At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions
to other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the
potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust
of his friends and special parasite. “Mount’s in for it again,” they
said among themselves. “Hang the women!” was a natural sequence. For,
don’t you see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling
such a very inflammable subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged
his bow, and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but
none would perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent
oaths, that this was a totally different case from the antecedent ones.
So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man
with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but
inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his
noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of
blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely
felt the case was different. There is something impressive in a great
human hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he
cannot contend with, or account for, or explain by means of
intelligible words. At first he took refuge in the depths of his
contempt for women. Cupid gave him line. When he had come to vent his
worst of them, the fair face now stamped on his brain beamed the more
triumphantly: so the harpooned whale rose to the surface, and after a
few convulsions, surrendered his huge length. My lord was in love with
Richard’s young wife. He gave proofs of it by burying himself beside
her. To her, could she have seen it, he gave further proofs of a real
devotion, in affecting, and in her presence feeling, nothing beyond a
lively interest in her well-being. This wonder, that when near her he
should be cool and composed, and when away from her wrapped in a
tempest of desires, was matter for what powers of cogitation the heavy
nobleman possessed.
The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press
the business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than his
parasite. Almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little
wife apprehended no harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had commended
her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith. Lady Judith had
left the Island for London: Lord Mountfalcon remained. There could be
no harm. If she had ever thought so, she no longer did. Secretly,
perhaps, she was flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as well educated as it
is the fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he could talk and
instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand that he was wicked,
very wicked, and that she improved him. The heroine, in common with the
hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world—to do some good: and
the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.
Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending!
Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his
title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to
sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his
villanies for him. No alarm was given to Lucy’s pure instinct, as might
have been the case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her
martyrdom to have a true friend to support her, and really to be able
to do something for that friend. Too simple-minded to think much of his
lordship’s position, she was yet a woman. “He, a great nobleman, does
not scorn to acknowledge me, and think something of me,” may have been
one of the half-thoughts passing through her now and then, as she
reflected in self-defence on the proud family she had married into.
January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon.
Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had no
sooner broached his lordship’s immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon
began to plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He swore by this
and that he had come across an angel for his sins, and would do her no
hurt. The next moment he swore she must be his, though she cursed like
a cat. His lordship’s illustrations were not choice. “I haven’t
advanced an inch,” he groaned. “Brayder! upon my soul, that little
woman could do anything with me. By heaven! I’d marry her to-morrow.
Here I am, seeing her every day in the week out or in, and what do you
think she gets me to talk about?—history! Isn’t it enough to make a
fellow mad? and there am I lecturing like a prig, and by heaven! while
I’m at it I feel a pleasure in it; and when I leave the house I should
feel an immense gratification in shooting somebody. What do they say in
town?”
“Not much,” said Brayder, significantly.
“When’s that fellow—her husband—coming down?”
“I rather hope we’ve settled him for life, Mount.”
Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
“How d’ye mean?”
Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, “He’s in for Don Juan at a
gallop, that’s all.”
“The deuce! Has Bella got him?” Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the Sussex coast,
signed “Richard,” and was worded thus:
“My beautiful Devil—!
“Since we’re both devils together, and have found each other out, come
to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry. Come, my
bright hell-star! I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come to me!
You have taught me how devils love, and I can’t do without you. Come an
hour after you receive this.”
Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
“Complimentary love-epistle!” he remarked, and rising from his chair
and striding about, muttered, “The dog! how infamously he treats his
wife!”
“Very bad,” said Brayder.
“How did you get hold of this?”
“Strolled into Bella’s dressing-room, waiting for her turned over her
pincushion hap-hazard. You know her trick.”
“By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank heaven, I haven’t
written her any letters for an age. Is she going to him?”
“Not she! But it’s odd, Mount!—did you ever know her refuse money
before? She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the fragments
with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt at your
Academy. I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!”
Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter could
be made to serve. Both conscientiously agreed that Richard’s behaviour
to his wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no mercy.
“But,” said his lordship, “it won’t do to show the letter. At first
she’ll be swearing it’s false, and then she’ll stick to him closer. I
know the sluts.”
“The rule of contrary,” said Brayder, carelessly. “She must see the
trahison with her eyes. They believe their eyes. There’s your chance,
Mount. You step in: you give her revenge and consolation—two birds at
one shot. That’s what they like.”
“You’re an ass, Brayder,” the nobleman exclaimed. “You’re an infernal
blackguard. You talk of this little woman as if she and other women
were all of a piece. I don’t see anything I gain by this confounded
letter. Her husband’s a brute—that’s clear.”
“Will you leave it to me, Mount?”
“Be damned before I do!” muttered my lord.
“Thank you. Now see how this will end: You’re too soft, Mount. You’ll
be made a fool of.”
“I tell you, Brayder, there’s nothing to be done. If I carry her
off—I’ve been on the point of doing it every day—what’ll come of that?
She’ll look—I can’t stand her eyes—I shall be a fool—worse off with her
than I am now.”
Mountfalcon yawned despondently. “And what do you think?” he pursued.
“Isn’t it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth? She’s”...he
mentioned something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
“Hm!” Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on his
chin. “That’s disagreeable, Mount. You don’t exactly want to act in
that character. You haven’t got a diploma. Bother!”
“Do you think I love her a bit less?” broke out my lord in a frenzy.
“By heaven! I’d read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal
history to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night.”
“You’re evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount.”
The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
“What do they say in town?” he asked again.
Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or
widow.
“I’ll go to her this evening,” Mountfalcon resumed, after—to judge by
the cast of his face—reflecting deeply. “I’ll go to her this evening.
She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer.”
“Do you mean to say she don’t know it?”
“Hasn’t an idea—thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven! I’ll be to her.”
“A—hm!” went the Honourable Peter. “This way to the sign of the Green
Man, ladies!”
“Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?”
“Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong. I may have
forgotten the trick of alighting on my feet. There—there! I’ll be sworn
she’s excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested friend.”
“I’ll go to her this evening,” Mountfalcon repeated. “She shall know
what damned misery it is to see her in such a position. I can’t hold
out any longer. Deceit’s horrible to such a girl as that. I’d rather
have her cursing me than speaking and looking as she does. Dear little
girl!—she’s only a child. You haven’t an idea how sensible that little
woman is.”
“Have you?” inquired the cunning one.
“My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women,” said
Mountfalcon, evading his parasite’s eye as he spoke.
To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his
parasite simply ingeniously dissipated. Full many a man of God had
thought it the easier task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat much
in the shade. She offered to have the candles brought in. He begged her
to allow the room to remain as it was. “I have something to say to
you,” he observed with a certain solemnity.
“Yes—to me?” said Lucy, quickly.
Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it,
and what it exactly was, he did not know.’
“You conceal it admirably,” he began, “but you must be very lonely
here—I fear, unhappy.”
“I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord,” said Lucy.
“I am not unhappy.” Her face was in shade and could not belie her.
“Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might give
you, Mrs. Feverel?”
“None indeed that I know of,” Lucy replied. “Who can help us to pay for
our sins?”
“At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you
have helped me to wash out some of any sins.”
“Ah, my lord!” said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet for a woman to
believe she has drawn the serpent’s teeth.
“I tell you the truth,” Lord Mountfalcon went on. “What object could I
have in deceiving you? I know you quite above flattery—so different
from other women!”
“Oh, pray, do not say that,” interposed Lucy.
“According to my experience, then.”
“But you say you have met such—such very bad women.”
“I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune.”
“Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?”
“Yes, and I might say more.”
His lordship held impressively mute.
“How strange men are!” thought Lucy. “He had some unhappy secret.”
Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various
pretences during the nobleman’s visits, put a stop to the revelation,
if his lordship intended to make any.
When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: “Do you know, I am
always ashamed to ask you to begin to read.”
Mountfalcon stared. “To read?—oh! ha! yes!” he remembered his evening
duties. “Very happy, I’m sure. Let me see. Where were we?”
“The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask
you to read, my lord. It’s new to me; like a new world—hearing about
Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we
walk upon. It fills my mind. But it must have ceased to interest you,
and I was thinking that I would not tease you any more.”
“Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. ’Pon my honour, I’d read till I
was hoarse, to hear your remarks.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Do I look so?”
Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he
could appear to endow them with mental expression.
“No, you are not,” said Lucy. “I must thank you for your forbearance.”
The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
Now it was an object of Lucy’s to have him reading; for his sake, for
her sake, and for somebody else’s sake; which somebody else was
probably considered first in the matter. When he was reading to her, he
seemed to be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no
doubts or suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while she
had him employed in that office. So she rose to fetch the book, laid it
open on the table at his lordship’s elbow, and quietly waited to ring
for candles when he should be willing to commence.
That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce,
and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with
anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak,
or insinuate. He sat silent and did nothing.
“What I do not like him for,” said Lucy, meditatively, “is his changing
his religion. He would have been such a hero, but for that. I could
have loved him.”
“Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?” Lord Mountfalcon asked.
“The Emperor Julian.”
“Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate but then, you know,
he meant what he was about. He didn’t even do it for a woman.”
“For a woman!” cried Lucy. “What man would for a woman?”
“I would.”
“You, Lord Mountfalcon?”
“Yes. I’d turn Catholic to-morrow.”
“You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord.”
“Then I’ll unsay it.”
Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell to ring for
lights.
“Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?” said the nobleman.
“Oh yes! yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience I would not
have.”
“If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?”
Lucy’s hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful light with
one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken in this
way before. He spoke better, too. She missed the aristocratic twang in
his voice, and the hesitation for words, and the fluid lordliness with
which he rolled over difficulties in speech.
Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and
presented Tom Bakewell. There was a double knock at the same instant at
the street door. Lucy delayed to give orders.
“Can it be a letter, Tom!—so late?” she said, changing colour. “Pray
run and see.”
“That an’t powst” Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
“Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?” Lord Mountfalcon
inquired.
“Oh, no!—yes, I am, very,” said Lucy. Her quick ear caught the tones of
a voice she remembered. “That dear old thing has come to see me,” she
cried, starting up.
Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
“Mrs. Berry!” said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
“Me, my darlin’!” Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her journey,
returned the salute. “Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for I ain’t
one to stand by and give the devil his licence—roamin’! and the salt
sure enough have spilte my bride-gown at the beginnin’, which ain’t the
best sign. Bless ye!—Oh, here he is.” She beheld a male figure in a
chair by the half light, and swung around to address him. “You bad
man!” she held aloft one of her fat fingers, “I’ve come on ye like a
bolt, I have, and goin’ to make ye do your duty, naughty boy! But
you’re my darlin’ babe,” she melted, as was her custom, “and I’ll never
meet you and not give to ye the kiss of a mother.”
Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft woman
had him by the neck, and was down among his luxurious whiskers.
“Ha!” She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back. “What hair’s that?”
Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
“Oh, my gracious!” Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, “I been and kiss a
strange man!”
Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord to
excuse the woful mistake.
“Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I’m sure;” said his lordship,
re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; “may I beg the pleasure of an
introduction?”
“My husband’s dear old nurse—Mrs. Berry,” said Lucy, taking her hand to
lend her countenance. “Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs. Berry.”
Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic
bobs, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her
passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars,
by which it was revealed that the softness of her heart was only
equalled by the weakness of her stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry
down.
“Well, and where’s my—where’s Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?” Mrs.
Berry turned from her tale to question.
“Did you expect to see him here?” said Lucy, in a broken voice.
“And where else, my love? since he haven’t been seen in London a whole
fortnight.”
Lucy did not speak.
“We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think,” said Lord
Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly,
embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house
by Tom Bakewell.
The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. “Did ye ever know
sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!” she
exclaimed. “I could cry at it, I could! To be goin’ and kissin’ a
strange hairy man! Oh dear me! what’s cornin’ next, I wonder? Whiskers!
thinks I—for I know the touch o’ whiskers—’t ain’t like other
hair—what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it
flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in,
and I see that great hairy man—beggin’ his pardon—nobleman, and if I
could ’a dropped through the floor out o’ sight o’ men, drat ’em!
they’re al’ays in the way, that they are!”—
“Mrs. Berry,” Lucy checked her, “did you expect to find him here?”
“Askin’ that solemn?” retorted Berry. “What him? your husband? O’
course I did! and you got him—somewheres hid.”
“I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days,” said Lucy, and her
tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
“Not heer from him!—fifteen days!” Berry echoed.
“O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell
me! I’ve borne it so long. They’re cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do you
know if I have offended him—my husband? While he wrote I did not
complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from
him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they want to
take him from me? Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I’ve had no one
to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help
crying, Mrs. Berry!”
Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy’s
lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never
this excellent creature’s system to be miserable in company. The sight
of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set
her resolutely the other way.
“Fiddle-faddle,” she said. “I’d like to see him repent! He won’t find
anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know it. Now,
look you here, my dear—you blessed weepin’ pet—the man that could see
ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law,
and not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he ain’t got
much man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my babe! I was
sayin’, look here, to comfort ye—oh, why, to be sure he’ve got some
surprise for ye. And so’ve I, my lamb! Hark, now! His father’ve come to
town, like a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring
your bodies together, as your hearts is, for everlastin’. Now ain’t
that news?”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, “that takes my last hope away. I thought he had gone
to his father.” She burst into fresh tears.
Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
“Belike he’s travellin’ after him,” she suggested.
“Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!”
“Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sich a man as that. He’s a regular
meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey. Well, so hark you here. I
says to myself, that knows him—for I did think my babe was in his
natural nest—I says, the bar’net’ll never write for you both to come up
and beg forgiveness, so down I’ll go and fetch you up. For there was
your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye
one hour in a young marriage. It’s dangerous, it’s mad, it’s wrong, and
it’s only to be righted by your obeyin’ of me, as I commands it: for I
has my fits, though I am a soft ’un. Obey me, and ye’ll be happy
tomorrow—or the next to it.”
Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted
martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else’s guidance
utterly.
“But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?”
“’Cause, ’cause—who can tell the why of men, my dear? But that he love
ye faithful, I’ll swear. Haven’t he groaned in my arms that he couldn’t
come to ye?—weak wretch! Hasn’t he swore how he loved ye to me, poor
young man! But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be. You should ’a
followed my ’dvice at the fust—’stead o’ going into your ’eroics about
this and t’other.” Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
matrimony, pointed especially at young couples. “I should ’a been a
fool if I hadn’t suffered myself,” she confessed, “so I’ll thank my
Berry if I makes you wise in season.”
Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into
the soft woman’s kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed from mouth
to mouth. And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very
secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring
herself to speak it.
“Well! these’s three men in my life I kissed,” said Mrs. Berry, too
much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife’s
struggling bosom, “three men, and one a nobleman! He’ve got more
whisker than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought. Ten to one he’ll
think, now, I was glad o’ my chance—they’re that vain, whether they’s
lords or commons. How was I to know? I nat’ral thinks none but her
husband’d sit in that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?”
Mrs. Berry hardened her eyes, “and your husband away? What do this
mean? Tell to me, child, what it mean his bein’ here alone without ere
a candle?”
“Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here,” said Lucy. “He is
very kind. He comes almost every evening.”
“Lord Montfalcon—that his name!” Mrs. Berry exclaimed. “I been that
flurried by the man, I didn’t mind it at first. He come every evenin’,
and your husband out o’ sight! My goodness me! it’s gettin’ worse and
worse. And what do he come for, now, ma’am? Now tell me candid what ye
do together here in the dark of an evenin’.”
Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
“O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way—I don’t like it,” said
Lucy, pouting.
“What do he come for, I ask?”
“Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely, and wishes to
amuse me. And he tells me of things I know nothing about and”—
“And wants to be a-teachin’ some of his things, mayhap,” Mrs. Berry
interrupted with a ruffled breast.
“You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman,” said Lucy,
chiding her.
“And you’re a silly, unsuspectin’ little bird,” Mrs. Berry retorted, as
she returned her taps on the cheek. “You haven’t told me what ye do
together, and what’s his excuse for comin’.”
“Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the great
men. And he says I’m not silly, Mrs. Berry.”
“That’s one bit o’ lime on your wings, my bird. History, indeed!
History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty
History! Why, I know that man’s name, my dear. He’s a notorious living
rake, that Lord Montfalcon. No woman’s safe with him.”
“Ah, but he hasn’t deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not pretended he was
good.”
“More’s his art,” quoth the experienced dame. “So you read History
together in the dark; my dear!”
“I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
Look! there’s the book open ready for him when the candles come in. And
now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.
I do love you. Talk of other things.”
“So we will,” said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy’s caresses. “So let us.
A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich a
beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
spot it shall! He won’t meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I
drop him. I’m dyin’ for a cup o’ tea, my dear.”
Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
dropping him, was continuing to say: “Let him go and boast I kiss him;
he ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of in a chaste woman’s
kiss—unawares—which men don’t get too often in their lives, I can
assure ’em;”—her eye surveyed Lucy’s figure.
Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms,
and drew her into feminine depths. “Oh, you blessed!” she cried in most
meaning tone, “you good, lovin’, proper little wife, you!”
“What is it, Mrs. Berry!” lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
eyes.
“As if I couldn’t see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or I’d ’a
marked ye the fast shock. Thinkin’ to deceive me!”
Mrs. Berry’s eyes spoke generations. Lucy’s wavered; she coloured all
over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.
“You’re a sweet one,” murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
rocking her. “You’re a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk. Haven’t
told a word to your husband, my dear?” she asked quickly.
Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
“That’s right. We’ll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
him, and thinks he—losin’ breath ‘I’m a father!’ Nor a hint even you
haven’t give him?”
Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
“Oh! you are a sweet one,” said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more
closely and lovingly.
Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
fingers’ ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: “Now this
right everything—a baby in the balance! Now I say this angel-infant
come from on high. It’s God’s messenger, my love! and it’s not wrong to
say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn’t ’a had one—not for all
the tryin’ in the world, you wouldn’t, and some tries hard enough, poor
creatures! Now let us rejice and make merry! I’m for cryin’ and
laughin’, one and the same. This is the blessed seal of matrimony,
which Berry never stamp on me. It’s be hoped it’s a boy. Make that man
a grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe. Oh! this
is what I call happiness, and I’ll have my tea a little stronger in
consequence. I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news.”
So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate and
she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste was
hers.
Says Lucy demurely: “Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
books.”
“Do I?” replies Berry. “Belike I do. Since what you done’s so good, my
darlin’, I’m agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They can’t
come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and
Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your own
dear way, and that’s all I cares for.”
“No, but you don’t understand,” persists Lucy. “I only read sensible
books, and talk of serious things, because I’m sure... because I have
heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don’t you understand now?”
Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. “Only to think of her bein’ that
thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of one
religion ain’t as good as another, after that. Why, you want to make
him a historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who’ve been comin’
here playin’ at wolf, you been and made him—unbeknown to himself—sort
o’ tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that little women ain’t got
art ekal to the cunningest of ’em. Oh! I understand. Why, to be sure,
didn’t I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman: he was a postermost
child, and afore his birth that women read nothin’ but Blair’s ‘Grave’
over and over again, from the end to the beginnin’;—that’s a serious
book!—very hard readin’!—and at four years of age that child that come
of it reelly was the piousest infant!—he was like a little curate. His
eyes was up; he talked so solemn.” Mrs. Berry imitated the little
curate’s appearance and manner of speaking. “So she got her wish, for
one!”
But at this lady Lucy laughed.
They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to
sleep with her. “If it’s not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin’ beside
a woman,” said Mrs. Berry. “I know it were to me shortly after my
Berry, and I felt it. It don’t somehow seem nat’ral after matrimony—a
woman in your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for the cold sheets
do give ye the creeps when you’ve been used to that that’s different.”
Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then
Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced
linen, all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own
hands: and Mrs. Berry praised them and her. “You been guessing a
boy—woman-like,” she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed
by the fire, and knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each
other, praying; both praying for the unborn child; and Mrs. Berry
pressed Lucy’s waist the moment she was about to breathe the petition
to heaven to shield and bless that coming life; and thereat Lucy closed
to her, and felt a strong love for her. Then Lucy got into bed first,
leaving Berry to put out the light, and before she did so, Berry leaned
over her, and eyed her roguishly, saying, “I never see ye like this,
but I’m half in love with ye myself, you blushin’ beauty! Sweet’s your
eyes, and your hair do take one so—lyin’ back. I’d never forgive my
father if he kep me away from ye four-and-twenty hours just. Husband o’
that!” Berry pointed at the young wife’s loveliness. “Ye look so ripe
with kisses, and there they are a-languishin’!—... You never look so
but in your bed, ye beauty!—just as it ought to be.” Lucy had to
pretend to rise to put out the light before Berry would give up her
amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled
her, and arranged for their departure to-morrow, and reviewed Richard’s
emotions when he came to hear he was going to be made a father by her,
and hinted at Lucy’s delicious shivers when Richard was again in his
rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now usurped; and all sorts of
amorous sweet things; enough to make one fancy the adage subverted,
that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew such glowing pictures of
bliss within the law and the limits of the conscience, till at last,
worn out, Lucy murmured “Peepy, dear Berry,” and the soft woman
gradually ceased her chirp.
Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
beside her, and listening to Lucy’s breath as it came and went;
squeezing the fair sleeper’s hand now and then, to ease her love as her
reflections warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire
hills, and sprang white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It
passed, leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land. The moon shone
brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark. His bark was savage and
persistent. She was roused by the noise. By and by she fancied she
heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that the
house-door opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out
voices in the midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and
bolted the door of the room, assured herself of Lucy’s unconsciousness,
and went on tiptoe to the window. The trees all stood white to the
north; the ground glittered; the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat
arms across her bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the
situation of the window permitted. Berry was a soft, not a timid,
woman: and it happened this night that her thoughts were above the
fears of the dark. She was sure of the voices; curiosity without a
shade of alarm held her on the watch; and gathering bundles of her
day-apparel round her neck and shoulders, she silenced the chattering
of her teeth as well as she could, and remained stationary. The low hum
of the voices came to a break; something was said in a louder tone; the
house-door quietly shut; a man walked out of the garden into the road.
He paused opposite her window, and Berry let the blind go back to its
place, and peeped from behind an edge of it. He was in the shadow of
the house, so that it was impossible to discern much of his figure.
After some minutes he walked rapidly away, and Berry returned to the
bed an icicle, from which Lucy’s limbs sensitively shrank.
Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in
the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top. Mrs.
Berry went into the garden. The snow was partially melted; all save one
spot, just under the portal, and there she saw the print of a man’s
foot. By some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of
Richard’s boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of
the boot in that solitary footmark. There could be no doubt that it
fitted. She tried it from heel to toe a dozen times.