IN AMERICA
“The ship _l’Europe_ came slowly up New York harbor one pleasant summer
morning, and among the eager crowd gathered on its deck, none were more
eager and expectant, ay, and nervous too, than our friends Madame
Verwest and Anna. The latter had been sick all the voyage, and kept her
state-room, tormented with a thousand groundless fears as to what her
infuriated husband might do. He was capable of anything, she knew, and
felt that he would follow her to America, and try to get her again in
his power. It was Fred who thoughtlessly suggested that he might
telegraph to New York for officers to be ready to arrest his runaway
wife as a lunatic, and after that idea once lodged in her brain, Anna
never rested a moment, night or day; and when at last New York was in
sight, and she was forced to dress herself and go on deck, she looked
more like a ghost than the blooming girl who had sailed down that very
harbor not quite two years before. Madame Verwest had been very silent
during the entire voyage, and had never given the slightest reason why
she had left the chateau. Nor did Anna care to question her. She was
satisfied to have her with her and clung to her as to a mother.
“‘Do you think he has telegraphed, and what shall we do if he has? You
will never let them have me,’ she said, as the ship was nearing the
wharf, and she gazed in terror at the promiscuous crowd waiting there,
and mistaking the custom-house officers for the police come to arrest.
“Madame Verwest herself had thought it possible that Haverleigh might
telegraph, but she did not admit it. She only said:
“‘They will take both of us, if either. I shall not leave you and your
friends will soon know of it.’
“Thus reassured, Anna grew more calm, and waited till the ship was fast
at the landing and the passengers free to leave. There was no officer
there, no telegram, and our party took the first train which left next
morning on the Harlem Road for Millfield. A telegram, however, had
preceded them, and the whole town was in a state of wild excitement when
it was known that Anna was coming back, and why. Up to this time but
little had been said of Fred’s departure for Europe, and though there
were surmises of something wrong, nothing definite was known until the
telegram was received, when the story came out and set the town on fire.
Everybody told everybody else, so that long before the train was due the
history of Anna’s life in France had been told a thousand times, and had
Ernest Haverleigh then appeared in the streets he would assuredly have
been torn in pieces by the crowd which surged toward the depot long
before the train was due. Everybody was there; those who had known Anna
in her girlhood and those who had not, the new-comers who only knew her
story and waited for a glimpse of her. Oh, how white, and frightened,
and wild she looked when at last she came and stepped upon the platform.
Fred’s arm was around her, and behind her came Madame Verwest, carrying
the child, which slept soundly all through the exciting scene.
“‘Mother—where’s mother?’ the pallid lips asked as Anna’s feet touched
the ground, and then her mother’s arms were round her, and the tired
head dropped on the maternal bosom with a low pitiful cry, and it was
whispered in the crowd that she had fainted.
They took her home to the low red house, and laid her in the little room
she used to occupy, and which she once had so despised. It seemed like
heaven to her now, as she sank down among the snowy pillows, and felt
the sweet breath of the summer air, laden with the perfume of the
new-mown hay, and the lilies of which she had talked so much to Madame
Verwest.
“‘Oh, mother, Mary, I am so glad,’ she said, as she saw them bending
over her, and felt that she was safe. ‘No one can get me here. You’ll
never let me go, for he will come after me; he is coming now,’ and with
a shudder she drew the sheet over her face as if to hide herself from
the dreaded husband coming to take her away.
“After that Anna knew no more of what was passing about her for days,
and even weeks. Nature had borne all it could, and she lay almost
motionless, and utterly unconscious of everything. But never sure was
queen tended with more care than she for whom everybody cared, and whose
room was filled with tokens of remembrance, flowers and fruit, and such
masses of white lilies, for these had been her favorites, and every
school-boy in town considered it an honor to wade into the pond,
knee-deep, and even imperil his life to secure the fragrant blossoms.
“From the first Madame Verwest was a puzzle to all, and a very little in
the way. It is true she was the nurse who took the entire charge of the
baby, and who, more than any one else, seemed to understand and know
what to do for Anna. But still she was in the way—a stranger, who had
not been expected, but whose only fault seemed to be that she stared too
much at Mrs. Strong and at the people in Millfield, especially the older
inhabitants, and asked too many questions about them. It was a little
strange, too, how fond she was of roaming about the town, and exploring
it in all its parts. Sometimes, with the baby in her arms, she would
leave the house in the morning, and not return again until dinner time,
and Mrs. Strong had heard of her more than once in the graveyard,
studying the old head-stones; and again down near the boat-house by the
river, sitting apparently in deep thought upon the grass, with Anna’s
baby sleeping on her lap. At first Mrs. Strong felt some natural anxiety
for the safety of the child, but when she saw how it clung to Madame
Verwest, and how devoted she seemed to be to its every movement, she
came to trust her fully, and to forget all else in her great concern for
her own child, who grew weaker and weaker every day, until to those who
watched her so closely there seemed little hope that she could ever
rally from the death-like stupor into which she had fallen. Nothing
roused her to the least degree of consciousness or motion, except,
indeed the mention of her husband’s name. As an experiment Madame
Verwest bent over her and said:
“‘_Ma petite_, do you remember Monsieur Haverleigh of Chateau d’Or?’
“Then there was a quivering of the lids, and a shiver ran through Anna’s
form, and she whispered faintly:
“‘Yes, yes, and he is coming; he is almost here, but don’t let him get
me.’
“And four days after he came, on the six o’clock train, from which he
stepped like a prince of the royal blood, and confronting the first man
he met upon the platform, haughtily demanded if he knew ‘whether Mrs.
Ernest Haverleigh, formerly Miss Anna Strong, were in town.’
“All the town was watching for Haverleigh, and threatening him with dire
vengeance should he attempt the removal of his wife by force. As it
chanced, the person addressed was a burly truckman, and who, with his
whip in his hand, looked a rather formidable personage, as, in answer to
Haverleigh’s question, he replied:
“‘Yes, _sir_, the lady you mean is in town, sick to death, they say, and
if you are that contemptible dog who shut her up and called her crazy,
and told them infernal lies, the quicker you leave these parts the
healthier for you, if you don’t want to be ducked in the mill-pond.’
“Haverleigh was too much astonished to speak at first. That he, the
proud Englishman, should be thus addressed by a low, ignorant, working
Yankee was more than flesh and blood like his could bear, and his face
was purple with rage, and his eyes gleamed savagely as he replied:
“‘Who are you that dares speak to me in this manner, and do you know who
I am?’
“‘Yes, _sir-ee_, I know darned well who you are,’ the man replied,
nothing intimidated by Haverleigh’s threatening manner, but strengthened
by the crowd gathering so fast around him.
“It had circulated rapidly that Haverleigh had come, and was ‘sassing’
Ben Rogers, and the idlers gathered near at once, eager to hear and
ready to defend, if necessary, their comrade, who continued:
“You are the confoundedest, meanest, contemptiblist animal that the Lord
ever suffered to live, and I am Benjamin Franklin Rogers, at your
service, and if you open your dirty mouth again I’ll give you a taste of
this horse-whip; so, if you want to save your British hide, skedaddle
quick for the Widder Strong’s, as I s’pose you must go there, but, mark
my words, me and these chaps, my friends’—sweeping his arm toward the
crowd—‘will go with you to see you do no harm, and if the widder says
_duck you_, we’ll do it, or tar you and ride you on a rail, or any other
honor such as we can give you _grattis_ for nothin’.’
“Whether Haverleigh was intimidated, or too proud to speak, I do not
know. He made no reply except to glare like a madman upon the speaker
and the crowd, which made way for him to pass, and then followed at a
little distance as he moved rapidly in the direction of Mrs. Strong’s.
The news of his arrival had preceded him, and with a face white with
terror Mrs. Strong was waiting for him, and so was Madame Verwest. _She_
was neither pale nor frightened. She had carried the baby to Anna’s
room, and bidding Mary watch it, had left the apartment, and locking the
door after her joined Mrs. Strong in the parlor below, where they sat
together until the sound of the coming rabble drew them both to the
door.
“Very proudly and erect Haverleigh moved on, never once glancing back at
the crowd behind him. But he knew that it was there, and heard the
muttered menaces as he opened the gate and walked to the door. It was
Madame Verwest who met him and asked: ‘Ernest Haverleigh, why are you
here?’
“‘Why?’ he repeated, and his voice was like a savage growl. ‘Why am I
here? I am here for my wife and my son, and I intend to have them, too.
I’d like to see the law that can keep them from me, so lead the way
quickly, for I shall be off in the next train.’
“‘Never with Anna and the baby. Never, while I have the power to prevent
it, as I have,’ Madame Verwest replied, and then all the pent-up fury of
the terrible man burst out, and there were flecks of white foam about
his lips as he cursed the woman who boldly kept him at bay, with the
most horrible of curses, calling her at last by the vilest name a woman
can be called, and asking for her wedding ring and the certificate of
her marriage.
‘Ernest Haverleigh, hush; nor dare speak to me, _your mother_, like that
again.’
“The voice which said these words was very steady and low, but
Haverleigh heard it distinctly, and grasping the back of the chair near
which he was standing, repeated: ‘My mother; you, who were only my
nurse. You call yourself my mother!’
“‘Yes, and before Heaven I am your mother; listen while I tell you what
you should have known before, but for a promise to the dead.’
“He was still staring at her, with that same corpse-like pallor on his
face, and the look of a wild beast in his eyes, but he did not speak,
for some thing in the woman before him kept him silent while she went
on:
“‘I am your mother, and I thought I was your father’s wife, until after
you were born, when there came a day of horrid awakening, and I found I
was betrayed by the man I loved, and for whom I had left my home, for I
was young and innocent once, and pretty, too, they said; but I was poor
and hated poverty, and when this rich man came with honeyed words and
fair promises, I believed and trusted him to my ruin, and went with him
over the sea—for I am American born, and not English, as you suppose. We
staid in lodgings in London till you were born, and by that time a face
fairer than mine had come between me and your father, a woman he meant
to marry, and so he told me the truth of his villainy, and when I found
I was not a wife, I think I went mad for a time, and when I came to
myself I was in poorer lodgings in an obscure part of London, where I
passed for Mr. Haverleigh’s housekeeper, who had served him so
faithfully that he would not cast me off in my trouble. That was the lie
he told, and they believed him and were kind to me for the sake of the
money he paid them, You were at Grasmere then with your father, whom in
spite of everything I loved, and to whom I went, begging him to let me
have the care of my child if nothing more. To this he consented, the
more readily because he was about to marry my rival, and you might be in
the way. He loved you, I do believe, and he trusted me, but made me
swear not to divulge my real relation to you. I was your nurse, your
foster-mother, nothing more. There might be no children of the marriage,
he said, and if so, he should make you his heir, and did not wish you to
know the stain upon your birth. There _were_ no children, and as if to
punish him for his sin to me, his wife died within the year, and he was
left alone and made you his heir, so that when he died all he had was
left to you, except a thousand pounds given to me, whom he designated as
the foster-mother of his child.
“‘You, as you grew up, believed the woman who died at Grasmere was your
mother, and that I was only your nurse; but that was false; I was your
mother, else I had never followed your fortunes as I have, and clung to
you through all as only a mother can cling to the son whose wickedness
she knows, and whom she cannot forsake. You thought me in your power,
because you fancied I had been indiscreet in my youth, and that your
threats to expose me kept me quiet to do your bidding. There you were
mistaken. It was the mother loving you through everything which made me
the same as a prisoner at Chateau d’Or, where I was really happier than
when following you about. Because it suited you I consented to be Madame
Verwest, a Frenchwoman, and for you I have lived a life of deceit,
which, thank Heaven, is over now. I meant to release Anna myself
sometime, on the plea of _your_ insanity, if by no other, for there is
madness in your father’s family, and you are mad at times. But others
planned the escape, and I gladly followed to America, my native land,
and to Millfield, my old home, for I am Milly Gardner, step-sister to
Anna’s father, and the one you told me went to the bad, and was the only
blot on the family.’
“Up to this time there had been a listener to Madame Verwest’s
story—Mrs. Strong, who, terrified at the appearance of Haverleigh, had
fled to the adjoining room, where she sank into a chair faint and
helpless, and thus heard all that was said by Madame Verwest. At the
mention of Milly Gardner, however, she sprang to her feet and ran to the
woman’s side, exclaiming:
“Oh, Milly, Milly! I have heard so much of you from my husband, and from
him learned to love you even while believing the story I know now to be
false. It is all so strange that you should be here when we thought you
dead years ago. And _you_ are _his_ mother,” she continued, pointing to
Haverleigh. ‘Send him away, if you have any power over him; he must not
see my child.’
“The sound of Mrs. Strong’s voice speaking of Anna roused Haverleigh
from his stupor, or rather state of bewilderment, and with a savage oath
he started forward, exclaiming:
“‘I _shall_ see your child, and take her, too, for she is mine. Stand
aside, woman—hag—beldame—who dares to call herself my mother,’ he
continued, as Madame Verwest laid both her hands upon his arm. ‘It is a
lie you have told me. My mother was she who lived and died at Grasmere,
and you—you—are——’
“He did not finish the sentence, for his excitement and passion had been
increasing every moment, while his face grew more and more swollen and
purple, until the flecks of foam gathered more thickly about his lips,
which gave forth a bubbling sound as he fell across the chair in a fit.
“Then the mother woke again in Madame Verwest, and kneeling by the side
of her tossing, struggling son, she lifted up his head, and cared for
him as tenderly as when he was a new-born baby and first lay upon her
bosom. The terrible convulsions ceased at last, and the natural color
came back to his face; but the eyes, which fastened themselves upon her
with such a look of hate, were the eyes of a madman, who had in his
heart intense hatred and even murderous designs toward the woman who
still held his head upon her lap, and dropped her tears upon his face.
“‘Woman—fiend—liar—I’ll have your life!’ he screamed, as he sprang to
his feet, and with clenched fists darted toward his mother, who stepped
aside to avoid the blow, and thus made way for the men outside upon the
walk, who, attracted by the loud, angry tones, had come nearer and
nearer to the door, which they reached just as Haverleigh rose to his
feet and sprang toward his mother.
“‘Hold, villain—stop that!’ the foremost of them cried; and Haverleigh
was caught by both arms, and held as in a vise by two men, who yet had
hard work to keep him from breaking loose from their grasp.
“A moment sufficed to convince them that it was no sane man they held,
and then arose a call for ropes with which to bind him. I think the
whole town knew by this time what was going on, and the street in front
of Mrs. Strong’s was densely packed with an excited throng, but only a
few entered the house, and these the more intimate acquaintance of the
family. That Haverleigh was raving mad was a fact no one doubted, and to
secure his person was a step which seemed imperative, but was hard of
accomplishment, for he was naturally strong, and his excitement lent to
him a double strength. But he was mastered at last, and carried bodily
to the village hall, where he was to be kept securely until some
decision was reached as to what should be done with him. That decision
was reached before the close of the next day, for he grew more and more
furious and uncontrollable, until the asylum seemed the only
alternative, and thither they carried him at last, and placed him in the
strong room, as it was called, where, struggle as he might, he could not
get free or burst the bars and bolts which held him.
“Meanwhile, in Millfield, Madame Verwest, as we will still call her, had
told her story more fully to Mrs. Strong, while Anna, too, when she was
better and could bear it, heard that the woman who from the first had
been so kind to her in Chateau d’Or, was in reality her mother-in-law,
and the grandmother of the little boy Arthur. Like poor Agatha Wynde she
had been lured from her place in Boston, where she was employed in a
straw shop. The man, who gave his name to her as Stevens, was an
Englishman, and rich, and she went with him trustingly and honorably, as
she believed, until the dreadful day when she found how she had been
deceived. Even then she loved him and clung to her child, whom she was
allowed to care for on condition that she passed as his nurse or
foster-mother, and to this promise she held for many years, during which
time Haverleigh died and left by will all his fortune to his son, except
a thousand pounds bequeathed to the wretched woman who stood by him when
he died; and when, selfish to the last, he said: ‘Don’t let the boy know
the story of his birth. Let him think that Mabel was his mother,’ she
answered him, ‘I will,’ and bore her secret bravely, and cared for the
boy, and was a very slave to do his wishes, because of the love she bore
him.
“Whatever opinion he might have had of her, her influence over him was
great, and he really seemed to have a genuine affection for her as the
only mother he had ever known, and would never suffer her to leave his
service, as he called it. He paid her well, told her most of his plans,
counseled with her often, and at times evinced for her a liking and
respect very dear to the woman who longed so much to fall upon his neck
and claim him as her son. She had been with him in Scotland, and London,
and Paris, and at last, six years before his marriage with Anna, had
gone with him to Chateau d’Or, which he had just bought, and where for
weeks he held a high carnival with his wild, dissipated friends. The
quiet and seclusion of the place just suited his mother, who at his
request had before leaving Paris, taken the name of Madame Verwest.
“Up to that time she had been Mrs. Stevens, for she clung to the name
she once believed to be her own, but it pleased her son to have her
Madame Verwest, and a Frenchwoman, so a Frenchwoman she was; and because
she liked the chateau so much he permitted her to stay there in charge
of his servants, who held her in great esteem. The isolated position of
the chateau was just suited to some of Haverleigh’s nefarious schemes,
and poor Agatha Wynde was not the first young girl who had been immured
in its walls. A fair-haired German from Munich, and a dark-eyed Italian
from Verona had been hidden there for months until the search for them
by their grief-stricken friends was over. When poor Agatha came there
she had been so fair, so sweet, and so confiding, that Madame Verwest
had taken the erring, repentant girl into her heart, and loved her like
a mother.
“‘We don’t think quite the same,’ Agatha had said to her during a lucid
interval a day or two before she died. ‘We are not the same religion.
You Protestant, I _Catholique_; but you love Jesus, you ask him to
forgive, and so do I; Him and Mary, too; and He will, and you will come
to Heaven after poor Agatha some day. I sure you will, for there be now
and then some Protestant there.’
“This was quite a concession for one so devout as Agatha, and Madame
Verwest had smiled faintly when it was made, but she kissed the pallid
lips and brow where death had already set its seal, and when at last all
was over she placed a golden crucifix in the white hands folded so
meekly over the heart which would never know pain again. She telegraphed
to Haverleigh, who was dining with Eugenie when he received the message,
and who read the telegram without a word of comment, and then, lest the
jealous eyes watching him so closely should see it, he lighted a match,
and applying it to the paper saw it burn to ashes. But he could not seem
quite natural, and as soon as dinner was over he excused himself, and
started directly for the station, leaving Eugenie to speculate upon the
nature of the telegram which had so plainly affected his spirits, and
taken him from her earlier than his wont. Alas, she little guessed the
truth, or dreamed of the beautiful girl lying so cold and still in her
coffin, and on whose white face even Haverleigh’s tears fell when he
looked upon her dead, and remembered what she was when he first saw her,
a lovely peasant-girl in Normandy, singing by her father’s door. They
buried her quietly, and then Haverleigh returned to Paris and Eugenie,
while over the lonely grave Madame Verwest vowed that no other maiden
should ever come there as Agatha had come; and so, when she first heard
of Anna, she determined upon something desperate, until told that Anna
was a wife in very deed, and that no stain was on her name. Then, when
she learned who she was, and whence she came, her heart went out to the
desolate creature with a great throb of love, which strengthened every
day, and was such as a real mother feels for a suffering, ill-used
child. Many times, when listening to Anna’s talk of her New England
home, she had been tempted to tell her who she was, but had refrained
from doing so, hoping always that the day was not far distant when she
could disclose everything, and be her real self again. That day had come
at last, and with no fear of the dreadful man who had ruled her for so
many years, she told her story, and waited the verdict of her wondering
listeners.
“Anna was the first to speak. Motioning Madame Verwest to her bedside,
she wound her arms around her neck, and said:
“‘I loved you as a mother at Chateau d’Or, and am so glad to find you
are my mother truly, and the grandmother of little Arthur.’
“Neither were Mrs. Strong and Mary backward in their demonstrations of
friendship and esteem for the woman who had suffered so much since the
day, years and years before, when she had left her home in Millfield and
returned no more. Could the inmates of the red house have blotted from
their minds the memory of the poor lunatic who, not many miles away, was
chafing and raging like a newly-caged animal, they would have been very
happy these last summer days; and, to a certain degree, they were happy,
though, in her low, nervous state Anna could never quite put from her
mind the fear lest her dreaded husband should by some means escape from
his confinement and come to do her harm. But the bolts and bars were
very strong which held him, else he might perhaps have escaped, for he
seemed endowed with superhuman strength, and clutched savagely at the
iron gratings of his cell, shaking them at times as if they were but
dried twigs in his hands.
“He was terrible in his insanity, and only his keeper and physician ever
ventured near him. At them he sprang and snapped viciously, like a dog
chained to a post, while he filled the room with the most horrid oaths,
cursing Madame Verwest, who had dared to call him her child.
“‘He who was highly born, the son of a gentleman, the child of a
servant, a nurse, a Yankee, and illegitimate at that; curse her! curse
her! she lies! she lies! she played me false, and I hate her!’ he would
scream, when his mother was the subject of his thoughts.
“Again, when it was Eugenie, he grew, if possible, more desperate than
before, and would utter such oaths that even his keeper, hardened as he
was by similar scenes, fled from the hearing of the blasphemous words.
“Of Anna and Agatha he never spoke until toward the last, when, as if he
had worn his fierce nature out, he grew more quiet, and would sit for
hours perfectly still, with his head bowed upon his hands, intently
brooding over something in the past. Was he thinking of Agatha, and the
cottage far away in Normandy, where he first saw her singing in the
sunshine, with the sweet, shy look of innocence in her soft eyes, or did
she come up before him as he last looked upon her, cold, white, and dead
in her coffin, ruined by him, who had used every act in his power to
lure her into the snare. It would seem that she came to him in both
phases, for at times he would smile faintly and whisper, very soft and
low:
“‘_Ma petite, ma cherie. Venez avec moi a Paris. Je vous aime bien_.’
“To her he always spoke in French and with the utmost tenderness, saying
to her, as he thought himself bending over her coffin:
“‘I am sorry, Aggie, I am so sorry, and I wish I had left you in your
home as innocent as I found you, poor little Aggie, so white and cold;
don’t look at me with those mournful eyes; don’t touch me with those
death-like hands; don’t you know you are dead, _dead_, and dead folks
lie still? Don’t touch me, I say;’ and cries of fear would echo through
the hall as the terror-stricken man fancied himself embraced and held
fast by the arms which for so long had been at rest beneath the sod in
southern France.
“‘It’s the French girl after him now,’ the keeper would say, as he heard
the cries and pleadings for some one ‘to lie still and take their cold
hands off.’ ‘It’s the French girl after him now, _death hug_, you know.
He’ll be quieter when it’s t’other one;’ the ‘t’other one’ referring to
Anna, who was often present to the disordered mind of the man, but who
never excited him like Agatha.
“He was not afraid of Anna, but would hold long conversations with her,
trying sometimes to convince her of her insanity, and again telling her
that he loved her and always had, notwithstanding what he had heard her
say of him in New York. It was in the spring following the summer when
Anna arrived at Millfield that this softer, quieter mood came upon him,
and with it a debility, and loss of strength and appetite, and gradual
wasting away, which told that his days were numbered. Years of
dissipation had undermined his naturally strong constitution, and he had
no surplus vitality on which to draw, so that the decay, once commenced,
was very rapid, and just a year from the day Anna came back to
Millfield, he was dead.
“Madame Verwest was with him when he died for though he never asked for
her or for any one, the mother love was too strong to keep her from him,
and she went to him unbidden when she heard how sick he was. Whether her
presence was any gratification to him or not, she never knew, for he
expressed nothing, either by word or look. Once, when she spoke to him
of Anna and his boy, there came a faint flush upon his face, and he
repeated the names:
“‘Anna—Arthur.’
“Again, when she said to him:
“‘Ernest, you have much money, and land in your possession. If you die,
where do you wish it to go?’
“For a moment he regarded her intently, and then replied:
“‘Anna, Arthur—mother.’
“The last word was spoken softly, kindly, and brought a rain of tears
from the poor woman, who had clung to him so many years, and never heard
that name from him before. Two days after that he died, and went to the
God who deals justly with all His creatures. They bought him an elegant
coffin, and dressed him in the finest of broadcloth, and brought him up
to Millfield and buried him in the quiet graveyard behind the church,
where he sleeps till the resurrection morning. Anna did not see him. She
could not, but she suffered Madame Verwest to take Arthur with her to
the grave, and so the mother and the son stood together while the coffin
was lowered to the earth, and the solemn words were uttered, ‘ashes to
ashes, dust to dust.’
“To the little boy the weeping woman said:
“‘That’s your father, Arthur; your father they are burying;’ but Arthur
was thinking more of the sunshine, and birds, and flowers than of the
ceremonial which had no meaning for him, and releasing himself from his
grandmother, started in pursuit of a butterfly, and his loud baby laugh
mingled with the sound of the dirt rattling down upon the coffin which
contained what had been his father.”
Here Hal Morton paused, and pointed toward a half-closed shutter through
which the early morning was breaking. We had sat up all night, he
telling and I listening to this strange story, which I felt was not
finished yet, for I must know more of Anna, and if anything had ever
been heard from Eugenie, who, however bad she might seem, had shown
herself in some respects a noble woman, with many noble instincts and
kindly feelings; so I said to my companion:
“Never mind the daylight, Hal. We will order a tip-top breakfast by and
by, and meantime you finish the story and tell me more of Anna and
Eugenie. Did they ever hear from her, and did Anna and the child get
Haverleigh’s money?”
“Yes, they got Haverleigh’s money,” Hal replied. “Anna and Arthur
between them. It was theirs lawfully, you know, and there was a million
in all. Think of Anna Strong a millionaire. But it did not hurt her one
whit, or change her in the least from the sweet, modest, half-frightened
woman who came back to Millfield in place of the gay Anna we had known.
She did not wear mourning for her husband; she could not with that
consciousness in her heart of relief because he was dead; but she always
wore black or white, relieved perhaps with a knot of ribbon or a flower,
and never was there a fairer sight than was she in this sober attire as
she went about our village seeking the sick and suffering, and giving to
the poor of the wealth that God had given her. She built her mother a
handsome house on an elevation just out of the town, and a wing was
added for Madame Verwest, who was so much one of the family that she
could not leave them.
“And so the working in the shoe-shop was at an end, with the smell of
wax and leather, and the horrors of Chateau d’Or were past, and there
were people foolish enough to say that it paid after all to marry a
madman when the end had brought such peace. To Eugenie, Anna had often
written, and when all was over she wrote again telling of the death.
Then the French inconsistency of character showed itself, and the woman
to whom Haverleigh had always been kind and indulgent, wept and refused
to be comforted, partly for her loss, and more, I think, because no
provision had been made for her.
“‘_Mon dieu!_’ she wrote to Anna, ‘to think no little legacee _pour
moi_, who have given everything for him. Not so much as one, what you
say, one dollar, and I so poor, too. Not so much to buy one pair of
gloves, and they so cheap at _Au Bon Marche, trois francs et demi_, and
so good. Shall I send you a box of black—bah, _non, ma cherie_. You not
wear that for he, but _me_, I must wear _crepe_, and bombasin, one
leetle month, for my heart all French, all _crepe_, all ache, _douleur_,
for the bad monsieur, who once love Eugenie. He have account at bank and
I draw check at will, and have draw till only one thousand franc left,
which you make two hundred dollars. Then what I must do? I grow old and
want no more monsieur—bah! I hate him all. I look in my glass and see
Eugenie most forty, with some gray hairs, some wrinkles, which paste
will not cover. No monsieur want me for wife: I want no monsieur. So I
must work; must hang out the sign, ‘_Robes et Costumes. Madame
Eugenie_,’ and tie to it some bonnets and caps. Oh, but it will go hard
after all the ease, to have so many girls round, and I must scold them
all the time; perhaps I act again, but it I hate so much; it brings me
_les messieurs_ again, and I won’t have it. For you, you so happy with
_beaucoup de l’argent_, no more nasty shop, no more wax, no more
leather, no more smell-bad; but for me leather, and wax, and smell-bad,
_toujours, toujours_. _Mon Dieu_, ’tis quite hard, and I give all to
him, all, and if he not die, what you call him, crazy, he remember
Eugenie in his—his little last testament, you call it, or some book like
that. Oh, me, I starve, I die. I have the many girls around me with the
bad to sew, and you have the silk, the satin, the opera, and the lunch
at _Trois Freres—bien_—’tis right, but hard, and it takes so few money
to set me up, quite. _Me comprenez vous?_’
“Anna did understand the hint, and sent to the Frenchwoman, who had done
her great service, ten thousand dollars, which Eugenie acknowledged with
rapture.
“‘Enough, with _prudency_ and _save_, to keep me lady all my life. No
need for the girls now to sew _les robes_; no leather, no wax, no
smell-bad, forevermore, but highly respectable woman, who let rooms to
_les Americains_ and bring them _cafe_ in the morning.’
“This was Eugenie’s reply, and after that Anna heard no more from her,
but supposed her happy as a highly respectable woman and keeper of
lodgers.”
The mention of Eugenie’s _cafe_ was too much for Hal and myself in our
exhausted condition, and, ringing the bell, we ordered _cafe_ for two in
our apartments, and while we were sipping the delicious beverage, I said
to my companion:
“Hal, you have told a splendid story, but I must hear a little more. You
were in love with Anna Strong before she married Haverleigh. Did the
love come back after he was dead?”
Hal made no answer for a moment, then he said:
“I will not tell you another word to-day; nor have I time. We must see a
little of Marseilles, and to-night be off for Nice.”
“And not stop at Cannes?” I asked, and he replied:
“No, not stop at Cannes—a stupid place, full of English. Nice is the
spot in all the world for me.”
So we went straight to Nice, and were quartered at the Grand Hotel, and
our rooms opened upon the spacious garden, where, looking from my window
in the morning, I saw several groups of people, one of which attracted
my attention at once. A beautiful boy of three years old was running up
and down a graveled walk, followed by a smart-looking French maid, who
always brought him back to two ladies sitting on a bench under the
trees.
One lady was old and draped in black, but the other was young, and oh,
so fair in her morning-dress of white, with a blue ribbon in her wavy
hair. There were diamonds and costly gems sparkling on her hands, and
everything about her betokened the lady of wealth and culture.
“Who is she, I wonder?” I was saying to myself, when I saw Hal enter the
garden and walk straight up to her, while a shout from the little boy
showed that he was no stranger.
Stranger! I should say not, by the _kiss_ he gave that girl or woman,
with me looking on, and saying aloud:
“That’s Anna, sure!”
Yes, it was Anna come abroad with Madame Verwest and her child, and her
former maid, Celine, whom she had found at Chateau d’Or, where they had
stopped for a few days. And an hour after I was introduced to Mrs.
Haverleigh, and sat opposite her at the breakfast we had in her parlor,
and studied her closely, and decided that Hal had not overrated her
charms.
She was beautiful, with that soft, refined, unconscious beauty that one
rarely sees in a really handsome face. There was nothing of the doll
about her. She was a thorough woman, graceful, pure, and lovely, with a
look in her blue eyes which told of Chateau d’Or and the dreamy day and
night watches there. But those were over now. Chateau d’Or was rented
for a series of years, at a price merely nominal, and so that was off
her hands, and the greatest care she had was the care of her immense
fortune. Of course Hal had offered to relieve her of this care, and she
had accepted his offer, and given him herself as a retaining fee.
We kept with her after that, or Hal did, and I kept at a distance, and
talked with Madame Verwest, and romped with Arthur until we reached
Venice, and there, one moonlight night, Hal and Anna were married, and
we made the tour of the Grand Canal for a wedding trip, and the canopy
over the bride was of pure white satin, and in the soft, silvery
moonlight we sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” our two boatmen joining in
the chorus with their sweet Italian voices.
That was long ago, and Hal Morton has a boy of his own now, and a
blue-eyed baby daughter, too, and he lives in one of the finest places
on the Connecticut river, and goes to Europe every year, and Madame
Verwest lives with him; and Fred has been through college, and is on the
Continent now; and Mary is married to a Methodist minister, and Mrs.
Strong is dead; and Eugenie—well, when the Commune swept over Paris,
Eugenie herself went into the street and cared for the wounded and
dying, and hurled a stone at a Frenchman who was attacking an American,
and kept him at bay, and got the young man into her own house, and
bandaged up his head, and called him “Sharles,” and asked him if he
remembered her.
Fred did remember her then, and staid with her till the fierce storm was
over and he was free to leave beleaguered and desecrated Paris and go on
his way to Scotland, where he found Hal Morton and Anna in their
beautiful home among the Highlands, not very far from Loch Katrine, and
so I finish this story of Chateau d’Or.
THE END.
NORAH.
I had crossed in the bright October sunshine from Calais to Dover
without once taking refuge in the close, pent-up saloon, which is like a
little purgatory when the waters of the Channel are stirred to their
depths, and the boat is tossed like a feather from one angry wave to
another. It was very quiet that day, and the sea was literally like
glass, with the sunshine falling so softly upon it. Nobody had been sick
except a fair young girl, with _bride_ unmistakably stamped upon her,
from her dainty traveling-dress to the trustful glance of the blue eyes
lifted so often and lovingly to the face of the young man beside her.
Once, when the boat rocked more than usual, she had turned white to her
lips, and, dropping her golden head upon the shoulder of her husband,
had kept it there in a weary, languid kind of way, while I speculated
about her, wondering who she was, and where she was going, and hoping
that the party of American girls, who seemed to monopolize and fill the
entire deck, would take note of her, and see that at least one of my
countrywomen had taste, and style and beauty combined.
“Such frights as the English women are, with their horrid shoes, their
dresses made before the flood, and that everlasting white thing tied
high about their throats,” I had heard one of them say and, while
flushing with indignation, had felt, to a certain degree, that their
criticism was just, and that, taken as a whole, the English ladies did
not compare favorably with their American sisters, so far as grace and
style were concerned.
But this little bride, with the blue eyes and golden hair, might have
come from the show-rooms of the most fashionable modiste on Broadway,
and not have shamed her mantua-maker. She had evidently been gotten up
in Paris, and I watched her with a good deal of interest until the
cliffs of Dover were in sight, and we were nearing the shores of England
and home. Then, in seeing to my boxes, which were the very last to be
brought from the boat, I forgot everything, and came near being left by
the train waiting to take us to London.
“Hurry up, miss, you’ve only quarter of a second,” a porter cried, as,
in my bewilderment, I was looking for a carriage. “Here, here! this way!
Second class?” he screamed again, interrogatively, and seizing the door
of a second-class carriage, he held it open for me, guessing, by what
intuition I know not, that I must necessarily be a second-class
passenger.
For once, he was mistaken; for, thanks to the kindness of dear Kitty
Bute, with whom my vacation had been passed, I was first-class all the
way from Paris to London, and, rejecting contemptuously the porter’s
offer of assistance, I sprang into the nearest first-class compartment,
just as the train began to move, and found myself alone with the little
bride and groom. There was a look of annoyance in the eyes of the bride,
while the young man gave a significant pull to his brown mustache, and I
knew I was not wanted. But I had a right as valid as their own, and
taking my seat on the opposite side, near the open window, I pretended
to be occupied with the country through which we were passing so
swiftly, while my thoughts went back to the past, gathering up the
broken threads of my life, and dwelling upon what I had been once and
what I was now.
And this is the picture I saw far back through a vista of twelve long,
weary years. A pleasant old house in Middlesex—an English house, of
stone, with ivy creeping over it even to the chimney-tops, and the boxes
of flowers in the windows, the tall trees in front, the patches of
geraniums and petunias in the grass, the honeysuckle over the door of
the wide, old-fashioned hall, through which the summer air blew softly,
laden with the perfume of roses, and the sweet-scented mignonette. And I
was standing in the door, with a half-opened rose in my hair, and the
tall, angular boy who had placed it there was looking down upon me with
great tears swimming in his eyes, as he said:
“Keep the rose, Norah, till I come back, and I shall know you have not
forgotten me, even if you _are_ Mrs. Archibald Browning.”
There was an emphasis on the last name, and a tone in his voice as he
spoke it, which did not please me, and I said:
“Oh, Tom, why can’t you like Archie better, and he so noble and good,
and so kind to get you that position with his uncle in India?”
“Yes, I know; Archie is lovely, and I am a brute because I don’t feel
like kissing his feet just because he interested himself to get me the
place. But I hope you will be happy, and if those two lubbers of cousins
happen to die, you will be my Lady Cleaver, and mistress of Briarton
Lodge; but don’t forget old Tom, who by that time will be married to
some black East Indian princess, and have a lot of little darkies
running round. There, I must go now; it’s time. I say, Norah, come with
me through the field to the highway. I want to keep hold of you to the
very last, and Archie won’t care. I’m your brother, you know.”
He was my brother to all intents and purposes, though really my second
cousin. But I had no brother, or sister, or mother, only a father and
aunt, and Tom had lived with us since I was a little girl of ten, and
now he was going out to India to make his fortune. His ship would sail
on the morrow, and I could not refuse to go with him as far as the
highway, where he was to take the stage for London. It was a forlorn,
dreary walk through the pleasant grassy lane; for I loved Tom very
dearly, and there was a great wrench in my heart at the thought of
parting with him. He was silent, and never spoke a word until the stile
was reached, where we were to part. Then, suddenly lifting me high in
his arms, as if I were a child, for I was very short and he was very
tall, he kissed my forehead and lips, and cried like a baby, as he said:
“Good-by, little Norah, Mrs. Archibald Browning, good-by, and God bless
you; and if that husband ever does abuse you, tell him he will answer
for it to me, Tom Gordon, the gawky cousin with more legs than brains.”
“Oh, Tom,” I said, struggling to my feet, “you know Archie did not mean
that, and maybe he never said it. I wish you did not hate him so.”
“I don’t hate him, Norah. I simply do not like him, or any of his race.
They are a proud set, who think you highly honored to be admitted into
the blooded family of Brownings. And then, too, Norah,” he continued,
with that peculiar smile which was his one beauty and made him
irresistible, “then, too, Norah, you see—you know—I’m not your brother;
I’m only your second cousin, and though I never thought you very
handsome, you are the nicest girl I ever knew, and—well, I think I meant
to marry you myself!”
He burst into a merry laugh and looked straight in my face as I drew
back from him with a gasp, exclaiming:
“_You_, Tom; _you_ marry me! Why, I’m old enough to be your
grandmother!”
“You are twenty, I am nineteen; that’s all the difference, though I
confess that you have badgered, and scolded, and lectured me enough for
forty grandmothers,” he said; “but there’s the stage, and now it’s
really good-by.”
Two minutes more and I was walking back alone through the quiet shady
lane, where Tom and I had played together so often, and where now were
the remains of a playhouse he had built under a spreading oak. There was
his room, divided from mine by a line of stones, and there in the wall
the little niche where I kept my dishes and hid the gooseberry tarts
away from greedy Tom. How happy we had been together, making believe
sometimes that I was his mother and he my sick baby, which I tried to
rock to sleep in my lap, finding his long legs a great inconvenience and
a serious obstacle to much petting on my part. Again he was a fierce
knight and I a lorn maiden shut up in some grim fortress—usually old
Dunluce Castle—for we had once visited the north of Ireland and explored
the ruins of what some writer terms “the grandest, romantickest,
awfullest sea-king’s home in all the broad kingdom.” We had had our
quarrels, too, and even fights, in which I always came off victor, owing
to my peculiar mode of warfare, as I had a habit of springing upon him
like a little cat and tearing his face with my nails, while he was
usually content with jerky pulls at my hair. But all that was over now,
and buried with the doll whose head he had broken because I would not
stay home and nurse him when he had the quinsy, and could only talk in a
wheezy kind of way. He had threatened revenge, and taken it upon my
prettiest Paris doll, and I had flown at him like a tiger and scratched
his nose till it bled, and cried myself sick, and then we had made it up
and buried dolly near the old playhouse in the lane, and reared a slab
to her memory, and planted some daisies on her grave. And just here,
near what seemed to be the grave of my childhood, I sat down that summer
afternoon and thought of all those years—of Tom on his way to India, and
of the future opening so brightly before me, for I was the betrothed
wife of Archibald Browning, who belonged to one of the best families in
the county, and in less than a month we were to be married and spend our
honeymoon in Switzerland, among the glorious Alps, of which I had
dreamed so much. I knew that Archie’s mother was very proud, and thought
her son might have looked higher than Norah Burton, especially as there
was a possible peerage in prospect, but she was civil to me, and had
said that a season in London would improve me greatly, if such a little
creature could be improved; and Archie, I was sure, loved me dearly,
notwithstanding that he sometimes criticised my style and manner, and
wished I was more like his cousin, Lady Darinda Cleaver, who, I heard,
powdered her face and penciled her eyebrows, and was the finest rider on
Rotten Row. Tom, who had been often in London, had seen the Lady
Darinda, and reported her as a perfect giantess, who wore a man’s hat,
with a flapper behind on the waist of her riding-suit, and sat her horse
as stiffly and straight as if held in her place by a ramrod, and never
rode faster than a black ant could trot.
This was Tom’s criticism, which I had repeated to Archie, who laughed a
little, and pulled his light brown mustache, and said: “Tom was not a
proper judge of stylish women, and that Darinda’s manners were
faultless.”
I had no doubt they were, though I had never seen her, but I should ere
long, as she had consented to be one of my bride-maids, and had written
me a note which was very prettily worded, and very patronizing in its
tone, and made me dislike her thoroughly. She was in London now, Archie
had written in the letter in which he told me he should be with me on
the day after Tom’s departure. I was never so glad for his coming, I
think, for my heart was very heavy at parting with Tom, whose words, “I
meant to marry you myself,” kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone in
the grassy lane by the ruins of the playhouse he had built. Not that I
attached the slightest importance to them, or believed for a moment that
he was serious in what he said, for he was my brother, my dear, good
brother, who had been so much to me, and whom I missed so much, that at
last I laid my head upon dollie’s miniature grave and cried bitterly for
the boy traveling so fast to London, and the ship which would take him
away. There was, however, comfort in the thought that Archie was coming
on the morrow, and the next morning found me with spirits restored,
eager and expectant for my love. But Archie did not come, and the hours
wore on and there was no news of him until the following day, when there
came a note from his mother telling me he was sick.
“Nothing very serious,” she wrote, “only a heavy cold, the result of a
drenching he received while riding with Darinda several miles out in the
country. He sends his love, and says you are not to be alarmed, for he
will soon be with you.”
That was the note, and I was not to be alarmed, nor was I. I was only
conscious that a strange kind of feeling took possession of me, which I
could not define, but which sent me to my room, where the bridal finery
lay, and made me fold it up, piece by piece, and put it carefully away,
with a feeling that it would never be worn. There was much sickness in
our neighborhood that summer, and the morning after hearing of Archie’s
illness I took my breakfast in bed, and after that day knew little of
what was passing around me until the roses which were blossoming so
brightly when Tom went away were fading on their stalks, and other and
later flowers were blossoming in their place.
I had been very sick, Aunt Esther said, with the distemper, as they
called the disease, which had desolated so many homes in our vicinity.
“What day is it? What day of the month, I mean?” I asked, feeling dazed
and bewildered, and uncertain whether it was yesterday that I sat in the
lane and cried for dear Tom, or whether it was long ago.
“It’s the tenth,” she said; and her voice shook a little, and she did
not turn her face toward me but pretended to be busy with the curtains
of the bed.
“The tenth?” I cried. “Tenth of July, my wedding-day! Do you mean that?”
“Yes,” she answered, softly; “it was to have been your wedding-day.”
“And Archie,” I continued; “is he better—is he here?”
Still her face was turned from mine, and her hands were busy with the
curtain, as she replied:
“He is not here now, but he is better, much better.”
This time her voice and manner awoke in me a suspicion of some impending
evil, and exerting all my strength, I raised myself in bed and said,
vehemently:
“Aunt Esther, you are keeping something from me. Tell me the worst at
once. Is Archie dead, or Tom, or both?”
“No, no. Oh, no, not Tom. Heaven forbid that Tom should die. There’s a
letter for you from him. I’ll get it, shall I? You were not to read it
till to-day.”
She started to leave the room, but I kept her back with my persistent
questionings.
“You have not told me all. You are trying to deceive me. Is Archie
dead?”
Archie _was_ dead and buried ten days ago. The heavy cold taken while
riding with Lady Darinda had become congestion of the lungs, and while I
lay unconscious of my loss, he had died, and Lady Darinda had written me
a note of condolence and sympathy. Mrs. Browning was too much broken
down to write, she said, and so on her devolved the painful duty of
telling me how quietly and peacefully Archie had died, after an illness
of a few days.
“I nursed him myself to the very last, and was the more anxious to do
it,” she wrote, “because I fancied he had never quite forgiven me for
having refused him, as you probably knew I did two or three years ago,
just before he met you at the Trossachs Hotel. I was very fond of
Archie, poor fellow, even if I could not marry him, and it nearly broke
my heart to see him die. He spoke your name once or twice, but I could
not make out exactly what he said, except ‘Be kind to her,’ and Mrs.
Browning wishes me to assure you of her friendship, and good feeling,
and desire to serve you if ever in her power to do so. We did not tell
Archie you were sick; we thought it better not, and as he expressed no
wish to have you come to him, it was not necessary. I send a lock of his
hair, which I cut for you myself, and Mrs. Browning says she thinks the
picture you have of him better than any she has ever seen, and she will
be very glad if you will loan it to her until she can have some copies
of it taken. Please send it at once, as we shall leave London soon for
Bath, my aunt’s health rendering a change of air and scene imperative.
Yours, in sorrow and sympathy,
“DARINDA CLEAVER.”
As I read this strange epistle, I felt as if turning into stone, and had
my life depended upon it I could not have shed a tear for the lover dead
and the ruin of all my hopes. Indeed, in looking back upon the past, I
do not think I ever _really_ cried for _Archie_, though for weeks and
months there was a heavy pain in my heart, a sense of loss and
loneliness, and disappointment, but often, as I felt the hot tears
start, there came the recollection that I had not been his first choice,
if indeed I were ever his choice at all; that it was probably in a fit
of pique he had asked me to be his wife, and this forced the tears down
and made me harder, stonier than before. I sent his picture back that
very day, and with it my engagement ring, a splendid solitaire, which I
reflected with bitterness would some day sparkle on Lady Darinda’s
finger, and it did. I did not write a word. I could not. I merely sent
the ring and the picture, and felt when I gave them to Aunt Esther that
my old life was ended and a new one just begun.
“Tom’s letter you have not read yet. That may comfort you. I’ll bring it
directly,” Aunt Esther said: and in a moment I had it in my hand and was
studying the superscription:
“MISS NORAH BURTON,
“The Oaks,
“Middlesex.
“Not to be opened till the wedding-day.”
Then for a moment there was a feeling in my throat as if my heart were
rising into my mouth, but I forced it down, and breaking the seal, read
the letter, which was so much like Tom. He had been out to sea three
days, and there was a ship in sight by which they hoped to send messages
home, so he was trying to write in spite of the fearful condition of his
stomach, which he described as a kind of raging whirlpool.
“DEAR NORAH,” he began, “I am sitting on deck on a coil of rope, and
am sicker than a horse. I’ve thrown up everything I ate for a month
before I left England, and everything I expect to eat for a month to
come; but I must write a few lines of congratulation to Mrs. Archibald
Browning, as you will be when you read this letter. Norah, I hope you
will be happy; I do, upon my word, even if I did talk against him and
say I meant to marry you myself. That was all bosh, for of course a
venerable kind of a girl like you never could think of such a
spindle-shanked, sandy-haired gawky as I am. Archie is far better for
you, and I am glad you are his wife, real glad, Norah, and no sham,
though last night when I sat on the deck and looked out over the dark
sea toward old England and you, there was a lump in my throat as big
as a tub, and, six-footer as I am, I laid my head on the railing and
cried like a baby, and whispered to myself, ‘Good-by, Norah, good-by,
once for all.’ I was bending up double the next minute, and that cramp
finished the business, and knocked all sentiment out of me, so that
to-day you are my sister, or mother, or grandmother, just which you
choose to call yourself, and I am very glad you are to marry Archie. I
mean to be a rich man, and by and by pick up some English girl in
India, and bring her home to you. There it comes again! that horrid
creep from the toes up. I wonder if the whale felt that way when he
cast up Jonah. Oh, my gracious. I can’t stand it. Good-by. Yours in
the last agony,
“TOM GORDON.”
I had been out in a yacht on the Irish coast, and been sea-sick, and I
knew just how Tom felt, and could imagine how he acted, and I laughed
aloud in spite of Archie dead and the great pain at my heart. In fact,
the laugh did me good, and with Tom’s letter under my pillow I felt
better than before I read it.
It was four months before we heard from him again, and then he was so
sorry for me, so kindly sympathetic, that I cried as I had not cried
since Archie died. Tom was well and happy, and liked the country and his
employment, and to use his words was having a “gay old time,” with some
“larks of chaps” whose acquaintance he had made. Regularly each month we
heard from him for a year or more, and then his letters became very
irregular, and were marked with a daring and flippancy I did not like at
all. Then followed an interval of silence, and we heard from other
sources that Tom Gordon, though still keeping his place and performing
his duties to his employer faithfully, was growing fast into a reckless,
daring, dissipated man, such as no sister would like her brother to be.
I was his sister; he was my brother, I said, and I wrote him a letter of
remonstrance and reproof, telling him how disappointed I was in him and
begging him to reform for my sake, and the sake of the old time when we
were children together, and he had some respect for goodness and purity.
He did not answer that letter. I think it made him angry, and so I could
only weep over the wayward boy, and pray earnestly that Heaven would
save him yet, and restore him to us as he used to be before he strayed
so far from the paths of virtue.
And so the years went by till I was twenty-five, when, suddenly, without
a note of warning, my father died, and by some turn in the wheel of
fortune, never clear to my woman’s vision, Aunt Esther and I were left
with a mere pittance not sufficient to supply the necessities even of
one of us. Then Tom wrote and offered to come home if I wished it, but I
did not. I was a little afraid of him, and something in my reply must
have shown him my distrust, for he was evidently hurt and piqued, and
did not write again until after Aunt Esther and myself were settled in
lodgings in London, and taking care of ourselves. For we came to that at
last; came to the back room, upper floor, of a lodging house in pleasant
old Kensington, with the little hall bedroom, scarcely larger than a
recess, for our sleeping apartment, and only my piano left me as a
reminder of the dear old home in Middlesex, where strangers now are
living. And I was a teacher of French and music, and went out every day
to give lessons to my pupils, who lived, some of them, near to Abingdon
Road, and some of them farther away.
With the next seven years this story has little to do. Aunt Esther died
within the first two years, and I was left alone, but stayed always with
the Misses Keith, the three dear old ladies who kept the house and
petted me like a child. They were poor themselves, and depended for
their living upon what their lodgers paid them, and I was the least
profitable to them of all, for my little back room on the upper floor
was the cheapest room they had. Still I think they would have parted
with me more unwillingly than with the rich widow and her son who
occupied the drawing-room floor, and made them handsome presents every
Christmas. I kept their old hearts young, they said, with my music and
my songs, and they pitied me so much, knowing what I used to be, and
what I am now.
From Tom I heard quite often after Aunt Esther died. He was a better
man, rescued from depths of dissipation he knew not how, he wrote,
unless it was the memory of the olden time in Middlesex, and the prayers
he was always sure I made for him. It was strange that through all his
wildness he had been retained and trusted by his employer, who depended
greatly upon him, and made him at last his confidential clerk. That was
the turning point, and from that time he went up and up until few young
men, it was said, stood higher or were more popular in Calcutta than my
cousin Tom. And I was so proud of him; and when I read his letters
telling me of his success and the many people whom he knew, and the
families where he visited—families whose friends lived in London—I was
glad he did not know just how poor I was, and that if even one scholar
failed me I must deny myself something in order to meet the necessities
of my life. I had never written him the truth with regard to my
circumstances. I told him of the Misses Keith, who were so kind to me,
and of my cozy room which looked into a pleasant garden, and upon the
rear of the church which the Duke of Argyle occasionally honored with
his presence. I had also mentioned incidentally, that, as I had plenty
of leisure, I gave a few lessons in music to the daughters of gentlemen
who lived in the vicinity of Abingdon Road. For this deception my
conscience had smitten me cruelly, and if asked for a motive, I could
not have given one. I merely wished to keep my poverty a secret from
Tom, and up to the time when I was a passenger in a first-class carriage
from Dover to London I had succeeded in doing so, and though Tom
frequently sent me some token of remembrance from India, and, among
other things, a real Cashmere shawl, which I could not wear because of
the contrast between that and my ordinary dress, he had never sent me
money, and so my pride was spared at the expense of a deception on my
part.
I had been on a little trip to Paris and Switzerland with one of my
pupils, who defrayed all my expenses, and to whom I was indebted for the
freest, happiest weeks I had known since my father’s death. But these
had come to an end. I had said good-by to the glorious Alps, good-by to
delightful Paris, good-by to my pupil, who was to remain abroad with her
mother, and here I was at the last stage of my journey, nearing London,
whose smoke and spires were visible in the distance. As we flew along
like lightning toward the city, there came over me a great dread of
taking to the old, monotonous life again—a shrinking from the little
back room, third floor, which was dingy and dreary, with the dark paper
on the walls, the threadbare carpet, and the paint which had seen so
many years. There was a loathing, too, of my daily fare, always the
cheapest I could find—the mutton chop, with rolls and eggs, and the
Englishwoman’s invariable tea. No more French dishes, and soups, and
_cafe au lait_ for me. I was not the guest of a party, now; I was again
the poor music-teacher, going back to my bondage, and for a few moments
I rebelled against it with all my strength, and hot, bitter tears forced
themselves to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Hastily dashing them
away, I glanced at the couple opposite, the bride and groom, to see if
they were noticing me; but they were not; they were wholly absorbed in
themselves, and were talking of Paris and the fine people they had met
there, while the bride was wondering if Miss Lucy Elliston, who lived on
Grosvenor Square, would really call upon her as she had promised to do.
The name, Elliston, was not new to me, for Tom had more than once
mentioned a friend of his, Charlie Elliston, whose father lived on
Grosvenor Square, but I did not know there was a Lucy, and I became
interested when I heard the bride say:
“George, do you remember how long it is since Miss Elliston returned
from India?”
George did not, and the bride, whom George called Addie, continued:
“How very stylish she is, and how much she talked of Mr. Gordon. Is it
one of _the Gordons_, do you suppose?”
George did not know, and the conversation soon changed to another
subject, while I began to wonder if it could be Tom of whom Miss Lucy
Elliston talked so much. Tom was in India, and Tom was descended
directly from _the Gordons_, whose coat of arms could be seen any day in
Hyde Park during the season. Did Tom know Miss Lucy Elliston, and was
she so very stylish and proud, and had he not in one of his letters
mentioned the number of the house on Grosvenor Square? If so, I would
walk round, some day, and look at it, I said, just as we shot under
cover at Victoria Station, and my journey was at an end.
It seemed as if my one insignificant little box was always destined to
be the last found, and it was a long time before I took my seat in the
cab and was driven in the direction of No. — Abingdon Road. The October
sun, which all the day had poured such a flood of golden light upon the
English landscape, had gone down in a bank of clouds, and I remember
that there were signs of rain in the chill evening air, and the fog
began to creep up around the lamp-posts and the corners of the streets
as I rode through the darkness with a feeling of homesickness at my
heart, as I remembered the Alps and Paris, the long vacation free from
care, with every want supplied, and then thought of the little back
room, third floor, with its dingy furniture. Even the warm welcome I was
sure to receive from the Misses Keith, was forgotten in the gloom which
weighed upon my spirits, when at last the cab stopped before No.—, which
was all ablaze with light, candles in the basement, candles in the
dining-room, and gas, it would seem, in the drawing-room floor, which
the wealthy widow had left before I went away, but which evidently had
another occupant now. My ring was answered by the youngest Miss Keith,
who I fancied looked a very little disappointed at sight of me and my
box.
“You here!” she said; “we didn’t expect you till to-morrow night. Not
but you are very welcome but you see—come this way, please, down stairs.
Don’t go to your room now. It’s cold there, and dark. We have let the
drawing-room floor very advantageously to a newly-married couple, who
have just arrived. She is so pretty.”
By this time we had reached the little room in the basement, where the
Misses Keith took their meals and sat when the business of the day was
over, and where now a cheerful fire was blazing, making me feel more
comfortable than I had since I left the Victoria Station in the cab. The
elder Miss Keith and her sister were glad to see me, but I thought they
looked askance at each other as if I were not after all quite welcome,
and in a forlorn, wretched state of mind I sat down to warm my cold feet
by the fire, wondering if letting the drawing-room floor so
advantageously had quite put me in the background. Evidently it had, for
after a few questions as to my journey, I was left alone, while the
three ladies flitted back and forth, up stairs and down, busy with the
grand dinner to be served in the drawing-room for the new arrivals, Mr.
and Mrs. Trevyllan, who were reported as making elaborate toilets for
the occasion.
“Married just six weeks, and her dress is beautiful,” Miss Keith said to
me, as she conducted me at last to my room, which she reported as ready
for me.
The drawing-room door was open, and as I passed it I could not forbear
glancing in at the table, set with the best damask and silver and glass
which No.— afforded, and, right before the fire, under the chandelier,
stood the bride in full evening dress of light silk, her golden curls
falling behind from a pearl comb, and her blue eyes upturned to the
husband who stood beside her, to _George_, as I knew in a moment,
recognizing them at once as my fellow-travelers from Dover, and
remembering again what the bride had said of Miss Lucy Elliston and a
Mr. Gordon. Strangely enough, too, my thoughts went far back to Archie,
and what I might have been had he lived, and there was a swelling of my
heart, and the tears were in my eyes as I followed Miss Keith to my
room, the door of which she threw wide open, and then stood back for me
to see and admire.
“Oh-h! what have you done? I exclaimed, and then in an instant I
comprehended the whole, and knew just how the good souls had planned,
and contrived, and undoubtedly denied themselves to give me this
surprise and delightful welcome home.
It was not the old dingy apartment at all, but the coziest of rooms,
with fresh paint and paper, a new, light ingrain carpet of drab and
blue, with chintz coverings for the furniture, of the same shade, and
pretty muslin curtains looped back from the windows in place of the
coarse Nottingham lace which had always been an offense to me. Add to
this a bright fire in the grate, and my little round tea-table drawn up
before it, with the rolls and chop, and pot of damson plums, and the
teakettle boiling merrily, and you have the picture of the room which I
stood contemplating, while Miss Keith blew her nose softly, and wiped
her eyes with the corner of her apron as she said:
“You see, the girls and me (they always spoke of each other as _girls_,
these women of fifty, fifty-five and sixty) the girls and me thought you
had been forlorn long enough, and when Mrs. Winters left and was pleased
to give us ten pounds extra, and we let the drawing-rooms so quick and
well, pay beginning the day it was let, we said we would do something
for Miss Norah, and we meant to have the fire made and a nice hot supper
ready when you came, but you took us by surprise, and we had to keep you
below till we could straighten up. I am glad you like it. There’s Mrs.
Trevyllan’s bell, and I must go.”
She left me then and went to the little bride, who I knew did not enjoy
her elaborately served dinner in her handsome parlor one-half as much as
I enjoyed my simple tea in my rocking-chair before the fire, which
whispered and spit so cheerily and cast such pleasant shadows on the
wall. All my poverty and loneliness were for the time forgotten in the
glamour of these creature comforts, but they returned to a certain
extent when, my supper over and the tea-things removed, I sat down to
read the few letters which had come for me within the last two weeks and
not been forwarded. Was there one from Tom? I asked myself, and I was
conscious of a feeling of disappointment when I found there was not.
“Tom does not care for me anymore,” I said, sadly, to myself, as I
opened the first letter and read, with a pang, that Mrs. Lambert, on
Warwick Crescent, had concluded to employ a governess in the house, and
consequently would not need my services as French and music-teacher to
her three daughters.
This was a great loss to me, and I remember a feeling of cold and almost
hunger as I mechanically folded the letter and laid it aside, and as
mechanically opened the second, and read that Mrs. Lennox, High street,
Kensington, was going abroad for the winter with her daughters, and
would not need me until spring, when she should be glad to employ me
again if my time was not fully occupied.
“Fully occupied,” I said, bitterly. “Small danger of that. I shall
starve at this rate,” and in a hopeless, despairing kind of way I opened
the third and last letter and read that Lady Fairfax, No.—Grosvenor
Square, would like me to call _at once_ if I cared for another scholar,
as she might wish to put her little daughter Maude under my instruction.
The note was dated more than two weeks back, and the _call at once_ was
underscored as if the summons admitted no delay.
“Lost that chance too,” I said, as I studied the small, delicate
handwriting, and wondered where I had seen it before, or a handwriting
like it.
I could not tell, but somehow my thoughts went back to that summer
afternoon twelve years ago, and the breezy hall, with the doors opened
wide, the sweet-scented air, and the tall, lank boy placing the white
rose in my hair and bidding me keep it till he came back.
I had put the rose between the leaves of a heavy book that night, and
when, weeks afterward, I found it there, I laid it away in a little
Japanese box with a lock of Archie’s bright brown hair, cut for me from
his dead brow by Lady Darinda’s hand, and one of Tom’s sandy curls cut
by himself with a jack-knife, and given me on one of my birth-days. That
was twelve years in the past, and everything was so changed, and I was
so tired, so poor and lonely as I recalled it all, and thought first of
Archie dead, then of the father dead also, and the money gone, and then
of Tom, who had been so much to me once, and who seemed of late to have
forgotten me entirely, for I had not heard from him since July, when he
wrote, asking for my photograph, and bidding me be sure and send it, as
he wished to know how “the little old mother looked after a dozen
years.”
That was what he called me; “little old mother,” the name he gave me
long ago when I used to lecture him so soundly and call him a “naughty
boy.” He had asked me in the letter if I did not want some money,
saying, if I did he wished I would tell him so frankly, and it should be
forthcoming to any amount. I did not want money from him; he was too
much a stranger to me now to admit of that, but I had sent him a
photograph, which the Misses Keith had pronounced excellent, but which I
thought younger, fairer, and better-looking than the face I knew as
mine. Still, such as it was, I sent it to Tom, and thanked him for
offering me money, and said I did not need it, and told him of my
projected trip to Switzerland with some friends, and asked him to write
to me again, as I was always glad to hear from him. But he had not
written me a line, and it was almost four months now since I sent him
the photograph.
“He was probably disappointed and disgusted with the picture, and so has
ceased to think of or care for me,” I said; and notwithstanding my
newly-renovated room, which an hour before I thought so bright and
cheerful, I do not remember that I had ever felt so lonely, and
wretched, and forsaken, as I did that night, when I sat thinking of Tom
and listening to the rain which had commenced to fall heavily, and was
beating against the shutters of the room.
How long I sat there I do not know, but the house was perfectly quiet,
and the fire was burned out, when at last I undressed myself and crept
shivering to bed.
Next morning I awoke with a dull pain in my head and bones, a soreness
in my throat, and a disposition to sneeze, all of which, Miss Keith
informed me, were symptoms of influenza, which would nevertheless
succumb to a bowl of hot boneset tea, a dose of pills, and a blister on
the back of my neck. I took the tea, but declined the blister and pills,
and was sick in bed for two whole weeks, during which time the Misses
Keith were unremitting in their attentions, and the bride, little Mrs.
Trevyllan, came to see me several times. She was a kind-hearted, chatty
body, disposed to be very familiar and communicative, and during her
first visit to my room told me all about herself, and how she happened
to meet _George_, as she always called her husband. Her father was a
clergyman in the Church of England, and had a small parish in the north
of Ireland, not far from the Giant’s Causeway, where she was born. Her
mother had belonged to one of the county families in Essex, and so she
was by birth a lady, and entitled to attention from the best of the
people. George was junior partner in the firm of Trevyllan & Co., near
Regent Circus, and would some day be very rich. He was the best fellow
in the world, and had been staying at Portrush for a few weeks the
previous summer, and seen and fallen in love with her, and carried her
off in the very face of an old, _passe_ baronet, who wanted her for his
wife. Then she spoke of her home looking out on the wild Irish Sea, and
of her mother, who, to eke out their slender salary, sometimes received
one or two young ladies into the family, and gave them lessons in French
and German. Miss Lucy Elliston had been one of these; and on her second
visit to me, the little lady entertained me with gossip concerning this
lady, whom she evidently admired greatly—“so stylish, and dignified, and
pretty,” she said, “and so fond of me, even if I am the daughter of a
poor clergyman, and she the daughter of Colonel Elliston, who served so
long in India, and whose son is there now. We always corresponded at
intervals after she left Ireland, and I was so delighted to meet her
again in Paris. She has been to India herself for a year, it seems, and
only came home last spring. I believe she has a lover out there; at all
events, she talked a great deal of a certain Mr. Gordon, who is very
rich and magnificent-looking, she said. She did not tell me she had his
photograph, but I heard her say to a friend that she would show it to
her sometime, though she did not think it did him justice. I would not
wonder if I have it in my possession this very minute.”
“You!” I exclaimed—“you have Mr. Gordon’s photograph! How can that be?”
“I’ll tell you,” she replied. “I met Miss Elliston shopping at Marshall
& Snellgrove’s, the other day, and she apologized for not having called
upon me as she promised to do when I saw her in Paris. ‘She was so
busy,’ she said, and then she was expecting her brother from India, and
she wished I would waive all ceremony and come and see her some day. She
gave me her address, and as her card-case was one of those Florentine
mosaic things which open in the center like a book, she dropped several
cards upon the floor. I helped her pick them up, and supposed we had
them all, but after she was gone, I found, directly under my feet, the
picture of a man, who could not have been her brother, for he is sick,
and as it was taken in Calcutta, it must have been Mr. Gordon. I shall
take it back to her, and am glad of an excuse to call, for, you see,
George laughs at my admiration for Miss Elliston, and says it is all on
one side, that she does not care two straws for me, or she could find
time to come and see me, and all that nonsense, which I don’t believe;
men are so suspicious.”
“I’d like to see the photograph,” I said, thinking of Tom, and the utter
impossibility that he could be Miss Elliston’s friend, or that she could
think him splendid-looking.
Tall, raw-boned, thin-faced, with sandy hair, brownish-gray eyes, and a
few frecks on his nose—that was Tom, as I remembered him; while the
picture Mrs. Trevyllan brought me was of a broad-shouldered,
broad-chested, dark-haired man, with heavy, curling beard, and piercing,
gray eyes, which yet had a most kindly, honest expression as they looked
into mine. _No_, Miss Elliston’s Mr. Gordon was _not_ Tom, and I
experienced a feeling of relief as I returned the photograph to Mrs.
Trevyllan.
Looking back upon that time, I know that in my inmost heart there was no
thought or wish that Tom could ever be more to me than a friend and
brother, but I did want him in that capacity, I was so alone in the
world; and though I did not know Miss Elliston personally, I was sure
she would separate me entirely from Tom, for there could be no sympathy
between a proud, fashionable woman like Miss Lucy Elliston, and a poor
music-teacher like myself.
The next day Mrs. Trevyllan made her call, and returned quite
disappointed, and, as I fancied, a little disgusted. Miss Elliston was
very sorry, but too much occupied with a dressmaker to see any one, so
Mrs. Trevyllan had left her card and the photograph, and retraced her
steps with a feeling that she had taken the trouble for nothing, unless
she took into consideration the fact that she had at least seen the
parlors of Miss Elliston’s home. Beautiful beyond anything I had ever
seen they must have been, if her description of them was to be trusted,
and I sighed a little as I listened to her glowing account of the
carpets, and curtains, and pictures, and rare works of art, and then
glanced at my own humble surroundings, and thought how poor I was. Only
one pound ten was left in my purse, and there was the doctor’s bill and
the two weeks’ rent, to say nothing of a new pair of boots which I must
have, for the old pair leaked, and was past being made respectable by
any amount of French dressing. Yes, I was very poor; too poor, in fact,
to remain idle much longer, and as soon as I was able, I started out in
quest of pupils in the place of those I had lost.
Remembering the note of Lady Fairfax, I resolved to seek her first,
hoping that she had not engaged another teacher for her little girl,
notwithstanding the imperative “Come at once, if you care for another
scholar.”
How well I remember that November day, when, with a leaden sky overhead,
muddy sidewalks under foot, and a feeling of snow or rain in the air, I
started, in my suit of last year’s gray, which nothing could make new or
stylish, but which I did try to freshen a little with clean linen collar
and cuffs, and a bright blue necktie in place of the inevitable white
one so common then in England. I hunted up, also, an old blue feather
which I twisted among the loops of ribbon on my hat, and felt a little
flutter of satisfaction when one of the Misses Keith told me how pretty
I looked, and how becoming blue was to me. It used to be, when I lived
in the roomy old house in Middlesex, and Tom said my eyes were like
great robin’s eggs; but that was years and years ago, and I felt so old
and changed as I turned into High street, and went down the stairs to
the station, and took my seat in a third-class carriage of the
under-ground railway. I always traveled third-class in London, but so
did hundreds of others far richer than myself, and I did not mind that,
or think myself inferior to the people around me, but when at last I
found myself ringing the bell at Lady Fairfax’s handsome house, and met
the cool stare of the powdered footman, who opened the door to me, and
looked as if he wondered at my presumption in ringing there, I felt all
my misgivings return, and was painfully conscious of the faded gray
dress, the old feather, and the leaky boots, which were wet even with
the short distance it had been necessary for me to walk, and which began
to smoke as I involuntarily drew near and held them to the warm coal
fire in the grate in the reception-room where I was to wait for Lady
Fairfax.
She was at home, the tall footman said, and engaged with a lady, but
wished me to wait, and I fancied there was a shade of deference in his
demeanor toward me after he had taken my card to his mistress and
received her message for me. How pleasant it was in that pretty room,
with the flowers in the bow window, the soft, rich carpet, the
comfortable chairs, the bright fire, which felt so grateful to me after
the raw November wind outside. And for a time I enjoyed it all, and
listened to the murmur of voices in the parlor across the hall, where
Lady Fairfax was entertaining her visitor. Both were well-bred voices, I
thought, and one seemed stronger than the other, as if its owner were a
stronger, more self-reliant woman than her companion, and I felt
intuitively that I would trust her before the other. Which was Lady
Fairfax, and who was her visitor, I wondered, just as a rustling silk
trailed down the stairs, and an elderly lady entered the parlor
opposite. I heard her address some one as Miss Elliston, and the lower,
softer voice responded. Then the stronger voice said: “Oh, Lucy, by the
way, when have you heard from your brother, and will he soon be home?”
Instantly then I knew that Lucy Elliston was Lady Fairfax’s guest, and I
was hoping I might have a glimpse of her as she passed the door on her
way out, when a smart waiting-maid entered the room hurriedly, and
apparently spoke a few words to Lady Fairfax, who exclaimed:
“Why, Lucy dear, Christine tells me that your mamma has sent word for
you to come home immediately. Your brother has just arrived.”
“Good gracious!” I heard Miss Elliston say, and wondered a little at the
slang from which I supposed her class was free. “Charlie come! Was he
alone, Christine? Was no one with him?”
There was a moving of chairs, a shuffling of feet and in the confusion I
lost Christine’s reply, but heard distinctly Mr. Gordon’s name uttered
by some one. Then the three ladies moved into the hall, and through the
half-open door I saw a tall young lady in a maroon velvet street suit,
with a long white plume on her hat, and very large black eyes, which
shone like diamonds through the lace vail drawn tightly over her face.
That was Miss Elliston; and the _very_ tall and rather stout woman in
heavy black silk, with lavender trimmings, was Lady Fairfax, who pushed
the door of the reception-room wide open, and with a firm, decided step
crossed to the mantel in front of me, and eying me closely said:
“You are Miss Burton, I believe?”
“Yes,” I replied, and she continued: “Miss Norah Burton, who once lived
at the Oaks in Middlesex?”
“Yes,” I said again, wondering a little at the question, and how she had
ever heard of the Oaks.
She was regarding me very intently, I knew, taking me in from the
crumpled blue feather on my hat to the shockingly shabby boots still
smoking on the fender. These I involuntarily withdrew, thinking to hide
them under my gray dress. She saw the movement, guessed the intention,
and said kindly:
“Dry your boots, child. I see they are very wet Did you walk all the
distance from Kensington here?”
“Oh, no,” I answered; “only to and from the station, but the streets are
very nasty to-day;” and then I looked at her more closely than I had
done before.
She was very tall, rather stout, and might have been anywhere from
thirty-five to forty; certainly not younger. She had fine eyes, a good
complexion, and very large hands, which, nevertheless, were shapely,
soft and white, and loaded with diamonds. One splendid solitaire
attracted my attention particularly from its peculiar brilliancy, and
the nervous manner with which she kept touching it as she talked to me.
She saw I was inspecting her, and allowed me time in which to do it;
then she began abruptly, and in a tone slightly fault-finding:
“You received my note, of course, or you would not be here, It was
written a month ago, and as I heard nothing from you I naturally
supposed you did not care for, or need, another pupil, so I have
obtained a governess for Maude.”
There was a choking sob in my throat which I forced down as I replied:
“Oh, I am so sorry, for I do need scholars so much, oh, so much.”
“Why didn’t you come, then?” she asked; and I told her how her letter
had been two weeks at my lodgings before my return from the continent,
and of the sickness which had followed my return.
“And you live there all alone. Have you no friends, no relations
anywhere?” she asked.
“None since father and Aunt Esther died.” I said. “I have nobody but
Cousin Tom, who is in India, and who never writes to me now. I think he
has forgotten me. Yes, I am quite alone.”
“I wonder you have never married in all these years,” was the next
remark, and looking up at her I saw something in her face which went
over me like a flash of revelation, and my voice shook a little as I
repeated her last words, “Never married!” while my thoughts went back to
Archie and the summer days when I waited for him, and he did not come,
and that later time when Lady Darinda wrote me he was dead.
Was this Lady Darinda? My eyes asked the question, and she answered me:
“Perhaps my manner seems strange to you, Miss Burton; let me explain. I
was wishing for a new teacher for my little Maude, one who was gentle
and patient to children. A friend of mine, Mrs. Barrett, whose daughter
you have taught, told me of you. The name attracted me, for I once knew
of a Miss Norah Burton. I made inquiries, and learned that Jennie
Barrett’s teacher and Miss Norah Burton of the Oaks, Middlesex, were one
and the same. I wanted to see you, and so I wrote the note.”
She spoke rapidly, and kept working at the solitaire, without once
looking at me, till I said: “You are Lady Darinda Cleaver?”
Then her large blue eyes looked straight at me and she replied:
“I was Lady Darinda Cleaver, cousin to Archibald Browning, whom you were
engaged to marry. If you had married him you would have been Lady
Cleaver now of Briarton Lodge, for both my brothers are dead, and Archie
was next in succession.”
“Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge;” I whispered the words with a gasp, and
for a moment tried to realize what was involved in being Lady Cleaver of
Briarton Lodge.
Not a third floor back room, sure, with shabby boots and mended gloves,
and faded dress of gray, but luxury and elegance, and troops of servants
and friends, and equality with such people as Lady Fairfax, who, I knew,
was trying to imagine how the crumpled, forlorn little woman, with the
shabby boots and feather, would have looked as Lady Cleaver of Briarton
Lodge. Tom had once taunted me with the possibility of my being Lady
Cleaver, and with a thought of him the great bitter throb of regret for
what might have been passed away, and I was glad in my heart that I was
not the mistress of Briarton Lodge; so, when at last Lady Fairfax said
to me, “Are you not sorry?” I looked at her steadily and answered, “Yes,
very sorry that Archie is dead, but not sorry that I am not his wife.
Years have shown me that we were not suited to each other. We should not
have been happy together, and then——” I hesitated a moment, while a
feeling of pique, or malice, or jealousy, or whatever one chooses to
call a desire to give another a little sting, kept growing within me,
until at last I added, “and then—Archie’s first choice was for you; he
loved you best; offered himself to you first, you know. You wrote me so
in the letter.”
She turned the solitaire on her finger entirely round, and her cheek
flushed as she smiled faintly, and replied:
“Offered himself to me first? Yes, and was very fond of me, I think, but
whether he loved me best is doubtful. Poor Archie, he did not want to
die, and at the last, after he had ceased to answer our questions, he
whispered to himself: ‘Poor little girl; she will be so sorry. Be kind
to her.’ That was you, I think.”
There was a great lump now in my throat, and a faintness came over me
which must have shown itself in my face, for Lady Darinda exclaimed:
“How pale you look, Miss Burton, and how tired. I am sure you will be
better to take something,” and touching the bell she bade the servant
who appeared bring some biscuits and a glass of wine. I was not hungry,
but I reflected that the lunch would save the expense of supper at home,
and I took thankfully the biscuits, and sandwiches and wine, which were
served from solid silver and the most delicate of Sevres. To such
straits of calculation had I come: I, who had just missed of being Lady
Cleaver, of Briarton Lodge. I pitied myself even while I ate the
sandwiches, with Lady Fairfax looking on and fathoming all my poverty,
as I believed. Perhaps I did her injustice, for I think she really meant
to be kind, and when I had finished my lunch, she said:
“Archie’s mother, Aunt Eleanor, is here with me now—lives with me
entirely. Would you like to see her?” and before I could reply, she
stepped across the hall into the drawing-room, where I heard a few
low-spoken words; then another step beside that of Lady Darinda, and
Archie’s mother, Mrs. Browning, was at my side, and holding my hand in
hers.
Time and sorrow had changed her greatly, or else the silvery puffs of
hair which shaded her face softened the cold, haughty expression I
remembered so well, and made it very pleasing and kind.
“Child,” she said, “it is many years since we met, and I am sorry to
hear so sad a story of you. You are all alone in the world, Darinda
tells me.”
She had seated herself beside me, still holding my hand, and at the
sound of her voice I broke down entirely. All the loneliness, and
dreariness and poverty of my life swept over me like a billow of the
sea, and forgetting the difference in our stations, I laid my head in
her lap and cried bitterly. I think she must have cried, too, a very
little, and that for a few moments she lost sight of the poor music
teacher in crumpled feather and shabby boots, and saw in me only the
girl who had loved her boy, and whom the boy was to have married, if
death had not interfered. She was very kind to me, and made me tell her
all the sad story of my life since father died, and questioned me of
Tom, and then, turning to her niece, who had retired to the window,
said:
“Darinda, you did not positively engage Mademoiselle Couchet to read to
me?”
Her tone implied that she wished her niece to say no, which she
accordingly did, while Mrs. Browning continued:
“Then, I think I shall ask Miss Burton if she can come to me for two
hours five days in the week, and read to me either in English or French,
as I may choose at the time. I will give her a pound a week for the
winter. Will you come for that?” and she turned now to me. “Come between
eleven and one, so as to lunch with me in my room.”
I had hidden nothing of my needs from her, and I felt sure that she
included the lunch for a purpose, and my heart swelled with a gratitude
so great that it was positive pain, and kept me from accepting the
generous offer for a few moments. I had indeed found friends where I
least expected them, and when a little later I arose to go, my heart was
lighter than it had been since I bade good-by to one favorite pupil in
Paris. I was to have a pound a week, with lunch, and what was better
yet, Archie’s friends were mine at last. I was sure of that, and was not
foolish enough to question their motives or to suspect—what was perhaps
the truth—that inasmuch as I was in no way connected with them, and they
were not at all responsible for my appearance, they could afford to be
kind and lend me a helping hand; and then, I might have been the lady of
Briarton Lodge, and lived in as grand a house as that of Lady Fairfax or
Miss Lucy Elliston. I passed the latter on my way to the station,
knowing it by the number which Mrs. Trevyllan had told me, and which I
found was the same which Tom had sent me long ago.
The short November day was drawing to a close, and already the gas was
lighted in the parlors of No. —, and in the dining-room, where the
butler was arranging the dinner-table. He had not yet closed the
shutters, and I could see the silver, and damask, and flowers, and
wondered if they were expecting company besides the son just returned,
or were their table surroundings always as elegant and grand. Then I
remembered Mr. Gordon, and said: “He is to be there too,” just as the
figure of a young lady passed before the window of the parlor. It was
Miss Elliston, in blue silk evening dress, with white roses in her hair
and a soft fall of lace at her throat. She was dressed for dinner, and I
stood watching her a moment as she walked up and down for two or three
times, restlessly as it seemed, and then came to the window and looked
out upon the street. Did she see me, I wonder?—the forlorn little woman
who hurried away in the fast-gathering darkness. If she did she thought
it some maid or shop-girl, no doubt, and continued her watch, while I
sped on my way to the station and was soon mounting the stairs which led
up and out to High street, Kensington.
It was not far to No. — Abingdon road, but a heavy mist was falling, and
I was wet, and bedraggled, and cold when at last I reached the house,
and finding the door unfastened, walked in without ringing, and hurried
directly to my room. From the basement below one of the Misses Keith
called to me softly, and thinking it was some inquiry about my supper
which she wished to make, I answered back:
“I have had something to eat, and do not wish anything more.”
Then I ran on up the next flight of stairs, at the head of which was the
door of my room. It was partly open, and a flood of light and warmth
streamed out into the hall, causing me to stand perfectly still for a
moment, while my eyes took in the view presented to them. Such a fire as
was roaring in the grate had never been seen there since I had been
mistress of the apartment, while in the middle of the floor the table
was spread as for a gala dinner, with celery and jelly, and even the
coffee-urn which I never had used. What did it mean? Why had the Misses
Keith taken this liberty with me, and plunged me into such extravagance,
when they knew the low state of my finances? I think I felt a very
little indignant at the good, kind old souls, as I pushed the door wide
open and advanced into the room, starting back and stopping suddenly, at
sight of a man—a big, broad-shouldered, tall man—muffled in a heavy
coat, and sitting with his back to me, his feet resting on a chair, and
his hands clasped behind his head, as if he were intently thinking. Who
was he that dared thus intrude? I thought, and my voice had a sharp ring
in it, as I said:
“Sir, what are you doing here? You have made a mistake. This is my
room.”
He started then, and sprang up so quickly as to upset the chair on which
his feet had rested, and which he did not stop to pick up, as he came
rapidly toward me. What a giant of a fellow he was, in that shaggy coat,
with all that brown, curling beard! and how my heart beat as he caught
me in his strong arms, and, kissing me on both cheeks, said:
“I have made no mistake, Norah, and I am here to see you. Don’t you
remember spindle-shanks?”
Then I knew who it was, and, with a glad cry, exclaimed:
“Oh, Tom! Tom! I am so glad. Why didn’t you come before, when I wanted
you so much?”
I had struggled to my feet, but did not try to release myself from the
arm which held me so fast. In my excitement and surprise I forgot the
years since we had met, forgot that he was a full-grown man, and no
longer the “spindle-shanks,” as I used sometimes to call him—forgot
everything but the fact that he had come back to me again, and that I
was no longer alone and friendless in the world. Tom was there with me,
a tower of strength, and I did not hesitate to lean upon my tower at
once, and when he said, as only Tom could say, in a half-pitiful,
half-laughing tone, “Have it out, Norah. Put your head down here, and
cry,” I laid my head on the big overcoat, and “cried it out.”
I think he must have cried, too, for, as soon as his hands were at
liberty, he made vigorous use of his pocket-handkerchief, and I noticed
a redness about his eyes, when at last I ventured to look him fully in
the face. How changed he was from the long, lank, thin-faced,
sandy-haired Tom of old! Broad-shouldered, broad-chested, brown-faced
brown-haired, and brown-bearded, there was scarcely a vestige left of
the boy I used to know, except the bright smile, the white, even teeth,
and the eyes, which were so kind and honest in their expression, and
which, in their turn, looked so searchingly at me. I had divested myself
of my hat and sacque by this time, and came back to the fire, when,
turning the gas-jets to their full height, Tom made me stand directly
under the chandelier, while he scanned me so closely that I felt the hot
blood mounting to my hair, and knew my cheeks were scarlet.
“How changed and old he must think me,” I said to myself, just as he
asked:
“I say, Mousey, how have you managed to do it?”
“Do what?” I asked, and he continued:
“Managed to keep so young, and fair, and pretty, or rather, to grow so
pretty, for you are ten times handsomer than you were that day you
walked down the lane with me, twelve years ago, and I said good-by with
such a lump in my throat.”
“Oh, Tom, how can you——” I began, when he stopped me short and
continued:
“Hear me first, and then put in as many disclaimers as you choose. I
want to tell you at once all it concerns you now to know of my life in
India. Those first years I was there I fell in with bad associates, and
came near going to the dogs, as you know, and nothing saved me from it,
I am sure, but the knowing that a certain little English girl was
praying for me every day, and still keeping faith in me, as she wrote me
in her letters. I could not forget the little girl, Norah, and the
memory of her and her pathetic, ‘You will reform, Tom, for the sake of
the dear old times, if for nothing else,’ brought me back when my feet
were slipping over the brink of ruin, and made a man of me once more. I
do not know why Mr. Rand trusted me and kept me through everything, as
he did, unless it was for certain business qualities which I possessed,
and because I did my work well and faithfully. When your father died you
know I offered to come home, but you bade me not, and said you did not
need me; and so I staid, for money was beginning to pour in upon me, and
I grew richer and richer, while you—oh, Norah, I never dreamed to what
you were reduced, or nothing would have kept me away so long. I always
thought of you as comfortable and happy, in pleasant lodgings, with a
competence from your father. I did not know of music scholars and daily
toil to earn your bread. Why didn’t you tell me, Norah? Surely I had a
right to know—I, your brother Tom!”
He did not wait for me to answer, but went on:
“Six months ago Mr. Rand, my old employer and then partner, died, and
for some good or favor he fancied I had done him, he left me £50,000,
which, with what I already had, made me a rich man, and then I began to
think of home and the little cousin who, I said, must be a dried-up old
maid by this time.”
At this I winced and tried to draw back from Tom, but he held me fast,
while his rare smile broke all over his face as he went on:
“I thought I’d like to know just how you did look, and so wrote for your
photograph, which, when it came, astonished me, it was so young and
pretty and girlish; not in the least old maidish, as I feared it might
be——”
“Tom, Tom—are you crazy?” I cried, wrenching my hands from his. “I’m not
pretty; I’m not girlish; I’m not young; and I am an old maid of
thirty-two.”
“Yes, yes, very true. I know your age to a minute, for didn’t we use to
compare notes on that point when you brought up your seniority of ten
months as a reason why you should domineer over and give me fits. I knew
you were thirty-two, but you’d pass for twenty-five. Why, I’m ten years
older than you now, with my bushy head, and tawny face, and brawny
chest. Look at the difference, will you?” And leading me to the mirror
he showed me the picture it reflected—picture of a tall,
broad-shouldered, brown-faced, brown-haired man, who might have been
thirty-five, and by his side, not quite reaching his shoulder, the
petite figure of a woman whose forehead and lips were very pale, whose
cheeks were very red, whose eyes were bright with excitement, and whose
wavy hair was not unbecoming even if it was all tumbled and tossed, and
falling about her face and neck.
That was Tom and I, and when, with his mischievous smile shining on me
from the glass he asked: “Well Mousey, what do you think of us?” I
answered with a dash of my old sauciness: “I think you look like a great
shaggy bear, and I like a little cub.”
He laughed aloud at that and said: “You are very complimentary, but I’ll
forgive you for once, and go on with my story, which was interrupted at
the point where I received the photograph, which astonished me so much
that I determined to come home and see if it was correct. And, as you
know, I came, and wishing to surprise you gave no warning of my coming,
but hunted up your lodgings, and felt utterly confounded when I was
ushered into this little back third floor room, and was told you had
occupied it for years, and not only that, but that you gave music
lessons for a living, and had gone out to hunt up scholars. I don’t
think I quite swore, but I did tear round a little, and bade the woman
make up a roaring fire against your return, and told her I was going to
dine with you. You ought to have seen her twist her apron, and heard her
stammer and hesitate as she told me ‘Miss Burton didn’t mostly have
dinners nowadays;’ meaning, of course, that you couldn’t afford it. I
believe I did say d——, with a dash, under my breath, but I gave her a
sovereign, and told her to get up the best dinner possible for the time,
for I was hungry as forty bears. She courtesied almost to the floor and
departed, but upon my soul I believe they think me a burglar or
something dreadful, for one or the other of them has been on this floor
watching me slyly to see that I was not rummaging your things.”
While he talked I was trying to dry my wet boots which, like Lady
Darinda, he spied at last and exclaimed, “Why, child, how wet your boots
are. Why do you not change them? You will surely take cold. Go now and
do it.”
I did not tell him they were all I had, but he must have guessed it from
my manner, and looking sharply at me as if he would wring the truth from
me, he said: “Norah, are these your only boots?”
“Yes, Tom, they are,” and my lip quivered a little, while he stalked up
and down the room, knocking over a chair with his big overcoat, and
nearly upsetting a stand of plants. I think I felt my poverty more at
that moment than I had ever done before, but there was nothing I could
say, and fortunately for us both Miss Keith just then appeared, saying
dinner was ready, and asking if she should send up the soup. What a
dinner it was, and Tom did ample justice to it, until suddenly,
remembering himself, he said:
“By the way, I must be moderate here, for I have another dinner to eat
to-night: one, too, where the fatted calf has been killed.”
Up to this point I had not once thought of Miss Elliston since I found
Tom sitting in my room, but now I remembered the handsome dinner table
seen through the windows of No. — Grosvenor Square, and felt sure it was
to that table Tom had been bidden as a guest; but I would not ask him,
and he continued:
“My fellow-traveler from India was an invalid—that Lieut. Elliston of
whom I wrote you once. I nursed him through a contagious disease when
every one else had deserted him, and he seems to think he owes his life
to me, and sticks to me like a burr; while his family, on the strength
of that and the little Gordon blood there is in my veins, make much of
me, and insist that I shall dine with them to-night; so I must leave you
soon, but shall return to-morrow.”
I made no answer, but busied myself with preparing his coffee, and after
a moment he went on:
“By the way, Norah, what do you think of Miss Elliston? She wrote you
were at the same hotel in Paris.”
“At the same hotel with me? Miss Elliston at the Grand? When?” I asked,
in much surprise; and he replied:
“Last September, when you were there with friends. Did you not see her?”
“No,” I answered, “I did not see her, or if I did, I did not know it;
and she is much too proud to make herself known to me, a poor music
teacher.”
This last I said bitterly, but Tom made no reply, and hardly knowing
what I was saying, I added:
“Then you are the Mr. Gordon she talks so much about?”
“Miss Elliston talk about me! How do you know that?” Tom asked, with an
increase of color in his face.
Very foolishly I told him how I knew, and of the photograph which must
be his, though it was not quite like him now.
“Yes, it was taken three years ago, and we exchanged. I remember it
now—and she has it yet,” he said, abruptly; then looking steadily at me
across the table, he continued: “Norah, I have not told you all the
reasons which brought me home. I am thinking of getting married and
settling down in England among the daisies and violets.”
“Yes, Tom,” I said, with a great throb of pain in my heart, for I knew
his marriage with Miss Elliston would separate him from me further than
his absence in India had done.
“Are you not glad?” he added, and there was a mischievous twinkle in his
eyes, and a lurking smile at the corners of his mouth.
Then I told a fib, and said I was glad, for I could some time hope to
see him. My life would not be so lonely.
He had risen by this time, and was putting on his overcoat, which made
him so big and bearish.
“Good-by, Mousey, till to-morrow. Take off those boots and dry your feet
the instant I am gone. I cannot have you sick now. _Au revoir._”
He passed his warm hands caressingly over my hair and across my cheek,
and then he was gone, and I sat down alone to think it all over, and
wonder if it really was Tom who had been there, or if it was a dream
from which I should awaken. Naturally too, I followed him in imagination
to the dinner, and saw Miss Lucy in her blue silk with white roses in
her hair, and to my very finger tips I felt how Tom must be impressed
with the difference between her high-bred grace and ease of manner, and
the little shrinking woman in faded gray, with worn out, leaky boots. I
did not take them off, but held them to the fire and watched the steam
as it came from the soles, and rather enjoyed my poverty and loneliness,
and thought hard things against Miss Elliston, who had known I was at
the hotel and had never spoken to me.
I must have fallen asleep while I thought, and the fire was out, and the
clock striking twelve when I awoke, chilled in every limb, with a dull,
heavy pain in the back of my head, and a soreness in my throat. I
remember going to the window and looking out into the foggy night, and
wondering if the grand dinner was over, and how soon Tom would come
again. Then I crept shivering to bed, and when I woke the Misses Keith
were all in my room, together with Mrs. Trevyllan, and I heard them say:
“Twelve pairs of boots for her to try, with orders to keep them all if
they fit. He is very generous.”
Then I knew that somebody had sent me a box of beautiful French gaiters,
and it made me so tired to think of wearing them all at once, as I
thought I must, that I gave a weary sigh, which brought the ladies
instantly to my side with anxious inquiries as to how I felt, and where
I was the sickest.
“Not sick at all,” I said, “only tired, and cold, and sleepy. Please go
away with the dinners, and boots, and Toms, and leave me alone. I want
to sleep it out.”
“Poor girl, she’s out of her head,” I heard one of them say, and then I
slept again, how long I do not know, but when I woke a curious thing
seemed to have happened, which yet did not surprise me in the least.
I, Norah Burton, was hidden away in the deep window seat, where, myself
unseen, I could command a view of the bed, which had been brought from
the little recess, and now occupied the center of my room. On that bed,
with a face as white as the pillows, save where the fever spot burned on
either cheek, somebody was lying—somebody who looked like me, and yet
was not I, though they called her Norah, and talked in whispers about
the long strain upon her nerves, being so much alone; the long walk in
the November mist and fog before she was able, and the repeated wetting
of her feet from the want of strong, new shoes. How queerly it all
sounded; how curiously I watched the girl, who looked so young, lying
there so still, with her hands folded always the same way, just over her
breast, and her face turned a little toward me.
If she had ever been restless, and from what they said I judged she must
have been, it was over now, and she lay like one dead, never moving so
much as an eyelid, or paying the slightest heed to what was passing
around her. The Misses Keith and Mrs. Trevyllan were never all together
in the chamber now, though each came frequently, and Mrs. Trevyllan
always cried out and asked, “Do you think she is any better? Will she
live?” of the tall man who sat and watched the sick girl just as closely
as I did, and who would sometimes answer, “God knows,” and again shake
his head mournfully, as if there was no hope.
How kind, and tender, and gentle he was—gentle, and tender, and kind as
any woman—and I found myself wishing the girl could know he was there,
and know how, when he was all alone, he kissed the pale little fingers,
and smoothed the ruffled hair, and called so soft and low, “Norah,
Norah! don’t you hear me? Don’t you know old Tom?”
She did not hear; she did not know; and the pale fingers never stirred
to the kiss he gave them, and only the breath from the parted lips told
there still was life. How sorry I felt for them both, but sorriest I
think, for the man, who seldom left the room, and sat always where he
could see the white face on the pillow.
“Dear little face! dear little girl! I cannot let her die. Please, God,
spare her to me!” I heard him say once. Then there certainly was a
fluttering of the eyelids—an effort like struggling back to life; and I
think the girl in the bed wanted to tell the man in the chair that she
heard him, and appreciated all his watchful care.
But nature was too weak to rally, and after that one sign the sick girl
lay quiet and motionless as ever, and only the ticking of the clock
broke the deep silence of the room. I wondered did that ticking disturb
her. It would have worried me, and I should have been forever repeating
the monotonous one-two, one-two, which the pendulum seemed to be saying.
Did my thought communicate itself to her the girl on my pillow, with a
face like my face, and which yet was not mine? Perhaps, for she did at
last move uneasily, and the pale lips whispered: “One-two, one-two! it
keeps going on forever and ever, and makes me so tired. Stop it, Tom.”
He knew what she meant, and the clock which had not run down in years
was silenced at once, while Tom’s face grew bright and hopeful, for she
had spoken, and called him by his name.
Outside there was the sound of carriage wheels stopping before the
door—a pull at the bell, a hurried conversation in the hall below, Miss
Keith’s voice sounding flurried and confused, the other voice
self-assured, surprised, and commanding; and then footsteps came up the
stairs, and Archie’s mother, Mrs. Browning, was standing on the
threshold, red, tired, panting, and taking in rapidly every portion of
the room, from the cheap hearthrug and carpet to the tall man by the
bedside, and the pallid face on the pillows. At sight of that her
countenance changed sensibly, and she exclaimed:
“I did not suppose it so bad as this.”
Then Tom, who had arisen from his seat, spoke a little sternly, for he
was angry at the intrusion:
“Madam, don’t you know Miss Burton is very sick and cannot see
strangers?”
“Yes, I know;” and Archie’s mother pressed close to the girl on the
pillow, trailing her India shawl on the floor directly across Tom’s
feet. “She was engaged to read to me every day for two hours, and I
waited for her to come or send some message, till at last I concluded to
drive round and see what had become of her. You are her cousin, I
believe? I am Mrs. Browning.”
She said the last name as if between Mrs. Browning and the cousin there
was a vast difference, but if Tom recognized it, he did not seem to
notice it; he merely said:
“Yes, I am her cousin, and you were to have been her mother-in-law?”
“Yes, Archie was my son. If he had lived he would have been heir of
Briarton Lodge; both the young lords are dead.”
“Oh, yes, and my cousin would have been Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge,”
Tom answered, and it seemed to me that he thought just as I did, namely,
that the sick girl was of more importance to Mrs. Browning because of
what she _might have been_.
The shadow of the honor she had missed reached even to this humble room,
and made Mrs. Browning more gracious, more pitiful, more anxious than
she might otherwise have been. And yet it was wholly the fault of her
birth and education that she cared so much for these things. At heart
she was a thoroughly good woman, and there was genuine kindness in her
inquiries of Tom as to what was needed most, and in her deportment
toward the sick girl, whom she tried to rouse, calling her by name, and
saying to her:
“I am Archie’s mother; you remember Archie, who died?”
There was a little sob in the mother’s voice, but the girl gave no sign;
only Tom looked gloomy, and black, and intensely relieved when the India
shawl was trailed down the stairs, and the Browning carriage drove away.
Next day it stopped again before the house, and this time it held an
added weight of dignity in the person of Lady Darinda Fairfax, whose
heavy silk rustled up the stairs, and whose large white hands were
constantly rubbing each other as she talked to Tom, in whom she had
recognized the Mr. Gordon seen once at Miss Elliston’s, where she was
calling at the same time with himself.
“Really, Mr. Gordon, this _is_ a surprise. I had no idea, I am sure,
that Miss Burton was your cousin; really, I am surprised. And she came
near being _my_ cousin, too. You must know about Archie?”
“Yes,” and Tom bowed stiffly. “I had the honor of seeing him years ago
when he visited my cousin. I went out to India just before he died.”
“Yes, I see; and did not return until a few days since. It must have
shocked you very much—the change in her circumstances. Poor girl, we
never knew it until she came to us for employment. I am glad for her,
that you have come to care for her. She will live with you, of course,
if you marry and settle here.”