Part 57 (1/2)

”What did I say, when I came in?” Miss Ladd asked. ”Speak out plainly; and try--it's not easy, I know--but try to begin at the beginning.”

Mrs. Ellmother looked back through her memory of past events, and began by alluding to the feeling of curiosity which she had excited in Francine, on the day when Emily had made them known to one another.

From this she advanced to the narrative of what had taken place at Netherwoods--to the atrocious attempt to frighten her by means of the image of wax--to the discovery made by Francine in the garden at night--and to the circ.u.mstances under which that discovery had been communicated to Emily.

Miss Ladd's face reddened with indignation. ”Are you sure of all that you have said?” she asked.

”I am quite sure, ma'am. I hope I have not done wrong,” Mrs. Ellmother added simply, ”in telling you all this?”

”Wrong?” Miss Ladd repeated warmly. ”If that wretched girl has no defense to offer, she is a disgrace to my school--and I owe you a debt of grat.i.tude for showing her to me in her true character. She shall return at once to Netherwoods; and she shall answer me to my entire satisfaction--or leave my house. What cruelty! what duplicity! In all my experience of girls, I have never met with the like of it. Let me go to my dear little Emily--and try to forget what I have heard.”

Mrs. Ellmother led the good lady to Emily's room--and, returning to the lower part of the house, went out into the garden. The mental effort that she had made had left its result in an aching head, and in an overpowering sense of depression. ”A mouthful of fresh air will revive me,” she thought.

The front garden and back garden at the cottage communicated with each other. Walking slowly round and round, Mrs. Ellmother heard footsteps on the road outside, which stopped at the gate. She looked through the grating, and discovered Alban Morris.

”Come in, sir!” she said, rejoiced to see him. He obeyed in silence. The full view of his face shocked Mrs. Ellmother. Never in her experience of the friend who had been so kind to her at Netherwoods, had he looked so old and so haggard as he looked now. ”Oh, Mr. Alban, I see how she has distressed you! Don't take her at her word. Keep a good heart, sir--young girls are never long together of the same mind.”

Alban gave her his hand. ”I mustn't speak about it,” he said. ”Silence helps me to bear my misfortune as becomes a man. I have had some hard blows in my time: they don't seem to have blunted my sense of feeling as I thought they had. Thank G.o.d, she doesn't know how she has made me suffer! I want to ask her pardon for having forgotten myself yesterday.

I spoke roughly to her, at one time. No: I won't intrude on her; I have said I am sorry, in writing. Do you mind giving it to her? Good-by--and thank you. I mustn't stay longer; Miss Ladd expects me at Netherwoods.”

”Miss Ladd is in the house, sir, at this moment.”

”Here, in London!”

”Upstairs, with Miss Emily.”

”Upstairs? Is Emily ill?”

”She is getting better, sir. Would you like to see Miss Ladd?”

”I should indeed! I have something to say to her--and time is of importance to me. May I wait in the garden?”

”Why not in the parlor, sir?”

”The parlor reminds me of happier days. In time, I may have courage enough to look at the room again. Not now.”

”If she doesn't make it up with that good man,” Mrs. Ellmother thought, on her way back to the house, ”my nurse-child is what I have never believed her to be yet--she's a fool.”

In half an hour more, Miss Ladd joined Alban on the little plot of gra.s.s behind the cottage. ”I bring Emily's reply to your letter,” she said.

”Read it, before you speak to me.”

Alban read it: ”Don't suppose you have offended me--and be a.s.sured that I feel gratefully the tone in which your note is written. I try to write forbearingly on my side; I wish I could write acceptably as well. It is not to be done. I am as unable as ever to enter into your motives. You are not my relation; you were under no obligation of secrecy: you heard me speak ignorantly of the murder of my father, as if it had been the murder of a stranger; and yet you kept me--deliberately, cruelly kept me--deceived! The remembrance of it burns me like fire. I cannot--oh, Alban, I cannot restore you to the place in my estimation which you have lost! If you wish to help me to bear my trouble, I entreat you not to write to me again.”

Alban offered the letter silently to Miss Ladd. She signed to him to keep it.

”I know what Emily has written,” she said; ”and I have told her, what I now tell you--she is wrong; in every way, wrong. It is the misfortune of her impetuous nature that she rushes to conclusions--and those conclusions once formed, she holds to them with all the strength of her character. In this matter, she has looked at her side of the question exclusively; she is blind to your side.”

”Not willfully!” Alban interposed.