Читать книгу A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette - Charlotte M. Brame - Страница 3

Mark and Patty Brace sat down again by their hearth-stone. They were too much excited to think of sleep. Mark made up the fire and trimmed the lamp, and ruddy glow and golden gleam seemed the joyful reflection of their strangely-brightened fortunes.

Honest Mark, who seldom thought of even locking his door when he went to bed, suddenly felt that thieves might break in to steal that blessed hundred pounds that saved him from ruin. He buttoned the notes up in his waistcoat, and longed for the day-dawn when he might pay his debt and be free.

Upon Patty's simple heart rested the shadow of a new care. It was to her upright spirit a terrible responsibility to rear a stranger's child. What disposition would this little one inherit?

Could she obey that unknown mother's behest and keep this soul white and pure? Suppose the child should be willful, full of faults, proud, hard to govern, in all points the opposite to her own simple, gentle, good little girl – would she be able by love and kindness to govern and mold her into goodness? And suppose the child grew day by day into her heart, until it seemed like her very own, and then that unknown mother came and took her away? Suppose, too, that after all her humble cares, when the mother came, she should be dissatisfied and complain of the rudeness of the child's rearing?

But Patty need not have feared that; she had herself the best of good breeding, that which comes from a generous, thoughtful, unselfish spirit.

Then she began to wonder who was the mother of this babe. She told over to herself all the ladies of the adjacent village of Brakebury; not one had a hundred pounds a year to spare. She thought of all the ladies she had met in the narrow limits of life, in which she had never been fifty miles from her home. There was not one whom it would not be the utmost absurdity to charge with the maternity of this charge.

"I give it up," said Patty aloud, with a sigh.

"Give what up?" asked Mark, starting from a reverie.

"Guessing who is the mother of this little Doris."

"So you should give it up," said honest Mark, stoutly. "A bargain is a bargain, Patty, and you know all that money is not to pay for one baby's milk, tendance, and bits of clothes; nor is it to buy our faith, for faith cannot be bought; but it is given us as pledge of a secret kept with that child's mother, and to use to defend that secret; and so we must. Questions, Patty, we must not ask nor answer; if curiosity is troublesome, we'll even bear it till it dies out naturally; we are paid for the trouble of bearing our neighbor's curiosity."

"That is true," said Patty; "we will make silence our rule."

So they sat by the fire, while the storm ceased, the winds fell, the rain-heavy grass and leaves lifted themselves, the east brightened with a new day, the birds broke forth into matin-song, and then a broad bar of sunshine fell over the kitchen floor, through the very window where the black-veiled figure had stood the night before.

"Mark," said Patty, "here is a new day."

"And a very happy day," said Mark. "I shall go pay my debt the first thing; and then, Heaven helping me, when this harvest is gathered in, I can settle with neighbor Dobbs and stand up a free man. After that, Patty, I'll starve before I beg, borrow, steal, or go security. In my eye, it's all one; it's robbing your own or your neighbors in any case."

How happy felt Mark Brace that morning, as, with springing step, and whistling like a mavis, loud and clear, he strode off to Brakebury to pay his debt. His sinewy hand trembled convulsively as he took his receipt.

"I'm as thankful as you are, Mark," said his creditor; "it would have gone to my heart to ruin you. I lay awake all night thinking of it; but I must have this money or be sold out myself, and my wife is ill in bed, and my old mother blind, and cleaving to this home she was born in as ivy cleaves to the wall."

"I know how it goes," said Mark; "I've felt it. And after this, I'll hold the Scripture rule, to owe no man anything but to love one another."

Mark felt his heart large enough to love all the world that morning, especially that golden-haired mystery who had brought him safety. He hurried home, longing to be at work again. He felt energy for everything. Never had there been such a fair day, never such a lovely home, never such beautiful fields, standing thick to the sickle. Heaven be praised, he was his own man again!

He met his laborers coming to the work. In answer to his questions, one said that, crossing a field after dark, he had met a tall woman, in black, veiled, carrying a bundle which, at the time, he fancied might be a child. Another, returning late from the Blue Boar, had passed a tall woman, in black, veiled, hurrying on, with empty arms swinging at her side, but heard her sob and moan as she went by.

This was all Mark Brace heard about that eventful night.

The neighbors, finding a golden-haired, dainty babe in Patty Brace's cradle, said, wisely:

"No doubt she was well paid." "Mark Brace had seemed flush of money of late." "It was well to have friends. The child very surely belonged to some great lady."

But whether its mother lived or was dead, or where she was, Patty never opened her lips to tell; and, after two months, gossip died away, and the baby at Brackenside Farm was an accepted fact.

One person asked questions with more show of authority, and to him Mark and Patty told part of the truth. This one person was the Rector of Brakebury. They told him that the child had been left at their door, with a letter and a sum of money. The letter said the child was legitimate and christened, and that the hundred pounds would come each year. The rector was so astonished at this story that he told it to his bishop when he dined with him.

"And what kind of a child is it?" asked the Bishop of Lansdown.

"The most marvelously beautiful creature; fairly angelic."

A few weeks later, in November, the bishop was dining with the Duke of Downsbury, and bethought himself to tell the tale, beginning:

"Does not the village of Brakebury belong entirely to your grace? and is not Mark Brace one of your tenant farmers?"

The bishop told the story, as he told every story, admirably.

"And they have no clew to the child's family," asked the duchess.

"Not the least. It was the most cleverly-managed thing I ever heard of in my life."

When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, Lady Estelle Hereford, the duke's only child, asked her mother:

"What was that story the bishop was telling?"

Lady Estelle was not nineteen. Her mother felt that this tale of a foundling was not a proper thing to pour into the ear of innocence.

"Really, my dear, I was shocked at the bishop's speaking of such a thing before you," said her Grace of Downsbury.

"Why, mamma, there may be nothing really wrong about it after all," said Lady Estelle, quietly, and the duchess privately thanked Heaven for her daughter's simplicity.

"There is always some wrong where there is concealment," said the duchess, with decision. "Honor does not shun the day. I prefer you do not talk of it, Estelle."

"But, dear mamma, I want to know. So little happens here in the country, I hoped it was something to interest me."

"No, my dear. Only a little child, left at Mark Brace's door – with some money – and I think that is all, my dear."

"And Mark Brace is going to keep the child, mamma?"

"So I understand. Very admirable, honest people, the Braces."

"It is just like a novel, mamma – nicer than a written one. I am sick of novels, as I am sick of everything. I would like to see that child, if it is so pretty, mamma."

"My dearest love! But Brackenside is fifteen miles off, and you could not go so far in this chill autumn weather. You know the doctor says you must get to Italy at once."

Lady Estelle leaned back as one completely bored and weary of life, and toyed with her fan and flowers. A beauty, an heiress, a duke's daughter, Lady Estelle had been for a year and a half the idol of the most fashionable circle in London. Proud, stately, cold, calm, with sudden gleams of tenderness and fire in her great violet eyes, she had been courted by some of the noblest men of England, and dismissed each with the same indifference. But the excitement of gay life, or a nervous shock received in traveling with her friend, Lady Agnes Delapain, in Switzerland, had stolen the wild-rose tint from her cheek and the elasticity from her graceful step, and baffled physicians ordered her to be taken to a warmer climate.

"I am sorry to lose you again, Lady Hereford," said the bishop, when the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing-room.

"Thank you. But I am rather glad to go. I may find in Italy something to amuse me, or wake my cold, calm soul to romance. Here, it seems to me, it is very dull. Only the little incident that you told to-day rises over the prosaic."

Lady Estelle, with a swift glance, assured herself that the duchess was at the most remote corner of the room.

"Ah, yes, that has a flavor of romance," said the bishop.

"And you say the child is healthy and pretty?"

"Both, I am told, to an unusual degree. It has the fatal gift of beauty."

"Why fatal?" asked Lady Estelle, with listless politeness.

"Not fatal to those born to rank, parents, and every care, but fatal to the poor, the unprotected, the unknown. I cannot imagine a more terrible gift to a friendless girl."

"I never thought of that," said Lady Estelle, and then her brief interest in the little child seemed to pass into the gentle indifference with which she regarded all the events of life.

For hours afterward Lady Estelle Hereford thought of the fair foundling that had been left at Brackenside Farm, and an uneasy feeling came over her as she reflected upon the bishop's words:

"The child possesses the fatal gift of beauty. I cannot imagine a more terrible gift to a friendless girl."