Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 54

"Get you a situation? Yes, of course, if you are competent."

"Thank you, sir. Perhaps, if you could be so very kind as to tell me to whom I am to apply in town; for I shall go thither to-night."

"My goodness!" cried Mark. "Old Mark don't do things in this off-hand, cold-blooded way. Let us know who you are, my dear, and about Mr.

Thurnall. Have you anything against him?"

She was silent.

"Mary, just step into the next room."

"If you please, sir," said the same gentle voice, "I had sooner that the lady should stay. I have nothing against Mr. Thurnall, G.o.d knows. He has rather something against me."

Another pause.

Mary rose, and went up to her and took her hand.

"Do tell us who you are, and if we can do anything for you."

And she looked winningly up into her face.

The stranger drew a long breath and lifted her veil. Mary and Mark both started at the beauty of the countenance which she revealed--but in a different way. Mark gave a grunt of approbation: Mary turned pale as death.

"I suppose that it is but right and reasonable that I should tell you, at least give proof of my being an honest person. For my capabilities as a nurse--I believe you know Mrs. Vavasour? I heard that she has been staying here"

"Of course. Do you know her?"

A sad smile pa.s.sed over her face.

"Yes, well enough, at least for her to speak for me. I should have asked her or Miss St. Just to help me to a nurse's place: but I did not like to trouble them in their distress. How is the poor lady now, sir?"

"I know who she is!" cried Mary by a sudden inspiration. "Is not your name Harvey! Are you not the schoolmistress who saved Mr. Thurnall's life? who behaved so n.o.bly in the cholera? Yes! I knew you were! Come and sit down, and tell me all! I have so longed to know you! Dear creature, I have felt as if you were my own sister. He--Mr. Thurnall-- wrote often about all your heroism."

Grace seemed to choke down somewhat: and then answered steadfastly--

"I did not come here, my dear lady, to hear such kind words, but to do an errand to Mr. Thurnall. You have heard, perhaps, that when he was wrecked last spring he lost some money. Yes! Then it was stolen.

Stolen!" she repeated with a great gasp: "never mind by whom. Not by me."

"You need not tell us that, my dear," interrupted Mark.

"G.o.d kept it. And I have it; here!" and she pressed her hands tight over her bosom. "And here I must keep it till I give it into his hands, if I follow him round the world!" And as she spoke her eyes shone in the lamplight, with an unearthly brilliance which made Mary shudder.

Mark Armsworth poured a libation to the G.o.ddess of Puzzledom, in the shape of a gla.s.s of port, which first choked him, and then descended over his clean shirt front. But after he had coughed himself black in the face, he began:--

"My good girl, if you are Grace Harvey, you're welcome to my roof and an honour to it, say I: but as for taking all that money with you across the seas, and such a pretty helpless young thing as you are, G.o.d help you, it mustn't be, and shan't be, and that's flat."

"But I must go to him!" said she in so nave half-wild a fashion, that Mary, comprehending all, looked imploringly at her father, and putting her arm round Grace, forced her into a seat.

"I must go, sir, and tell him--tell him myself. No one knows what I know about it."

Mark shook his head.

"Could I not write to him? He knows me as well as he knows his own father."

Grace shook her head, and pressed her hand upon her heart, where Tom's belt lay.

"Do you think, madam, that after having had the dream of this belt, the shape of this belt, and of the money which is in it, branded into my brain for months--years it seems like--by G.o.d's fire of shame and suspicion;--and seen him poor, miserable, fretful, unbelieving, for the want of it--O G.o.d! I can't tell even your sweet face all.--Do you think that now I have it in my hands, I can part with it, or rest, till it is in his? No, not though I walk barefoot after him to the ends of the earth."

"Let his father have the money, then, and do you take him the belt as a token, if you must--"

"That's it, Mary!" shouted Mark Armsworth, "you always come in with the right hint, girl!" and the two, combining their forces, at last talked poor Grace over. But upon going out herself she was bent. To ask his forgiveness in her mother's name, was her one fixed idea. He might die, and not know all, not have forgiven all, and go she must.

"But it is a thousand to one against your seeing him. We, even, don't know exactly where he is gone."

Grace shuddered a moment; and then recovered her calmness.

"I did not expect this: but be it so. I shall meet him if G.o.d wills; and if not, I can still work--work."

"I think, Mary, you'd better take the young woman upstairs, and make her sleep here to-night," said Mark, glad of an excuse to get rid of them; which, when he had done, he pulled his chair round in front of the fire, put a foot on each hob, and began rubbing his eyes vigorously.

"Dear me! Dear me! What a lot of good people there are in this old world, to be sure! Ten times better than me, at least--make one ashamed of oneself:--and if one isn't even good enough for this world, how's one to be good enough for heaven?"

And Mary carried Grace upstairs, and into her own bed-room. A bed should be made up there for her. It would do her good just to have anything so pretty sleeping in the same room. And then she got Grace supper, and tried to make her talk: but she was distrait, reserved; for a new and sudden dread had seized her, at the sight of that fine house, fine plate, fine friends. These were his acquaintances, then: no wonder that he would not look on such as her. And as she cast her eye round the really luxurious chamber, and (after falteringly asking Mary whether she had any brothers and sisters) guessed that she must be the heiress of all that wealth, she settled in her heart that Tom was to marry Mary; and the intimate tone in which Mary spoke of him to her, and her innumerable inquiries about him, made her more certain that it was a settled thing. Handsome she was not, certainly; but so sweet and good; and that her own beauty (if she was aware that she possessed any) could have any weight with Tom, she would have considered as an insult to his sense; so she made up her mind slowly, but steadily, that thus it was to be; and every fresh proof of Mary's sweetness and goodness was a fresh pang to her, for it showed the more how probable it was that Tom loved her.

Therefore she answered all Mary's questions carefully and honestly, as to a person who had a right to ask; and at last went to her bed, and, worn out in body and mind, was asleep in a moment. She had not remarked the sigh which escaped Mary, as she glanced at that beautiful head, and the long black tresses which streamed down for a moment over the white shoulders ere they were knotted back for the night, and then at her own poor countenance in the gla.s.s opposite.

It was long past midnight when Grace woke, she knew not how, and looking up, saw a light in the room, and Mary sitting still over a book, her head resting on her hands. She lay quiet and thought she heard a sob.

She was sure she heard tears drop on the paper. She stirred, and Mary was at her side in a moment.

"Did you want anything?"

"Only to--to remind you, ma'am, it is not wise to sit up so late."

"Only that?" said Mary, laughing. "I do that every night, alone with G.o.d; and I do not think He will be the farther off for your being here!"

"One thing I had to ask," said Grace. "It would lesson my labour so, if you could give me any hint of where he might be."

"We know, as we told you, as little as you. His letters are to be sent to Constantinople. Some from Aberalva are gone thither already."

"And mine among them!" thought Grace. "It is G.o.d's will!... Madam, if it would not seem forward on my part--if you could tell him the truth, and what I have for him, and where I am, in case he might wish--wish to see me--when you were writing."

"Of course I will, or my father will," said Mary, who did not like to confess either to herself or to Grace, that it was very improbable that she would ever write again to Tom Thurnall.

And so the two sweet maidens, so near that moment to an explanation, which might have cleared up all, went on each in her ignorance; for so it was to be.

The next morning Grace came down to breakfast, modest, cheerful, charming. Mark made her breakfast with them; gave her endless letters of recommendation; wanted to take her to see old Doctor Thurnall, which she declined, and then sent her to the station in his own carriage, paid her fare first-cla.s.s to town, and somehow or other contrived, with Mary's help, that she should find in her bag two ten-pound notes, which she had never seen before. After which he went out to his counting-house, only remarking to Mary--

"Very extraordinary young woman, and very handsome, too. Will make some man a jewel of a wife, if she don't go mad, or die of the hospital fever."