A House to Let (5 page)

He came nearer to Norah, and would have taken her hand; but she backed
away from him; looking at him all the time with staring eyes, as if he
were some horrible object. Yet he was a handsome, bronzed, good-looking
fellow, with beard and moustache, giving him a foreign-looking aspect;
but his eyes! there was no mistaking those eager, beautiful eyes—the
very same that Norah had watched not half-an-hour ago, till sleep stole
softly over them.

"Tell me, Norah—I can bear it—I have feared it so often. Is she dead?"
Norah still kept silence. "She is dead!" He hung on Norah's words and
looks, as if for confirmation or contradiction.

"What shall I do?" groaned Norah. "O, sir! why did you come? how did you
find me out? where have you been? We thought you dead, we did, indeed!"
She poured out words and questions to gain time, as if time would help
her.

"Norah! answer me this question, straight, by yes or no—Is my wife
dead?"

"No, she is not!" said Norah, slowly and heavily.

"O what a relief! Did she receive my letters? But perhaps you don't
know. Why did you leave her? Where is she? O Norah, tell me all
quickly!"

"Mr. Frank!" said Norah at last, almost driven to bay by her terror lest
her mistress should return at any moment, and find him there—unable to
consider what was best to be done or said-rushing at something decisive,
because she could not endure her present state: "Mr. Frank! we never
heard a line from you, and the shipowners said you had gone down, you and
every one else. We thought you were dead, if ever man was, and poor Miss
Alice and her little sick, helpless child! O, sir, you must guess it,"
cried the poor creature at last, bursting out into a passionate fit of
crying, "for indeed I cannot tell it. But it was no one's fault. God
help us all this night!"

Norah had sate down. She trembled too much to stand. He took her hands
in his. He squeezed them hard, as if by physical pressure, the truth
could be wrung out.

"Norah!" This time his tone was calm, stagnant as despair. "She has
married again!"

Norah shook her head sadly. The grasp slowly relaxed. The man had
fainted.

There was brandy in the room. Norah forced some drops into Mr. Frank's
mouth, chafed his hands, and—when mere animal life returned, before the
mind poured in its flood of memories and thoughts—she lifted him up, and
rested his head against her knees. Then she put a few crumbs of bread
taken from the supper-table, soaked in brandy into his mouth. Suddenly
he sprang to his feet.

"Where is she? Tell me this instant." He looked so wild, so mad, so
desperate, that Norah felt herself to be in bodily danger; but her time
of dread had gone by. She had been afraid to tell him the truth, and
then she had been a coward. Now, her wits were sharpened by the sense of
his desperate state. He must leave the house. She would pity him
afterwards; but now she must rather command and upbraid; for he must
leave the house before her mistress came home. That one necessity stood
clear before her.

"She is not here; that is enough for you to know. Nor can I say exactly
where she is" (which was true to the letter if not to the spirit). "Go
away, and tell me where to find you to-morrow, and I will tell you all.
My master and mistress may come back at any minute, and then what would
become of me with a strange man in the house?"

Such an argument was too petty to touch his excited mind.

"I don't care for your master and mistress. If your master is a man, he
must feel for me poor shipwrecked sailor that I am—kept for years a
prisoner amongst savages, always, always, always thinking of my wife and
my home—dreaming of her by night, talking to her, though she could not
hear, by day. I loved her more than all heaven and earth put together.
Tell me where she is, this instant, you wretched woman, who salved over
her wickedness to her, as you do to me."

The clock struck ten. Desperate positions require desperate measures.

"If you will leave the house now, I will come to you to-morrow and tell
you all. What is more, you shall see your child now. She lies sleeping
up-stairs. O, sir, you have a child, you do not know that as yet—a
little weakly girl—with just a heart and soul beyond her years. We have
reared her up with such care: We watched her, for we thought for many a
year she might die any day, and we tended her, and no hard thing has come
near her, and no rough word has ever been said to her. And now you, come
and will take her life into your hand, and will crush it. Strangers to
her have been kind to her; but her own father—Mr. Frank, I am her nurse,
and I love her, and I tend her, and I would do anything for her that I
could. Her mother's heart beats as hers beats; and, if she suffers a
pain, her mother trembles all over. If she is happy, it is her mother
that smiles and is glad. If she is growing stronger, her mother is
healthy: if she dwindles, her mother languishes. If she dies—well, I
don't know: it is not every one can lie down and die when they wish it.
Come up-stairs, Mr. Frank, and see your child. Seeing her will do good
to your poor heart. Then go away, in God's name, just this one night-to-
morrow, if need be, you can do anything—kill us all if you will, or show
yourself—a great grand man, whom God will bless for ever and ever. Come,
Mr. Frank, the look of a sleeping child is sure to give peace."

She led him up-stairs; at first almost helping his steps, till they came
near the nursery door. She had almost forgotten the existence of little
Edwin. It struck upon her with affright as the shaded light fell upon
the other cot; but she skilfully threw that corner of the room into
darkness, and let the light fall on the sleeping Ailsie. The child had
thrown down the coverings, and her deformity, as she lay with her back to
them, was plainly visible through her slight night-gown. Her little
face, deprived of the lustre of her eyes, looked wan and pinched, and had
a pathetic expression in it, even as she slept. The poor father looked
and looked with hungry, wistful eyes, into which the big tears came
swelling up slowly, and dropped heavily down, as he stood trembling and
shaking all over. Norah was angry with herself for growing impatient of
the length of time that long lingering gaze lasted. She thought that she
waited for full half-an-hour before Frank stirred. And then—instead of
going away—he sank down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his face
in the clothes. Little Ailsie stirred uneasily. Norah pulled him up in
terror. She could afford no more time even for prayer in her extremity
of fear; for surely the next moment would bring her mistress home. She
took him forcibly by the arm; but, as he was going, his eye lighted on
the other bed: he stopped. Intelligence came back into his face. His
hands clenched.

"His child?" he asked.

"Her child," replied Norah. "God watches over him," said she
instinctively; for Frank's looks excited her fears, and she needed to
remind herself of the Protector of the helpless.

"God has not watched over me," he said, in despair; his thoughts
apparently recoiling on his own desolate, deserted state. But Norah had
no time for pity. To-morrow she would be as compassionate as her heart
prompted. At length she guided him downstairs and shut the outer door
and bolted it—as if by bolts to keep out facts.

Then she went back into the dining-room and effaced all traces of his
presence as far as she could. She went upstairs to the nursery and sate
there, her head on her hand, thinking what was to come of all this
misery. It seemed to her very long before they did return; yet it was
hardly eleven o'clock. She so heard the loud, hearty Lancashire voices
on the stairs; and, for the first time, she understood the contrast of
the desolation of the poor man who had so lately gone forth in lonely
despair.

It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs. Openshaw come in, calmly
smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after her children.

"Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?" she whispered to Norah.

"Yes."

Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes of
love. How little she dreamed who had looked on her last! Then she went
to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her countenance, but more
of pride. She took off her things, to go down to supper. Norah saw her
no more that night.

Beside the door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened out of Mr.
and Mrs. Openshaw's room, in order that they might have the children more
immediately under their own eyes. Early the next summer morning Mrs.
Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call of "Mother! mother!" She
sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and went to her child. Ailsie was
only half awake, and in a not uncommon state of terror.

"Who was he, mother? Tell me!"

"Who, my darling? No one is here. You have been dreaming love. Waken
up quite. See, it is broad daylight."

"Yes," said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother, said,
"but a man was here in the night, mother."

"Nonsense, little goose. No man has ever come near you!"

"Yes, he did. He stood there. Just by Norah. A man with hair and a
beard. And he knelt down and said his prayers. Norah knows he was here,
mother" (half angrily, as Mrs. Openshaw shook her head in smiling
incredulity).

"Well! we will ask Norah when she comes," said Mrs. Openshaw, soothingly.
"But we won't talk any more about him now. It is not five o'clock; it is
too early for you to get up. Shall I fetch you a book and read to you?"

"Don't leave me, mother," said the child, clinging to her. So Mrs.
Openshaw sate on the bedside talking to Ailsie, and telling her of what
they had done at Richmond the evening before, until the little girl's
eyes slowly closed and she once more fell asleep.

"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Openshaw, as his wife returned to bed.
"Ailsie wakened up in a fright, with some story of a man having been in
the room to say his prayers,—a dream, I suppose." And no more was said
at the time.

Mrs. Openshaw had almost forgotten the whole affair when she got up about
seven o'clock. But, bye-and-bye, she heard a sharp altercation going on
in the nursery. Norah speaking angrily to Ailsie, a most unusual thing.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw listened in astonishment.

"Hold your tongue, Ailsie I let me hear none of your dreams; never let me
hear you tell that story again!" Ailsie began to cry.

Mr. Openshaw opened the door of communication before his wife could say a
word.

"Norah, come here!"

The nurse stood at the door, defiant. She perceived she had been heard,
but she was desperate.

"Don't let me hear you speak in that manner to Ailsie again," he said
sternly, and shut the door.

Norah was infinitely relieved; for she had dreaded some questioning; and
a little blame for sharp speaking was what she could well bear, if cross-
examination was let alone.

Down-stairs they went, Mr. Openshaw carrying Ailsie; the sturdy Edwin
coming step by step, right foot foremost, always holding his mother's
hand. Each child was placed in a chair by the breakfast-table, and then
Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw stood together at the window, awaiting their
visitors' appearance and making plans for the day. There was a pause.
Suddenly Mr. Openshaw turned to Ailsie, and said:

"What a little goosy somebody is with her dreams, waking up poor, tired
mother in the middle of the night with a story of a man being in the
room."

"Father! I'm sure I saw him," said Ailsie, half crying. "I don't want
to make Norah angry; but I was not asleep, for all she says I was. I had
been asleep,—and I awakened up quite wide awake though I was so
frightened. I kept my eyes nearly shut, and I saw the man quite plain. A
great brown man with a beard. He said his prayers. And then he looked
at Edwin. And then Norah took him by the arm and led him away, after
they had whispered a bit together."

"Now, my little woman must be reasonable," said Mr. Openshaw, who was
always patient with Ailsie. "There was no man in the house last night at
all. No man comes into the house as you know, if you think; much less
goes up into the nursery. But sometimes we dream something has happened,
and the dream is so like reality, that you are not the first person,
little woman, who has stood out that the thing has really happened."

"But, indeed it was not a dream!" said Ailsie, beginning to cry.

Just then Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick came down, looking grave and discomposed.
All during breakfast time they were silent and uncomfortable. As soon as
the breakfast things were taken away, and the children had been carried
up-stairs, Mr. Chadwick began in an evidently preconcerted manner to
inquire if his nephew was certain that all his servants were honest; for,
that Mrs. Chadwick had that morning missed a very valuable brooch, which
she had worn the day before. She remembered taking it off when she came
home from Buckingham Palace. Mr. Openshaw's face contracted into hard
lines: grew like what it was before he had known his wife and her child.
He rang the bell even before his uncle had done speaking. It was
answered by the housemaid.

"Mary, was any one here last night while we were away?"

"A man, sir, came to speak to Norah."

"To speak to Norah! Who was he? How long did he stay?"

"I'm sure I can't tell, sir. He came—perhaps about nine. I went up to
tell Norah in the nursery, and she came down to speak to him. She let
him out, sir. She will know who he was, and how long he stayed."

She waited a moment to be asked any more questions, but she was not, so
she went away.

A minute afterwards Openshaw made as though he were going out of the
room; but his wife laid her hand on his arm: