Part 3

I found my future charge in the drawing-room, when I descended dressed for dinner. She was a fragile-looking creature, with light hair and large blue eyes. She greeted me very kindly. Her manner was childish, considering her age; but I was much relieved not to find her a fine fashionable young lady. She was still in mourning for her mother.

We had a musical evening. Mrs Morrell and I executed several duets on the piano, accompanied by Mr Foster on the violin, which he played very well. Edith kissed me very kindly as she said good-night; and before I went to rest, I sat down and wrote to my aunt in glowing terms, saying that Gorton Hall was an earthly paradise.

Nor did I see reason to change my opinion for many weeks. I soon felt perfectly at ease in my new home. Edith was so gentle, so unassuming, and so considerate, that it was impossible not to love her; and Mr Foster and his sister were most kind. I was treated as a gentlewoman and an equal; and my duties were very light, being chiefly to drive Edith in a pretty pony-carriage, to play duets, and occasionally to read aloud.

We did not mix very much in society, although Mrs Morrell received a due amount of calls from the ladies in the neighbourhood. A few quiet garden-parties and dinners were the limit of our dissipations, on Edith’s account. I was always included in any scheme of pleasure, and Mr Foster made quite a point of introducing me to all visitors.

There was a fine old church in the village, to which we all went on Sundays. It was a mile and a half across the fields; but we usually drove, on account of Edith. I had been nearly six months at the Hall, when one fine Sunday morning in July it fell to my lot to go to church alone, for the first time since my arrival. Mr Foster was in London; Edith had a headache; and Mrs Morrell would not leave her, although she was urgent that I should go. The service over, I was returning across the first field, when I heard steps behind me, and a gentleman’s voice said: ‘Miss Armitage!’

I turned round in surprise, to see a young man who was a perfect stranger to me. Lifting his hat politely, he begged for the honour of a few words with me.

I was both amazed and indignant, and somewhat loftily informed him that I was not in the habit of conversing with total strangers; so saying, I was walking on, when he interrupted me, and begged me to listen, for Edith Thorndyke’s sake.

‘My father, Dr Archer, was her father’s oldest friend, Miss Armitage. My family is well known in this neighbourhood; and I live in the next village, Little Gorton, where I am in partnership with Dr Selby. You are well known to me by name, and for some time I have endeavoured to contrive an interview with you, in vain. I could not come up to the Hall,’ he added, no doubt seeing amazement written on my face. ‘The fact is, Miss Armitage, I love Edith Thorndyke; but her step-father considers my position inferior to hers, and refuses to allow me to see her until she is of age. Doubtless you are aware that she will inherit a great deal of property.’

‘I strongly disapprove of discussing these family matters with a total stranger, sir,’ I said, trying to move away. ‘Also, Mr Foster has absolutely forbidden it.—Good-morning.’

‘One moment!’ he pleaded. ‘Edith Thorndyke’s very life may depend upon it! Have you heard the terms of her mother’s will?’

‘They are nothing to me, sir.’

‘Oh, but please, Miss Armitage! I entreat you! Do listen to me! When Mrs Foster’s first husband died, he left her some thousands a year, in addition to Gorton Hall and the estates, entirely at her own disposal. She married again, and died last year, when it was found that she had left her husband Edith’s sole guardian until she should be twenty-one, when she would enter into the possession of the Thorndyke property. In case she died before attaining her majority, one half of the property would devolve upon Mr Foster, and half upon relatives of the Thorndykes. Even the half is a very large sum, Miss Armitage—quite enough to tempt a man like Mr Foster to—to—— In short, I sadly fear Edith Thorndyke will not be allowed to live until she is twenty-one.’

‘This is downright madness!’ I exclaimed. ‘Mr Foster is the kindest and best of men—quite incapable of harbouring designs upon his step-daughter’s life.’

‘I know Lawrence Foster; you do not,’ he answered quietly. ‘I know him to be bold and cunning and unscrupulous. Edith believes in him and his sister; but she is sadly deceived. I hoped to be able to enlist you on my side, Miss Armitage, when I heard of your arrival at the Hall. I should be glad to feel sure that Edith has one disinterested friend in the house.’

‘But I ought not to speak to you at all,’ I said, feeling very uncomfortable. ‘Mr Foster has strictly forbidden me to gossip with strangers.’

‘Because he is afraid that you might hear the truth.’

‘But if he is what you say, why does he have a companion for his step-daughter at all? I must be a check on his movements. I see all that goes on; he never hides anything from me.’

‘Don’t you see that your presence is an additional security for him? It disarms suspicion. Supposing Edith—well, died suddenly; people would say: “Miss Armitage was there; she knows all about it;” and no comment would be excited; whereas it would probably seem suspicious, at all events to the Thorndyke family, who are by no means satisfied with the terms of the will, if Edith were to die whilst living alone with Mr Foster and his sister. There can be no doubt that the money must be an immense temptation to him. He has nothing of his own. Ten thousand a year, and only one fragile girl’s life in the way!’

I must say the speaker’s earnestness and unmistakable sincerity began to make an impression upon me. I had fancied once or twice that Mr Foster exercised an unusually close surveillance over Edith and me. Were Dr Archer’s words true, and was I merely a lay-figure at Gorton Hall, to deceive the world? Had I been taken into society by my employers, and my praises trumpeted forth to all their acquaintances, merely in order that my presence should disarm suspicion? ‘You have made me very uncomfortable,’ I candidly confessed.

‘Believe me, Miss Armitage, I would not have taken this course but that I was compelled by necessity. Edith’s step-father has such a complete ascendency over her, that it is difficult to know what to do. But you are always with her, and can watch over her.’

‘But I am only a paid companion, liable to dismissal at any time.’

‘True; but I hope you will try and stay as long as you can, for Edith’s sake.’

‘I fear she is very delicate.’

‘She is delicate; she needs care. But, as she gets older, her health will probably improve. There is really no reason, humanly speaking, why she should not live for many years. But I fear—I fear many things, but chiefly poison, slow and secret. Mr Foster is an accomplished chemist; and his antecedents—better known to me than to most people—give me little confidence in him. If you knew as much as I do about him, Miss Armitage, you would not wonder at my suspicions. But be sure of this: there is danger. I have no proof against Mr Foster, and therefore cannot interfere in any way. Promise, promise me, Miss Armitage, that you will inform me of everything suspicious that you may see from this time. Here is my address.’

I hastily took the proffered card and gave the promise, anxious to return before Mrs Morrell should be uneasy at my absence. She laughingly remarked that the sermon must have been unusually long, and in a casual manner asked what was the text. Luckily, I was able to supply chapter and verse and a lengthy catalogue of my fellow-worshippers. It then struck me for the first time that if, by chance, I was allowed to go out alone, either Mr Foster or Mrs Morrell might find out, by skilfully put questions, everything I had said, seen, and done.

Now that suspicion had once entered my mind, I saw grounds for it everywhere, as might have been expected. The most absurd fancies entered into my head. I persuaded Edith in secret to lock her door at night before retiring to rest, which she had never done before. I do not know what I expected to happen. The precaution was a senseless one; for the foes I was fighting against were far too clever and subtle to contemplate anything so foolish as commonplace midnight murder.

I will do my employers the justice to say that with all this I spent a delightful summer. They took Edith and me to Scotland for a two months’ tour; and I never enjoyed a holiday so much. A more charming cicerone than Mr Foster could not be. Then we went back to Gorton, and settled down for the winter. For some time, absolutely nothing of any importance occurred. I wrote occasionally a brief, reassuring, cautious note to Dr Archer, but carefully refrained from speaking when we met, to avert suspicion. Edith and I grew daily more attached; and nothing could exceed my employers’ kindness.

Edith had been decidedly better in health, until she received a severe chill in November. Mrs Morrell at once sent for the doctor, the same old family practitioner who had attended her from her birth.

Dr Stevens was a worthy man, and once a skilful physician, no doubt; but when I saw him, he was nearly eighty and quite past his work. Feeble, weak in sight and hearing, the old man seemed more fit to be in bed himself, than to be employed in his professional capacity. I hinted as much to Edith; but she was quite indignant, and reiterated her assurances that she had more confidence in Dr Stevens than in any one else; so I had to rest satisfied.

Miss Thorndyke’s illness dragged on with fluctuating strength. She was too delicate to shake off anything easily; and she had frequent relapses, which sadly weakened her strength. Mrs Morrell nursed her most assiduously, declining professional attendance, but permitting me to help her to the best of my ability. But although I was allowed to be in the invalid’s room all day, if I chose, Mrs Morrell would not permit me to exhaust my strength in night-nursing. She had had her bed placed in a dressing-room communicating with Edith’s room, and there she slept, ready, at the slightest movement of the invalid, to spring up and wait upon her. Edith spoke warmly of Mrs Morrell’s kindness and devotion; and certainly she spared no pains to humour the fancies of the sick girl.

About Christmas, the disease assumed a new phase. Symptoms of stomach derangement set in, which Dr Stevens attributed to the long-continued recumbent position and lack of exercise; and he set himself to combat the new evil by every means in his power. This was all discussed in my presence, for no mystery was made of the matter; and indeed I was usually accustomed to administer Edith’s food and medicines when I sat in her room. This, however, never occurred in the evening; for Mr Foster so pathetically pleaded his loneliness in the deserted drawing-room after dinner, when his sister always went to the invalid, that in common civility I could not refuse to play chess and cribbage with him, and occasionally accompany his violin on the piano.

But one night about nine o’clock I slipped quietly out of the drawing-room, and went up-stairs to Edith’s room to see if she was awake. She had been worse that day, and I was beginning to feel rather anxious about her. For a wonder, Mrs Morrell was not on duty, and I entered unchallenged. I had not been into Edith’s room so late as this since the beginning of her illness, and was astonished to find it lighted up by eight large wax candles, dispersed about the apartment, although the glare was carefully screened from the invalid’s face. I stooped over the thin face on the pillow, and received a faint smile. I could not help remarking: ‘How light your room is! I wonder you can sleep in such a blaze.’

‘Mrs Morrell likes it,’ was the languid answer. ‘She always burns eight candles like that, all night. I don’t mind them.—O Alice dear, I am so tired of lying here! and I’m always so thirsty, so dreadfully thirsty! Do give me something to drink!’

I poured out a tumblerful of a cooling drink from a handsome red glass jug on the table near me. She drank it eagerly, and sank back on her pillow as Mrs Morrell came into the room.

I fancied that an angry gleam shot at me from under the widow’s black eyebrows; but if so, she smoothed away her irritation before she addressed me. ‘Alice, my dear, it is most kind of you to be here, but I left my darling girl, as I hoped, to sleep. She is more likely to get a good night’s rest, if she is not disturbed by late visitors. After nine o’clock, please, I must request you for the present, dear, not to come here again.’

I apologised, and said good-night, turning, however, at the door to ask if Mrs Morrell did not think so much light might have a disturbing effect upon the invalid.

‘Now, my dear Miss Armitage, that is not like your usual common-sense,’ answered the widow sweetly. ‘Above all things, plenty of light is essential in a sickroom, where medicines have to be accurately measured out, and where at any moment the nurse may be summoned to her patient’s side. I should be tumbling over the furniture in the dark, if the candles were not kept burning. And now, my dear girl, I must really request that you go; Edith is nearly asleep. Good-night.’ So I ran down-stairs, to be gently scolded by Mr Foster for my long absence.

When a week went by and Edith grew worse every day, I became seriously alarmed, and expressed my uneasiness in a letter to Dr Archer, which I posted myself, for fear of accidents. He sent me a brief note by a trusty messenger, in reply, which did not tend to allay my fears:

‘Your account of her symptoms was most alarming. You say she is wasted and prostrate, and suffers from painful cramps and insatiable thirst. These are the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. You must contrive to secure portions of all her food and medicine, and bottle them securely, and bring them to me. Be in the fir plantation at four o’clock to-morrow to meet me; it is a matter of life and death.’

You may imagine how terrified I was; but luckily I had nerve enough to hide it. I looked out all the small bottles I could find, washed them out carefully, and determined to put them into my pocket one at a time, to fill as occasion should serve. At the same time I could hardly believe that Dr Archer was right in his suspicions. I believed they could not poison Edith without my knowledge. I was in and out of the sickroom all day, from about ten o’clock in the morning, until I was dismissed at five to dress for dinner; and at least half of her food and medicine I administered with my own hands. The medicine bottles I frequently opened fresh from Dr Stevens’ wrappings; and it was difficult to imagine that poison could get into puddings and jellies brought straight from the kitchen to the bedside. I could only conclude that at night must occur Mrs Morrell’s opportunity—if at all.

I felt like a conspirator, as I contrived to secrete small portions of everything of which Edith partook. I secured the last drops remaining of the cooling drink which Mrs Morrell had had to administer to the invalid during the night; also a portion of the farinaceous pudding which Miss Thorndyke had had for her dinner, a part of her sleeping-draught, a wine-glassful of the mixture she was taking every two hours, and some of the beef-tea which Dr Stevens had ordered for her. If poison were really being administered, it must be present in one or other of these. I chiefly suspected the remains of the cooling drink. I was young and unsophisticated, and my experience as a novel-reader made me believe it quite possible that Mrs Morrell should carry small packets of arsenic about in her pocket, to mix in Edith’s medicines and food, as occasion should serve. I can only smile at my credulity now.

It was a difficult matter to meet Dr Archer in the fir plantation unobserved. Mrs Morrell had first to be evaded, and then Mr Foster, who manifested a most amiable and pressing desire to accompany me in my walk. I dared not linger, but hastily thrust the phials into the young doctor’s hands, telling him I particularly suspected the cooling drink. He informed me that he was going to send them at once to an eminent analyst at one of the London hospitals; and that, if they proved to contain poison, he should instantly apply to a magistrate for a warrant.

I could not control my feelings that evening sufficiently well to prevent Mr Foster remarking, as we sat at chess: ‘Your walk to-day did not do you much good, Miss Armitage.’

‘I have rather a headache,’ I hastily answered. It was perfectly true. ‘I sat with Edith all the morning, and her room seemed to me very stuffy.’ Indeed, I had frequently noticed a strange closeness pervading it, especially when I first entered it in the morning; and I very often found my head the worse for a prolonged sojourn in it.

‘As soon as Dr Stevens will allow it, she shall be moved into a larger room,’ he answered, as if he wished to evade a discussion of the subject.

SOME ANECDOTES OF AMERICAN CHILDREN.

The subject of children is one in which every one is more or less interested; for even those who have none of their own were babies themselves in some dim period of the past, and probably most of us have wondered at times what sort of babies we were. Happy they who have it on the authority of those who ought to know, that they were ‘well-behaved children’—lumps of good-nature, and never addicted to crying. How kindly does Charles Lamb revert to the days of his childhood, dwelling with something of reverence on the image of that ‘young master’ whom he could scarcely believe to have been indeed himself, and whose pure memory he cherished as tenderly ‘as if it had been a child of some other house,’ and not of his parents. So perhaps some of us also have yearned over those little phantoms of the past, our own child-selves.

But it is of American children that we have now a few words to say. Perhaps, however, we make a mistake at the outset in calling them _children_ at all, for many of them seem to belong to some species of fairy changelings, so remarkable and almost uncanny is their precocity, and that, too, from the earliest infancy, while they are still in their nurses’ arms, or at the bottle. Gilbert’s little urchin of the _Bab Ballads_ who chucked his nurse under the chin when she fed him, and vowed by the rap it was excellent pap, was nothing to them. They would be too _blasé_ for such infantine manifestations as these. We have one of them before our ‘mind’s eye’ now, an ideal-looking little maid, with sunny hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, the youngest darling of a happy household. Being of a wakeful disposition, she was indulged with her bottle at night up to the mature age of nearly two years. Her mother, waking once at midnight, was aware of some disturbance in the cot beside her, where baby seemed to be searching vigorously in the moonlight for something. Hoping the little one might forego her search and drop to sleep, the mother lay quiet, when suddenly baby raised her soft fair head, and with the startling question, ‘Where de debil is my mouf-piece?’ fairly banished all slumber from her fond parent. It must be explained that this occurred in a part of the country where children were liable to overhear the talk of negroes, both indoor and outdoor servants; and this race, as represented in the States of America, are evidently of the opinion of the old sea-captain’s Scotch wife who, while agreeing with her minister as to the advisability of her husband’s giving up the habit of swearing, was yet constrained to acknowledge that ‘nae doubt it was still a great set-off to conversation.’ Baby’s grandmamma, however, on being informed of this last addition to her darling’s vocabulary, remarked somewhat grimly that it was about time the bottle should be given up.

The foregoing was scarcely so bad as what a little two-year-old neighbour was guilty of; for on this young scapegrace being mildly remonstrated with for some misdemeanour by his grandfather—a venerable old doctor, of much repute with all who knew him—he retorted, in his half-articulate baby speech, ‘Gan-pa, you’se a old fool!’—waking a burst of unhallowed merriment from all within hearing distance.

The propensity on the part of their children to use profane language is a source of great uneasiness to American mothers. One lady, the daughter of a clergyman, who had brought her up on strictly old-fashioned principles, was much distressed to note the habit growing on her only child, a fine manly little boy of four years. At her wits’ end for a timely cure, she at last resorted to the expedient of a whipping, threatening, with the most unmistakable air of sincerity, that it would be repeated if ever a certain word were used by him again. The morning after this occurrence, Georgie was, as usual, at his spelling lesson with his mother, the task for the day consisting of a string of words all rhyming with ‘am.’ The first few of them had been accomplished with praiseworthy accuracy, when suddenly the young student came to a dead-stop. ‘Go on, sonny,’ said his mother encouragingly, not seeing for the moment where the difficulty lay. ‘C-a-m—cam,’ repeated Georgie in evident embarrassment, the next word apparently presenting some insurmountable obstacle. ‘Go on!’ insisted his mother—when, with a sudden blurt, out came the monosyllable ‘D-a-m—_dam_, a millpond dam,’ added Georgie, the threatened punishment being uppermost in his mind.

The same little boy had a cousin, a year older than himself, and ages ahead of him in knowledge of the world, so much so, that he would sometimes assume the part of mentor towards his more unsophisticated junior. When the two were together one day, the elder announced his intention of paying a visit to a family living near them. ‘But I won’t take you with me,’ said he. ‘Why not?’ asked Georgie, disconcerted. ‘Because they’ll teach you to swear,’ returned the other gravely. ‘But you go there yourself,’ argued little George. ‘O yes,’ rejoined his senior with a world-worn air; ‘I swear already.’