"The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still.
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill."
MATHILDE BLIND.
John was late. Mitty looked out several times to see if he were coming,
and then put down the tea-cake to the fire.
At last his step came slowly along the garret gallery, and Lindo, who
approved of nursery tea, walked in first, his dignity somewhat impaired
by a brier hanging from his back flounce.
John saw the firelight through the open door, and the figure in the low
chair waiting for him. She had heard him coming, and was getting
stiffly up to make the tea.
"Mitty, you should not wait for me," he said, sitting down in his own
place by the fire.
Would they let her keep the brass kettle and her silver teapot? Yes, no
doubt they would; but somebody would have to ask. He supposed he should
be that somebody. Everything she possessed had been bought by himself
with other people's money.
He let the tea last as long as possible. If Lindo had more than his
share of tea-cake, no one was the wiser. At last Mitty cleared away, and
sat down in the rocking-chair.
"Don't light the candles, Mitty."
"Why not, my dear? I can't be settin' with my hands before me, and holes
in your socks a shame to be seen."
John came and sat down on the floor beside her, and leaned his head
against her.
"Never mind the socks just now. There is something I want to talk to you
about."
He looked at the fire through the bars of the high nursery fender, and
something in its glimmer, seen from so near the floor through the
remembered pattern of the wires which he had lost sight of for twenty
years, suddenly recalled the times when he had sat on the hearthrug, as
he was sitting now, with his head against Mitty's knee, confiding to her
what he would do when he was a man.
"Do you remember, Mitty," he said, "how I used to tell you that when I
grew up you should ride in a carriage, and have a gold brooch, and a
clock that played a tune?"
"I remember, my darling; and how, next time Charles went into York, you
give him all you had, and half a crown it was, to buy me a brooch, and
the silly staring fool went and spent it, and brought back that great
thing with the mock stones in. And you was as pleased as pleased. Eh! I
was angry with Charles for taking your bits of money, and all he said
was, 'Well, Mrs. Emson, I went to a many shops, and I give five
shillin's for it so as to get a big un.'"
"I remember it," said John. "It was about the size of a small poultice.
And so Charles paid half. Good old Charles! I seem to have been much
deceived in my youth."
His deep-set eyes watched the fire, watched the semblance of a little
castle in the heart of the glow. Mitty was quite happy with her
darling's head against her knee.
"When the castle falls in I will tell her," said John to himself.
But the fire had settled itself. The castle held. At last Mitty put out
her hand, and gave it a poke; not with the brass poker, of course, but
with a little black slave which did that polished aristocrat's work for
it.
"Mitty," said John, "I am not so rich now as when I was in pinafores;
and even then, you see, the brooch was not bought with my own money.
Charles gave half. I have never given you anything that was paid for
with my own money. I have been spending other people's all my life."
"Why, bless your dear heart!" said Mitty; "and who gave me my silver
teapot, I should like to know, and the ivory workbox, and that very
kettle a-staring you in the face, and the Wedgwood tea-things, and--and
everything, if it was not you?"
John did not answer. His face twitched.
The bars of the fender were blurred. The brass kettle, instead of
staring him in the face, melted quite away.
Mitty stroked his head and face.
"Cryin'!" she said--"my lamby cryin'!"
"Not for myself, Mitty."
"Who for, then? For that Miss Dinah?"
"No, Mitty, for you. This is no home for you and me." He took her hard
hand and rubbed his cheek against it. "It belongs to Colonel Tempest. I
am not my father's son, Mitty."
"Well, my precious," said Mitty, soothingly, in no wise discomposed by
what John feared would have quite overwhelmed her, "and if your poor
mammy did say as much to me when she was light-headed, when her pains
was on her, there's no call to fret about that, seeing it's a long time
ago, and her dead and all. Poor thing! I can see her now, with her
pretty eyes and her little hands, and she'd put her head against me and
say, 'Nursey' (Nursey I was to her), 'I'm not fit neither to live nor to
die.' Many and many's the night I've roared to think of her after she
was gone, when you was asleep in your crib. But there's no need for you
to fret, my deary."
John's heart contracted. Mitty knew also. Oh, if he might but have
started life knowing what even Mitty knew!
"They'd no business to marry her to Mr. Tempest," continued Mitty,
shaking her head, "and she, poor thing, idolizing that black Lord Fane,
as was her first cousin. It wasn't likely, after that, she'd settle to
Mr. Tempest, who was as light as tow. It was against nature. She never
took a bit of interest in him, nor him in her neither, that I could see.
A hard man he was, too--a hard man. She sent for him when she was dying.
She would not see him while there was any chance. 'Forgive me,' she
says; she says it over and over, me holding her up. 'I wouldn't ask it
if I was staying, but I'm doing the best I can by dying. It's not much
to make up, but it's the best I can. And,' she says, 'don't think, Jack,
as all women are bad like me. There's a many good ones as 'ull make you
happy yet when I'm gone.' I can see him now, standing by her, looking
past her out of the window with his face like a flint. 'I've known two
false ones,' he says; and he went away without another word. And she
says after a bit to me, 'I've always been frightened at the very thought
of dying, but it's living I'm frightened of now.' Eh! Master John, your
poor mammy! She did repent. And Mr. Tempest sent for me to the library
after the funeral, and he says, 'Promise me, nurse, that you'll never
repeat what your mistress said to me when she was not herself.' And he
looked hard at me, and I promised. And I've never breathed it to any
living soul, not to one I haven't, from that day to this."
"I found it out three weeks ago," said John. "And as I am not Mr.
Tempest's son, everything I have belongs by right to Colonel Tempest,
the next heir, not to me. Overleigh is not mine. It never was mine."
But Mitty could not be made to understand what his mother's frailty had
to do with John. When at last she grasped the idea that John would make
known the fact that he was not his father's son, she was simply
incredulous that her lamb could do such a thing--could bring shame upon
his own mother. No, whatever else he might do, he would never do that.
Why, Mrs. Alcock would know; and friends as she was with Mrs. Alcock,
and had been for years, such a word had never passed her lips. And the
people in the village, and the trades-people, and Jones and Evans from
York, who were putting up the new curtains,--everybody would know. Mitty
became quite agitated. Surely, surely, he'd never tell against his poor
mother in her grave.
"Mitty," said John, forcing himself to repeat what it had been
difficult enough to say once, "don't you see that I can't stay here and
keep what is not mine? Nothing is mine if I am not Mr. Tempest's son. I
ought never to have been called so. We must go away."
But Mitty was perplexed.
"Not to that great weary house in London," she said anxiously, "with
every spot of water to carry up from the bottom?"
"That is not mine either," said John in despair, rising to his feet and
standing before her. "Oh, Mitty, try and understand. Nothing is
mine--nothing, nothing, nothing; not even the clothes I have on. I am a
beggar."
Mitty looked at him in a dazed way. She could not understand, but she
could believe. Her chin began to tremble.
It was almost a relief to see at last the tears which he had dreaded
from the first. "My lamb a beggar," she said over and over again; and
she cried a little, but not much. Mitty was getting old, and she was not
able to realize a change--a change so incomprehensible as this.
"But we need not be unhappy," said John, kneeling down by her, and
putting his arms round her. "We shall be together still. Wherever I go
you will go with me. I don't know yet where it will be, but we shall
have a little home together somewhere, just you and I; and you'll do my
socks and handkerchiefs, won't you, Mitty? and"--John controlled his
voice, but he hid his face in her lap that she might not see it--"we'll
be so happy together." At the moment I think John would have given up
heaven itself to make that hour smooth to Mitty. "And your cakes,
Mitty," he went on hoarsely. "They are better than any one else's. You
shall have a little kitchen, and you will make the cakes yourself,
won't you? and the"--his voice stumbled heavily--"the rock buns."
"My precious," said Mitty, sobbing, "don't you fret yourself! I can make
a many things besides them; Albert puddings and moulds, and them little
cheese straws, and a sight of things. There's a deal of work in my old
hands yet. It's only the spring as has took the starch out of me. I
always feel a sinking in the spring. Lord, my darling, the times and
times again I've been settin' here just dithering with a mossel of
crotchet, or idling over a bit of reading, and wishing you was having a
set of nightshirts to make!"
Love had found out the way. John had appealed to the right instinct.
Mitty was already busying herself with a future in which she should
minister to her child's comfort, and John saw, with a relief that was
half a pang, that the calamity of his life held hardly any place in the
heart that loved him so much.
"I've a sight of things," continued Mitty, wiping her eyes. "Books and
pictures and cushions put away. My precious shall not go short. And
there's two pair of linen sheets as I bought with my own money, and
piller-slips to match, and six silver teaspoons and one dessert. My lamb
shall have things comfortable about him."
She fell to communing with herself. John did not speak.
"I'll leave my places tidy," said Mitty. "Tidy I didn't find 'em, but
tidy I'll leave 'em. I can't go till after the spring cleaning, Master
John. I'll never trust that Fanny to do the scrubbing unless I'm behind
her. I caught her washing round the mats instead of under only last
week."
John felt unable to enter into the question of the spring cleaning.
There was another silence.
At last Mitty said defiantly, "And I shall take your morroccy shoes, and
your little chair as I give you myself. I don't care what anybody says,
I shall take 'em. And the old horse and the Noey's ark."
"It will be all right," said John, getting slowly to his feet. "Nobody
will want to have them, or anything of mine;" and he kissed her, and
went out.
He went to the library and sat down by the fire.
The resolution and aspiration of a few hours ago--where were they now?
He felt broken in body and soul.
Lindo came in, nibbled John's elbow, and scrutinized the fire. John
scratched him absently on the top of his back between the tufts.
"Lindo," he said, "the world is a hard place to live in."
But Lindo, bulging with an unusual allowance of tea-cake, and winnowing
the air with an appreciative hind leg, did not think so.