The Melmar family had just concluded their luncheon, and were still
assembled in the dining-room--all but Mrs. Huntley, who had not yet come
down stairs--when Desirée, flushed and excited from her interview with
the Mistress, who waited for her in the little room, came hastily in
upon the party; without noticing any of the others Desirée went up at
once to the head of the house, who glared at her from behind his
newspaper with his stealthy look of suspicion and watchfulness, as she
advanced. Something in her look roused the suspicions of Mr. Huntley; he
gave a quick, angry glance aside at Oswald, as if inquiring the cause of
the girl’s excitement, which his son replied to with a side-look of
sullen resentment and mortification--an unspoken angry dialogue which
often passed between the father and son, for Melmar had imposed upon the
young man the task of keeping Desirée in ignorance and happiness, a
charge which Oswald, who had lost even the first novelty of amusing
himself with her found unspeakably galling, a constant humiliation. The
little Frenchwoman came up rapidly to her host and employer--her cheek
glowing, her eye shining, her small foot in her stout little winter-shoe
sounding lightly yet distinctly on the carpet. They all looked at her
with involuntary expectation. Something newly-discovered and strange
shone in Desirée’s face.
“Sir,” she said, quickly, “I come to thank you for being kind to me. I
come because it is honest to tell you--I am going away.”
“Going away? What’s wrong?” said Melmar, with a little alarm; “come into
my study, mademoiselle, and we will put all right, never fear; that
little deevil Patricia has been at her again!”
Desirée did not wait for the burst of shrewish tears and exclamations
which even Patricia’s extreme curiosity could not restrain. She answered
quickly and with eagerness,
“No, no, it is not Patricia--it is no one--it is news from home; _you_
know it already--you know it!” cried the girl. “My mother! She is poor;
I have had to come away from her to be a governess; and you, alas, knew
who she was, but said nothing of it to me!”
And involuntarily Desirée’s eyes sought, with a momentary indignant
glance, the face of Oswald. He sat perfectly upright in his chair
staring at her, growing red and white by turns; red with a fierce,
selfish anger, white with a baffled, ungenerous shame, the ignominy, not
of doing wrong, but of being found out. But even in that moment, in the
mortifying consciousness that this little girl had discovered and
despised him--the revenge, or rather, for it was smaller--the spite of a
mean mind, relieved itself at least in the false wooer’s face. He turned
to her with the bitterest sneer poor Desirée had ever seen. It seemed to
say, “what cause but this could have induced me to notice _you_?” She
did not care for him, but she thought she once had cared, and the sneer
galled the poor little Frenchwoman to the heart.
“You are ungenerous--you!” she exclaimed, with a fiery vehemence and
passion, “you delude me, and then you sneer. Shall I sneer at you, you
sordid, you who wrong the widow? But no! If you had not known me I
should have thanked you, and my mother would never, never have injured
one who was good to Desirée; but now it is war, and I go. Farewell,
Monsieur! you did not mean to be kind, but only to blind me--ah, I was
wrong to speak of thanks--farewell!”
“What do you mean? who has deceived you?” cried Joanna, stepping forward
and shaking Desirée somewhat roughly by the arm; “tell us all plain out
what it is. I’m as sure as I can be that it’s him that’s wrong--and I
think shame of Oswald to see him sit there, holding his tongue when he
should speak; but you shanna look so at papa!”
And Joanna stood between Melmar and her excited little friend, thrusting
the latter away, and yet holding her fast at arm’s length. Melmar put
his arm on his daughter’s shoulder and set her quietly aside.
“Let us hear what this discovery is,” said Mr. Huntley; “who is your
mother, mademoiselle?”
At which cool question Desirée blazed for an instant into a flush of
fury, but immediately shrunk with a cool dread of having been wrong and
foolish. Perhaps, after all, they did not know--perhaps it was she who
was about to heighten the misfortune of their loss and ruin by
ungenerous insinuations. Desirée paused and looked doubtfully in
Melmar’s face. He was watching her with his usual stealthy vigilance,
looking, as usual, heated and fiery, curving his bushy, grizzled
eyebrows over those keen cat-like eyes. She gazed at him with a
doubtful, almost imploring, look--was she injuring him?--had he not
known?
“Come, mademoiselle,” said Melmar, gaining confidence as he saw the girl
was a little daunted, “I have but a small acquaintance in your country.
Who was your mother? It does not concern us much, so far as I can see,
but still, let’s hear. Oswald, my lad, can’t you use your influence?--we
are all waiting to hear.”
Oswald, however, had given up the whole business. He was pleased to be
able to annoy his father and affront Desirée at last. Perhaps the rage
and disappointment in his heart were in some sort a relief to him. He
was at least free now to express his real sentiments. He got up hastily
from his chair, thrust it aside so roughly that it fell, and with a
suppressed but audible oath, left the room. Then Desirée stood alone,
with Melmar watching her, with Patricia crying spitefully close at hand,
and even Joanna, her own friend, menacing and unfriendly. The poor girl
did not know where to turn or what to do.
“Perhaps I am wrong,” she said, with a momentary falter. “There was no
reason, it is true, why you should know mamma. And perhaps it is unkind
and ungenerous of me. But--ah, Joanna, you guessed it when I did not
know!--you said she must have been here--you are honest and knew no
harm! My mother was born at Melmar; it is hers, though she is poor--and
she is coming home.”
“Coming home! this is but a poor story, mademoiselle,” said Melmar.
“_That_ person died abroad long ago, and was mother to nobody; but it’s
clever, by George! uncommonly clever. Her mother’s coming home, and my
land belongs to her! cool, that, I must say. Will you take Patricia for
your lady’s maid, mademoiselle?”
“Ah, you sneer, you all sneer!” cried Desirée. “I could sneer too, if I
were as guilty; but it is true, and you know it is true; you, who are
our kinsman and should have cared for us--you, who have planned to
deceive a poor stranger girl--you know it is true!”
“If he does,” cried Joanna, “_you’re_ no’ to stand there and tell him.
He has been as kind to you as if you belonged to us--you don’t belong to
us--go--go away this moment. I will not let you stay here!”
And Joanna stamped her foot in the excess of her indignation and
sympathy with her father, who looked on, through all this side-play of
feelings, entirely unmoved. Poor little Desirée, on the contrary, was
stung and wounded beyond measure by Joanna’s violence. She gave her one
terrified, passionate look, half reproachful, half defiant, had hard ado
to restrain a burst of girlish, half-weeping recrimination, and then
turned round with one sob out of her poor little heart, which felt as
though it would burst, and went away with a forlorn, heroical dignity
out of the room. Poor Desirée would not have looked back for a kingdom,
but she hoped to have been called back, for all that, and could almost
have fallen down on the threshold with mortification and disappointment,
when she found that no one interfered to prevent her withdrawal. The
poor child was full of sentiment, but had a tender heart withal. She
could not bear to leave a house where she had lived so long after this
fashion, and but for her pride, Desirée would have rushed back to fall
into Joanna’s arms, and beg everybody’s pardon; but her pride sustained
her in the struggle, and at length vanquished her “feelings". Instead of
rushing into Joanna’s arms, she went to the Mistress, who still waited
for her in the little room, and who had already been edified by hearing
the fall of Oswald’s chair, and seeing that gentleman, as he went
furiously forth, kicking Patricia’s lap-dog out of his way in the hall.
The Mistress was human. She listened to those sounds and witnessed that
sight with a natural, but not very amiable sentiment. She was rather
pleased than otherwise to be so informed that she had brought a
thunderbolt to Melmar.
“Let them bear it as they dow,” said the Mistress, with an angry
triumph; “neither comfort nor help to any mortal has come out of Me’mar
for mony a day;” and she received the unfortunate little cause of all
this commotion with more favor than before. Poor little Desirée came in
with a quivering lip and a full eye, scarcely able to speak, but
determined not to cry, which was no small trial of resolution. The
family of Melmar were her mother’s enemies--some of them had tried to
delude, and some had been unkind to herself--yet she knew them; and the
Mistress, who came to take her away, was a stranger. It was like going
out once more into the unknown world.
So Desirée left Melmar, with a heart which fluttered with pain, anger,
indignation, and a strange fear of the future, and the Mistress guided
to Norlaw almost with tenderness the child of that Mary who had been a
lifelong vexation to herself. They left behind them no small amount of
dismay and anxiety, all the house vaguely finding out that something was
wrong, while Joanna alone stood by her father’s side, angry, rude, and
careless of every one, bestowing her whole impatient regards upon him.