which, though I had never watched it coming before, went to my heart with an instinctive chill and recognition. She could not bear me to be out of her sight for a moment. When I went to the dressing-room door to speak a word to Aunt Milly she called me back with an impatient, stifled cry. At last she beckoned me close to her bedside.

“I want—I want—send—let him come,” she stammered out.

“Luigi?” I said.

She clasped her hands together in an access of passion. “To make my will,” she cried, with a kind of scream; “now—now—this moment.” When she had uttered the words she fell back panting, a flush of weakness and fever coming to her face. I went and told Aunt Milly, who, all troubled as she was, sent off a messenger immediately for Mr. Cresswell. “I will send for the doctor, too, and—and the clergyman; but what can Dr. Roberts do for her?” cried poor Aunt Milly, wringing her hands. The clergyman! What, indeed, could that sleek, comfortable man do at this deathbed of guilt and passion? Ah me! A poor priest might have done something, perhaps, or a poor preacher accustomed to matters of life and death.

The day glided on while we waited. She would not let me leave her; but she did not say anything, except disjointed murmurs, and strange broken conversations with herself. It was not the present time that her mind was busy with. Listening in the silence of that room I became aware of a passionate prime of life, an Italian summer, a bitter mortification, disappointment, revenge—revenge which had come back upon the remorseless inflictor, and made her life the desert it had been. It all opened up before me in breaks and glimpses; afterwards, when I knew the story, it was with the force of an actual representation that I remembered this broken, unconscious autobiography. She was not raving; she was only calling up and setting in order the incidents of that crisis of her life, I cannot follow her through it now; but I remember that the awe, and interest, and excitement kept me from feeling any weariness.

I could not turn away for any sort of refreshment; I sat fascinated before that revelation of the secret of her days. She seemed to have foresworn husband and child, life itself and all that made it bearable, in dreadful vengeance for some broken promise or unfulfilled vow. Her father came flitting across the troubled picture; the count, and some dreadful controversy about a name, all intermixed with recollections of certain rooms and their furniture; of a garden and a thicket of syringas. What that point of deception or disappointment was, on which the whole story turned, I could not tell; but for this she had left the stream of life when life was at its fullest promise; for this she had settled down in a frightful, stubborn determination, behind that screen in the drawing-room of the Park. All her after existence, huddled up into one long monotonous day, had not made these scenes less fresh in her memory. This was now she had revenged herself—on the Count, who was dead—on her son, whom she disowned and cast away from her; ah! above all, a thousand times more bitterly, on herself.

It was afternoon when Mr. Cresswell came. He was brought up to the room immediately, without a word of explanation, and accordingly knew nothing of all the dreadful history of the last twenty-four hours. He had not even a hint that anything was changed, except the health of Miss Mortimer. He came and expressed his concern in the common-place tone of an unexcited stranger; he expressed his surprise to see me with her. In his heart he set it down that this will was of my suggesting. I am certain he did; and smiled to find me the nurse of the sick woman. But Miss Mortimer (that I should still go on calling her by that name after all I had heard!) left him very little time. She recovered herself wonderfully at sight of him; her very utterance became easier in the anxiety she showed to express herself plainly. She was impatient of his inquiries and condolences. She moved her hands uneasily about the bed, and for a moment her eyes fluttered as they had done the day before; but as soon as he had prepared his papers, and taken his pen in hand, she was composed again. My heart beat so loud with anxiety to hear what she said, that I could scarcely breathe. Was she now at last to set right the injustice of a life?

“Write,” she cried, with a gasp for breath, “that I leave everything—mind, it is everything, Bob Cresswell, no partitions. My sister Milly, though she is a fool, is as fond of her, ah! as—as I am—all the Park and the lands belonging to it, to Millicent Mortimer. There! the young soldier’s wife; and to—eh! who is it? Who speaks to me?”

I grasped her hand hard in my sudden passion. It was cold, cold, a dead hand, and horrified me with its touch. “Stop,” I cried, “oh, stop, Mr. Cresswell; she cannot mean such horrible injustice! Miss Mortimer! Countess! whatever you are! will you dare to die and never repent? Do you think I will let you bring a curse on my innocent baby? Stop! Stop! I forbid it, for her soul’s sake!”

Mr. Cresswell pushed back his chair and stared in amazement too great for words. She looked at me with a strange air of cunning and superior wisdom, and then at him.

“She thinks,” said the dying woman, in a kind of whisper, addressing Mr. Cresswell, “to draw me into some foolish talk, and bring it up against the will. Fool! they are all fools; go on.”

“What does it mean?” he said looking at me.

“It means that she ought to do justice,” I cried; “that it is all she can do now; that she is going to die without repenting, without making amends. If you write it, it will be a sin.”

“Bob Cresswell, go on; it is I who am the person to be attended to,” said Miss Mortimer. “This creature, do you hear, is a fool. I know what I mean.”

“There is something here I don’t understand; my dear lady, you’re not so very ill, suppose we put it off,” said the lawyer in great perplexity; “and there’s Miss Milly, you know, she has her share in the Park.”

“Attend to me!” cried Miss Mortimer, wildly. “You will kill me; am I to be thwarted now, as well as all my life? Oh, good heavens! in my own house, and in bed, and perhaps going to die—and I am not to have my will, my will! I shall have my will, if I should write it myself!”

She stretched out her eager hand towards the writing things, stretching out of bed, and by some chance touched Mr. Cresswell. When he felt that deathly touch he grew very grave, and started with a shudder. He took up his pen immediately.

“I will do what you please,” he said. He could not resist that cry of death.

Chapter XIX.

“Let her do what she will,” cried Aunt Milly. “If I go and argue with her, it will only make her worse. Oh, child! we can’t cross her now; don’t you see we can’t cross her now? But I took a vow, as sure as God saw us, I would do justice,” said Aunt Milly, solemnly through her tears. “She can but do what she can. We are co-heiresses! she has no power but over her own share.”

“Share!” I cried, “is it shares we have to think of? She is dying, and she does not repent.”

I could not wait there any longer; they all followed upstairs, Aunt Milly holding my hand. They all came into the dressing-room, where we could faintly hear Miss Mortimer’s voice, and where Carson stood trembling at the door. At this moment there was no order or rule in the stricken house. Then Aunt Milly went with me into the sick room. Mr. Cresswell was writing, and Miss Mortimer had stopped speaking. She turned her eyes triumphantly upon us both.

“I have carried out your wishes, Milly. I have left everything to your favourite,” she said, with pauses to got her breath. “You may sign it after me, and then it will be complete.”

“Sarah, that boy, that boy!” cried Aunt Milly. “Oh, put out your hand to him just once—think, before it is finished, what claims he has. Give him something. Sarah! Sarah! you would not take me into your confidence; but I’ll go down on my knees to you if you’ll do justice to that boy!”

“I am going to die,” said Miss Mortimer, after a pause. “I can see it in all your faces. I can’t be much worse off than I’ve been here. But look you, Milly, if you come and drive me into passion; if that wretched boy so much as comes near me, I’ll die directly, and you’ll be my murderers. His father made the choice—and I will not change, no, not if he came again, as he did yesterday, with the dead man. Cresswell, I’m growing a little faint. Is it ready to sign?”

He brought it and laid it before her on the bed; and she called to me to raise her up. I was desperate. I would rather have been content to be her murderer, as she said, than to let her do that sin.

“You are not Sarah Mortimer,” said I, as with great difficulty she wrote her signature. “It is a false name, and you know it is. Write your own name, Countess Sermoneta, and let everybody know that you have disinherited your son.”

She stared round at me, setting her teeth, then returned to the paper, and with a desperate resolution completed it. I stood perfectly aghast as I saw that dead hand trace those words, which to me cut her off for ever from every hope:—“By marriage, Sermoneta.” God help us! was there now no place of repentance?

“And now,” she said, falling back on her pillows, “send me Carson—I want no more—no more from anybody; send me my maid. I’ll forgive her though she deserted me;—nobody,” sobbed the poor voice, all at once breaking and growing feeble,—“nobody knows me but Carson. I want my maid; Carson, here!”

She had scarcely spoken, when Carson was by her side kneeling down at the bed, kissing the cold hand held out to her with such tears and eager affection as I never saw a servant show to a mistress. It was a reconciliation of love. The tears came into Miss Mortimer’s eyes. She gave her hand to her maid’s caresses with actual affection. It was the strangest conclusion to that dismal scene. One after another we three went out of the room confounded. Aunt Milly weeping tears, the bitterness of which I could not enter into. Mr. Cresswell, with a face of utter wonder, and myself, too much shocked and shaken to be able for anything. I could not go downstairs with them. I took refuge in the room that had been fitted up as a nursery for my baby. I got my boy into my arms and cried over him. It was too much; when he put his innocent arms round my neck and laid his cheek to mine to console me, my happiness struck me as with a pang. Oh, the unutterable things she had lost, that poor, miserable woman! I got up again to rush back to her with my baby, and see if that would not touch her heart, but stumbled in weariness and weakness, and fell on my knees on the floor. That was all that was to be done. I acknowledged it with that dreadful sense of impotence that one has, when hearts and souls have to be dealt with. On my knees I might help that desolate, lonely creature,—nowhere else, in no other manner. And even this not now. I was worn out with excitement and distress. I was ashamed to think, or permit myself to say, that one night’s watching had done it. I had to put little Harry back into Lizzie’s hands and lie down in the waning daylight. My head throbbed, and my heart beat, so that I could not even recollect my thoughts. And all that had happened seemed to have no impression but one upon me. I never thought of that group downstairs going over the wonderful story which nobody had so much as guessed at. I thought only of that hopeless woman, in her shut-up room, slowly floating out of existence, dying hour by hour, and minute by minute, unchanged and unsubdued. What was death that it should change her, whom love and pity, and the long-suffering of God had not changed? But I thought to myself I could never more blame those who preach out of season as well as in season, and cannot be silent. There were moments in which I could not endure myself—in which I felt as if I must go and make another appeal to her—even at the risk of thrusting myself into the room, and disturbing the quiet of her last hours.

Chapter XX.

BY MISS MILLY MORTIMER.

But to go back to that day. When we left my sister’s deathbed, and I, without even Milly to support me, went down alone with them all to hear everything told over again, and all Mr. Cresswell’s remarks and astonishment, you may well imagine it was very hard to me. I would have given anything to have been able to keep all that from Mr. Cresswell, but after what he had heard, and Sarah’s extraordinary signature, of course it was indispensable that he should understand the whole business; as well as for my nephew’s sake. I am bound to say Luigi behaved to his poor mother in a very different way from that in which she had treated him. If she had been the best mother in the world he could not have told the tale more gently. He went over it all,—how there had been a secret marriage done in Leghorn, where it was not unlawful for a Catholic to marry a Protestant, and where his father came under some engagement to take our own name. How it was kept secret for some reason of her own. How my father found it out. How the Count was summoned and called upon to bind himself, now that the affair could not be mended, to come home with them, and take the name of Mortimer. How, being dreadfully irritated by his wife (I don’t doubt she could have driven a man mad, especially in the days of her beauty), he refused; and how she had renounced, and given him up, and had nothing more to say to him. You may say, why did not he claim his rights? I can’t tell. He might have ruined her reputation, to be sure, or made the whole story public; but I suppose she must have been more than a match for him. She retired away into some village, and had her baby, and left it there. Then she came home. The Count never disturbed her all his life; and when he died he told his son the story, and bade him never to rest till he had recovered his mother. The young man, all amazed, full of grief for his father and anxiety to find her, came to England, asking for the Countess Sermoneta. It was only after many failures, and seeking better information from his father’s papers, that he came to believe that she called herself still Miss Mortimer; and we know all the rest. Luigi did not blame her, not a single word; he sat with his head leaning on his hands, overcome with distress and trouble. He called her his mother, his mother, every time he spoke, and said the name in such a tone as would have gone to anybody’s heart. Little Sara sat gazing at him all the time, with her whole heart in her eyes. When he covered his face with his hands in that pitiful way, Sara was unable to contain herself; she moved restlessly in her seat, fell a-crying in extreme agitation, and then, just for a moment, laid her hand upon his and pressed it with a quick momentary touch of sympathy. Her father’s eyes gleamed out for a moment surprise, anger, I cannot tell what mixture of feelings; but, dear! dear! what had their courtships and lovemakings to do in this stricken house? I could not bear any such question just at that moment. I told Cresswell that it was needful he should make my will, too, as well as my sister’s, and that I left my share to my nephew, without any conditions. Cresswell made objections, as was natural for a lawyer. His objections were too much for me; I got angry and impatient, more than I ought to have done. Here was he pottering about proofs and such things, when I knew, and had seen, and read it all in my sister’s face. This story was the key to Sarah’s life; I understood it all now what it meant, from her never-uttered quarrel with my father, down to the time when she met Luigi on the road. And the man spoke to me about proofs! I made him draw out a kind of form of a will, like that which Sarah had signed, but which Mr. Cresswell worded so cautiously, that it would be null if Luigi was not proved my nephew—bequeathing all my share of the Park estate to him. I confess it cost me a pang to do this; I confess freely that, to part the lands, and to leave it away from Milly, and to think it was Sarah and not me who had provided for that dear child, went to my heart; but I would rather have died than refused justice to my sister’s son.

Luigi came round to my side and took my two hands and kissed them. I was so wicked as to dislike it just at that moment, and to think it was one of his Italian ways. But he stood before me with tears in his eyes, and that look of the Mortimers, which nobody could mistake. “And your love?” he said. I could not stand out against that; I broke down entirely, and cried and sobbed like a child. Dreadful days these had been! Now I was overpowered, and could do no more. When I rose to go upstairs Luigi drew my arm into his, and took care of me like a son. He begged me to go to Milly, and not to be by myself; and I cannot tell how, but his voice had so great an effect upon me, that I did just as he said. Oh, dear! dear! to think what Sarah had cast away from her. There was she, lying alone, rejecting every creature in the world but Carson,—and here was the love that belonged to her, coming to me.

I did not see Mr. Cresswell again before he went away. Sara came up a little after, in despair, saying he had ordered her to return with him, and came and hugged me silently, and cried, with a frightened look upon her pale little face. “I would say farewell to godmamma Sarah, if I dared,” cried the poor child; but I dared not let her do it. She went away, casting longing looks back at us like a creature condemned. It was natural that she should feel leaving us in so much trouble, and going back to her own quiet, motionless home. It was not Sara’s fault she had not been watching with us every moment of that terrible night; but, for all that, it was very right of Mr. Cresswell to take her away.

And then some days of watching followed. Once Sarah admitted me into her room, and she saw the doctor without making any objection—she would have lived still, had that been possible—but when I begged her to see Luigi, just to say one word to him, to let him believe she recognised him as her son, her looks grew so terrible that I dared not say more. He went himself, out of my knowledge, to her door, and begged and prayed to be let in; but Carson came out to him, pallid with terror, and begged him to go away, or he would kill Miss Mortimer—for they kept up that farce of a name to the end. Luigi came to me heart-broken; it was, indeed, a terrible position for the young man. He reproached himself for seeking his natural rights, and bringing on all this misery. He said, “I have killed my mother!” It was all I could do to comfort him. God forgive her! it was not he who was to blame.

This was how my sister Sarah died. I try never to think of it. I try not to remember that dreadful time. Thank heaven! to judge others is not our part in this life. There is very little comfort to be had out of it, anyhow; living and dying it was a sad existence for a woman. If she had not much love in her lifetime, I think there are few graves over which have been shed more bitter tears. On her tombstone she is called Countess Sermoneta; the first time she has ever borne that ill-fated name.

It was not difficult to prove the whole history. By degrees Mr. Cresswell gathered enough from other sources to convince him of Luigi’s story; and after that it did not take much persuasion to make him consent to give my nephew his daughter. It was not the match he might have made, of course. The Sermonetas are a very old family in their own country; not much wonder the Count would not consent to give up his own name, and take the name of the haughty Englishman that despised him. Luigi would have changed his, had his mother bidden him, and for his father’s sake; but the young man was deeply grateful to me for not making any conditions. For my part, I did not want him to be the representative of the Mortimers. I may safely say I came to love him like a child of my own at last. But after all he was a foreigner still, and even when I came to be fond of him, I never could see him without pain mixing with the pleasure. It was Harry, little Harry, my sweet English baby, Milly’s beautiful boy, that was to be the Mortimers’ heir.

And Sara will not be married till Harry Langham comes home. Perhaps it is not justice to Sara to say my nephew might have done better; but, after all, you know, her father is only an attorney, our family attorney. Her hair is grown now, and she is a little older, and very pretty; very pretty indeed the little creature is. She is not in the least like what my sister Sarah used to be; she can never be such a beauty as her poor godmamma was. If it were nothing else, she is too little for beauty; but I must say she is extremely pretty. I don’t know if there is such another in all Cheshire. My Milly is different. Of the two I should rather have her; but then I am not a young man.

And the war is over, and the dear child is nervously happy, and counting the days. About another week or so and Harry Langham will be at home.

POSTSCRIPT.

BY MRS. LANGHAM.

Here Lizzie came to a dead stop, and cried, the unfailing resource in all difficulties. A perception of the truth flashed upon me as I looked at her.

“Do you mean to say——?” cried I, but got no further in my extreme amaze.

“Eh, it’s no me!” cried Lizzie. “But eh, Menico says——”

Here she stopped again, gave me a frightened look, made an attempt to go on—and finally, startled by a sound in the next room, where Harry was, dropped the apron she had unconsciously pulled off, on the floor, and fairly ran away.

Leaving me thunderstruck, and by no means pleased. I knew if I went and told Harry he would burst into fits of laughter, and there would be an end to all serious consideration of the subject. To lose Lizzie all at once like this, to let the creature go and marry a foreigner! There was something quite unbearable in the thought; what was I to do? A foreigner, and a Catholic, too, and a man twice as old as herself; the girl was mad! The more I thought of it the more distressed I grew. At last I went to seek Aunt Milly, who was the only practicable counsellor. She was in the garden, and I went to seek her there. It was July, and sultry weather. In the hall, now better occupied than it used to be, stood Domenico, in the white suit, vast and spotless, with which he always distinguished himself in summer weather, and which always put me in mind of that dreadful day when the Count Sermoneta first came, in his own name, to the Park. Domenico started forward, noiseless and smiling, to open the door. The action brought before me in a minute our little Chester lodgings, our troubled happy days, our parting, and all the simple kindness this honest fellow had done us. His face beamed through all my recollections of that time, always thus starting forward with the courtesy of the heart. My heart warmed to him in spite of all I had been cogitating against him. Perhaps he divined what it was occupied my thoughts—he followed me out at the door.

“It pleases to the Signora give me the Leezee?” said Domenico, with an insinuating look. “No? no? But what to have done? The Signora displeases herself of me? Wherefore? Because? I not know.”

“I am not displeased,” said I. “You are a very good fellow, Domenico, and have always been very kind. But she is a child; she is not seventeen. What would you do with her in a strange country? She is too young for you.”

“The Leezee contents herself,” said Domenico, with a broad smile opening out his black beard. “If it pleases to the Signora, I bring her back other times; I take the care of her; I make everything please to her. The Signora not wills to say no?”

And of course I did not say no; I had no right to say anything of the sort. And Lizzie actually was not afraid to marry that mountain of a man. She went away with him, looking dreadfully ashamed, and taking the most heartrending farewell of little Harry and me, Domenico looking on with great but smiling sympathy all the while, and not at all resenting her tears. But the Captain had come home, and little Harry had attained the independence of two and a half years. Lizzie felt she had discharged her trust, and was no longer imperatively needed to take care of me. I kissed her when she went away, as if she had been a sister of my own, and I confess was not ashamed to add a tear to the floods that poured from her brown eyes; but I am obliged to avow that it is not within the range of my powers to put correctly on paper all the long rolling syllables of her new name.

THE END.