I am not fit to see any one: I am not indeed. My spirits are low now, and I often burst into tears for nothing. I have been praying, all the way over, not to meet you. After what was done to you at our house but a week or two ago, I did not expect ever to have been noticed by you again. Jane must hate me.”
“Does she! Jane and I have been concocting a charming little plot about you, Lucy. We are going to have your old room made ready, and the sweet-scented lavender sheets put on the bed, and get you over to us. For good, if you will stop; long enough to recruit your health if you will not. Don’t you remember how you used to talk in the holidays about the home sheets; saying you only got them smelling of soap at school?”
A faint smile, like a shade, flitted over Lucy Bird’s face at the reminiscence.
“I should not know the feel of fine white linen sheets now: coarse calico ones have had to content me this many a day. Let me turn, Robert! For my own sake, I would rather not meet your wife. You cannot know how I feel about seeing old friends; those who—who–”
Those who once knew me, she meant to say; but broke down with a sob. Robert kept walking on. Lucy was a great deal younger than he, and had been used to yield to him from the time she was a child. Well for her would it have been, that she had yielded to his opinion when Captain Bird came a-courting to Timberdale.
“You have company at your house, perhaps, Robert?”
“There’s not a soul but Jane and me. The Coneys asked us to dine there to-day, but we thought we’d have the first Sunday to ourselves. We went to church this morning; and I came out after dinner to ask after old Arkwright: they fear he is dying.”
She made no further opposition, and Robert took her into the Court, to the warm dining-room. Jane was not there. Robert put her into the arm-chair that used to be their father’s, and brought her a glass of wine.
“No, thank you,” she faintly said.
“You must take it, Lucy.”
“I am afraid. My head is weak.”
“A sign you want something good to strengthen it,” he urged; and she drank the wine.
“And now take off your bonnet, Lucy, and make yourself at home, whilst I go to seek Jane,” said he.
“Lucy is here,” he whispered, when he had found his wife. “The merest shadow you ever saw. A wan, faded thing that one’s heart bleeds to look upon. We must try and keep her for a bit, Jane.”
“Oh, Robert, if we can! And nurse her into health.”
“And deliver her from that brute she calls husband—as I should prefer to put it, Jane. Her life with him must be something woeful.”
When they got in, she was leaning forward in the chair, crying silently. In the clear old room, with all its familiar features about her, memory could only have its most painful sway. Her grand old father with his grand old white hair used to sit where she was sitting; her brothers had each his appointed place; and she was a lovely bright child amongst them, petted by all; the sentimental girl with her head as brimful of romance as ever the other Lucy Ashton’s had been, when she went out to her trysts with the Master of Ravenswood. Which had been the more bitter fate in after-life—that Lucy’s or this one’s?
Mrs. Ashton went quietly up, put her arms round Lucy, and kissed her many times. She untied the bonnet, which Lucy had not done, and gave it with the shawl to Robert, standing behind. The bright hair fell down in a shower—the bonnet had caught it—and she put her feeble hand up as if to feel the extent of the disaster. It made her look so like the sweet young sister they had all prized, that Robert turned to the window and gave a few stamps, as if his boots were cold.
How she cried!—tears that came from the very heart. Putting her face down on the arm of the chair, she let her grief have its way. Jane held her hand and stroked it lovingly. Robert felt inclined to dash his arms through the dark window-panes on which the fire-light played, in imaginary chastisement of the scamp, Bird.
“Could you lend me a shawl of your own, Jane?” she asked, by-and-by, when Robert said they would have tea in—and she glanced down at her shabby brown gown. “I don’t wish the servants to see me like this.”
Jane flew out and brought one. A handsome cashmere of scarlet and gold-colour, that her mother had given her before the wedding.
“Just for an hour or two, until I leave,” said Lucy, as she covered herself up in it.
“You will not go out of this house to-night, Lucy.”
“I must, Robert. You can guess who it was I came to Timberdale to see.”
“Of course I can. She is going on all right and getting stronger; so there’s no immediate haste about that. Mr. Bird would not—not come, I suppose.”
Lucy did not answer. Robert was right—Bird would not come: his young sister might die where she was or be sheltered in the workhouse, for all the concern he gave himself. For one thing, the man was at his wits’ end for money, and not too sure of his own liberty. But Lucy’s conscience had not let her be still: as soon as she had scraped together the means for a third-class ticket, she came over.
“The poor girl has lain like a weight upon my mind, since the time when we abandoned her in London,” confessed Lucy.
“Why did you abandon her?”
“It was not my fault,” murmured Lucy; and Robert felt vexed to have asked the hasty question. “I hoped she went home, as I desired her; but I did not feel sure of it, for Clara was thoughtless. And those unsuspicious country girls cannot take care of themselves too well. Robert, whatever has happened I regard as our fault,” she added, looking up at him with some fever in her eyes.
“As Mr. Bird’s fault; not yours,” corrected Robert—who, strange perhaps to say, observed courtesy of speech towards Bird when talking with Lucy: giving him in general a handle to his name. It might have sounded ironical, but that he couldn’t help. “Did you never write to ascertain what had become of her, Lucy?”
“My husband would not let me. He is often in difficulties: and we never have a settled home, or address. What will be done with her, Robert?”
“She will stay where she is until she is strong; Jane wishes it; and then we shall see about the future. Something will turn up for her in some place or other, I’ve little doubt.”
Jane glanced at her husband and smiled. Robert had given her a promise to help the girl to an honest living. But, as he frankly told his wife, had he known it was a sister of Bird’s, he might never have done so.
“About yourself, Lucy; that may be the better theme to talk of just now,” he resumed. “Will you remain here for good in your old home?”
The hot tears rushed to her eyes, the hot flush to her cheeks. She looked deprecatingly at both, as if craving pardon.
“I cannot. You know I cannot.”
“Shall I tell you what Bird is, Lucy? And what he most likely will be?”
“To what end, Robert?” she faintly asked. “I know it without.”
“Then you ought to leave him—for your own sake. Leave him before you are compelled to do so.”
“Not before, Robert.”
“But why?”
“Oh, Robert, don’t you see?” she answered, breaking down. “He is my husband.”
And nothing else could they get from her. Though she cried and sobbed, and did not deny that her life was a fear and a misery, yet she would go back to him; go back on the morrow; it was her duty. In the moment’s anger Robert Ashton said he would wash his hands of her as well as of Bird. But Jane and Lucy knew better.
“What can have induced you and Robert to take up this poor Clara in the way you are doing—and mean to do?” she asked when she was alone with Jane at the close of the evening.
“I—owe a debt of gratitude; and I thought I could best pay it in this way,” was Mrs. Ashton’s