NO sooner did Mrs. Grainger find herself safely locked in her room,
than she re-opened the letter the post had just brought her. It was
exceedingly brief, and seemed hastily written:
“Strictly and imperatively private.
“Trieste, Tuesday morning.
“My dear Miss Grainger,--I have just arrived here from
India, with important despatches for the government. The
fatigues of a long journey have re-opened an old wound, and
laid me up for a day; but as my papers are of such a nature
as will require my presence to explain, there is no use in
my forwarding them by another; I wait, therefore, and write
this hurried note, to say that I will make you a flying
visit on Saturday next I say _you_, because I wish to see
yourself and alone. Manage this in the best way you can. I
hope to arrive by the morning train, and be at the villa by
eleven or twelve at latest. Whether you receive me or not,
say nothing of this note to your nieces; but I trust and
pray you will not refuse half an hour to your attached and
faithful friend,
“Harry Calvert.”
It was a name to bring up many memories, and Miss Grainger sat gazing at
the lines before her in a state of wonderment blended with terror. Once
only, had she read of him since his departure; it was, when agitated and
distressed to know what had become of him, she ventured on a step of,
for her, daring boldness, and to whose temerity she would not make her
nieces the witnesses. She wrote a letter to Miss Sophia Calvert, begging
to have some tidings of her cousin, and some clue to his whereabouts.
The answer came by return of post; it ran thus:
“Miss Calvert has to acknowledge the receipt of Miss
Grainger’s note of the 8th inst.
“Miss Calvert is not aware of any claim Miss Grainger can
prefer to address her by letter, still less, of any right to
bring under her notice the name of the person she has dared
to inquire after. Any further correspondence from Miss
Grainger will be sent back unopened.”
The reading of this epistle made the old lady keep her bed for three
days, her sufferings being all the more aggravated, since they imposed
secrecy. From that day forth she had never heard Calvert’s name; and
though for hours long she would think and ponder over him, the mention
of him was so strictly interdicted, that the very faintest allusion to
him was even avoided.
And now, like one risen from the grave, he was come back again! Come
back to renew, Heaven could tell what sorrows of the past, and refresh
the memory of days that had always been dashed with troubles.
It was already Friday. Where and how could a message reach him? She
dreaded him, it is true: but why she dreaded him she knew not. It was a
sort of vague terror, such as some persons feel at the sound of the
sea, or the deep-voiced moaning of the wind through trees. It conveyed
a sense of peril through a sense of sadness--no more. She had grown to
dislike him from the impertinent rebuke Miss Calvert had administered to
her on his account. The mention of Calvert was coupled with a darkened
room, leeches, and ice on the head, and worse than all, a torturing
dread that her mind might wander, and the whole secret history of the
correspondence leak out in her ramblings.
Were not these reasons enough to make her tremble at the return of the
man who had occasioned so much misery? Yet, if she could even find a
pretext, could she be sure that she could summon courage to say, “I’ll
not see you?” There are men to whom a cruelly cold reply is a repulse;
but Calvert was not one of these, and this she knew well. Besides, were
she to decline to receive him, might it not drive him to come and ask to
see the girls, who now, by acceding to his request, need never hear or
know of his visit?
After long and mature deliberation, she determined on her line of
action. She would pretend to the girls that her letter was from her
lawyer, who, accidentally finding himself in her neighbourhood, begged
an interview as he passed through Orta on his way to Milan, and for this
purpose she could go over in the boat alone, and meet Calvert on his
arrival. In this way she could see him without the risk of her nieces’
knowledge, and avoid the unpleasantness of not asking him to remain when
he had once passed her threshold.
“I can at least show him,” she thought, “that our old relations are
not to be revived, though I do not altogether break off all
acquaintanceship. No man has a finer sense of tact,-and he will
understand the distinction I intend, and respect it” She also bethought
her it smacked somewhat of a vengeance--though she knew not precisely
how or why--that she’d take Sophia Calvert’s note along with her, and
show him how her inquiry for him was treated by his family. She had a
copy of her own, a most polite and respectful epistle it was, and in no
way calculated to evoke the rebuke it met with. “He’ll be perhaps able
to explain the mystery,” thought she, “and whatever Miss Calvert’s
misconception, he can eradicate it when he sees her.”
“How fussy and important aunt is this morning!” said Florence, as the
old lady stepped into the boat. “If the interview were to be with the
Lord Chancellor instead of a London solicitor, she could not look more
profoundly impressed with its solemnity.”
“She’ll be dreadful when she comes back,” said Emily, laughing; “so
full of all the law jargon that she couldn’t understand, but will feel a
right to repeat, because she has paid for it.”
It was thus they criticised her. Just as many aunts and uncles, and
some papas and mammas, too, are occasionally criticised by those younger
members of the family who are prone to be very caustic as to the mode
certain burdens are borne, the weight of which has never distressed
their own shoulders. And this, not from any deficiency of affection,
but simply through a habit which, in the levity of our day, has become
popular, and taught us to think little of the ties of parentage, and
call a father a Governor.