meet her, gave a glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and beckoning the young Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him downstairs into that now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a good dinner had been celebrated.
Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period the parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr. Bowls, Miss Crawley’s large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened to be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview); and the Captain coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black charger pawing among the straw, to the admiration of the little blackguard boys collected in the street. He looked in at the dining-room window, managing his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully — for one instant the young person might be seen at the window, when her figure vanished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume the affecting duties of benevolence.
Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That evening a little dinner for two persons was laid in the dining-room — when Mrs. Firkin, the lady’s maid, pushed into her mistress’s apartment, and bustled about there during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new nurse — and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal.
Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a morsel of meat. The young person carved a fowl with the utmost delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs, before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing hysterical state.
“Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?” said the person to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so. Briggs seized it mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began to play with the chicken on her plate.
“I think we shall be able to help each other,” said the person with great suavity: “and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls’s kind services. Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you.” He went downstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon the unoffending footman, his subordinate.
“It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs,” the young lady said, with a cool, slightly sarcastic, air.
“My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on’t see me,” gurgled out Briggs in an agony of renewed grief.
“She’s not very ill any more. Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. She has only overeaten herself — that is all. She is greatly better. She will soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped and from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately. Pray console yourself, and take a little more wine.”
“But why, why won’t she see me again?” Miss Briggs bleated out. “Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years’ tenderness! is this the return to your poor, poor Arabella?”
“Don’t cry too much, poor Arabella,” the other said (with ever so little of a grin); “she only won’t see you, because she says you don’t nurse her as well as I do. It’s no pleasure to me to sit up all night. I wish you might do it instead.”
“Have I not tended that dear couch for years?” Arabella said, “and now —”
“Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people have these fancies, and must be humoured. When she’s well I shall go.”
“Never, never,” Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.
“Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?” the other said, with the same provoking good-nature. “Pooh — she will be well in a fortnight, when I shall go back to my little pupils at Queen’s Crawley, and to their mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need not be jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl without any friends, or any harm in me. I don’t want to supplant you in Miss Crawley’s good graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: and her affection for you has been the work of years. Give me a little wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends. I’m sure I want friends.”
The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that, and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such, astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described ingeniously as “the person” hitherto), went upstairs again to her patient’s rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she eliminated poor Firkin. “Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do; how nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted.” “Thank you”; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the more dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom.
Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and gruel-basin the neglected female carried.
“Well, Firkin?” says she, as the other entered the apartment. “Well, Jane?”
“Wuss and wuss, Miss B.,” Firkin said, wagging her head.
“Is she not better then?”
“She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never thought to have seen this day!” And the water-works again began to play.
“What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought, while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm friends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a stranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still dearest Matilda!” Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was of a literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume of poems —“Trills of the Nightingale”— by subscription.
“Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young woman,” Firkin replied. “Sir Pitt wouldn’t have let her go, but he daredn’t refuse Miss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad — never happy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won’t have nobody near her but Miss Sharp, I can’t tell for where nor for why; and I think somethink has bewidged everybody.”
Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; the next night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time for several hours’ comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of her patroness’s bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she sat up and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and her grief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs’ weeping snuffle, and her manner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that Miss Crawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when they visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world, when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression and terror of death.
Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from Miss Rebecca respecting his aunt’s health. This improved so rapidly, that poor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with tender hearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental female, and the affecting nature of the interview.
Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon. Rebecca used to mimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, thereby rendering the imitation doubly piquant to her worthy patroness.
The causes which had led to the deplorable illness
