Читать книгу Young Musgrave - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 7

“Yes, I sent for you. I am in—difficulty, Martha. These children have just come—the children of a friend—— ” Her first idea was to conceal the real state of the case even from her confidential and well-informed maid.

“Dear me,” said Miss Brown, with seeming innocence. “How strange! to bring a little lady and gentleman without any warning. But I’ll go and give orders, ma’am; there are plenty of rooms vacant, there need not be any difficulty—— ”

Miss Musgrave caught her by the arm.

“What I want for the moment is light, and some food here. Bring me the lamp I always use. No, not Eastwood; never mind Eastwood. I want you to bring it, they will be less afraid in the light.”

“There is a fire in the dining-room, ma’am, it is only a step, and Eastwood is lighting the candles; and there you can have what you like for them.”

It was confidence Miss Brown wanted—nothing but confidence. With that she was ready to do anything; without it she was Miss Musgrave’s respectable maid, to whom all mysteries were more or less improper. She crossed her hands firmly and waited. The room was growing darker and darker every minute, and the foreign nurse began to lose patience. She called “Madame! madame!” in a high voice; then poured forth into a stream of words, so rapid and so loud as both mistress and maid thought they had never heard spoken before. Miss Musgrave was not a great linguist. She knew enough to be aware that it was Italian the woman was speaking, but that was all.

“I do not understand you,” she said in distress, going up to the little group. But as she approached a sudden accession of terror, instantly suppressed on the part of the little girl but irrepressible by the younger boy, and which broke forth in a disjointed way, arrested her steps. Were they afraid of her, these children? “Little Lilias,” she said piteously, “be a brave child and stand by me. I cannot take you out of this cold room yet, but lights are coming and you will be taken care of. If I leave you alone for a little while will you promise me to be brave and not to be afraid?”

There was a pause, broken only by little flutterings of that nervous exhaustion which made the children so accessible to fear. Then a small voice said, dauntless, yet with a falter—

“I will stay. I will not be afraid.”

“Thank God,” said Mary Musgrave, to herself. The child was already a help and assistance. “Martha,” she said hastily, “tell no one; they are—my brother’s children—”

“Good Lord!” said Martha Brown, frightened out of her primness. “And it’s dark, and there’s two big boxes, and master don’t know.”

“That is the worst of all,” said Miss Musgrave sadly. She had never spoken to any one of her father’s inexorable verdict against John and all belonging to him. “The heir! and I must not take him into the house of his fathers! Take care of them, take care of them while I go—— And, Martha, say nothing—not a word.”

“Not if they were to cut me in pieces, ma’am!” said Miss Brown fervently. She was too old a servant to work in the dark; but confidence restored all her faculties to her. It was not, however, in the nature of things that she should discharge her commission without a betrayal more or less of the emergency. “I want some milk, please,” she said to the cook, “for my lady.” It was only in moments of importance that she so spoke of her mistress. And the very sound of her step told a tale.

“I told ye there was somethink oop,” said Tom Gardener, still lingering in the kitchen.

And to see how the house brightened up, and all the servants grew alert in the flutter of this novelty! Nothing had happened at the castle for so long—they had a right to a sensation. Cook, who had been there for a long time, recounted her experience to her assistants in low tones of mystery.

“Ah, if ye’d known the place when the gentlemen was at home,” said cook; “the things as happened in t’auld house—such goings on!—coming in late and early—o’er the watter and o’er the land—and the strivings, that was enough to make a body flee out of their skin!” She ended with a regretful sigh for the old times. “That was life, that was!” she said.

Meanwhile Mary Musgrave came in out of the dark hall into the lighted warmth of the dining-room, where the glass and the silver shone red in the firelight. How cosy and pleasant it was there! how warm and cheerful! Just the place to comfort the children and make them forget their miseries. The children! How easily her mind had undertaken the charge of them—the fact of their existence; already they had become the chief feature in her life. She paused to look at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, to smooth her hair, and put the ribbon straight at her neck. The Squire was “very particular,” and yet she did not remember to have had this anxious desire to be pleasant to his eyes since that day when she had crept to him to implore a reversal of his sentence. She had obtained nothing from him then; would she be more fortunate now? The colour had gone out of her face, but her eyes were brighter and more resolute than usual. How her heart beat when Mr. Musgrave said, “Come in,” calmly from the midst of his studies, as she knocked trembling at the library door!