A True Friend Part 49

"Who are _you_?" said the woman, looking at her sharply.

"I am governess to Mr. Brand's little boy."

"Oh, indeed. And he's at home, I suppose?"

"No," said Janetta, gravely, "he has been away for more than a year, and is now, I believe, on his way to America."

"You lie!" said the woman, furiously; "and you know that you lie!"

Janetta recoiled a step. Was this person mad?

"He is at home, and you want to keep me out," the woman went on, wildly.

"You don't want me to set foot in the place, or to see my child again!

He is at home, and I'll see him if I have to trample on your body first."

"n.o.body wants to keep you out," said Janetta, forcing herself to speak and look calmly, but tingling with anger from head to foot. "But I a.s.sure you Mr. Brand is away from home. His mother lives here; she is not very strong, and ought not to be disturbed. If you will give me your name----"

"My name?" repeated the other in a tone of mockery. "Oh yes, I'll give you my name. I don't see why I should hide it; do you? I've been away a good long time; but I mean to have my rights now. My name is Mrs. Wyvis Brand: what do you think of that, young lady?"

She drew herself up as she spoke, looking gaunt and defiant. Her eyes flamed and her cheeks grew hotter and deeper in tint until they were poppy-red. She showed her teeth--short, square, white teeth--as if she wanted to snarl like an angry dog. But Janetta, after the first moment of repulsion and astonishment, was not dismayed.

"I did not know," she said, gravely, "that you had any right to call yourself by that name. I thought that you were divorced from Mr. Wyvis Brand."

"Separated for incompatibility of temper; that was all," said Mrs. Brand coolly. "I told him I'd got a divorce, but it wasn't true. I wanted to be free from him--that's the truth. I didn't mean him to marry again. I heard that he was going to be married--is that so! Perhaps he was going to marry _you_?"

"No," Janetta answered, very coldly.

"I'm not going to put up with it if he is," was her visitor's sullen reply. "I've borne enough from him in my day, I can tell you. So I've come for the boy. I'm going to have him back; and when I've got him I've no doubt but what I can make Wyvis do what I choose. I hear he's fond of the boy."

"But what--what--do you want him to do?" said Janetta, startled out of her reserve. "Do you want--_money_ from him?"

Mrs. Wyvis Brand laughed hoa.r.s.ely. Janetta noticed that her breath was very short, and that she leaned against the gate-post for support.

"No, not precisely," she said. "I want more than that. I see that he's got a nice, comfortable, respectable house; and I'm tired of wandering.

I'm ill, too, I believe. I want a place in which to be quiet and rest, or die, as it may turn out. I mean Wyvis to take me back."

She opened the gate as she spoke, and tried to pa.s.s Janetta. But the girl stood in her way.

"Take you back after you have left him and ill-treated him and deceived him, you wicked woman!" she broke out, in her old impetuous way. And for answer, Mrs. Wyvis Brand raised her hand and struck her sharply across the face.

A shrill, childish cry rang out upon the air. Janetta stood mute and trembling, unable for the moment to move or speak, as little Julian suddenly flung himself into her arms and tried to drag her towards the house.

"Oh, come away, come away, dear Janetta!" he cried. "It's mamma, and she'll take me back to Paris, I know she will! I won't go away from you, I won't, I won't!" His mother sprung towards him, as if to tear him from Janetta's arm, and then her strength seemed suddenly to pa.s.s from her.

She stopped, turned ghastly white, and then as suddenly very red. Then she flung up her arms with a gasping, gurgling cry, and, to Janetta's horror, she saw a crimson tide break from her quivering lips. She was just in time to catch her in her arms before she sank senseless to the ground.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

JULIET.

There was no help for it. Into Wyvis Brand's house Wyvis Brand's wife must go. Old Mrs. Brand came feebly into the garden, and identified the woman as the mother of Julian, and the wife of her eldest son. She could not be allowed to die at their door. She could not be taken to any other dwelling. There were laborers' cottages only in the immediate vicinity.

She must be brought to the Red House and nursed by Janetta and Mrs.

Brand. A woman with a broken blood-vessel, how unworthy soever she might be, could not be sent to the Beaminster Hospital three miles away.

Common humanity forbade it. She must, for a time at least, be nursed in the place where she was taken ill.

So she was carried indoors and laid in the best bedroom, which was a gloomy-looking place until Janetta began to make reforms in it. When she had put fresh curtains to the windows, and set flowers on the window-sill, and banished some of the old black furniture, the room looked a trifle more agreeable, and there was nothing on which poor Juliet Brand's eye could dwell with positive dislike or dissatisfaction when she came to herself. But for some time she lay at the very point of death, and it seemed to Janetta and to all the watchers at the bedside that Mrs. Wyvis Brand could not long continue in the present world.

Mrs. Brand the elder seldom came into the room. She showed a singular horror of her daughter-in-law: she would not even willingly speak of her. She pleaded her ill-health as an excuse for not taking her share of the nursing; and when it seemed likely that Janetta would be worn out by it, she insisted that a nurse from the Beaminster Hospital should be procured. "It will not be for long," she said gloomily, when Janetta spoke regretfully of the expense. For Janetta was chief cashier and financier in the household.

But it appeared as if she were mistaken. Mrs. Brand did not die, as everybody expected. She lay for a time in a very weak state, and then began gradually to recover strength. Before long, she was able to converse, and then she showed a preference for Janetta's society which puzzled the girl not a little. For Julian she also showed some fondness, but he sometimes wearied, sometimes vexed her, and a visit of a very few minutes sufficed for both mother and son. Julian himself exhibited not only dislike but terror of her. He tried to run away and hide when the hour came for his daily visit to his mother's room; and when Janetta spoke to him on the subject rather anxiously, he burst into tears and avowed he was afraid.

"Afraid of what?" said Janetta.

But he only sobbed and would not tell.

"She can't hurt you, Julian, dear. She is ill and weak and lonely; and she loves you. It's not kind and loving of you to run away."

"I don't want to be unkind."

"Or unloving?" said Janetta.

"I don't love her," the boy answered, and bit his lip. His eye flashed for a moment, and then he looked down as if he were ashamed of the confession.

"Julian, dear? Your mother?"

"I can't help it. She hasn't been very much like a mother to me."

"You should not say that, dear. She loves you very much; and all people do not love in the same way."

"Oh, it isn't that," said the boy, as if in desperation. "I know she loves me, but--but----" And there he broke down in a pa.s.sion of tears and sobs, amidst which Janetta could distinguish only a few words, such as "Suzanne said"--"father"--"make me wicked too."

"Do you mean," said Janetta, more shocked than she liked to show, "that you think your father wicked?"

"Oh, no, no! Suzanne said mother was not good. Not father."

"But, my dear boy, you must not say that your mother is not good. You have no reason to say so, and it is a terrible thing to say."

"She was unkind to father--and to me, too," Julian burst forth. "And she struck you; she is wicked and unkind, and I don't love her. And Suzanne said she would make me wicked, too, and that I was just like her; and I don't want--to--be--wicked."

"n.o.body can make you wicked if you are certain that you want to be good," said Janetta, gravely; "and it was very wrong of Suzanne to say anything that could make you think evil of your mother."

"Isn't she naughty, then?" Julian asked in a bewildered tone.

"I do not know," Janetta answered, very seriously. "Only G.o.d knows that.

We cannot tell. It is the last thing we ought say."