The Minister's Charge Part 20

"There ain't anything there," he reported without looking at her, and was about to pa.s.s her on the stairs in going down.

"Oh, thank you very much, Lemuel," she said, with fervent grat.i.tude in her voice. She fetched a tremulous sigh. "I suppose it was nothing.

Yes," she added hoa.r.s.ely, "it must have been nothing. Oh, let _me_ go down first!" she cried, putting out her hand to stop him from pa.s.sing her. She resumed when they reached the ground floor again. "Aunty has gone out, and Jane was in the kitchen, and it began to grow dark while I sat reading in the drawing-room, and all at once I heard the strangest _noise_." Her voice dropped deeply on the last word. "Yes, it was very strange indeed! Thank you, Lemuel," she concluded.

"Quite welcome," said Lemuel dryly, pushing on towards the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

"Oh! And Lemuel! will you let Jane give you your supper in the dining-room, so that you could be here if I heard anything else?"

"I don't want any supper," said Lemuel.

The girl scrutinised him with an expression of misgiving. Then, with a little sigh, as of one who will not explore a painful mystery, she asked: "Would you mind sitting in the dining-room, then, till aunty gets back?"

"I'd just as lives sit there," said Lemuel, walking into the dark dining-room and sitting down.

"Oh, thank you very much. Aunty will be back very soon, I suppose. She's just gone to the Sewells' to tea."

She followed him to the threshold. "You must--I must--light the gas in here for you."

"Guess I can light the gas," said Lemuel, getting up to intercept her in this service. She had run into the reception-room for a match, and she would not suffer him to prevent her.

"No, no! I insist! And Lemuel," she said, turning upon him, "I must ask you to excuse my speaking harshly to you. I was--agitated."

"Perfectly excusable," said Lemuel.

"I am afraid," said the girl, fixing him with her eyes, "that you are not well."

"Oh yes, I'm well. I'm--pretty tired; that's all."

"Have you been walking far?"

"Yes--not very."

"The walking ought to do you good," said Sibyl, with serious thoughtfulness. "I think," she continued, "you had better have some bryonia. Don't you think you had?"

"No, no! I don't want anything," protested Lemuel.

She looked at him with a feeling of baffled anxiety painted on her face; and as she turned away, she beamed with a fresh inspiration. "I will get you a book." She flew into the reception-room and back again, but she only had the book that she had herself been reading.

"Perhaps you would like to read this? I've finished it. I was just looking back through it."

"Thank you; I guess I don't want to read any, just now."

She leaned against the side of the dining-table, beyond which Lemuel sat, and searched his fallen countenance with a glance contrived to be at once piercing and reproachful. "I see," she said, "you have not forgiven me."

"Forgiven you?" repeated Lemuel blankly.

"Yes--for giving way to my agitation in speaking to you."

"I don't know," said Lemuel, with a sigh of deep inward trouble, "as I noticed anything."

"I told you to light the gas in the bas.e.m.e.nt," suggested Sibyl, "and then I told you to light it up here, and then--I scolded you."

"Oh yes," admitted Lemuel: "that." He dropped his head again.

Sibyl sank upon the edge of a chair. "Lemuel! you have something on your mind?"

The boy looked up with a startled face.

"Yes! I can see that you have," pursued Sibyl. "What have you been doing?" she demanded sternly.

Lemuel was so full of the truth that it came first to his lips in all cases. He could scarcely force it aside now with the evasion that availed him nothing. "I don't know as I've been doing anything in particular."

"I see that you don't wish to tell me!" cried the girl. "But you might have trusted me. I would have defended you, no matter what you had done--the worse the better."

Lemuel hung his head without answering.

After a while she continued: "If I had been that girl who had you arrested, and I had been the cause of so much suffering to an innocent person, I should never have forgiven myself. I should have devoted my life to expiation. I should have spent my life in going about the prisons, and finding out persons who were unjustly accused. I should have done it as a penance. Yes! even if he had been guilty!"

Lemuel remained insensible to this extreme of self-sacrifice, and she went on: "This book--it is a story--is all one picture of such a nature.

There is a girl who's been brought up as the ward of a young man. He educates her, and she expects to be his wife, and he turns out to be perfectly false and unworthy in every way; but she marries him all the same, although she likes some one else, because she feels that she ought to punish herself for thinking of another, and because she hopes that she will die soon, and when her guardian finds out what she's done for him, it will reform him. It's perfectly sublime. It's--enn.o.bling! If every one could read this book, they would be very different."

"I don't see much sense in it," said Lemuel, goaded to this comment.

"You would if you read it. When she dies--she is killed by a fall from her horse in hunting, and has just time to join the hands of her husband and the man she liked first, and tell them everything--it is wrought up so that you hold your breath. I suppose it was reading that that made me think there were burglars getting in. But perhaps you're right not to read it now, if you're excited already. I'll get you something cheerful." She whirled out of the room and back in a series of those swift, nervous movements peculiar to her. "There! that will amuse you, I know." She put the book down on the table before Lemuel, who silently submitted to have it left there. "It will distract your thoughts, if anything will. And I shall ask you to let me sit just here in the reception-room, so that I can call you if I feel alarmed."

"All right," said Lemuel, lapsing absently to his own troubled thoughts.

"Thank you very much," said Sibyl. She went away, and came back directly. "Don't you think," she asked, "that it's very strange you should never have seen or heard anything of her?"

"Heard of who?" he asked, dragging himself painfully up from the depths of his thoughts.

"That heartless girl who had you arrested."

"She _wasn't_ heartless!" retorted Lemuel indignantly.

"You think so because you are generous, and can't imagine such heartlessness. Perhaps," added Sibyl, with the air of being illumined by a happy thought, "she is dead. That would account for everything. She may have died of remorse. It probably preyed upon her till she couldn't bear it any longer, and then she killed herself."

Lemuel began to grow red at the first apprehension of her meaning. As she went on, he changed colour more and more.

"She is alive!" cried Sibyl. "She's alive, and you have seen her!

You needn't deny it! You've seen her to-day!" Lemuel rose in clumsy indignation. "I don't know as anybody's got any right to say what I've done, or haven't done."

"O Lemuel!" cried Sibyl. "Do you think anyone in this house would intrude in your affairs? But if you need a friend--a sister----"

"I don't need any sister. I want you should let me alone."

At these words, so little appreciative of her condescension, her romantic beneficence, her unselfish interest, Sibyl suddenly rebounded to her former level, which she was sensible was far above that of this unworthy object of her kindness. She rose from her chair, and pursued--

"If you need a friend--a sister--I'm sure that you can safely confide in--the cook." She looked at him a moment, and broke into a malicious laugh very unlike that of a social reformer, which rang shriller at the bovine fury which mounted to Lemuel's eyes. The rattle of a night-latch made itself heard in the outer door. Sibyl's voice began to break, as it rose: "I never expected to be treated in my own aunt's house with such perfect ingrat.i.tude and impudence--yes, impudence!--by one of her servants!"