“Come, darling, come up; you shall hear from me in a day or two, or see me. This will blow over, as so many other troubles have done,” he said, kissing her fondly.
And now began the short fuss and confusion of a packing on brief notice, while Tom harnessed the horse, and put him to the dogcart.
And the moment having arrived, down came Charles Fairfield, and Tom swung his portmanteau into its place, and poor little Alice was there with, as Old Dulcibella said, “her poor little face all cried,” to have a last look, and a last word, her tiny feet on the big unequal paving stones, and her eyes following Charlie’s face, as he stepped up and arranged his rug and coat on the seat, and then jumped down for the last hug; and the wild, close, hurried whisperings, last words of love and cheer from laden hearts, and pale smiles, and the last, really the last look, and the dogcart and Tom, and the portmanteau and Charlie, and the sun’s blessed light, disappear together through the old gateway under the wide stone arch, with tufted ivy and careless sparrows, and little Alice stands alone on the pavement for a moment, and runs out to have one last wild look at the disappearing “trap,” under the old trees, as it rattled swiftly down to the narrow road of Carwell Valley.
It vanished—it was gone—the tinkling of the wheels was heard no more. The parting, for the present, was quite over, and poor little Alice turned at last, and threw her arms about the neck of kind old Dulcibella, who had held her when a baby in her arms in the little room at Wyvern Vicarage, and saw her now a young wife, “wooed and married, and a’,” in the beauty and the sorrows of life; and the light air of autumn rustled in the foliage above her, and a withered leaf or two fell from the sunlit summits to the shadow at her feet; and the old woman’s kind eyes filled with tears, and she whispered homely comfort, and told her she would have him back again in a day or two, and not to take on so; and with her gentle hand, as she embraced her, patted her on the shoulder, as she used in other years—that seemed like yesterday—to comfort her in nursery troubles. But our sorrows outgrow their simple consolations, and turn us in their gigantic maturity to the sympathy and wisdom that is sublime and eternal.
Days passed away, and a precious note from Charlie came. It told her where to write to him in London, and very little more.
The hasty scrawl added, indeed emphatically, that she was to tell his address to no one. So she shut it up in the drawer of the old-fashioned dressing-table, the key of which she always kept with her.
Other days passed. The hour was dull at Carwell Grange for Alice. But things moved on in their dull routine without event or alarm.
Old Mildred Tarnley was sour and hard as of old, and up to a certain time neither darker nor brighter than customary. Upon a day, however, there came a shadow and a fear upon her.
Two or three times on that day and the next, was Mrs. Tarnley gliding, when old Dulcibella with her mistress was in the garden, about Alice’s bedroom, noiselessly as a shadow. The little girl downstairs did not know where she was. It was known but to herself—and what she was about. Coming down those dark stairs, and going up, she went on tiptoe, and looked black and stern as if she was “laying out” a corpse upstairs.
Accidentally old Dulcibella, coming into the room on a message from the garden, surprised lean, straight Mrs. Tarnley, feloniously trying to turn a key, from a bunch in her hand, in the lock of the dressing-table drawer.
“Oh, la! Mrs. Tarnley,” cried old Dulcibella, very much startled.
The two women stood perfectly still, staring at one another. Each looked scared. Stiff Mildred Tarnley, without, I think, being the least aware of it, dropped a stiff short courtesy, and for some seconds more the silence continued.
“What be you a-doing here, Mrs. Tarnley?” at length demanded Dulcibella Crane.
“No occasion to tell you,” replied Mildred, intrepidly. “Another one, that owed her as little as I’m like ever to do, would tell your young mistress. But I don’t want to break her heart—what for should I? There’s dark stories enough about the Grange without no one hangin’ theirself in their garters. What I want is where to direct a letter to Master Charles—that’s all.”
“I can’t say, I’m sure,” said old Dulcibella.
“She got a letter from him o’ Thursday last; ’twill be in it no doubt, and that I take it, ma’am, is in this drawer, for she used not to lock it; and I expect you, if ye love your young mistress, to help me to get at it,” said Mrs. Tarnley, firmly.
“Lor, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am! me to pick a lock, ma’am! I’d die first. Ye can’t mean it?”
“I knowd ye was a fool. I shouldn’t ’a said nothing to ye about it,” said Mildred, with sharp disdain.
“Lawk! I never was so frightened in my life!” responded Dulcibella.
“Ye’ll be more so, mayhap. I wash my hands o’ ye,” said Mrs. Tarnley, with a furious look, and a sharp little stamp on the floor. “I thought o’ nothing but your mistress’s good, and if ye tell her I was here, I’ll explain all, for I won’t lie under no surmises, and I think ’twill be the death of her.”
“Oh, this place, this hawful place! I never was so frightened in my days,” said Dulcibella, looking very white.
“She’s in the garden now, I do suppose,” said Mildred, “and if ye mean to tell her what I was about, ’taint a pin’s head to me, but I’ll go out and tell her myself,
