Not Like Other Girls Part 40

Nevertheless, Mrs. Cheyne's singular aspect filled her with vague fear. It did not enter into her mind to connect the coming storm with Mrs. Cheyne's condition, until she hinted at it herself.

"Oh, yes, you are welcome," she responded, wearily. "I have looked for you evening after evening, but you chose to come with the storm. It is a pity, perhaps; but then you did not know!"

"What would you have me know?" asked Phillis, timidly.

Mrs. Cheyne shrugged her shoulders a little flightily.

"Oh, you are young!" she returned; "you do not understand what nerves mean; you sleep sweetly of a night, and have no bad dreams: it does not matter to you happy people if the air is full of suns.h.i.+ne or surcharged with electricity. For me, when the sun ceases to s.h.i.+ne I am in despair. Fogs find me brooding. An impending storm suffocates me, and yet tears me to pieces with restlessness: it drives me hither and thither like a fallen leaf. I tire myself that I may sleep, and yet I stare open-eyed for hours together into the darkness. I wonder sometimes I do not go mad. But there! let us walk--let us walk." And she made a movement to retrace her steps; but Phillis, with a courage for which she commended herself afterwards, pulled her back by her hanging sleeves.

"Oh, not there! it is not good for any one who is sad to walk in that dark place. No wonder your thoughts are sombre. Look! the heavy rain-drops are pattering among the leaves. I do not care to get wet: let us go back to the house."

"Pshaw! what does it matter getting wet?" she returned, with a little scorn; but nevertheless she suffered Phillis to take her arm and draw her gently towards the house. Only as they came near the library window, she pointed to it indignantly. "Who has dared to enter that room, or open the window! Have I not forbidden over and over again that that room should be used? Do you think," she continued, in the same excited way, "that I would enter that room to-night of all nights! Why, I should hear his angry voice pealing in every corner!

It was a good room for echoes; and he could speak loudly if he chose.

Come away! there is a door I always use that leads to my private apartments. I am no recluse; but in these moods I do not care to show myself to people. If you are not afraid, you may come with me, unless you prefer Miss Mewlstone's company."

"I would rather go with you," returned Phillis, gently. She could not in truth say she was not afraid; but all the same she must try and soothe the poor creature who was evidently enduring such torments of mind: so she followed in silence up the broad oak staircase.

A green-baize door admitted them into a long and somewhat narrow corridor, lighted up by a row of high narrow windows set prettily with flower-boxes. Here there were several doors. Mrs. Cheyne paused before one a moment.

"Look here! you shall see the mysteries of the west wing. This is my world; downstairs I am a different creature--taciturn, harsh, and p.r.o.ne to sarcasm. Ask Mr. Drummond what he thinks of me; but I never could endure a good young man--especially that delicious compound of the worldling and the saint--like the Reverend Archibald. See here, my dear: here I am never captious or say naughty things!"

She threw open the door, and softly beckoned to Phillis to enter. It was a large empty room,--evidently a nursery. Some canaries were twittering faintly in a gilded cage. There were flowers in the two windows, and in the vases on the table: evidently some loving hands had arranged them that very morning. A large rocking-horse occupied the centre of the floor: a doll lay with its face downwards on the crimson carpet; a pile of wooden soldiers strutted on their zigzag platform,--one or two had fallen off; a torn picture-book had been flung beside them.

"That was my Janie's picture-book," said Mrs. Cheyne, mournfully: "she was teaching her doll out of it just before she was taken ill. Nothing was touched; by a sort of inspiration,--a foreboding,--I do not know what,--I bade nurse leave the toys as they were. 'It is only an interrupted game: let the darlings find their toys as they put them,'

I said to her that morning. Look at the soldiers, Bertie was always for soldiers,--bless him!"

Her manner had grown calmer; and she spoke with such touching tenderness that tears came to Phillis's eyes. But Mrs. Cheyne never once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the a.s.sociations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled neatly on two chairs,--a boy's velvet tunic on one, a girl's white frock, a little limp and discolored, hung over the rails of the other.

"Everything just the same," murmured the poor mother. "Look here, my dear,"--with a faint smile--"these are Bertie's slippers: there is the hole he kicked in them when he was in his tempers, for my boy had the Cheyne temper. He was Herbert's image,--his very image." She sighed, paused, and went on: "Every night I come and sit beside their beds, and then the darlings come to me. I can see their faces--oh, so plainly!--and hear their voices. 'Good-night, dear mamma!' they seem to say to me, only Bertie's voice is always the louder."

Her manner was becoming a little excited again; only Phillis took her hand and pressed it gently, and the touch seemed to soothe her like magic.

"I am so glad you come here every night," she said, in her sweet, serious voice, from which every trace of fear had gone. "I think that a beautiful idea, to come and say your prayers beside one of these little beds."

"To say my prayers!--I pray beside my darlings' beds!" exclaimed Mrs.

Cheyne, in a startled voice. "Oh no! I never do that. G.o.d would not hear such prayers as mine,--never--never!"

"Dear Mrs. Cheyne, why not?" She moved restlessly away at the question, and tried to disengage herself from Phillis's firm grasp.

"The Divine Father hears all prayers," whispered the girl.

"All?--but not mine,--not mine, or I should not be sitting here alone.

Do you know my husband left me in anger,--that his last words to me were the bitterest he ever spoke? 'Good-by, Magdalene: you have made my life so wretched that I do not care if I never live to set foot in this house again!' And that to me,--his wedded wife, and the mother of his children,--who loved him so. Oh, Herbert! Herbert!" and, covering her face, the unhappy woman suddenly burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

Phillis kept a sad silence: not for worlds would she have checked the flow of tears that must have been so healing to the tortured brain.

Besides, what was there that she, so young and inexperienced, could say in the presence of a grief so terrible, so overpowering? The whole thing was inexplicable to Phillis. Why were the outworks of conventionality so suddenly thrown down? Why was she, a stranger, permitted to be a witness of such a revelation? As she sat there speechless and sympathizing, a faint sound reached her ear,--the rustle of a dress in the adjoining room,--footsteps that approached warily, and then paused; a moment afterwards the door closed softly behind them. Phillis looked round quickly, but could see nothing; and the same instant a peal of thunder rolled over their heads.

Mrs. Cheyne started up with an hysterical scream, and caught hold of Phillis. "Come," she said, almost wildly, "we will not stay here. The children will not come to-night, for who could hear their voices in such a storm? My little angels!--but they shall not see me like this.

Come, come!" And, taking the girl by the arm, she almost dragged her from the room, and led the way with rapid and disordered footsteps to a large luxurious chamber, furnished evidently as a dressing-room, and only divided from the sleeping-room by a curtained archway.

As Mrs. Cheyne threw herself down in an arm-chair and hid her face in her hands, the curtain was drawn back, and Miss Mewlstone came in with an anxious, almost frightened expression on her good-natured countenance. She hurried up to Mrs. Cheyne and took her in her arms as though she were a child.

"Now, Magdalene, now, my dear," she said, coaxingly, "you will try to be good and command yourself before this young lady. Look at her: she is not a bit afraid of the storm:--are you, Miss Challoner? No, just so; you are far too sensible."

"Oh, that is what you always tell me," returned Mrs. Cheyne, wrenching herself free with some violence. "Be sensible,--be good,--when I am nearly mad with the oppression and suffocation, here, and here,"

pointing to her head and breast. "Commonplaces, commonplaces; as well stop a deluge with a teacup. Oh, you are an old fool, Barby: you will never learn wisdom."

"My poor lamb! Barby never minds one word you say when you are like this."

"Oh, I will beg your pardon to-morrow, or when the thunder stops.

Hark! there it is again," cowering down in her chair. "Can't you pray for it to cease, Barby? Oh, it is too horrible! Don't you recollect the night he rode away,--right into the storm, into the very teeth of the storm? 'Good-bye, Magdalene; who knows when we may meet again?'

and I never looked at him, never kissed him, never broke the silence by one word; and the thunder came, and he was gone," beating the air with her hands.

"Oh, hush, my dear, hus.h.!.+ Let me read to you a little, and the fever will soon pa.s.s. You are frightening the poor young lady with your wild talk, and no wonder!"

"Pshaw! who minds the girl? Let her go or stop; what do I care? What is the whole world to me, when I am tormented like this? Three years, four years--more than a thousand days--of this misery! Oh, Barby! do you think I have been punished enough? do you think where he is, up in heaven with the children, that he forgives and pities me, who was such a bad wife to him?"

As Miss Mewlstone paused a moment to wipe the tears that were flowing over her old cheeks, Phillis's voice came to her relief.

"Oh, can you doubt it?" she said, in much agitation. "Dear Mrs.

Cheyne, can you have an instant's doubt? Do you think the dead carry all these paltry earthly feelings into the bright place yonder?

Forgive you--oh, there is no need of forgiveness there; he will only be loving you,--he and the children too."

"G.o.d bless you!" whispered Miss Mewlstone. "Hush, that is enough! Go, my dear, go, and I will come to you presently. Magdalene, put your poor head down here: I have thought of something that will do you good." She waved Phillis away almost impatiently, and laid the poor sufferer's head on her bosom, s.h.i.+elding it from the flashes that darted through the room. Phillis could see her bending over her, and her voice was as tender as though she were soothing a sick infant.

Phillis was trembling with agitation as she stole down the dark corridor. Never in her happy young life had she witnessed or imagined such a scene. The wild words, the half-maddened gestures, the look of agony stamped on the pale, almost distorted features, would haunt her for many a day. Oh, how the poor soul must have suffered before she lost self-control and balance like this!

It was not the death of her children that had so utterly unnerved her.

It must have been that bitter parting with her husband, and the remembrance of angry words never to be atoned for in this life, that was cankering the root of her peace, and that brought about these moods of despair.

Phillis thought of Coleridge's lines,--

"And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness on the brain,"--

as she took refuge in the dim drawing-room. Here, at least, there were signs of human life and occupation. A little tea-table had been set in one window, though the tea was cold. The greyhounds came and laid their slender noses on her gown, and one small Italian one coiled himself up on her lap. Miss Mewlstone's work-basket stood open, and a tortoise sh.e.l.l kitten had helped itself to a ball of wool and was busily unwinding it. The dogs were evidently frightened at the storm, for they all gathered round Phillis, s.h.i.+vering and whining, as though missing their mistress; and she had much ado to comfort them, though she loved animals and understood their dumb language better than most people.

It was not so very long, and yet it seemed hours before Miss Mewlstone came down to her.

"Are you here, my dear?" she asked, in a loud whisper, for the room was dark. "Ah, just so. We must have lights, and I must give you a gla.s.s of wine or a nice hot cup of coffee." And, notwithstanding Phillis's protest that she never took wine and was not in need of anything, Miss Mewlstone rang the bell, and desired the footman to bring in the lamp. "And tell Bishop to send up some nice hot coffee and sandwiches as soon as possible. For young people never know what they want, and you are just worried and tired to death with all you have gone through,--not being an old woman and seasoned to it like me," went on the good creature, and she patted Phillis's cheek encouragingly as she spoke.

"But how is she? Oh, thank G.o.d, the storm has lulled at last!"

exclaimed the girl, breathlessly.