The New Mistress Part 53

There was something in his voice that soothed Hazel, and the sobs grew less violent.

"It wasn't natural or right, and I ought to have known better than to have expected it; but they say every man gets his foolish fit some time or other in his life, and though mine was a long time coming, it came very strong at last. It's all quite over, my dear, and I know better now, and I'm going to ask you to say once more that common, vulgar sort of fellow as I am, you are going to look upon me as your friend."

"Common!" cried Hazel hysterically, for the bonds that she had maintained for weeks had given way at last, and her woman's weakness had resulted in tears and sobs. "Common!--vulgar! No, no!"

She caught his hands in hers and pressed them to her lips. Then she would have sunk upon her knees and asked his pardon for the pain she had unwittingly caused, but he caught her in his arms and held her helplessly sobbing to his breast.

They neither of them were aware that the drawing-room door was opened, and that Miss Burge and Rebecca Lambent had entered, the former to look tearfully on, the latter indignant as she muttered, "Shameless creature!" between her teeth.

"What! have you made matters up, then, Bill?" cried Miss Burge excitedly as she ran forward. "Oh, my dear, my dear!"

Her tears were flowing fast as she paused before them, trying to extricate her handkerchief from an awkward pocket and arrested by her brother's words.

"Yes, Betsey, we've made it up all right," he said.

"I--I didn't think it," sobbed Miss Burge.

"No," he said; "and it isn't as you think, for this is our very, very dear young friend, Betsey, and--and as I'm plenty old enough to be her father, Hazel Thorne's going to let me act by her like one, and stand by her through thick and thin, in spite of all that the world may say, including you, Miss Lambent." He spoke proudly, as he drew Hazel closer to his breast, and stood there softly stroking her hair, with so frank and honest a light shining out of his eyes that it brightened the whole man.

"Sir!" exclaimed Rebecca.

"Madam!" he cried, "I don't want to be rude; but, as your company can't be pleasant to Miss Hazel Thorne, I'd take it kindly if you'd go."

"And I was ready to forget my position and marry a man like this,"

muttered Rebecca as she walked down to the gate. "Oh, that creature!

She came upon Plumton like a curse."

"Betsey, my dear," said Mr William Forth Burge, speaking to his sister, but speaking at Hazel, "you and me never had anything kept from one another, and please G.o.d we never will, so I'll tell you. I've been asking Miss Hazel Thorne here to be my wife."

"Yes, Bill dear, I know--I know," sobbed little Miss Burge.

"And while I've been asking her, it came over me like that I was wrong to ask her, and that it wouldn't be natural and right."

"Oh, Bill dear!"

"She's been so good and tender, and kind and sensible, that it's been like taking the scales from before my eyes, and been a sort of lesson to me; and somehow, my dear, I feel as if I was a different sort of man to what I was before. I'm not a speaker, and I can't express myself as I should like to; but what I want to say is, that I feel as if I was more of a man and a bit wiser than I was."

"Oh, Bill dear!"

"I'm getting on fast for fifty, Betsey dear, and Miss Thorne here--I should like to say Hazel Thorne here--is only two-and-twenty or thereabouts, and she's going to be like our own child from now, if she will, and we're going to try and keep away troubles for the future till she wants to go away. And now we won't say any more about it, but let things settle down. Stop a minute, though, Hazel Thorne, my dear; you've made me a gentleman, and we shall be friends."

For answer Hazel left Miss Burge, who had been sitting by her with her arm round her waist, and, placing her hand in his, she looked him full in the eyes, seeing no longer the homeliness of the man, hearing no more his illiterate speech, but gazing as it were straight into his simple honest kindly heart. She hesitated for a moment, and then, reaching up she kissed, him as a child would kiss one she loved.

CHAPTER FORTY.

"I WANT TEACHER."

One low, weary, incessant cry in the shabby, sloping-roofed, whitewashed room.

The place was scrupulously clean; there was not so much as a speck upon the windows; but the chamber was miserably bare. One well-worn, damaged rush-chair was beside the worm-eaten, stump bedstead, a box supported a chipped white jug and basin, and an old sack unsewn and opened out formed the carpet. The only other article of furniture was a thin, very old, white sc.r.a.p of dimity curtain half drawn across the lead lattice-paned window upon a piece of tape.

And from the bed arose that one weary, constant cry from between the fevered, cracked lips, night and day--

"I want teacher to come!"

For there was no mischief dancing in her unnaturally bright eyes; the restless hands were not raised to play some trick; the face was not drawn up in some mocking grimace: all was pitiful, and pinched, and sad; for poor Feelier Potts lay sick unto death, and it seemed as if at any moment the dark shadow would float forth from the open window, bearing one more sleeping spirit away.

"I want teacher!--I want teacher!"--night and day that weary, weary burden, ever in the same unreasoning strain; and it was in vain that the poor rough mother, softened now in face of this terrible trouble, sought to give comfort.

"But she can't come now, my bairn--she can't come. Oh, do be quiet-- do!"

"I want teacher--I want teacher to come."

Unreasoning ever--for poor Feelier was almost beyond reasoning--there was one great want in her shadowed mind, and it found vent between her lips for the first days loudly, then painfully low, and at last in a hoa.r.s.e murmur, but always the same--

"I want teacher to come."

"I won't come anigh you to speak, miss, for it wouldn't be right,"

sobbed poor, broken-down Mrs Potts, weak now and worn out, as she stood at the cottage gate, after making signs for Hazel to come to the door.

For nights past she had been watching by her child's couch, while her husband had kept watch at the public-house till it was shut, and then he had slept in a barn. For he had only one body, and he was terribly afraid lest it should be stricken by the sore disease.

"I am not afraid of the infection, Mrs Potts," said Hazel kindly. "You look worn out; let me give you a cup of tea."

"My dear Hazel," said Mrs Thorne from the kitchen, where she was seated at the evening meal, "what are you going to do?"

"Good, if I can, mother," said Hazel simply, and she filled a cup and took it out to the half-fainting woman, who looked her thanks, for she could not speak for some minutes.

"There, miss, and G.o.d bless you for it," she said, handing back the cup.

"I felt I must come and tell you, miss, for--for it seems as if she couldn't die till you had been."

"Does she ask for me so?" said Hazel.

"She asks for nothing else, miss. It's always 'I want teacher,' and-- and I thought miss--if you'd come to the house--if it was only to stand on the other side of the road--the window's open, miss, and she could hear you, and if you was just to say, 'I'm here, Feelier!' or, 'go to sleep, there's a good girl!' it would quiet her like, and then she'd be able to die."

"Oh, pray don't speak like that!" cried Hazel. "Let us hope that she will live."

"I don't know what for, miss," said the wretched woman despondently.

"Only to live to have a master who'd beat and ill-use her, and make her slave to keep his bairns. I did think I'd like her to live, but the Lord knows best and He's going to take her away."

"I'll come on and see her," said Hazel quietly. "Poor child! I was in hopes that she was going to amend. Wait for me here till I get my hat, and I will come."

"What are you going to do, my dear?" exclaimed Mrs Thorne as Hazel pa.s.sed through the room.

"I am going to see one of my children, mother," she replied quietly.

"Not that dreadful Feelier Potts, Hazel?"