said; but I could not help it, I was obliged to give in. She spoke for me too.
“As long as there’s me, you may make your mind easy,” said Spicer. “A relation; and on the premises, so to speak. I’ll do for ’em all as is necessary; you may make your mind quite easy, Mr Turnham – you trust to me.”
Then she got up; her head drooped in her great heavy black bonnet and veil. She was not like a lily now, in all that crape; but I could not keep my eyes from her. She was not afraid of these men, as I was. She held out her hand first to the one, then to the other. “Good-bye,” she said. “We thank you very much for taking so much interest, but we would like to be alone to-day. Good-bye.”
Mr Turnham got up not quite pleased, but he shook hands with her and then with me, and said “Good-bye and God bless you” to us both. “If you want me, you know where I am to be found,” he said, with a little look of offence. Spicer stayed behind him, as if he belonged to us.
“I agree with you,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Them as is strangers has no business with your affairs. Trust ’em to me, my dear; trust ’em to me. When your money’s safe in a good snug little business you won’t be so badly off; at least it’s always something to fall back upon; – don’t you be downhearted, my dear. I don’t see as you will be so badly off.”
“Good-bye, Mr Spicer,” she said. She pushed past him and left the room with an impatience which I understood. He and I were left standing together, looking at each other. Nobody considered me much. It was the wife who was thought of – not the daughter. He shook his head as he looked after her.
“Bless us all! bless us all!” he said. “That’s what comes of turning a woman’s head. Miss Mary, I ain’t going to forsake you, though she’s far from civil. I’ll stand by you, never fear. If the money’s well invested you’ll both get something ’andsome. Nothing pays like business; and as there ain’t no babby – which was what I always feared – ”
“I don’t want to talk about Mrs Peveril,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t want to talk about her! no more do I. She’s very flighty and hoity-toighty. I remember when she was very glad to get a corner at my table. She thinks she’s set up now, with her thousand pounds. It’s a blessing as there’s no family. Miss Mary, I’ll take your instructions next time as I comes if you’ll put yourself in my hands. I’ve come to think on you as a relation too; but bless you, my dear, I know as you can’t be cheerful with visitors not just the first day. Don’t stand upon no ceremony with me.”
He wanted me to leave him, I thought, that he might examine everything, and perhaps, get at poor papa’s papers; but I would not do that. I stayed, though my heart was bursting, until he went away. What an afternoon that was! it was summer, but it rained all day. It rained and rained into the smoky street, and upon papa’s grave, which I seemed to see before me wet and cold and sodden, with little pools of water about. How heartless it seemed, how terrible, to have come into shelter ourselves and to have left him there alone in the wet, and the cold, and the misery! If one could but have gone back there and sat down by him and got one’s death, it would have been some consolation. I went up to my room and sat there drearily, watching the drops that chased each other down the window panes. It was so wet that the street was quite silent outside, nobody coming or going, except the milkman with his pails making a clank at every area. There were no cries in the street, no sound of children playing, nothing but the rain pattering, pattering, upon the roofs and the pavement, and in every little hollow on both. The house, too, was perfectly still; there was no dinner, nothing to break the long monotony. Ellen came up in her new black gown, with tears on her cheeks, to bring me a glass of wine and a sandwich. I could not eat, but I drank the wine. “Oh, Miss Mary,” said Ellen, “won’t you go to her now? There’s only you two. It ain’t a time, Miss, oh, it ain’t a time to think on things as may have been unpleasant. And she’s a taking on so, shut up in that room, as I think she’ll die.”
Why should she die any more than me? Why should she be more pitied than I was? I had lost as much, more than she had. She had known him but a short time, not two years; but he had been mine all my life. I turned my back upon Ellen’s appeal, and she went away crying, shaking her head and saying I was unkind, I was without feeling. Oh, was I without feeling? How my head ached, how my heart swelled, how the sobs rose into my throat; I should have been glad could I have felt that it was likely I should die.
“Will you go down to tea, Miss Mary,” Ellen said, coming back as the night began to fall. I was weary, weary of sitting and crying by myself; any change looked as if it must be better. I was cold and faint and miserable; and then there was in my mind a sort of curiosity to see how she looked, and if she would say anything – even to know what were to be the relations between us now. I went down accordingly, down to the dark little parlour which, during all papa’s illness, I had lived in alone. She was there, scarcely visible in the dark, crouching over a little fire which Ellen had lighted. It was very well-meant on Ellen’s part, but the wood was damp, and the coals black, and I think it made the place look almost more wretched. She sat holding out her thin hands to it. The tea was on the table, and after I went in Ellen brought the candles. We did not say anything to each other. After a while she gave me some tea and I took it. She seemed to try to speak two or three times. I waited for her to begin. I would not say a word; and we had been thus for a long time mournfully seated together before she at last broke the silence. “Mary,” she said, and then paused. I suppose it was because I was younger than she that I had more command of myself, and felt able to observe every little movement she made and every tone. I was so curious about her – anxious, I could not tell why, as to what she would do and say.
“Mary,” she repeated, “we have never been very good friends, you and I; I don’t know why this has been. I have not wished it – but we have not been very good friends.”
“No.”
“No; that is all you say? Could we not do any better now? When I came here first, I did not think I was doing you any wrong. I did not mean it as a wrong to you. Now we are two left alone in the world. I have no one, and you have no one. Could we not do any better! Mary, I think it would please him, perhaps, if we tried to be friends.”
My heart was quite full. I could have thrown myself upon her, and kissed her. I could have killed her. I did not know what to do.
“We have never been enemies,” I said.
“No. But friends – that is different. There never were two so lonely. If we stayed together we might get to be fond of each other, Mary; we might keep together out of the cold world. Two together are stronger than one alone. You don’t know how cold the world is, you are so young. If we were to keep together we might stay – at home.”
Some evil spirit moved me, I cannot tell how; it seemed to me that I had found her out, that it was this she wanted. I got up from my chair flaming with the momentary hot passion of grief. “If there is any money for me, and if you want that, you can have it,” I cried, and tried to go away.
She gave a little moaning cry, as if I had struck her. “Oh, Mary, Mary!” she cried, with a wailing voice more of sorrow than of indignation; and then she put out her hand and caught my dress. I could not have got away if I had wished, and I did not wish it, for I was devoured by curiosity about what she would do and say. This curiosity was the beginning of interest, though I did not know it; it fascinated me to her. She caught my dress and drew me closer. She put her other hand on mine, and drew me down to her, so that my face approached hers. She put up her white cheek, her eyes all hollowed out with crying, to mine: “Mary,” she said, in a heartrending tone, “do not go away from me. I have nobody but you in the world.” Then she paused. “I am going to have a baby,” she said all at once, with a low, sharp cry.
I was
