Маргарет Олифант
The Last of the Mortimers
Chapter IX
NEXT day that change upon Sarah’s whole appearance continued, and throughout the whole week. She was like herself once more. Carson made no more stealthy expeditions out of doors before my sister set out on her drive. Sarah did not stir in her chair and eye me desperately when the door opened. She even seemed to fall deaf again with that old, soft, slight hardness of hearing which I used to suspect in her. There was no pressure on her heart to startle her ears.
While I in the meantime tried my best to think nothing about it, tried to turn a blank face towards what might happen, and to take the days as they came. I have not come to be fifty without having troubles in plenty. For the last dozen years, to be sure, there had been only common embarrassments. The fewer people one has to love, the fewer pleasures and joys are possible, the less grow our sorrows. It is cold comfort, but it is a fact notwithstanding. Grief and delight go hand in hand in full lives; when we are stinted down into a corner both fall off. We suffer less, we enjoy less; we suffer nothing, we enjoy nothing in time, only common pricks and vexations, which send no thrill to the slumbering heart. So we had been living for years; happy enough, nothing to disturb us; or not happy at all, if you choose to take that view of the subject; true either way. Not such a thing as real emotion lighting upon our house, only secondary feelings; no love to speak of, but kindness; no joy, but occasional pleasure; no grief, but sometimes regret. A very composed life, which had been broken in upon quite suddenly by a bewildering shadow,—tragic fear, doubt, alarm,—sudden mystery no ways explainable, or madness explainable but hopeless. In this pause of dismay and doubt, while the dark, unknown, inexplicable figure had turned away from the door a little, it was hard to turn from its fascination and go quietly back to that quiet life.
Little Sara Cresswell came much about me in the library in those days; she interested herself in my business much; she tried to interfere with my work and help me, as the kitten called it. All the outlays on the estate, the works that were going on, the improvements I loved to set a-going—which did not all come to anything,—and the failures, of which to be sure there were plenty—pleased the impatient creature mightily. I was considered rather speculative and fanciful among the Cheshire squires; they did not approve of my goings on; they thought me a public nuisance for preserving no game, and making a fuss about cottages. But I am sorry to say little Sara did not agree with the squires. She thought my small bits of improvements very slow affairs indeed; she grew indignant at my stinginess and contracted ideas. She thought any little I did were just preliminary attempts not worth mentioning. When was I to begin the work in earnest she wanted to know?
“What work, Sara?”
“What work? Why, here are you, godmamma, an old lady—you will never grow any wiser or any better than you are,” cried the intolerable child. “You can’t get any more good out of all that belongs to the Park than just your nice little dinners, and teas, and the carriage, and the servants, and, perhaps, half-a-dozen dresses in the year,—though I do believe three would be nearer true,—and to keep all these farms, and fields, and meadows, and orchards, and things, all for godmamma Sarah and you! Don’t you feel frightened sometimes when you wake up suddenly at night?”
“You saucy little puss!—why?” cried I.
“To think of the poor,” said Sara, with a solemn look. She held herself straight up, and looked quite dignified as she turned her reproving eyes on me. “Quantities of families without any homes, quantities of little children growing up worse than your pigs, godmamma, quantities of people starving, and living, and crowding, and quarrelling in black streets not as broad as this room, with courts off from them, like those horrid, frightful places in Liverpool. While out here you are living in your big rooms, in your big house, with the green park all round and round you, and farmers, and gardeners, and cottagers, and servants, and all sorts of people, working to make you comfortable; with more money than you know what to do with, and everything belonging to yourself, and nobody to interfere with you. And why have you any right to it more than them?”
Little Sara’s figure swelled out, and her dark eyes shone bright as she was speaking. It took away my breath. “Are you a Chartist, child?” I cried.
“I think I am a Socialist,” said Sara, very composedly; “but I don’t quite know. I think we should all go shares. I have told you so a dozen times, godmamma. Suppose papa has twelve hundred a year,—I do believe he has a great deal more,—isn’t it dreadful? and all, not out of the ground like yours, but from worrying people into lawsuits and getting them into trouble. Well, suppose it was all divided among a dozen families, a hundred a year. People can live very comfortably, I assure you, godmamma, upon a hundred a year.”
“Who told you, child?” said I.
“The curate has only eighty,” said Sara; “his wife dresses the baby and makes all its things herself, and they have very comfortable little dinners. The window in my old nursery—the end window you know—just overlooks their little parlour. They look so snug and comfortable when the baby is good. To be sure it must be a bore taking one’s dinner with the baby in one’s lap; and I am sure she is always in a fright about visitors coming. I think it would be quite delightful to give them one of papa’s hundreds a year.”
“In addition to their eighty?” said I. “Why, then, there is an end of going shares.”
Sara coughed and stammered for a moment over this, quite at fault; but not being troubled either about logic or consistency, soon plunged on again as bold as ever.
“Whatever you say, godmamma, people can live quite comfortable on a hundred a year. I have reckoned it all up; and I don’t see really any reason why anybody should have more. Only fancy what a quantity of hundreds a year you and godmamma Sarah might distribute if you would. And, instead of that, you only build a few cottages and give a few people work—work! as if they had not as good a right as anybody to their living. People were not born only to work, and to be miserable, and to die.”
“People were born to do a great many harder things than you think for, Sara,” said I. “Do you think I am going to argue with a little velvet kitten like you? I advise you to try your twelve families on the twelve hundreds a year. But what do you suppose you would do if your godmamma and I, having no heirs, left the Park to you, and you had your will, and might do what you pleased?”
What put this into my head I cannot say; but I gave it utterance on the spur of the moment. Sara stared at me for a moment, with her pretty mouth falling a little open in astonishment. Then she jumped up and clapped her hands. “Do, godmamma!” she cried out, “oh do; such a glorious scatter I should make! everybody should have enough, and we’d build the loveliest little chapel in existence to St. Millicent, if there is such a saint. I have always thought it would be perfectly delightful to be a great heiress. Godmamma, do!”
To see her all sparkling with delight and eagerness quite charmed me. Had she ever heard a hint of being left heiress to the Park, of course she must have looked wretched and conscious. Anybody would that had thought of such a great acquisition. Sara had not an idea of that. She thought it the best fun possible. She clapped her hands and cried, “Do, godmamma!” She was as bold as an innocent young lion, without either guile or fear.
“It should be tied down so that you could not part with a single acre, nor give away above five pounds at a time,” said I.
“Ah!” said Sara, thoughtfully; “I dare say there would be a way of cheating you somehow though, godmamma,” she said, waking up again with a touch of malice. “People are always cheated after they are dead. I knew a dear old lady that would not have her portrait taken for anybody but one friend whom she loved very much; but, what do you think? after she was gone they found the wicked wretch of a photographic man that kept the thing,—the negative they call it,—and printed scores of portraits, and let everybody have one. I would have given my little finger to have had one; but to go and cheat her, and baulk her after she was dead, and all for love, that is cruel. I would rather go against what you said right out, godmamma, than go against what I knew was in your heart.”
“Ah, Sara, you don’t know anything about it,” said I. “If you had a great deal of money all to yourself, and could do anything you liked with it,—as heaven knows you may have soon enough!—and were just as foolish with it as you intend, how disgusted you would be with your charity, to be sure, after a while! What a little misanthrope you would grow! What mercenary, discontented wretches you would think all the people! I think I can see you fancying how much good you are doing, and yet doing only harm instead. Then that disagreeable old fellow, experience, would take you in hand. The living are cheated as well as the dead. We are all cheated, and cheat ourselves. Nothing would make me go and have my portrait taken; but I don’t deny if I found out that people had got it spontaneously, and handed it about among themselves all for love, I should not be angry. You are a little goose. You don’t know what manner of spirit you are of.”
“It is very easy talking, godmamma,” said Sara. “I was watching yesterday when godmamma Sarah went out for her drive. The groom and the boy were hard at work ever so long with the carriage and horses before it was ready. I saw them out of the window of Alice’s room while she was mending my dress for me. Then came old Jacob to the door with the carriage. Then came godmamma Sarah leaning on Carson’s arm to go downstairs. So there were two great horses and four human creatures,—three men and a woman,—all employed for ever so long to give one old lady a half-hour’s drive, when a walk would have done her twenty times as much good,” concluded the child hastily, under her breath.
“You speak in a very improper manner;—an old lady! You ought to have more respect for your godmamma,” said I, indignantly. “Your godmamma has nothing that is not perfectly suitable to her condition of life.”
“But godmamma Sarah is an old lady, whether I am respectful or not,” said the girl stoutly. “When I see ladies driving about I wonder at them. Two great horses that could fight or plough; and two great men that might do the same; and all occupied about one lady’s drive! If I were queen I would do away with drives! Ah! shouldn’t I like to be Semiramis, the Semiramis of the story, that persuaded the king to let her be queen for a day, and turned everything upside down, and then–”
“Cut off the king’s head. Would you do it, Sara, after he had trusted you?” said I.
Sara came to a sudden pause. “I would not mind about cutting off his head; but, to be sure, being trusted is different. As if it were not a story, not a word true! But please, godmamma,” cried the wild creature, making me a curtsey, “don’t leave me the Park. I don’t want to be trusted, please. I want to have my own way.”
Which was the truest word she ever said.
Chapter X
THE days wore away thus in talks with little Sara, and vague expeditions out of doors, a misty sort of confused life. I felt as one feels when one knows of some dreadful storm, or trial, that has passed over for a little, only to come again by and by. After seeing Sarah show so much feeling of one kind and another,—distress, anxiety, and apprehension one day, and comfort and relief another,—I could not bind myself with the thought that this could possibly pass off and come to nothing. Such things don’t happen once and get done with. There was a secret reason somewhere working all the same, either in her own mind alone, or in the past and her history as well; and one time or other it must make its appearance again. Whether it was her mind giving way; and in that case it did not matter whether Mr. Luigi came back or not, for if he did not appear, fancy would, doubtless seize upon some other; or whether it was some person this young man resembled, or some part of her life which she was afraid to hear of again which he recalled to her, in any case it was sure to break out some other day; and I cannot tell what a strange uncomfortable excitement it brought into my life, and how the impulse of watching came upon me. Sarah’s smallest motions got a meaning in my eyes. I could not take things easily as I had used to do. She had always, of course, been very important in the house; but she had been a kind of still life for a long time now. She would not be consulted about leases or improvements, or anything done on the estate. So long as everything was very comfortable and nice about her,—the fire just to her liking, which Ellis managed to a nicety; the cooking satisfactory; her wools nicely matched, and plenty of new patterns; her screen just in the proper position, protecting her from the draught; and the Times always ready when she was ready for it,—Sarah got on, as it appeared, very comfortably. Despite all that, to be sure she would get angry sometimes; but I was used to it, and did not mind much. Only to think that a person, who had either in the past or in her own mind something to work her up to such a pitch of excitement, could live such a life! She seemed to have quite resumed it now with a strange kind of unreasoning self-consolation. If it was the Italian that disturbed her, how could she persuade herself that he was not coming back again? Her quiet falling back into her old way was inexplicable to me.
I seemed to myself to stand just then in a very strange position. Sarah on one side of me all shut up and self secluded, with a whole life all full of strange incidents, dazzling, brilliant, unforgotten years, actual things that had happened locked in her silent memory; and little Sara on tiptoe, on the other side, eager to plunge in her own way into the life she dreamt of, but knew nothing about. All the wild notions of the little girl, ridiculous-wise opinions, poor dear child, her principles of right and justice with which she would rule the world, and all her innocent break-downs and failures, ever in her fancy, came pouring down upon me, pelting me at all times. And on the other side was my sister, content to spend her life in that easy-chair, my sister whom I knew nothing about, whose memory could go out of the Park drawing-room into exciting scenes and wonderful events which I had never heard of. How strange it was! I don’t remember much that I did in those days. I lived under a confused, uneasy cloud, ready enough to be amused with Sara’s philosophy. I am not sure that I was not all the more disposed to smile at and tease the dear child, and be amused by all the new ideas she started, for the troubled sensation in my own mind. Nothing could have happened, I think, that would have surprised me. Sometimes it came into my head whether my father could have done, or tried to do, something when he was abroad, to cut us off from the succession; and once I jumped bolt upright out of my seat, thinking—what if my father had married abroad and had a son, and we were living usurpers, and Sarah knew of it! How that idea did set my heart beating! If I had not been so much frightened for her passions, I should have gone to her directly and questioned her. But to be sure my father was not the man to leave off his own will for any consideration about his daughters; and would have been only too proud to have had a son. After thinking, I gave up that idea; but my heart went at a gallop for hours after, and I should not have been surprised to hear that anything had happened, or was going to happen. Really, anything real and actual, however bad, would have been a relief from the mystery which preyed upon me.
“Papa is coming to fetch me, to-morrow,” said Sara Cresswell, in rather a discontented tone. “There is to be some ridiculous ball, or something. Can anybody imagine anything so absurd as asking people to a ball when you want to show you’re sorry to part with them? and papa might have known, if he had ever taken the trouble to think, that I have no dress–”
“Sara, child! how many hundreds a year do you give your dressmaker?” said I.
“That has nothing whatever to do with it, godmamma,” said Sara, making a slightly confused pause; and then resuming, with a defiant look into my face,—“if I might give one hundred a year away out of all papa has got, I could live upon one dress in a year; but what is the use of shillings and sixpences to beggars, or of saving up a few pounds additional to papa? I don’t call that any economy. If we were living according to nature, it would be quite different; then I should want no ball-dresses. Besides,” continued the refractory creature, “I don’t want to go; and if papa insists on me going, why shouldn’t I get some pleasure out of it? Everything else will be just the same as usual, of course.—Godmamma,” exclaimed Sara suddenly, with a new thought, “will you ask papa anything about this business? it is not done with yet. He will come back, and all will have to be gone over again. Will you mention it to papa?”
She had been thinking of it too,—she, thoughtless as she was, found something in it not of a kind to die away and be passed over. I could not mistake, nor pretend to mistake, what she meant; it was to be read in her very eyes.
“My dear, I have told you already that your godmamma can have nothing whatever to do with this young man,” said I, with a little irritation; “if she is out of sorts it is nobody’s business. Do you fancy she could keep up an acquaintance with an Italian countess for more than twenty years, and I know nothing of it? Nonsense! Some fancy, or some old recollections, or something, had an effect upon her just at the moment. Speak to your father! Why, you told me he knew nothing about the Countess Sermoneta. Shall I ask him to feel your godmamma’s pulse and prescribe for her? or do you suppose, even if he were fit for that, your godmamma would allow it, without feeling herself ill? Your papa is highly respectable, and has always been much trusted by the family. But there are things with which one’s solicitor has nothing whatever to do; there are things which belong to one’s self, and to nobody else in the world.”
Poor little Sara! I did not mean to mortify the child! She grew crimson with pride and annoyance. I had no intention of reminding her that she was only the attorney’s daughter; but she reminded herself of it on the instant, with all the pride of a duchess. She did not say a syllable, the little proud creature; but turned away with such an air, her cheek burning, her eyes flashing, her little foot spurning the ground. She went off with a great sweep of her full skirts, disturbing the air to such an extent that I quite felt the breeze on my cheek. Perhaps it was just as well. Of course there was a difference between the Mortimers and the Cresswells. Because we did not stand on our dignity, people were so ready to forget what they owed to us. It was just as well the spoiled child could learn, for once in her life, that it was all of grace and favour that she was made so much of at the Park.
I made quite sure that she went to her own room directly, to see after the packing of her things, with some thoughts of starting for home at once, without even waiting for her father. However, when she began to talk to her little maid Alice, about that ball-dress, I daresay the other matter went out of the child’s head. The next that I saw of her was when she made a rush downstairs to ask me for postage stamps, with a letter in her hand, all closed ready to go off. She was still pouting and ill-tempered; but she contrived to show me the address of the letter. Alas, poor dear Bob Cresswell! it was to the Chester milliner, the best one we had, no doubt ordering a dress for the ball. Yet I do believe, for all that, the child could really have done what she said. I believe, if some great misfortune had happened, and her father had lost all his money, Sara’s first impulse would have been to clap her hands and cry, “Now everybody shall see!” Of course it is very dreadful to lose one’s fortune and become poor and have to work. But I wonder are there no other spoiled creatures in the world like Sara, who have their own ideas about such calamities, and think they would be the most famous fun in the world? Too much of anything makes a revulsion in the mind. Such over-indulged, capricious, spoiled children have often hardy bold spirits, and would be thankful for some real, not sham necessity. But, in the meantime, she had not the slightest idea of doing without her ball-dress.
