"This way, Uncle Charles!" I cried. "Hatty, where is your bonnet?"
"I don't know. They took all my outdoor things away."
"Tie my scarf over your head, and get into the chair. As my Uncle
Charles is here, I can walk very well."
He had come up now, and stood looking at Hatty's white, miserable face.
If he had seen it a few minutes earlier, he would have thought the
misery far greater.
"Well, this is a pretty to-do!" cried my Uncle. "Hatty, child, these
wretches have used you ill. Why on earth did you stay with them?"
"At first I did not want to get away, Uncle," she said, "and afterwards
I could not."
We went down-stairs. Mrs Crossland was standing in the door of the
drawing-room, with thin, shut-up lips, and a red, angry spot on either
cheek. Inside the room I caught a glimpse of Annabella, looking
woefully white and frightened. Mr Crossland I could nowhere see.
"Madam," said my Uncle Charles, sarcastically, "I will thank you to give
up those other young ladies, my nieces' cousins. If they wish to remain
in London, they can do so, but it will not be in Charles Street. Did
you not tell me, Cary, that their father wished them to come home?"
"My Aunt Kezia said that he intended to write to them to say so," I
answered, feeling as though it were about a year since I had received my
Aunt Kezia's letter.
"Really, Sir!" Mrs Crossland began, "the father of these gentlewomen
consigned them to my care--"
"And I take them out of your care," returned my Uncle Charles. "I will
take the responsibility to Mr Bracewell."
"I'll take all the responsi-what's-its-name," said Charlotte, suddenly
appearing among us. "Thank you, Mr Desborough; I'd rather not stop
here when Hatty is gone. Emily!" she shouted.
Amelia came down-stairs with her bonnet on, and Charlotte's in her hand.
"You can't go without a bonnet, my dear child."
"Oh, pother!" cried Charlotte, seizing her bonnet by the strings, and
sticking it on the top of her head anyhow it liked.
"One word before we leave, Mr Desborough, if you please," said Amelia,
with more dignity than I had thought she possessed. "I have strong
reason to believe these persons to be Popish recusants, and the last to
whom my father would have confided us, had he known their real
character. They have not used any of us so kindly that I need spare
them out of any tenderness."
"I thank you, Miss Bracewell," said my Uncle Charles, who also, I
thought, was showing qualities that I had not known to be in him. (How
scenes like these do bring one's faculties out!) "I rather thought there
was some sort of Jesuitry at work. Madam," he turned to Mrs Crossland,
"I am sure there is no necessity for me to recall the penal laws to your
mind. So long as these young ladies are left undisturbed in my care, in
any way,--so long, Madam,--they will not be put in force against you.
You understand me, I feel sure. Now, girls, let us go."
So, we three girls walking, and Hatty in the chair, with Dobson and
Caesar as a guard behind, we reached Bloomsbury Square.
"Charles, what is it all about?" said Grandmamma, taking a bigger pinch
than usual, and spilling some of it on her lace stomacher.
"A spider's web, Madam, from which I have been freeing four flies. But
one was a blue-bottle, and broke some of the threads," said my Uncle
Charles, laughing, and patting my shoulder.
"Really!" said Grandmamma. "I am pleased to see you, young ladies.
Hester, my dear, are you sure you are quite well?"
"I shall be better now," Hatty tried to say, in a trembling voice,--and
fainted away.
There was a great commotion then, four or five talking at once, making
impossible recommendations, and getting in each other's way; but at the
end of it all we got poor Hatty into bed in my chamber, and even
Grandmamma said that rest was the best thing for her. My Aunt Dorothea
mixed a cordial draught, which she gave her to take; and as Hatty's head
sank on the pillow, she said to my surprise,--
"Oh, the rest of being free again! Cary, I never expected you to be the
heroine of the family."
"I think you are the heroine, Hatty."
"Most people would have thought I should be. But I have proved weak as
water--yet not till after long suffering and hard pressure. You will
never see the old Hatty again, Cary."
"Oh yes, dear!" said I. "Wait a few days, till you have had a good
rest, and we have fed you up. You will feel quite different a week
hence."
"My body will, I dare say, but me--that inside feeling and thinking
machine--that will never be the same again. I want to tell you
everything."
"And I want to hear it," I replied. "But don't talk now, Hatty; go to
sleep, like a good girl. You will be much better for a long rest."
I drew the curtains, and asked Amelia to stay until Hatty was asleep. I
knew she would not talk much, and Hatty would not care to tell her
things as she would me. Going down-stairs, my Uncle Charles greeted me,
laughing, with,--
"Here she comes, the good Queen Bess! Cary, you deserve a gold medal."
Grandmamma bade me come to her, and tell her all I knew. She exclaimed
several times, and took ever so many pinches of snuff, till she had to
call on my Aunt Dorothea to refill the box. At the end of it she called
me a good child, and the Jesuits traitors and scoundrels, to which my
Uncle Charles added some rather stronger language.
Charlotte seems to have known nothing of what was going on; or, I should
rather say, to have noticed nothing. She is such a careless girl in
every way that I am scarce surprised. Amelia did notice things, but she
had a mistaken notion of what they meant. She fancied that Hatty was in
love with Mr Crossland, and that she, not knowing of his engagement in
marriage with Miss Marianne Newton, was very jealous of what she thought
his double-dealing. Until after I spoke to her, she had no notion that
there might be any sort of Popish treachery. Something which happened
soon after that, helped to turn her mind in that direction. But Hatty
says she knew next to nothing.
"But," says my Uncle Charles, "how could a Jesuit priest marry anybody?
It seems to be all in a muddle."
That I cannot answer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hatty is better to-day, after a quiet night's rest. She still looks
woefully ill, and Grandmamma will not let her speak yet. Now that
Grandmamma is roused about it, she is very kind to Hatty and me also. I
do hope, now, that things have done happening! The poor Prince is a
fugitive somewhere in Scotland, and everybody says, "the rebellion is
quashed." They did not call it a rebellion until he turned back from
Derby. My Uncle Bracewell has writ to my Uncle Charles again with news,
and has asked him to see Amelia and Charlotte sent off homeward. Hatty
will tarry here till we can return together.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
At last our poor Hatty has told her story: and a sad, sad story it is.
It seems that Mr Crossland was pretending to make court to her at
first, and she believed in him, and loved him. At that time, she says,
she would not have brooked a word against him; and as to believing him
to be the wretch he has turned out, she would as soon have thought the
sun created darkness. There was no show of Popery at all in the family.
They went to church like other people, and talked just like others.
From a word dropped by Miss Theresa Newton, Hatty began to think that
Mr Crossland's heart was not so undividedly her own as she had hoped;
and she presently discovered that he was not to be trusted on that
point. They had a quarrel, and he professed penitence, and promised to
give up Miss Marianne; and for a while Hatty thought all was right
again. Then, little by little, Mrs Crossland (whose right name seems
to be Mother Mary Benedicta of the Annunciation--what queer names they
do use, to be sure!)--well, Mrs Crossland began to tell Hatty all kinds
of strange stories about the saints, and miracles, and so forth, which
she said she had heard from the Irish peasantry. At first she told them
as things to laugh at; then she began to wonder if there might be some
truth in one or two of them; there were strange things in this world!
And so she went on from little to little, always drawing back and
keeping silence for a while if she found that she was going too fast for
Hatty to follow.
"I can see it all now, looking back," said Hatty. "It was all one great
whole; but at the time I did not see it at all. They seemed mere
passing remarks, bits of conversation that came in anyhow."
Hatty felt sure that Mrs Crossland was a concealed Papist long before
she suspected the young man. And when, at last, both threw the mask
off, they had her fast in their toils. She was strictly warned never to
talk with me except on mere trifling subjects; and she had to give an
account of every word that had been said when she returned. If she hid
the least thing from them, she was assured it would be a terrible sin.
"But you don't mean to say you believed all that rubbish?" cried I.
"It was not a question of belief," she answered. "I loved him. I would
have done anything in all the world to win a smile from him; and he knew
it. As to belief--I do not know what I believed: my brain felt like a
chaos, and my heart in a whirl."
"And now, Hatty?" said I. I meant to ask what she believed now: but she
answered me differently.
"Now," she said, in a low, hopeless voice, "the shrine is deserted, and
the idol is broken, and the world feels a great wide, empty place where
there is no room for me--a cold, hard place that I must toil through,
and the only hope left is to get to the end as soon as possible."
Oh, I wish Flora or Annas were here! I do not know how to deal with my
poor Hatty. Thoughts which would comfort me seem to fall powerless with
her; and I have nobody to counsel me. I suppose my Aunt Kezia would say
I must set the Lord before me; but I do not see how to do it in this
case. I am sure I have prayed enough. What I want is an angel to
whisper to me what to do again; and my angel has gone back into Heaven,
I suppose, for I feel completely puzzled now. At any rate, I do hope
things have done happening.
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Note 1. Our forefathers thought colds a much more serious affair than
we do. They probably knew much less about them.