“But if they had been made very ill?” said Chatty, who, up to this time, had not spoken. “I don’t think surely Mr. Cavendish would have done that.”
She was a little moved by this new view. Chatty was not interested in general about what was said, but now and then a personal question would rouse her. She thought of the woman with the blue eyes, so wide open and red with crying, and then of Dick with his laugh which it always made her cheerful to think of. Chatty had in her mind no possible link of connection between these two: but the absence of any power of comprehending the abstract in her made her lay hold all the more keenly of the personal, and the thought of Dick in the act of letting in poisonous gases upon that unhappy creature filled her with horror. She was indignant at so false an accusation. “Mr. Cavendish,” she repeated with a little energy, “never would have done that.”
“It is all a freak of those scientific men,” said Mrs. Wilberforce. “Look at the poor people, they can do a great deal more, and support a great deal more, than we can: yet they live among bad smells. I think they rather like them. I am sure my nursery is on my mind night and day, if there is the least little whiff of anything; but the children are as strong as little ponies—and where is the drainage there?”
With this triumphant argument she suddenly rose, declaring that she knew the brougham was at the door, and that Mrs. Warrender would be late for the train. She kissed and blessed both the ladies as she took leave of them. “Come back soon, and don’t forget us,” she said to Chatty; while to Mrs. Warrender she gave a little friendly pat on the shoulder. “You won’t say anything, not even to true friends like Herbert and me? but a secret like that can’t be kept, and though you mayn’t think so, everybody knows.”
“Do you think that is true, mamma?” Chatty asked when the wet umbrellas had again gone glimmering through the shrubberies and under the trees, and the travellers were left alone.
“That everybody knows? It is very likely. There is no such thing as a secret in a little world like ours; everybody knows everything. But still they cannot say that they have it by authority from you and me. It is time enough to talk of it when it is a fact, if it is to be.”
“But you have not any doubt of it, mamma?”
“I have doubt of everything till it is done; even,” she said, with a smile as the wheels of the brougham cut the gravel and came round with a little commotion to the door, “of our going away: though I allow that it seems very like it now.”
They did go away, at last, leaving the Warren very solitary, damp, and gray, under the rain—a melancholy place enough for Theo to return to. But he was not in a state of mind to think of that or of any of his home surroundings grave or gay. Chatty put her head out of the window to look behind her at the melancholy yet dear old house, with tears in her innocent eyes, but Mrs. Warrender, feeling that at last she had shaken herself free from that bondage, notwithstanding the anxiety in her heart for her son, had no feeling to spare for the leave-taking. She waved her hand to Mrs. Bagley at the shop, who was standing out at her door with a shawl over her cap to see the ladies go by. Lizzie stood behind her in the doorway saying nothing, while her grandmother curtsied and waved her hand and called out her wishes for a good journey, and a happy return. Naturally Chatty’s eyes sought those of the girl, who looked after her with a sort of blank longing as if she too would fain have gone out into the world. Lizzie’s eyes seemed to pursue her as they drove past—poor Lizzie, who had other things in her mind, Chatty began to think, beside the fashion books; and then there came the tall red mass of the Elms, with all its windows shut up, and that air of mystery which its encircling wall and still more its recent history conferred upon it. The two ladies looked out upon it, as they drove past, almost with awe.
“Mamma,” said Chatty, “I never told you. I saw the—the lady, just when she was going away.”
“What lady?” asked Mrs. Warrender, with surprise.
“I don’t think,” said Chatty, with a certain solemnity, “that she was any older, perhaps not so old as I. It made my heart sick. Oh, dear mother, must there not be some explanation, some dreadful, dreadful fate, when it happens that one so young—”
“Sometimes it may be so—but these are mysteries which you, at your age, Chatty, have no need to go into.”
“At my age—which is about the same as hers,” said Chatty; “and—oh, mamma, I wanted in my heart to stop her, to bring her to you. She had been crying—she had such innocent-looking, distracted eyes—and Lizzie said—”
“Lizzie! what had Lizzie to do with it?”
“I promised to tell no one, but you are not anyone, you are the same as myself. Lizzie says she knew her long ago, that she is the same as a child still, not responsible for what she is doing—fond of toys and sweets like a child.”
“My dear, I am sorry that Lizzie should have kept up such a friend. I believe there are some poor souls that if an innocent girl were to do what you say, stop them and bring them to her mother, might be saved, Chatty. I do believe that: but not—not that kind.”
The tears by this time were falling fast from Chatty’s eyes. “I wonder,” she said, “if I shall ever see
