Hope no more,
Since thou art furnished with hidden lore,
To ‘scape thy due reward if any day
Without some task accomplished passed away.
MOORE.
The little dog’s presence was a comfort, but his night of combat and
scuffling was not a restful one and the poor prisoner’s sickness of
heart and nervous terrors grew upon her every hour, with misgivings
lest she should be clinging to a shadow, and sacrificing her return to
Betty’s arms for a phantom. There were moments when her anguish of
vague terror and utter loneliness impelled her to long to sign her
renunciation that moment; and when she thought of recurring hours and
weeks of such days and such nights her spirit quailed within her, and
Loveday might have found her less calmly steadfast had she come in the
morning.
She did not come, and this in itself was a disappointment, for at least
she brought a human voice and a pitying countenance which, temptress
though she might be, had helped to bear Aurelia through the first days.
Oh! could she but find anything to do! She had dusted her two rooms as
well as she could consistently with care for the dress she could not
change. She blamed herself extremely for having forgotten her Bible and
Prayer-book when hastily making up her bundle of necessaries, and though
there was little chance that Madge should possess either, or be able to
read, she nerved herself to ask. “Bible! what should ye want of a Bible,
unless to play the hypocrite? I hain’t got none!” was the reply.
So Aurelia could only walk up and down the court trying to repeat the
Psalms, and afterwards the poetry she had learnt for Mr. Belamour’s
benefit, sometimes deriving comfort from the promises, but oftener
wondering whether he had indeed deserted her in anger at her distrustful
curiosity. She tried to scrape the mossgrown Triton, she crept up stairs
to the window that looked towards the City, and cleared off some of the
dimness, and she got a needle and thread and tried to darn the holes
in the curtains and cushions, but the rotten stuff crumbled under her
fingers, and would not hold the stitches. At last she found in a dusty
corner a boardless book with neither beginning nor end, being Defoe’s
_Plague of London_. She read and read with a horrid fascination,
believing every word of it, wondering whether this house could have been
infected, and at length feeling for the plague spot!
A great church-clock enabled her to count the hours! Oh, how many there
were of them! How many more would there be? This was only her
second day, and deliverance could not come for weeks, were her young
husband--if husband he were--ever so faithful. How should she find
patience in this dreariness, interspersed with fits of alarm lest he
should be dangerously ill and suffering? She fell on her knees and
prayed for him and for herself!
Here it was getting dark again, and Madge would hunt her in presently
and shut the shutters. Hark! what was that? A bell echoing over the
house! Madge came after her. “Where are you, my fine mistress! Go you
into the parlour, I say,” and she turned the key upon the prisoner,
whose heart beat like a bird fluttering in a cage. Suddenly her door was
opened, and in darted Fidelia and Lettice, who flung themselves upon her
with ecstatic shrieks of “Cousin Aura, dear cousin Aura!” Loveday was
behind, directing the bringing in of trunks from a hackney coach. All
she said was, “My Lady’s daughters are to be with you for the night,
madam; I must not say more, for her ladyship is waiting for me.”
She was gone, while the three were still in the glad tangle of an
embrace beginning again and again, with all sorts of little exclamations
from the children, into which Aurelia broke with the inquiry for their
brother. “He is much better,” said Fay. “He is to get up to-morrow, and
then he will come and find you.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Oh, yes, and he says it is Sister Aura, and not Cousin Aura--”
“My dear, dear little sisters--” and she hugged them again.
“I was sitting upon his bed,” said Letty, “and we were all talking about
you when my Lady mamma came. Are mothers kinder than Lady mammas?”
“Was she angry?” asked Aurelia.
“Oh! she frightened me,” said Fay. “She said we were pert, forward
misses, and we must hold our tongues, for we should be whipped if we
ever said you name, Cousin--Sister Aura, again; and she would not let us
go to wish Brother Amyas good-bye this morning.”
Aurelia’s heart could not but leap with joy that her tyrant should have
failed in carrying to Bowstead the renunciation of the marriage. Whether
Lady Belamour meant it or not, she had made resistance much easier by
the company of Faith and Hope, if only for a single night. She gathered
from their prattle that their mother, having found that their talk with
their brother was all of the one object of his thoughts, had carried
them off summarily, and had been since driving about London in search
of a school at which to leave them; but they were too young for Queen’s
Square, and there was no room at another house at which Lady Belamour
had applied. She would not take them home, being, of course, afraid of
their tongues, and in her perplexity had been reduced to letting them
share Aurelia’s captivity at least for the night.
What joy it was! They said it was an ugly dark house, but Aurelia’s
presence was perfect content to them, and theirs was to her comparative
felicity, assuring her as they did, through their childish talk, of Sir
Amyas’s unbroken love and of Mr. Belamour’s endeavours to find her. What
mattered it that Madge was more offended than ever, and refused to make
the slightest exertion for “the Wayland brats at that time of night”
without warning. They had enough for supper, and if Aurelia had not,
their company was worth much more to her than a full meal. The terrier’s
rushes after rats were only diversion now, and when all three nestled
together in the big bed, the fun was more delightful than ever. Between
those soft caressing creatures Aurelia heard no rats, and could well
bear some kicks at night, and being drummed awake at some strange hour
in the morning.
Mrs. Loveday arrive soon after the little party had gone down stairs.
She said the children were to remain until her ladyship had decided
where to send them; and she confirmed their report that his Honour
was recovering quickly. As soon as he was sufficiently well to leave
Bowstead he was to be brought to London, and married to Lady Arabella
before going abroad to make the grand tour; and as a true well-wisher,
Mrs. Loveday begged Miss Delavie not to hold out when it was of no use,
for her Ladyship declared that her contumacy would be the worse for
her. Aurelia’s garrison was, however, too well reinforced for any vague
alarms to shake even her out works, and she only smiled her refusal, as
in truth Mrs. Loveday must have expected, for it appeared that she had
secured a maid to attend on the prisoners; an extremely deaf woman, who
only spoke in the broken imperfect mode of those who have never heard
their own voice, deficiencies that made it possible that Madge would
keep the peace with her.
Lady Belamour had also found another piece of work for Aurelia. A dark
cupboard was opened, revealing shelves piled with bundle of old letters
and papers. There was a family tradition that one of the ladies of the
Delavie family had been an attendant of Mary of Scotland for a short
time, and had received from her a recipe for preserving the complexion
and texture of the skin, devised by the French Court perfumer. Nobody
had ever seen this precious prescription; but it was presumed to be
in the archives of the family, and her ladyship sent word that if Miss
Delavie wished to deserve her favour she would put her French to some
account and discover it.
A severe undertaking it was. Piles of yellow letters, files of dusty
accounts, multitudes of receipts, more than one old will had to be
conned it was possible to be certain they were not the nostrum. In the
utter solitude, even this occupation would have been valuable, but with
the little girls about her, and her own and their property, she had
alternative employments enough to make it an effort to apply herself to
this.
Why should she? she asked herself more than once; but then came the
recollection that if she showed herself willing to obey and gratify my
Lady, it might gain her good will, and if Sir Amyas should indeed hold
out till Mr. Wayland came home--Her heart beat wildly at the vision of
hope.
She worked principally at the letters, after the children had gone to
bed, taking a packet up stairs with her, and sitting in the bedroom,
deciphering them as best she might by the light of the candles that
Loveday had brought her.
Every morning Loveday appeared with supplies, and messages from her
Ladyship, that it was time Miss submitted; but she was not at all
substantially unkind, and showed increasing interest in her captive,
though always impressing on her that her obstinacy was all in vain. My
Lady was angered enough at his Honour having got up from his sick bed
and gone off to Carminster, and if Miss did not wish to bring her father
into trouble she must yield. No, this gladdened rather than startled
Aurelia, though her heart sank within her when she was warned that Mr.
Wayland had been taken by the corsairs, so that my Lady would have
the ball at her own foot now. The term of waiting seemed indefinitely
prolonged.
The confinement to the dingy house and courtyard was trying to all
three, who had been used to run about in the green park and breezy
fields; but Aurelia did her best to keep her little companions happy
and busy, and the sense of the insecurity of her tenure of their company
aided her the more to meet with good temper and sweetness the various
rubs incidental to their captivity in this close warm house in the
hottest of summer weather. The pang she had felt at her own fretfulness,
when she thought she had lost them, made her guard the more against
giving way to impatience if they were troublesome or hard to please.
Indeed, she was much more gentle and equable now, in the strength of
her resolution, than she had been when uplifted by her position, yet
doubtful of its mysteries.
Sundays were the most trying time. The lack of occupation in the small
space was wearisome, and Aurelia’s heart often echoed the old strains of
Tate and Brady,
I sigh whene’er my musing thoughts
Those happy days present,
When I with troops of pious friends
Thy temple did frequent.
She and her charges climbed up to the window above, which happily had
a broken pane, tried to identify the chimes of the church bells by the
notable nursery rhyme,
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clements, &c.,
watched the church-goers as far as they could see them, and then came
down to such reading of the service and other Sunday occupations
as Aurelia could devise. On the Sunday of her durance it was such
a broiling day that, unable to bear the heat of her parlour, she
established herself and her charges in a nook of the court, close under
the window, but shaded by the wall, which was covered with an immense
bush of overhanging ivy, and by the elm tree in the court. Here she made
Fay and Letty say their catechism, and the Psalm she had been teaching
them in the week, and then rewarded them with a Bible story, that of
Daniel in the den of lions. Once or twice the terrier (whose name she
had learnt was Bob) had pricked his ears, and the children had thought
there was a noise, but the sparrows in the ivy might be accountable for
a great deal, and the little ones were to much wrapped in her tale to be
attentive to anything else.
“Then it came true!” said Letty. “His God Whom he trusted did deliver
him out of the den of lions?”
“God always does deliver people when they trust Him,” said Fay, with
gleaming eyes.
“Yes, one way or the other,” said Aurelia.
“How do you think He will deliver us?” asked Letty; “for I am sure this
is a den, though there are no lions.”
“I do not know how,” said Aurelia, “but I know He will bear us through
it as long as we trust Him and do nothing wrong,” and she looked up at
the bright sky with hope and strength in her face.
“Hark! what’s that?” cried Letty, and Bob leapt up and barked as a great
sob became plainly audible, and within the room appeared Mrs. Loveday,
her face all over tears, which she was fast wiping away as she rose up
from crouching with her head against the window-sill.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said she, her voice still broken when she
rejoined them, “but I would not interrupt you, so I waited within; and
oh, it was so like my poor old mother at home, it quite overcame me! I
did not think there was anything so near the angels left on earth.”
“Nay, Loveday,” said Fay, apprehending the words in a different sense,
“the angels are just as near us as ever they were to Daniel, only we
cannot see them. Are they not, Cousin Aura?”
“Indeed they are, and we may be as sure that they will shut the lions’
mouths,” said Aurelia.
“Ah! may they,” sighed Loveday, who had by this time mastered her
agitation, and remembered that she must discharge herself of her
messages, and return hastily to my Lady’s toilette.
“I have found the recipe,” said Aurelia. “Here it is.” And she put into
Loveday’s hand a yellow letter, bearing the title in scribbled writing,
“_Poure Embellire et blanchire la Pel, de part de Maistre Raoul,
Parfumeur de la Royne Catherine_.”