A DISCOVERY.
There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told;
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
--Hemans.
Bluebell was settled in her new abode, about fifteen miles from London:
and certainly few governesses have the luck to drop into a more sunshiny
home. Only two little girls, pleasantly disposed; no banishment to the
school-room. They all mingled sociably together after lessons were
over,--walked, drove in an Irish car, or played croquet and gardened
as the spring advanced.
Mr. Markham was a barrister in London, and came down to dinner most
days--not always, though; and his wife, still a young woman, was glad
enough to find a companion in Bluebell. Beauty, too, unless it excites
jealousy, is agreeable to look at, and she soon became interested in the
young Canadian. But after a while she was puzzled by her. There was a
far-off, touching look in her eyes that had come there since marriage,
and she was reserved about herself, though the stiffness of first
acquaintance had long ago given way to affectionate intimacy. For a girl
apparently so frank to be at the same time so guarded suggested something
to be concealed. Mrs. Markham, being a woman, could not refrain from
speculating about it. She had elicited many lively descriptions of
Bluebell's life in Canada, and the children were never weary of sleighing
and toboggining stories. But these were general subjects; her narratives
were never personal ones.
"By-the-bye," observed Mrs. Markham, one day, "how strange it was that
poor child, Evelyn Leighton, dying just as you were going there! Her
mother told me of it when she enclosed Mrs. Rolleston's letter. But you
arrived in October, I think. Where were you those few months?"
"I was staying with a friend," replied Bluebell; but her hand shook and
she became crimson.
Mrs. Markham did not fail to note this, and suspected that during
that friendly visit some love passages might have arisen. "She seems
very sensitive about it," thought the kind lady. "I will get her to
tell me some day. It is such a shame ignoring that sort of thing with
governesses, just as if it were a crime! And if there is really anything,
he might come and see her here sometimes."
But Bluebell remained nervous and out of spirits the rest of that day.
One morning they were sitting together in the pleasant drawing-room; the
children had a holiday, and were playing with their dogs out of doors;
Mrs. Markham was colouring a design for her flower-beds, and lamenting
the non-arrival of some seeds the postman was to have brought. "The year
is getting on," murmured the aggrieved lady; "they really ought to be
sown, and it is such a lovely day for gardening."
"Let me go to Barton and fetch them," cried Bluebell, who was always
ready for a walk. "I shall be there and back before luncheon."
"Would you really?" said Mrs. Markham. "But it looks so hot! Are you sure
you don't mind?" And declaring it was the thing of all others she should
enjoy, Bluebell set off.
It was one of those glorious, sultry days that sometimes occur early in
the year, when summer seems actually to have arrived for the season--a
delusion invariably dispelled by the biting blasts of the blackthorn
winter. Lovely as it appeared it was a very oppressive day for a long
walk; the white, glaring road seemed endless, and she half repented her
offer.
Bluebell was scarcely so strong as she had been, and, having to hurry a
good deal to be back in time for luncheon, was quite pale and exhausted
on re-entering the drawing-room, prize in hand.
The second post was on the table, and the girl stopped short in the
midst of a message from the seedsman, for a deep black-edged envelope,
addressed to herself, caught her eye. Mrs. Markham observed her with
furtive anxiety. It is terrible to watch the opening of a letter
evidently containing sad tidings, yet she was hardly prepared to see
Bluebell, after perusing it drop prone on the ground as though she were
shot, her forehead striking against the table in the fall. Ringing the
bell, Mrs. Markham flew to her assistance, and, unfastening the collar of
her dress, something was disclosed to view which gave that lady a second
sensational shock, more thrilling than the first. Hurriedly she closed
the dress again, despatching for water a sympathetic servant who had just
entered, then swiftly, dexterously, possessed herself of a ribbon
encircling the girl's throat, on which hung a wedding-ring.
Bluebell recovered only to fall from one fainting fit into another. Her
strength had been exhausted by the walk, and she had none to bear up
against the shock that awaited her. The letter was from Miss Opie,
announcing Mrs. Leigh's sudden death, after a few hours' illness. Inside,
and unopened, was returned Bluebell's private enclosure revealing her
married name.
A year ago this child had been innocent of the existence of nerves, but,
from the trying scenes she had lately gone through, they were now so
shattered that she was unable to rally. The doctor kept her in bed at
first, recommended absolute quiet, and exhausted his formula with as
beneficial a result as could be expected considering it attacked the
secondary cause only, and was impotent to heal the suffering mind
reacting upon the body. Bluebell continued in a torpid condition,
scarcely giving any signs of life. One day, Mrs. Markham, who nursed her
with unremitting zeal, quickened, perhaps, by the interest of her
discovery, observed the patient's hand steal to her neck, and then she
glanced uneasily about, as if seeking for something.
They were alone, so Mrs. Markham whispered in a low, cautious tone, "I
have it quite safe, locked up in my desk. No one knows of it but myself."
An apprehensive look dilated the large, sad eyes, succeeded by an
expression of contented resignation. She did not perceptibly improve, her
mind was incessantly trying to realize what had happened, and was haunted
by a morbid conviction that the anxiety induced by her own strange
marriage might have precipitated the sad event, for Miss Opie's letter
did not soften the fact that Mrs. Leigh had fretted greatly about it.
Still she expressly said that she had succumbed to an epidemic that had
already gleaned many victims.
It was, after all, many days before Mrs. Markham remembered the seeds she
had been so anxious to obtain, but one favourable afternoon, she set
diligently to work to lay the foundation for summer flowers. Though the
"even tenour" of her life did not afford much scope for its indulgence,
this lady was not devoid of a certain spice of romance. She was also of
an independent character, and in the habit of judging for herself on most
matters, and had decided not to betray Bluebell's secret to her spouse.
"Men are prejudiced and unpracticable on some points," she soliloquized,
"and though I am quite satisfied that the poor girl is married, he may
choose to doubt it, or think we had better get out of her. Her illness
was entirely occasioned by the shock, so there really is no necessity to
explain my little accidental discovery."
But the plot was thickening, for that morning there arrived a letter from
Mrs. Leighton written in great perturbation, to the effect that she had
heard some very uncomfortable reports about Miss Leigh. Her information
was derived from the captain's wife at Liverpool, to whom she had written
on Bluebell's obtaining a situation, supposing that, as they had shown
her so much kindness, they would feel interested in the fact. But she had
received in return a most extraordinary letter from Mrs. Davidson,
stating that Miss Leigh had eloped from their house, leaving only a
letter containing an improbable story about going to be married, without
even mentioning to whom. Her husband, to be sure, had his suspicions as
to the lover, but the name had escaped her memory, and Captain Davidson
was at sea.
Now Mrs. Markham began to feel her innocent complicity becoming a little
embarrassing. It was rather awkward keeping a suspected person about the
children. Her husband would be in fits if he knew it, but, however
imprudent of Bluebell to elope, she still saw no reason to doubt the
marriage. Had she not the wedding-ring in proof of it?
So as she worked and planted, unavoidably decimating a worm here and
turning up an ants nest there, she conned it all over.
"The child must really tell me her secrets, or I can do nothing. I will
get her out for a drive; sitting alone in one room, as that demented old
Chivers prescribes, is the worst thing for a nervous complaint."
So the next fine morning she ordered the car, and, going to the
governess's room, asked her, in a matter-of-course manner, to put on
her hat and come out.
Bluebell had just received a visit from the local practitioner, who had
reiterated his assurances that "we wanted tone, and had better adhere to
the iron mixture; that we must not exert ourselves, and must be sure to
lie down a great deal," etc.; but she assented to Mrs. Markham's proposal
with the same indifference with which she had listened to Esculapius.
They drove on for some distance through a straggling village, with its
ivied church guarded by sentinel cypresses, children were playing about
with hands full of cowslips, and lilac bushes blossomed within cottage
palings. A little beyond they turned into Sir Thomas Farquhar's park,
where young rooks were cawing, unwitting of their predestined pastried
tomb. On entering a long, shady avenue, Mrs. Markham pulled the horse up
to a walk, and said quietly,--"When were you married, Miss Leigh?"
Perhaps this question had not been unexpected since the little episode of
the ring, for, with equal calmness, Bluebell replied,--"The last week in
November, at Liverpool."
Mrs. Markham felt a triumphant thrill. She would now hear the solution
of the mystery that had been exercising her imaginative powers for some
weeks. She poured forth question after question. Yet, at the end of
half-an-hour, not only had she failed to extort Dutton's name, but had
even entangled herself in a promise of inviolable silence as to the only
admitted fact.
She had insisted, threatened, got angry; Bluebell sorrowfully offered to
go, but remained firm.
"Well, keep your secret, then," cried Mrs. Markham, at last, abandoning
the contest; "but I shall find it out if I can. And I must take care that
Walter doesn't," thought she, with a mischievous chuckle, for that
gentleman, many years older than his wife, was a servile worshipper of
Mrs. Grundy, and his hair would have stood on end had he known that he
was harbouring a young lady with such suspicious antecedents. Besides her
personal liking for Bluebell, Mrs. Markham recollected that if dismissed
at this juncture she could scarcely recommend her to any other situation,
and then what would become of the poor thing? But what puzzled her most
was the total disappearance of the husband to whom she had been so very
lately married.
A clue to this, however, she believed herself to have obtained on
observing that Bluebell never failed to study the daily papers with
an avidity unusual at her age.
"He must be in the army and gone to the Crimea," thought she. "Poor
thing! how dreadful! Some day she will see him in the list of killed and
wounded."
Some little time after, Bluebell, who had in a great measure recovered
her strength, came to her room, and said, with frank, open eyes,--"May I
go to Barton and post a letter to my husband?"
A very warm assent drew forth the heartfelt exclamation,--"How I wish I
could tell you all, my dear Mrs. Markham."
Without that information, it was not so easy to answer Mrs. Leighton's
letter, which she did eventually in very guarded terms, stating that she
had proof of the marriage having taken place, but could say no more,
except that, "being much pleased with Miss Leigh, she intended to keep
her, especially as the children were very much under her own eye, and
seldom alone with their governess."
Mr. Markham was generally the first down, and was rather addicted to a
curious inspection of the post-mark on the family correspondence, neatly
placed by each recipient's plate.
His wife one morning found him standing over a large ship letter directed
to the governess, with somewhat the expression of distrustful pugnacity
with which a dog walks round a hedgehog.
"Is that for Miss Leigh?" said she, carelessly.
"Yes," with much solemnity. "Apparently she has a correspondent in the
Navy. It is not a sort of thing I like, and I must say I have often
thought Miss Leigh too young and flighty for me."
"Oh, I believe she is engaged, poor girl!" said Mrs. Markham, slipping
out a white one. "And she gets the children on beautifully. You thought
Emma already so improved in playing."
"Well if you know all about it, that's another thing. I trust she doesn't
put nonsense in the children's heads. Emma is getting very forward and
inquisitive."
His wife felt secretly excited, for she was sure this letter must be from
the errant husband, especially as the governess would not read it in
public, but pocketed it with a slight nervousness of manner.
Time passed on, and Mrs. Markham had discovered nothing.
Bluebell, in her diligent revision of the papers, found much of personal
interest. Colonel Rolleston's regiment had been ordered home to proceed
to the Crimea, and she well knew the anxiety his family must be enduring.
It seemed cold and ungrateful to be unable to write one word of sympathy
to Mrs. Rolleston, but any renewal of intercourse must lead to
explanations, and it was her cruel fate to be able to give none. One
other name, too, she saw in the public print that ought no longer to have
had the power to thrill her as it did. Well, it was not so long ago,
after all: but, however mentally disquieted we leave our heroine, as she
has now drifted, outwardly, into a peaceful haven, we must return to
others in the narrative who have more to do.