Маргарет Олифант
The Last of the Mortimers
Chapter VII
“YOU, who would not go out to dinner because you could not afford it!” cried Harry, “how do you dare venture on such rash proceedings? It appears to me you have adopted a new member into the family.”
“Ah, but it is different,” said I; “going out to dinner was a matter of choice, this was a matter of necessity.”
“It depends upon how people think,” said Harry, “the priest and the Levite were of quite a different opinion; but if you mean to have friends and pensioners, and get rich people and poor people about you, Milly darling, we’ll have to think of new supplies. I cannot imagine how it has gone out of my mind all this time. Pendleton actually asked me to-day whether I had heard anything more about your grandfather’s house.”
“My grandfather’s house!” I said; and we both looked at each other and laughed; our removal had put all that out of our heads. Chester, and new places to look at, and new people to see, and just the usual disturbance of one’s thoughts in changing about, had betrayed Harry who was so anxious about it, just as much as it had betrayed me.
“I must see after it now in earnest. A thousand pounds or so, you know,” said Harry, with a kind of serio-comic look, “would be worth a great deal to you just now.”
And with this he went out. A thousand pounds or so! twenty would have been nice; aye, or ten, or even five, more than just our regular money. However, I only laughed to myself, and went upstairs to my poor gentleman. After all, I am not so sure that he was a gentleman, or at least anything unusual in himself. He was very independent, and want, and a passionate dread of being found out, and made a pauper of, had carried him to a kind of heroism for the moment. But when he got used to me, and consented to let me bring him things, he became very much like other people. He was always eager to get the newspaper and see the news. I carried him up the Chester paper, which Mrs. Goldsworthy took in just now.
When I went into his room, the first thing I saw was two letters on the table. He was just drawing back, and still trembling from his exertion, for he was still very weak. He put the letters towards me with a little movement of his hand.
“I am writing to ask for work; I’m wonderfully steady now, wonderfully steady; if they would only give me work! Ah, it’s hard times when a man can’t get work,” he said.
I glanced at them as he wished me. “Cresswell?” said I; “I think I know his daughter, Mr. Ward. I’ll speak to her; perhaps she can make him help you.”
“She can make him do whatever she likes,” said my friend, with his wistful eyes; “it’ll be well for him if she don’t make him do what he’ll repent.”
“How do you mean?” said I, with some surprise.
“Well!” said my patient, “it’s a story I don’t understand, and I can’t give you the rights of it. I was never more than just about the office an hour or so in the day, getting my copy. You see there’s two rich old ladies about half-a-dozen miles out o’ Chester, and there’s either some flaw in their title, or something that way. I know for certain there was an advertisement written out for the Times, for one Mortimer–”
“Mortimer!”
“Yes,” he said, looking at me in his eager way. “I suppose it had been some day when he had quarrelled with them, and meant to bring in the true owner; when all of a sudden it was withdrawn, and has never been in the Times to this day; and Miss Cresswell after that spent a long time at the Park. Somebody said in the office it was more than likely the ladies would leave their property to her; and to be sure if that was so, it would be none of her father’s business to hunt up the right heir.”
I felt completely dizzy and bewildered; I kept looking down upon the table, where the letters seemed to be flitting about with the strangest unsteady motion.
“And are the ladies called Mortimer?” I said, almost under my breath.
“Yes; they’re folks well known in Chester, though seldom to be seen here,” said Mr. Ward; “the youngest one, Miss Milly, is a good creature; the other one, and her name is Sarah, was a great beauty in her day. I remember when I was a lad, we young fellows would walk all that way just to see her riding out of the gates, or driving her grey ponies; they called her the beautiful Miss Mortimer in those days. I daresay now she’s as old, and as crazy, and as chilly—but thank heaven, she can never be as poor, and as friendless, and as suffering—as me.”
I could not make any answer for a long time. I stood with my hands clasped together, and my brain in a perfect whirl; these words, Sarah, Miss Mortimer, the Park, going in gusts through my mind. What did it mean? I had come upstairs with a smile on my lips about the fabulous house of my grandfather. Was this the real story now about to disclose itself? I felt for a moment that overwhelming impatience to hear more which makes one giddy when on the verge of a discovery; but I did not want to betray myself to the old man.
“And do you mean,” said I, holding fast by the table to keep myself from trembling, “that they are not the lawful owners of their estate?”
“Nay, I cannot tell you that,” said my patient, very coolly; “but what could be wanted with an advertisement in the Times for one Mortimer? and old Cresswell holding it back, you know, as soon as it was likely that his girl might get the Park.”
“Do you remember what was the Mortimer’s name that was to be advertised for? I know some Mortimers,” said I, with a little tremble in my voice.
“I can’t say I exactly remember just at this moment,” said the old man, after a little pause. “It wasn’t like a Mortimer name; it was—nay, stay,—it was one of the cotton-spinners’ names; I remember I thought of the spinning-jenny directly; something in that way; I can’t tell exactly what it was.”
I could scarcely stand. I could scarcely keep silent; and yet I durst not, for something that choked the voice in my throat, suggest my father’s name boldly to his recollection. I hurried away and threw myself on a chair in my own room. All was silent there; but with just a door between us Lizzie was playing with my boy; and his crows of infant delight, and her soft but homely voice, seemed to break in upon the solitude I wanted. I rose from that retreat, and went down to our little drawing room. There it was Domenico’s voice, round and full, singing, whistling, talking, all in a breath. Nowhere could I get quiet enough to think over the extraordinary information I had just received. Or, rather, indeed it was not either Lizzie’s voice, or Domenico’s, but the agitation and tumult in my own mind; the beating of my heart, and the stir and restlessness that rose in me, that prevented me from thinking. Could it be possible that my father’s languid prophecy, which Aunt Connor reported so lightly, had truth in it after all? The idea excited me beyond the power of thinking. I went out and came in. I took up various kinds of work and threw them down again; I could do nothing till Harry came in, and I had told him. Then I fancied there might possibly seem some sense and coherence in the news. If this were to come true, then what prospects might be dawning upon us! In this sudden illumination my past dread returned to me, as a fear which has been forgotten for a time always does. The war! if Harry’s wife turned out a great heiress, must not Harry himself cease to be a soldier and enter into his fortune? Ah me! but he would not; he would not if I should ask him on my knees; not, at least, till he had taken his chance of getting killed like all the rest.
This threw me back, with scarcely a moment’s interval, into the full tide of those thoughts which had tortured me before we came to Chester. I got up from my chair and began to walk about the room in the restlessness of great sudden apprehension and terror. All my trouble came back. My fears had but been asleep, the real circumstances were unchanged; even to-day, this very day, Harry might be ordered to the war.
He saw my nervous, troubled look in a moment when he came in; he was struck by it at once. “You look as you once looked in Edinburgh, Milly,” he said, coming up to me; “what is the matter? Something has happened while I have been away?”
“Harry,” cried I, with a little excitement, suddenly remembering that I had news to tell him. “I have found the Park and the Sarah; I have found the estate I am heiress to; I have found out something far more important than that old red-brick house; and, do you know, hearing of this brought everything to my mind directly, all my terrors and troubles. Never mind, I’ll tell you what I heard in the first place. It was from my poor gentleman upstairs.”
Harry, who had heard me with great interest up to this point, suddenly shrugged up his shoulders, and put his lips together with that disdainful provoking whew! with which men think they can always put one down.
“Oh, indeed, you need not be scornful!” said I; “he writes papers for a lawyer, and had a very good way of knowing. He says Mr. Cresswell had an advertisement all ready to be put into the Times some months ago, for one Mortimer, whose name reminded him of a spinning-jenny. But it never was sent to the paper, because Miss Cresswell went out to the Park, and it was thought the ladies would make her their heiress; but it was supposed there was some flaw in their title, and that this Mortimer would be the true heir.”
“The Park, and the ladies, and Miss Cresswell, and it was supposed? By Jove, Milly!” cried Harry, with great vehemence, “do you see how important this is?—have you no better grounds than it was thought, and, it was supposed?”
“You are unreasonable, Harry; I only heard what he had to say; and, besides, it might not be my father, nor the same people at all. He could not tell me, I only heard what he had to say.”
But this explanation did not satisfy Harry; he became as excited as I had been, but in a different way. He snatched up his hat, and would have gone at once, on the impulse of the moment, to see Mr. Cresswell, had not I detained him. The news had the same influence on Harry that it had on me. It woke us both out of that happy quiescence into which we had fallen when we came here. We were no longer dwelling at peace, safe in each other’s society; once more we were thrown into all the agitation that belonged to our condition and prospects.
Harry was a soldier, ready to be sent off any day to the camp and the trenches, gravely anxious about a home and shelter for his wife and child; I, a soldier’s wife, ready at any moment to have the light of my eyes torn from me, and my life cut in twain. After the first hurried burst of consultation, we were both silent, thinking on these things. Certainly it was better that we should have been aroused. The reality coming at once, all unapprehended and unthought of, would otherwise have been an intolerable blow. Now there was little fear that we could forget again.
It was natural that we should return to the subject again and again during the day. Harry drew my father’s old books, and the drawing he had laughed at, from his own desk, where he had kept them; and with them the envelope, full of formal documents, which he had written to Aunt Connor for with so much haste and importance, to substantiate my claim to my grandfather’s house; there they lay, unused, almost unlooked at. Harry shook his head as he drew them out. We neither of us said anything. We were neither of us sorry that we had forgotten all about it for a time. For my own part, I went away upstairs very like to cry. This information, which had thrown us back into so many troubles, might never come to anything; and even if it did, what difference would that make? Harry, if I was found out to be a king’s daughter, would never leave his profession, or shrink from its dangers, while this war lasted. My pleasant forgetfulness was over now. He was looking at this subject in the same light he had looked at it before we left Edinburgh;—it would be a home for me.
Chapter VIII
IT was an agitated, troubled day. The accidental nature of the information, calmly told to one who was supposed to have no interest in it; the coincidence of the names; the startled feeling we had in thus being suddenly brought into contact with people nearly connected with us, who were unaware of our existence, and of whose existence we had been unaware, acted very powerfully on our imaginations. I don’t think either Harry or I had a moment’s doubt upon the subject. As to the identity of the persons, certainly none; and I confess that I, for one, received with perfect faith the suggestion that there was a wrong somehow in the matter, and that my father had turned out to be the true heir. It never occurred to me to imagine any other reason for the suppressed advertisement; and Mr. Cresswell, whom I had thought at the very climax of respectability, suddenly descended into a romantic lawyer-villain in my excited eyes.
To add to the agitation of my thoughts, Sara Cresswell chose to take that day for one of her odd visits. She came in the afternoon to stay with me till evening. She was clearly quite beyond her father’s control; not even subject to a wholesome restriction of hours and meal-times; for she never said her father was out to dinner on the occasions of her coming, nor accounted in any way for her liberty at his dinner-hour. The little brougham used to come for her at night, and her little maid in it—a sign, I suppose, that the father did not disapprove; but that was all. Only wilful as she was, I confess I had grown to like her very much. I sometimes lectured her; and once or twice we quarrelled; but she always came back next time just the same as ever. So quarrelling with her was evidently useless. I must say I had a very strange sensation in welcoming her to-day. Could she know her father’s base purposes about the Park which, according to all appearances, ought to be mine? Could she have been paying her court to those ladies with the hope of supplanting the true heir? A glance at her face, only too frank and daring always, might have undeceived me; but of course, I was bucklered up in my own thoughts, and could see nothing else.
“You are ill,” said Sara, “or you are worried; or ’tis I have done something. If I have, I don’t mind; that is to say, I am very sorry, of course, and I will never do it again. But if you think you will get rid of me by looking glum, you are sadly mistaken. I shan’t go. If you won’t have me for a friend, I shall come for a servant, and fight it out with Lizzie. Lizzie, will you have me for ‘a neebor?’ Ah, I’m learning Scotch.”
“Eh, that’s no Scotch!” cried Lizzie; “ye dinna ken what it is. I’m, maybe, no that good at learning folk now, for I have to speak English mysel’.”
“And Italian, Lizzie!” cried Sara, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about my “glum” face.
Lizzie’s elbows and ankles fell almost immediately, and the most extraordinary blush rose on the girl’s face. “Eh, but it’s funny to hear twa speaking’t,” cried Lizzie, evading the subject eagerly. The truth is, she had got overmuch involved in the delightful excitement of the new language, and in consequence of the ludicrous fascination of the dictionary, by means of which Domenico and she conducted their conversations, had come to like the society of that worthy. When I found him escorting my child-maid and the baby out-of-doors, I thought it was time to remonstrate on the subject; and my remonstrance had woke a certain womanly consciousness in the awkward-sensitive girlish bosom of Lizzie. She was overwhelmed with shame.
Fortunately, the mention of the “twa” diverted Sara’s thoughts. She had never ceased to be interested in Mr. Luigi, and I saw a world of questions in her eye immediately. I hurried her downstairs, not feeling able, really, for random talk; and troubled, more than I could express, to think how disappointed Harry would be when he came home full of one subject, expecting to talk it over with me, and found me occupied entertaining a stranger,—a stranger, too, who had something to do with it, who was our rival, and plotting against us, all unaware of who we were.
However, as it happened, one of the first things Sara’s eye lighted upon when we entered the room, was that old drawing of poor papa’s, which lay on the table. She was the quickest creature imaginable. She had it in her hand before I knew what she was about. Her exclamation made me start and tremble as if I had been found out in something. Here was another witness giving evidence freely, without any wish or contrivance of mine.
“Why, here is the Park!” cried Sara, “actually the very house! Where, in all the world, did you get it? Have you been there? Do you know them? Why, I thought you were quite strangers to Chester! I never knew anything so odd. Who did it? It is frightfully bad, to be sure, but a staring likeness. Dear Mrs. Langham, where did you get this?”
“I got it out of an old book,” said I, with a guilty faltering which I could not quite conceal. “What Park is it? where is it? I do not know the place.”
But I am sure if ever anybody looked guilty and the possessor of an uncomfortable secret, it was me at that moment. I turned away from Sara, putting away that envelope with the certificates which Harry (how careless!) had also left on the table. I am sure she must have felt there was something odd in my voice.
“What Park? why, the Park, to be sure. Everybody in Chester knows the Park; and here is an inscription, I declare!” she cried, running with it to the window. “Oh, look here; do look here! It must have been some old lover of godmamma Sarah’s. I never saw anything so funny in my life. ‘Sarah as I saw her last.’ Oh, Mrs. Langham! do come and look at this comical, delightful thing! Isn’t it famous? She’s as old—as old as any one’s grandmother. Who could it be? who could it possibly be?”
“Did you say your godmother?” said I. This was another novel aggravation. Of course I had heard Sara speak of her godmothers; but, somehow, I had not identified them with the ladies who were expected to make her their heir.
But Sara was too much excited and delighted, and full of glee and ridicule, to answer me. She kept dancing about and clapping her hands over the drawing; always returning to it, and indulging in criticisms as free and as depreciatory as Harry’s had been. It was getting dark, and I confess I was very glad to sit down a little in the half light, and repose myself as well as I could while she was thus engaged and wanted no attention from me. Just then, however, I heard Harry’s foot coming upstairs, and, to my great wonder and almost alarm, somebody else entered with Harry. I could scarcely see him as I rose to receive my husband’s companion. Somebody else, however, saw him quicker than I did. In a moment Sara had dropped into the shadow of the curtains, and became perfectly silent. An inconceivable kind of sympathy with her (it could be nothing but mesmerism) somehow cleared up the twilight in a moment, and made me aware who the stranger was. It was Domenico’s master, Mr. Luigi, the Italian gentleman downstairs.
I cannot tell how the first preliminaries were got over. Of all times in the world to make acquaintance with anybody, think of the twilight, just before the candles came in, and when you could scarcely make out even the most familiar face! We got on somehow, however; we three—Sara sitting all the time dropt down, and nestling like a bird among the curtains, struck into the most unaccountable silence. I suppose she thought nobody saw her; whereas, on the contrary, Mr. Luigi, looking out of the darkness where he was sitting towards the window, saw the outline of her pretty head against a bit of green-blue sky as distinct as possible; and looked at it too, as I can testify.
When candles came at last (Mrs. Goldsworthy had a lamp; but it smoked, and the chimney broke, and all sorts of things happened to it), after the first dazzled moment we all looked at each other. Then Sara became clearly visible, and was forced out of her corner to let the blind be drawn down. She came forward to the light at once, with just the least bravado in her manner, ashamed of hiding herself. She had still the drawing in her hand.
“Mr. Langham,” said Sara, “do you know this wonderful drawing? I never was so amused and amazed in my life. Do you know it’s the Park? and my godmamma Sarah when she was a young lady and a great beauty. To think you should find it accidentally! And it must have been one of her old lovers who did it. Oh, please give it to me, and let me show it her. She would be pleased. She would soon find out whose it was.”
Here Mr. Luigi, who had taken up one of those old books of my father’s, which Harry in his carelessness had left upon the table, uttered a very brief instantly suppressed exclamation. I wonder what he could have discovered! It was the copy of Racine, which I have before mentioned as among papa’s books, on which was written the name of Sarah Mortimer. Sarah Mortimer! Here were we all strangers, or almost strangers, to each other, all apparently startled by the sound and sight of this name. What could the Italian have to do with Sarah Mortimer? she who broke poor papa’s heart, and whom we had found out so suddenly to-day?
“This lady?” said Mr. Luigi, holding up the book to me with a slight tremulousness, “Madame will not think me impertinent; does she live?”
“Indeed,” said I, with a shiver of agitation, “I cannot tell. I do not know anything about her; her name on that book and the drawing is all we know. I think she is a ghost. Do you too know her name? Sara, tell us, for pity’s sake, who is this Sarah Mortimer of the Park?”
Sara stared at the book with still greater amazement than she had shown at the drawing. “She is my godmamma,” said the girl, in a disturbed, amazed tone. “She is Miss Mortimer of the Park. Since you all know her name, you all know that certainly. How is it you know her? why did you not tell me? Is there any mystery? it all seems very strange to me.”
“Then it is that lady,” exclaimed Mr. Luigi—“it is that lady I did meet in the village.”
“No,” said Sara, recovering herself in a moment; “you met my other godmamma, her sister. She told me she had met you. May I ask if you found the lady in Manchester? Godmamma was very much interested and anxious to know. Did you find her? have you heard where she is to be found?”
Mr. Luigi looked at the book once more; then closed it down firmly with his hand; then gazed a little anxiously in Sara’s face. “Have I found the lady?” he repeated like an echo. “Mademoiselle, I do not know.”
Then the Italian, as if with an instinctive motion, laid his other hand over the book, and clasped them both upon it as though to hold something fast. Then to my amazement and to Sara’s—but to something more than amazement on Sara’s part—something very much like pique and offence—he turned towards Harry and began to talk on indifferent matters. I had noticed a half-weary, half-impatient sigh escape him as he laid his hands over that book; but he showed no other symptom of emotion. The next moment he was talking in very good English, slightly, very slightly, broken with now and then a foreign idiom, something about public affairs. I confess I felt disappointed as well as Sara. He had recognised that name; somehow it was familiar to him; and his enigmatical answer had naturally stimulated our curiosity. He left us behind him staring and wondering, when he suddenly glided from the brink of some revelation to those quiet remarks upon English politics. Harry, full of his share of the common excitement, did not enter into it with half so much heart as Mr. Luigi. Harry blundered and was awkward, his thoughts being elsewhere. Mr. Luigi was quite undisturbed and at his ease. Sara scarcely spoke again while he remained; she did all but turn her back upon him; she showed her pique quite clearly enough to catch the quick eye of the Italian. Altogether he did not stay very long, thinking us, I daresay, rather an uncomfortable party; and Harry, disappointed, as I had expected, not to find me alone, and be able to hold a comfortable consultation, went downstairs with him to smoke a cigar.
“Now they are gone,” cried Sara; “now the man in the iron mask has left us. I wonder if that is what one would call a romantic Italian? ah! I’d rather have fat Domenico. Now they’re gone, do tell me, once for all, what is godmamma Sarah to you?”
“Nothing in the world that I know of,” said I, faltering a little; “we have only that drawing and her name in the old book.”
“I know there is something between her and him,” said Sara, returning, to my great dismay to the other books on the table; “she knows about him, or he knows about her, or something. You know she was a long time abroad. What funny old books! Was it among those you found the drawing? But, stop, here is another Mortimer—Richard A. Mortimer—who is he? Papa has been their agent for centuries, and I have known them all my life, but I never heard of a Richard Mortimer. Do tell me, who was he?”
“Indeed, it is all very odd,” cried I, really fluttered out of my self-possession. “I wonder what will come of it? It is very strange and bewildering. Richard Mortimer was my father.”
“Then you are a relation!” cried Sara; “you must be a relation, there are so few Mortimers; and your father must have been her lover. Are you sure, are you quite sure? Why, your name must be Mortimer too! and Milly! Mr. Langham calls you Milly—Milly Mortimer! Oh, dear, dear! I never can get to the Park to tell them to-night, and how shall I contain myself till to-morrow? I knew there must be something that made me love you so much at first sight. To be sure, that explains everything. Milly Mortimer! oh, you dear, pretty, good, delightful Mrs. Langham! I am so glad, so happy! They are my godmothers, and so to be sure we are relations too!”
Upon which Sara threw her arms round me in a wild, rapid embrace. I was so very much shaken and disturbed with all that had happened, that I could scarcely bear this last. I remember using all my remaining power to convince her that the relationship was by no means certain still, and that it was not to be communicated to the ladies at the Park without further assurance. Sara, however, only overpowered me with caresses and exclamations. She entirely upset all the remaining strength I had. She kept us from that consultation which Harry and I were both so much longing for. She left us at last in terror lest we should be brought into immediate contact with those unknown relatives. This day of great news, excitement, and perplexity, was, I think, the most exhausted, uncomfortable day I ever met with in all my life.
