It was not her kitten, which might have playfully followed her upstairs—it was not a prowling rat making a hungry attack. A low titter accompanied this pluck at her dress, and she saw the wide pale face of the Dutchwoman turned up towards her with an odious smile. She was seated on the step, with her shoulder leaning upon the frame of the door.
“You thought I was asleep under the coverlet,” she drawled: “or awake, perhaps, in the other world—dead. I never sleep long, and I don’t die easily—see!”
“And what for are ye out o’ your bed at all, ma’am? Ye’ll break your neck in this house, if ye go walking about, wi’ its cranky steps, and stairs, and you blind.”
“When you go blind, old Mildred, you’ll find your memory sharper than you think, and steps, and corners, and doors, and chimneypieces will come to mind like a picture. What was I about?”
“Well, what was ye about? Sure I am I don’t know, ma’am.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t,” said she.
“But you should be in your bed—that I know, ma’am.”
Still holding her dress, and with a lazy laugh, the lady made answer—
“So should you, old lass—a pair of us gadders; but I had a reason—I wanted you, old Mildred.”
“Well, ma’am, I don’t know how you’d ’a found me, for I sleep in the five-cornered room, two doors away from the spicery—you’d never ’a found me.”
“I’d have tried—hit or miss—I would not have stayed where I was,” answered the “old soldier.”
“What, not in the stateroom, ma’am—the finest room in the house, so ’twas always supposed!”
“So be it; I don’t like it,” she answered.
“Ye didn’t hear no noises in’t, sure?” demanded Mildred.
“Not I,” said the Dutchwoman. “Another reason quite, girl.”
“And what the de’il is it? It must be summat grand, I take it, that makes ye better here, sittin’ on a hard stair, than lying your length on a good bed.”
“Right well said, clever Mildred. What is the stateroom without a quiet mind?” replied the old soldier, with an oracular smile.
“What’s the matter wi’ your mind, ma’am?” said Mildred testily.
“I’m not safe there from intrusion,” answered the lady, with little pauses between her words to lend an emphasis to them.
“I don’t know what you’re afeard on, ma’am,” repeated Mrs. Tarnley, whose acquaintance with fine words was limited, and who was too proud to risk a mistake.
“Well, it’s just this—I won’t be pried upon by that young lady.”
“What young lady, ma’am?” asked Mrs. Tarnley, who fancied she might ironically mean Miss Lilly Dogger.
“Harry Fairfield’s wife, of course, what other? I choose to be private here,” said the Dutch dame imperiously.
“She’ll not pry—she don’t pry on no one, and if she wished it, she couldn’t.”
“Why, there’s nothing between us, woman, but the long closet where you used to keep the linen, and the broken furniture and rattle-traps” (raddle-drabs she pronounced the word), “and she’ll come and peep—every woman peeps and pries” (beebs and bries she called the words)—“I peep and pry. She’ll just pretend she never knew anyone was there, and she’ll walk in through the closet door, and start, and beg my pardon, and say how sorry she is, and then go off, and tell you next morning how many buttons are on my pelisse, and how many pins in my pincushion, and let all the world know everything about me.”
“But she can’t come in.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because, ma’am, the door is papered over.”
“Fine protection—paper!” sneered the lady.
“I saw her door locked myself before ’twas papered over,” said Mildred.
“Did you, though?” said the lady.
“With my own eyes,” insisted Mildred.
“I’d rather see it with mine,” joked the blind lady. “Well, see, we’ll make a long story short. If I consent to stay in that room, I’ll lock the door that opens into it. I’ll have a room, and not a passage, if you please. I won’t be peeped on, or listened to. If I can’t choose my company I’ll be alone, please.”
“And what do you want, ma’am?” asked Mildred, whose troubles were multiplying.
“Another room,” said the lady, doggedly.
Mildred paused.
“Well, did I ever!” pondered Mrs. Tarnley, reading the lady’s features sharply as she spoke; but they were sullen, and, for aught she could make out, meaningless. “Well, it will do if ye can have the key, I take it, and lock your door yourself?”
“Not so well as another room, if you’ll give me one, but better than nothing.”
“Come along then, ma’am, for another room’s not to be had at no price, and I’ll gi’ ye the key.”
“And then, when you lock it fast, I may sleep easy. What’s that your parson used to say—‘the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’ Plenty of wicked people going, Mrs. Tarnley, and weary enough am I,” sighed the great pale Dutchwoman.
“There’s two on us so, ma’am,” said Mildred, as she led the lady back to her room, and having placed her in her armchair by the fire, Mildred Tarnley took the key from a brass-headed tack, on which it hung behind the bedpost.
“Here it is, ma’am,” she said, placing the key in her groping fingers.
“What key is it?” asked the old soldier.
“The key of the long linen closet that was.”
“And how do I know that?” she inquired, twirling it round in her large fingers, and smiling in such a way as to nettle Mrs. Tarnley, who began—
“Ye may know, I take it, because Mildred Tarnley says so, and I never yet played a trick. I never tells lies,” she concluded, pulling up on a sudden.
“Well, I know that. I know you’re truth itself, so far as human nature goes; but that has its limits, and can’t fly very high off the ground. Come, get me up—we’ll try the key. I’ll lock it myself—I’ll lock it with my own fingers. Seeing is believing, and I can’t see; but feeling has no fellow, and,
