_ CHAPTER XXXIV. MISS MEWLSTONE HAS AN INTERRUPTION
"HERBERT DANCY CHEYNE!"
As he pronounced the name slowly and with marked emphasis, a low cry of uncontrollable astonishment broke from Phillis: it was so unexpected. She began to shiver a little from the sudden shock.
"There! I have startled you,--and no wonder; and yet how could I help it? Yes," he repeated, calmly, "I am that unfortunate Herbert Cheyne whom his own wife believes to be dead."
"Whom every one believes to be dead," corrected Phillis, in a panting breath.
"Is it any wonder?" he returned, vehemently; and his eyes darkened, and his whole features worked, as though with the recollection of some unbearable pain. "Have I not been snatched from the very jaws of death? Has not mine been a living death, a hideous grave, for these four years?" And then, hurriedly and almost disconnectedly, as though the mere recalling the past was torture to him, he poured into the girl's shrinking ears fragments of a story so stern in its reality, so terrible in its details, that, regardless of the children that played on the margin of the water, Phillis hid her face in her hands and wept for sheer pity.
Wounded, bereft of all his friends, and left apparently dying in the hands of a hostile tribe, Herbert Cheyne had owed his life to the mercy of a woman, a poor, degraded ill-used creature, half-witted and ugly, but who had not lost all the instincts of her womanhood, and who fed and nursed the white stranger as tenderly as though he were her own son.
While the old negress lived, Herbert Cheyne had been left in peace to languish back to life, through days and nights of intolerable suffering, until he had regained a portion of his old strength; then a fever carried off his protectress, and he became virtually a slave.
Out of pity for the tender-hearted girl who listened to him, Mr. Cheyne hurried over this part of his sorrowful past. He spoke briefly of indignities, abuse, and at last of positive ill treatment. Again and again his life had been in danger from brute violence; again and again he had striven to escape, and had been recaptured with blows.
Phillis pointed mutely to his scarred wrists, and the tears flowed down her cheeks.
"Yes, yes; these are the marks of my slavery," he replied, bitterly. "They were a set of hideous brutes; and the fetish they worshipped was cruelty. I carry about me other marks that must go with me to my grave; but there is no need to dwell on these horrors. He sent His angel to deliver me," he continued, reverently; "and again my benefactor was a woman."
And then he went on to tell Phillis that one of the wives of the chief in whose service he was took pity on him, and aided him to escape on the very night before some great festival, when it had been determined to kill him. This time he had succeeded; and, after a series of hair-breadth adventures, he had fallen in with some Dutch traders who had come far into the interior in search of ivory tusks. He was so burnt by the sun and disfigured by paint that he had great difficulty in proving his identity as an Englishman. But at last they had suffered him to join them, and after some more months of wandering he had worked his way to the coast.
There misfortune bad again overtaken him, in the form of a long and tedious illness. Fatigue, disaster, anguish of mind, and a slight sunstroke had taken dire effect upon him; but this time he had fallen into the hands of good Samaritans. The widowed sister of the consul, a very Dorcas of good works, had received the miserable stranger into her house; and she and her son, like Elijah's widow of Zarephath, had shared with him their scanty all.
"They were very poor, but they pinched themselves for the sake of the stricken wretch that was thrown on their mercy. It was a woman again who succored me the third time," continued Mr. Cheyne: "you may judge how sacred women are in my eyes now! Dear motherly Mrs. Van Hollick! when she at last suffered me to depart, she kissed and blessed me as though I were her own son. Never to my dying day shall I forget her goodness. My one thought, after seeing Magdalene, will be how I am to repay her goodness,--how I can make prosperity flow in on the little household, that the cruse and cake may never fail!"
"But," interrupted Phillis at this point, "did you not write, or your friends write for you, to England?"
Mr. Cheyne smiled bitterly:
"It seems as though some strange fatality were over me. Yes, I wrote. I wrote to Magdalene, to my lawyer, and to another friend who had known me all my life, but the ship that carried these letters was burnt at sea. I only heard that when I at last worked my way to Portsmouth as a common sailor and in that guise presented myself at my lawyer's chambers. Poor man! I thought he would have fainted when he saw me. He owned afterwards he was a believer in ghosts at that moment."
"How long ago was that?" asked Phillis, gently.
"Two months; not longer. It was then I heard of my children's death, of my wife's long illness and her strange state. I was ill myself, and not fit to battle through any more scenes. Mr. Standish took me home until I had rested and recovered myself a little; and then I put on this disguise--not that much of that is necessary, for few people would recognize me, I believe--and came down here and took possession of Mrs. Williams's lodgings."
Phillis looked at him with mute questioning in her eyes. She did not venture to put it into words, but he understood her:
"Why have I waited so long, do you ask? and why am I living here within sight of my own house, a spy on my own threshold and wife? My dear Miss Challoner, there is a bitter reason for that!
"Four years ago I parted from my wife in anger. There were words said that day that few women could forgive. Has she forgiven them? That is what I am trying to find out. Will the husband who has been dead to her all these years be welcome to her living?" His voice dropped into low vehemence, and a pallor came over his face as he spoke.
Phillis laid her hand on his own. She looked strangely eager:
"This is why you want my help. Ah! I see now! Oh, it is all right--all that you can wish! It is she who is tormenting herself, who has no rest day or night! When the thunder came that evening--you remember--we sat beside the children's empty beds, and she told me some of her thoughts. When the lighting flashed, her nerves gave way, and she cried out, in her pain, 'Did he forgive?' That was her one thought. Her husband,--who was up in heaven with the children,--did he think mercifully of her, and know how she loved him? It was your name that was on her lips when that good woman, Miss Mewlstone, hushed her in her arms like a child. Oh, be comforted!" faltered Phillis, "for she loves you, and mourns for you as though she were the most desolate creature living!" But here she paused, for something that sounded like a sob came to her ear, and looking round, she saw the bowed figure of her companion shaking with uncontrollable emotion,--those hard tearless sobs that are only wrung from a man's strong agony.
"Oh, hush!" cried the girl, tenderly. "Be comforted: there is no room for doubt. There! I will leave you; you will be better by and by." And then instinctively she turned away her face from a grief too sacred for a stranger to touch, and walked down to the water, where the children had ceased playing, and listened to the baby waves that lapped about her feet.
And by and by he joined her; and on his pale face there was a rapt, serious look, as of one who has despaired and has just listened to an angel's tidings.
"Did I not say that you, and only you, could help me? This is what I have wanted to know: had Magdalene forgiven me? Now I need wait no longer. My wife and home are mine, and I must take possession of my treasures."
He stopped, as though overcome by the prospect of such happiness; but Phillis timidly interposed:
"But, Mr. Cheyne, think a moment. How is it to be managed? If you are in too great a hurry, will not the shock be too much for her? She is nervous,--excitable. It would hardly be safe."
"That is what troubles me," he returned, anxiously. "It is too much for any woman to bear; and Magdalene--she was always excitable. Tell me, you have such good sense; and, though you are so young, one can always rely on a woman; you understand her so well--I see you do--and she is fond of you,--how shall we act that my poor darling, who has undergone so much, may not be harmed by me any more?"
"Wait one moment," returned Phillis, earnestly. "I must consider." And she set herself to revolve all manner of possibilities, and then rejected them one by one. "There seems no other way," she observed, at last, fixing her serious glance on Mr. Cheyne. "I must seek for an opportunity to speak to Miss Mewlstone. It must be broken carefully to your poor wife; I am sure of that. Miss Mewlstone will help us. She will tell us what to do, and how to do it. Oh, she is so kind, so thoughtful and tender, just as though Mrs. Cheyne were a poor wayward child, who must be guided and helped and shielded. I like her so much: we must go to her for counsel."
"You must indeed, and at once!" he returned, rather peremptorily; and Phillis had a notion now what manner of man he had been before misfortunes had tamed and subdued him. His eyes flashed with eagerness; he grew young, alert, full of life in a moment. "Forgive me if I am too impetuous; but I have waited so long, and now my patience seems exhausted all at once during the last hour. I have been at fever-point ever since you have proved to me that my wife--my Magdalene--has been true to me. Fool that I was! why have I doubted so long? Miss Challoner, you will not desert me?--you will be my good angel a little longer? You will go to Miss Mewlstone now,--this very moment,--and ask her to prepare my wife?"
"It is time for me to be going home: mother and Nan will think I am lost," returned Phillis, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "Come Mr. Cheyne, we can talk as we go along." For he was so wan and agitated that she felt uneasy for his sake. She took his arm gently, and guided him as though he were a child; and he obeyed her like one.
"Promise me that you will speak to her at once," he said, as he walked beside her rather feebly; and his gait became all at once like that of an old man. But Phillis fenced this remark very discreetly.
"This afternoon or this evening, when I get the chance," she said, very decidedly: "if I am to help you, it must be as I think best, and at my own time. Do not think me unkind, for I am doing this for your own good: it would not help you if your wife were to be brought to the brink of a nervous illness. Leave it to me. Miss Mewlstone will serve us best, and she will know." And then she took her hand from his arm, and bade him drop behind a little, that she might not be seen in the town walking with him. "Good-bye! keep up your courage. I will help you all I can," she said, with a kindly smile, as he reluctantly obeyed her behest. She was his good angel, but he must not walk any longer in her shadow: angels do their good deeds invisibly, as Phillis hoped to do hers. He thought of this as he watched her disappearing in the distance.
Phillis walked rapidly towards the cottage. Archie, who was letting himself in at his own door, saw the girl pass, carrying her head high, and stepping lightly as though she were treading on air. "Here comes Atalanta," he said to himself; but, though a smile came over his tired face, he made no effort to arrest her. The less he saw of any of them the better, he thought, just now.
Nan looked up reproachfully as the truant entered the work-room, and Mrs. Challoner wore her gravest expression; evidently she had prepared a lecture for the occasion. Phillis looked at them both with sparkling eyes.
"Listen to me, Nan and mother. Oh, I am glad Dulce is not here, she is so young and giddy; and she might talk--No, not a word from either of you, until I have had my turn." And then she began her story.
Nan listened with rapt speechless attention, but Mrs. Challoner gave vent to little pitying moans and exclamations of dismay.
"Oh, my child!" she kept saying, "to think of your being mixed up in such an adventure! How could you be so imprudent and daring? Mrs. Williams's lodger--a strange man! in that outlandish cloak, too! and you walked home with him that dark night! Oh, Phillis, I shall never be at peace about you again!" and so on.
Phillis bore all this patiently, for she knew she had been incautious: and when her mother's excitement had calmed down a little, she unfolded to them her plan.
"I must see Miss Mewlstone quite alone; and that unfinished French merino will be such a good excuse, Nan. I will take the body with me this afternoon, and beg her to let me try it on; the rest must come afterwards, but this will be the best way of getting her to myself." And, as Nan approved of this scheme, and Mrs. Challoner did not dissent, Phillis had very soon made up her parcel, and was walking rapidly towards the White House.
As she turned in at the gates she could see a shadow on the blind in Mrs. Williams's little parlor, and waved her hand towards it. He was watching her, she knew: she longed to go back and give him a word of encouragement and exhortation to patience; but some one, Mr. Drummond perhaps, might see her, and she dare not venture.
She sent her message by Jeffreys, and Miss Mewlstone soon came trotting into the room; but she wore a slightly-disturbed expression on her good-natured face.
She had been reading the third volume of a very interesting novel, and had most unwillingly laid down her book at the young dressmaker's unseasonable request. Like many other stout people, Miss Mewlstone was more addicted to passivity than activity after her luncheon; and, being a creature of habit, this departure from her usual rules flurried her.
"Dear, dear! to think of your wanting to try on that French merino again!" she observed; "and the other dress fitted so beautifully, and no trouble at all. And there has Miss Middleton being calling just now, and saying they are expecting her brother Hammond home from India in November; and it is getting towards the end of September now. I was finishing my book, but I could not help listening to her,--she has such a sweet voice. Ah, just so--just so. But aren't you going to open your parcel, my dear?"
"Never mind the dress," returned Phillis, quickly. "Dear Miss Mewlstone, I was sorry to disturb you; but it could not be helped. Don't look at the parcel: that is only an excuse. My business is far more important. I want you to put on your bonnet, and come with me just a little way across the road. There is some one's identity that you must prove."
Phillis was commencing her task in a somewhat lame fashion; but Miss Mewlstone was still too much engrossed with her novel to notice her visitor's singular agitation.
"Ah, just so--just so," she responded; "that is exactly what the last few chapters have been about. The real heir has turned up, and is trying to prove his own identity; only he is so changed that no one believes him. It is capitally worked out. A very clever author, my dear----"
But Phillis interrupted her a little eagerly:
"Is that your tale, dear Miss Mewlstone? How often people say truth is stranger than fiction! Do you know, I have heard a story in real life far more wonderful than that? Some one was telling me about it just now. There was a man whom every one, even his own wife, believed to be dead; but after four years of incredible dangers and hardships--oh, such hardships!--he arrived safely in England, and took up his abode just within sight of his old house, where he could see his wife and find out all about her without being seen himself. He put on some sort of disguise, I think, so that people could not find him out."
"That must be a make-up story, I think," returned Miss Mewlstone, a little provokingly; but her head was still full of her book. Poor woman! she wanted to get back to it. She looked at Phillis and the parcel a little plaintively. "Ah, just so,--a very pretty story, but improbable,--very improbable, my dear."
"Nevertheless, it is true!" returned Phillis, so vehemently that Miss Mewlstone's little blue eyes opened more widely. "Never mind your book. I tell you I have business so important that nothing is of consequence beside it. Where is Mrs. Cheyne? She must not know we are going out."
"Going out!" repeated Miss Mewlstone, helplessly. "My dear, I never go out after luncheon, as Magdalene knows."
"But you are going out with me," replied Phillis, promptly. "Dear Miss Mewlstone, I know I am perplexing and worrying you; but what can I do? Think over what I have just said,--about--about that improbable story, as you called it; and then, you will not be so dreadfully startled. You must come with me now to Mrs. Williams's cottage: I want you to see her lodger."
"Her lodger!" Miss Mewlstone was fully roused now; and, indeed, Phillis's pale face and suppressed eager tones were not without their due effect. Had the girl taken leave of her senses? Why, the ladies at the White House led the lives of recluses. Why should she be asked to call upon any stranger, but especially a gentleman,--Mrs. Williams's lodger? "My dear," she faltered, "you are very strange this afternoon.--Magdalene and I seldom call on any one, and certainly not on gentlemen."
"You must come with me," replied Phillis, half crying with excitement. She found her task so difficult. Miss Mewlstone was as yielding as a feather bed in appearance, and yet it was impossible to move her. "He calls himself Mr. Dancy; but now he says that is not all his name: let me whisper it in your ear, if it will not startle you too much. Think of Mrs. Cheyne, and try and command yourself. Mrs. Williams's lodger says that he is Herbert Cheyne,--poor Mrs. Cheyne's husband!" _