Hide and Seek Part 10

Vance appeared at the door, much less pompous than usual and displaying an interesting paleness of complexion. Jubber spat into the palm of each of his hands, and clenched his fists.

"Have you done dinner down stairs?" asked Doctor Joyce, reddening a little, but still very quiet.

"Yes, sir," answered Vance, in a remarkably conciliating voice.

"Tell James to go to the constable, and say I want him; and let the gardener wait with you outside there in the hall."

"Now," said the rector, shutting the door again after issuing these orders, and placing himself once more face to face with Mr. Jubber. "Now I have a last word or two to say, which I recommend you to hear quietly.

In the first place, you have no right over the child whatever; for I happen to know that you are without a signed agreement promising you her services. (You had better hear me out for your own sake.) You have no legal right, I say, to control the child in any manner. She is a perfectly free agent, so far as you are concerned.--Yes! yes! you deny it, of course! I have only to say that, if you attempt to back that denial by still a.s.serting your claim to her, and making a disturbance in my house, as sure as you stand there, I'll ruin you in Rubbleford and in all the country round. (It's no use laughing--I can do it!) You beat the child in the vilest manner last night. I am a magistrate; and I have my prosecutor and my witness of the a.s.sault ready whenever I choose to call them. I can fine or imprison you, which I please. You know the public; you know what they think of people who ill-use helpless children. If you appeared in that character before me, the Rubbleford paper would report it; and, so far as the interests of your circus are concerned, you would be a ruined man in this part of the country--you would, you know it!

Now I will spare you this--not from any tenderness towards _you_--on condition that you take yourself off quietly, and never let us hear from you again. I strongly advise you to go at once; for if you wait till the constable comes, I will not answer for it that my sense of duty may not force me into giving you into custody." With which words Doctor Joyce threw open the door, and pointed to the hall.

Throughout the delivery of this speech, violent indignation, ungovernable surprise, abject terror, and impotent rage ravaged by turns the breast of Mr. Jubber. He stamped about the room, and uttered fragments of oaths, but did not otherwise interrupt Dr. Joyce, while that gentleman was speaking to him. When the rector had done, the fellow had his insolent answer ready directly. To do him justice, he was consistent, if he was nothing else--he was bully and blackguard to the very last.

"Magistrate or parson," he cried, snapping his fingers, "I don't care a d.a.m.n for you in either capacity. You keep the child here at your peril!

I'll go to the first lawyer in Rubbleford, and bring an action against you. I'll show you a little legal law! _You_ ruin me indeed! I can prove that I only thrashed the little toad, the nasty deaf idiot, because she deserved it. I'll be even with you! I'll have the child back wherever you take her to. I'll show you a little legal law! (Here he stepped to the hall door.) I'll be even with you, damme! I'll charge you with setting on your menial servants to a.s.sault me. (Here he looked fiercely at the gardener, a freckled Scotch giant of six feet three, and instantly descended five steps.) Lay a finger on me, if you dare! I'm going straight from this house to the lawyer's. I'm a free Englishman, and I'll have my rights and my legal law! I'll bring my action! I'll ruin you! I'll strip your gown off your back I'll stop your mouth in your own pulpit!" Here he strutted into the front garden; his words grew indistinct, and his gross voice became gradually less and less audible.

The coachman at the outer gate saw the last of him, and reported that he made his exit striking viciously at the flowers with his cane, and swearing that he would ruin the rector with "legal law."

After leaving certain directions with his servants, in the very improbable event of Mr. Jubber's return, Doctor Joyce repaired immediately to his dining-room. No one was there, so he went on into the garden.

Here he found the family and the visitors all a.s.sembled together; but a great change had pa.s.sed over the whole party during his absence. Mr.

Blyth, on being informed of the result of the rector's conversation with Mrs. Peckover, acted with his usual impetuosity and utter want of discretion; writing down delightedly on little Mary's slate, without the slightest previous preparation or coaxing, that she was to go home with him to-morrow, and be as happy as the day was long, all the rest of her life. The result of this incautious method of proceeding was that the child became excessively frightened, and ran away from everybody to take refuge with Mrs. Peckover. She was still crying, and holding tight by the good woman's gown with both hands; and Valentine was still loudly declaring to everybody that he loved her all the better for showing such faithful affection to her earliest and best friend, when the rector joined the party under the coolly-murmuring trees.

Doctor Joyce spoke but briefly of his interview with Mr. Jubber, concealing much that had pa.s.sed at it, and making very light of the threats which the fellow had uttered on his departure. Mrs. Peckover, whose self-possession seemed in imminent danger of being overthrown by little Mary's mute demonstrations of affection, listened anxiously to every word the Doctor uttered; and, as soon as he had done, said that she must go back to the circus directly, and tell her husband the truth about all that had occurred, as a necessary set-off against the slanders that were sure to be spoken against her by Mr. Jubber.

"Oh, never mind me, ma'am!" she said, in answer to the apprehensions expressed by Mrs. Joyce about her reception when she got to the circus.

"The dear child's safe; and that's all I care about. I'm big enough and strong enough to take my own part; and Jemmy, he's always by to help me when I can't. May I come back, if you please, sir, this evening; and say--and say?--"

She would have added, "and say good-bye;" but the thoughts which now gathered round that one word, made it too hard to utter. She silently curtseyed her thanks for the warm invitation that was given to her to return; stooped down to the child; and, kissing her, wrote on the slate, "I shall be back, dear, in the evening, at seven o'clock"--then disengaged the little hands that still held fast by her gown, and hurried from the garden, without once venturing to look behind her as she crossed the sunny lawn.

Mrs. Joyce, and the young ladies, and the rector, all tried their best to console little Mary; and all failed. She resolutely, though very gently, resisted them; walking away into corners by herself, and looking constantly at her slate, as if she could only find comfort in reading the few words which Mrs. Peckover had written on it. At last, Mr. Blyth took her up on his knee. She struggled to get away, for a moment--then looked intently in his face; and, sighing very mournfully, laid her head down on his shoulder. There was a world of promise for the future success of Valentine's affectionate project in that simple action, and in the preference which it showed.

The day wore on quietly--evening came--seven o'clock struck--then half-past--then eight--and Mrs. Peckover never appeared. Doctor Joyce grew uneasy, and sent Vance to the circus to get some news of her.

It was again Mr. Blyth--and Mr. Blyth only--who succeeded in partially quieting little Mary under the heavy disappointment of not seeing Mrs.

Peckover at the appointed time. The child had been restless at first, and had wanted to go to the circus. Finding that they tenderly, but firmly, detained her at the Rectory, she wept bitterly--wept so long, that at last she fairly cried herself asleep in Valentine's arms. He sat anxiously supporting her with a patience that nothing could tire. The sunset rays, which he had at first carefully kept from falling on her face, vanished from the horizon; the quiet l.u.s.ter of twilight overspread the sky--and still he refused to let her be taken from him; and said he would sit as he was all through the night rather than let her be disturbed.

Vance came back, and brought word that Mrs. Peckover would follow him in half an hour. They had given her some work to do at the circus, which she was obliged to finish before she could return to the Rectory.

Having delivered this message, Vance next produced a handbill, which he said was being widely circulated all over Rubbleford; and which proved to be the composition of Mr. Jubber himself. That ingenious ruffian, having doubtless discovered that "legal law" was powerless to help him to his revenge, and that it would be his wisest proceeding to keep clear of Doctor Joyce in the rectory's magisterial capacity, was now artfully attempting to turn the loss of the child to his own profit, by dint of prompt lying in his favorite large type, sprinkled with red letters.

He informed the public, through the medium of his hand-bills, that the father of the Mysterious Foundling had been "most providentially"

discovered, and that he (Mr. Jubber) had given the child up immediately, without a thought of what he might personally suffer, in pocket as well as in mind, by his generosity. After this, he appealed confidently to the sympathy of people of every degree, and of "fond parents"

especially, to compensate him by flocking in crowds to the circus; adding, that if additional stimulus were wanting to urge the public into "rallying round the Ring," he was prepared to administer it forthwith, in the shape of the smallest dwarf in the world, for whose services he was then in treaty, and whose first appearance before a Rubbleford audience would certainly take place in the course of a few days.

Such was Mr. Jubber's ingenious contrivance for turning to good pecuniary account the ignominious defeat which he had suffered at the hands of Dr. Joyce.

After much patient reasoning and many earnest expostulations, Mrs. Joyce at last succeeded in persuading Mr. Blyth that he might carry little Mary upstairs to her bed, without any danger of awakening her.

The moonbeams were streaming through the windows over the broad, old-fas.h.i.+oned landings of the rectory stair-case, and bathed the child's sleeping face in their lovely light, as Valentine carefully bore her in his own arms to her bedroom. "Oh!" he whispered to himself as he paused for an instant where the moon shone clearest on the landing; and looked down on her--"Oh! if my poor Lavvie could only see little Mary now."

They laid her, still asleep, on the bed, and covered her over lightly with a shawl--then went down stairs again to wait for Mrs. Peckover.

The clown's wife came in half an hour, as she had promised. They saw sorrow and weariness in her face, as they looked at her. Besides a bundle with the child's few clothes in it, she brought the hair bracelet and the pocket-handkerchief which had been found on little Mary's mother.

"Wherever the child goes," she said, "these two things must go with her." She addressed Mr. Blyth as she spoke, and gave the hair bracelet and the handkerchief into his own hands.

It seemed rather a relief than a disappointment to Mrs. Peckover to hear that the child was asleep above stairs. All pain of parting would now be spared, on one side at least. She went up to look at her on her bed, and kissed her--but so lightly that little Mary's sleep was undisturbed by that farewell token of tenderness and love.

"Tell her to write to me, sir," said poor Mrs. Peckover, holding Valentine's hand fast, and looking wistfully in his face through her gathering tears. "I shall prize my first letter from her so much, if it's only a couple of lines. G.o.d bless you, sir; and good-bye. It ought to be a comfort to me, and it is, to know that you will be kind to her--I hope I shall get up to London some day, and see her myself. But don't forget the letter, sir: I shan't fret so much after her when once I've got that!"

She went away, sadly murmuring these last words many times over, while Valentine was trying to cheer and rea.s.sure her, as they walked together to the outer gate. Doctor Joyce accompanied them down the front-garden path, and exacted from her a promise to return often to the Rectory, while the circus was at Rubbleford; saying also that he and his family desired her to look on them always as her fast and firm friends in any emergency. Valentine entreated her, over and over again, to remember the terms of their agreement, and to come and judge for herself of the child's happiness in her new home. She only answered "Don't forget the letter, sir!" And so they parted.

Early the next morning, Mr. Blyth and little Mary left the Rectory, and started for London by the first coach.

CHAPTER VII. MADONNA IN HER NEW HOME.

The result of Mr. Blyth's Adventure in the traveling Circus, and of the events which followed it, was that little Mary at once became a member of the painter's family, and grew up happily, in her new home, into the young lady who was called "Madonna" by Valentine, by his wife, and by all intimate friends who were in the habit of frequenting the house.

Mr. Blyth's first proceeding, after he had brought the little girl home with him, was to take her to the most eminent aural surgeon of the day. He did this, not in the hope of any curative result following the medical examination, but as a first duty which he thought he owed to her, now that she was under his sole charge. The surgeon was deeply interested in the case; but, after giving it the most careful attention, he declared that it was hopeless. Her sense of hearing, he said, was entirely gone; but her faculty of speech, although it had been totally disused (as Mrs. Peckover had stated) for more than two years past, might, he thought, be imperfectly regained, at some future time, if a tedious, painful, and uncertain process of education were resorted to, under the direction of an experienced teacher of the deaf and dumb. The child, however, had such a horror of this resource being tried, when it was communicated to her, that Mr. Blyth instinctively followed Mrs.

Peckover's example, and consulted the little creature's feelings, by allowing her in this particular--and indeed in most others--to remain perfectly happy and contented in her own way.

The first influence which reconciled her almost immediately to her new life, was the influence of Mrs. Blyth. The perfect gentleness and patience with which the painter's wife bore her incurable malady, seemed to impress the child in a very remarkable manner from the first. The sight of that frail, wasted life, which they told her, by writing, had been shut up so long in the same room, and had been condemned to the same weary inaction for so many years past, struck at once to Mary's heart and filled her with one of those new and mysterious sensations which mark epochs in the growth of a child's moral nature. Nor did these first impressions ever alter. When years had pa.s.sed away, and when Mary, being "little" Mary no longer, possessed those marked characteristics of feature and expression which gained for her the name of "Madonna," she still preserved all her child's feeling for the painter's wife. However playful her manner might often be with Valentine, it invariably changed when she was in Mrs. Blyth's presence; always displaying, at such times, the same anxious tenderness, the same artless admiration, and the same watchful and loving sympathy. There was something secret and superst.i.tious in the girl's fondness for Mrs. Blyth. She appeared unwilling to let others know what this affection really was in all its depth and fullness: it seemed to be intuitively preserved by her in the most sacred privacy of her own heart, as if the feeling had been part of her religion, or rather as if it had been a religion in itself.

Her love for her new mother, which testified itself thus strongly and sincerely, was returned by that mother with equal fervor. From the day when little Mary first appeared at her bedside, Mrs. Blyth felt, to use her own expression, as if a new strength had been given her to enjoy her new happiness. Brighter hopes, better health, calmer resignation, and purer peace seemed to follow the child's footsteps and be always inherent in her very presence, as she moved to and fro in the sick room.

All the little difficulties of communicating with her and teaching her, which her misfortune rendered inevitable, and which might sometime have been felt as tedious by others, were so many distinct sources of happiness, so many exquisite occupations of once-weary time to Mrs.

Blyth. All the friends of the family declared that the child had succeeded where doctors, and medicines, and luxuries, and the sufferer's own courageous resignation had hitherto failed--for she had succeeded in endowing Mrs. Blyth with a new life. And they were right. A fresh object for the affections of the heart and the thoughts of the mind, is a fresh life for every feeling and thinking human being, in sickness even as well as in health.

In this sense, indeed, the child brought fresh life with her to all who lived in her new home--to the servants, as well as to the master and mistress. The cloud had rarely found its way into that happy dwelling in former days: now the suns.h.i.+ne seemed fixed there for ever. No more beautiful and touching proof of what the heroism of patient dispositions and loving hearts can do towards guiding human existence, unconquered and unsullied, through its hardest trials, could be found anywhere than was presented by the aspect of the painter's household. Here were two chief members of one little family circle, afflicted by such incurable bodily calamity as it falls to the lot of but few human beings to suffer--yet here were no sighs, no tears, no vain repinings with each new morning, no gloomy thoughts to set woe and terror watching by the pillow at night. In this homely sphere, life, even in its frailest aspects, was still greater than its greatest trials; strong to conquer by virtue of its own innocence and purity, its simple unworldly aspirations, its self-sacrificing devotion to the happiness and the anxieties of others.

As the course of her education proceeded, many striking peculiarities became developed in Madonna's disposition, which seemed to be all more or less produced by the necessary influence of her affliction on the formation of her character. The social isolation to which that affliction condemned her, the solitude of thought and feeling into which it forced her, tended from an early period to make her mind remarkably self-reliant, for so young a girl. Her first impression of strangers seemed invariably to decide her opinion of them at once and for ever.

She liked or disliked people heartily; estimating them apparently from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or s.e.x, or personal appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her--sometimes, people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure or uneasiness in the society of others with the most diverting candor--showing the extremest anxiety to conciliate and attract those whom she liked; running away and hiding herself like a child, from those whom she disliked. There were some unhappy people, in this latter cla.s.s, whom no persuasion could ever induce her to see a second time.

She could never give any satisfactory account of how she proceeded in forming her opinions of others. The only visible means of arriving at them, which her deafness and dumbness permitted her to use, consisted simply in examination of a stranger's manner, expression, and play of features at a first interview. This process, however, seemed always amply sufficient for her; and in more than one instance events proved that her judgment had not been misled by it. Her affliction had tended, indeed, to sharpen her faculties of observation and her powers of a.n.a.lysis to such a remarkable degree, that she often guessed the general tenor of a conversation quite correctly, merely by watching the minute varieties of expression and gesture in the persons speaking--fixing her attention always with especial intentness on the changeful and rapid motions of their lips.

Exiled alike from the worlds of sound and speech, the poor girl's enjoyment of all that she could still gain of happiness, by means of the seeing sense that was left her, was hardly conceivable to her speaking and hearing fellow-creatures. All beautiful sights, and particularly the exquisite combinations that Nature presents, filled her with an artless rapture, which it affected the most unimpressible people to witness.

Trees were beyond all other objects the greatest luxuries that her eyes could enjoy. She would sit for hours, on fresh summer evenings, watching the mere waving of the leaves; her face flushed, her whole nervous organization trembling with the sensations of deep and perfect happiness which that simple sight imparted to her. All the riches and honors which this world can afford, would not have added to her existence a t.i.the of that pleasure which Valentine easily conferred on her, by teaching her to draw; he might almost be said to have given her a new sense in exchange for the senses that she had lost. She used to dance about the room with the reckless ecstasy of a child, in her ungovernable delight at the prospect of a sketching expedition with Mr. Blyth in the Hampstead fields.

At a very early date of her sojourn with Valentine, it was discovered that her total deafness did not entirely exclude her from every effect of sound. She was acutely sensitive to the influence of percussion--that is to say (if so vague and contradictory an expression may be allowed), she could, under certain conditions, _feel_ the sounds that she could not hear. For example, if Mr. Blyth wished to bring her to his side when they were together in the painting-room, and when she happened neither to be looking at him nor to be within reach of a touch he used to rub his foot, or the end of his mahl-stick gently against the floor. The slight concussion so produced, reached her nerves instantly; provided always that some part of her body touched the floor on which such experiments were tried.

As a means of extending her facilities of social communication, she was instructed in the deaf and dumb alphabet by Valentine's direction; he and his wife, of course, learning it also; and many of their intimate friends, who were often in the house, following their example for Madonna's sake. Oddly enough, however, she frequently preferred to express herself, or to be addressed by others, according to the clumsier and slower system of signs and writing, to which she had been accustomed from childhood. She carefully preserved her little slate, with its ornamented frame, and kept it hanging at her side, just as she wore it on the morning of her visit to the Rectory-house at Rubbleford.

In one exceptional case, and one only, did her misfortune appear to have the power of affecting her tranquillity seriously. Whenever, by any accident, she happened to be left in the dark, she was overcome by the most violent terror. It was found, even when others were with her, that she still lost her self-possession at such times. Her own explanation of her feelings on these occasions, suggested the simplest of reasons to account for this weakness in her character. "Remember," she wrote on her slate, when a new servant was curious to know why she always slept with a light in her room--"Remember that I am deaf _and blind too_ in the darkness. You, who can hear, have a sense to serve you instead of sight, in the dark--your ears are of use to you then, as your eyes are in the light. _I_ hear nothing, and see nothing--I lose all my senses together in the dark."

It was only by rare accidents, which there was no providing against, that she was ever terrified in this way, after her peculiarity had first disclosed itself. In small things as well as in great, Valentine never forgot that her happiness was his own especial care. He was more nervously watchful over her than anyone else in the house--for she cost him those secret anxieties which make the objects of our love doubly precious to us. In all the years that she had lived under his roof, he had never conquered his morbid dread that Madonna might be one day traced and discovered by her father, or by relatives, who might have a legal claim to her. Under this apprehension he had written to Doctor Joyce and Mrs. Peckover a day or two after the child's first entry under his roof, pledging both the persons whom he addressed to the strictest secrecy in all that related to Madonna and to the circ.u.mstances which had made her his adopted child. As for the hair bracelet, if his conscience had allowed him, he would have destroyed it immediately; but feeling that this would be an inexcusable breach of trust, he was fain to be content with locking it up, as well as the pocket-handkerchief, in an old bureau in his painting-room, the key of which he always kept attached to his own watch chain.

Not one of his London friends ever knew how he first met with Madonna.