Chapter IV,

Otago Witness, Issue 1098, 14 December 1872, Page 19

Chapter IV,

Leluarde and I had dined, and were sitting by the . drawing-room fire afterwards, when my sister said, giving a shrinking look into all the dark corners :

"Joan, I hate that dreary room opposite. I shall have it locked up again, and Mrs. Bracebridge shall keep the key."

"So as to turn it into a haunted chamber at once ! My dear, before it had been shut up a week, you would have ghosts, and rumours of ghosts, demoralising the whole establishment ! You would never keep a servant, depend upon it. "

"It has given me the horrors," she answered, with a shiver. " Because we were geese enough to be frightened at nothing. Come, Lelgarde, let me advise you. Have a fire lighted there ; open all the windows, do it up with a set of Cretonne chintz, all over blue and scarlet dickey-birds ; ask the seven vicarage children to tea there, and let them make themselves ill with plum-cake, and greasy with bread-and-butter, and you will find Miss Hilda's ghost is laid in no time.""

The door opened slowly, causing Lelgarde to jump almost into my arms.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, if 1 startled you," said Mrs. Bracebridge, advancing out of the shadow with a large square of canvas in her arms ; " you desired me to bring this for you to look at after dinner — poor Miss Hilda's picture."

" Tiresome old woman ! " I thought, "as if we had not had enough of Miss Hilda for one day ; " but the housekeeper was only obeying Lelgarde's orders, and I could say nothing, so we proceeded to look at the portrait. We both exclaimed with surprise at seeing its unfinished state : the drapery of the head and shoulders was merely sketched out, not coloured at all. The face only was complete, and the hair again died away into indistinctness, in a way that gave a strange ghastly look to the features — high, delicate features, so like Miss Atheling's, that the difference of expression was the more striking. For this was a gentle face, so sweet that one half forgave its utter weakness. I quite forgave it, when I thought of the hard, stern face hung in the hall, and recollected that Etheldreda was many years older than her sister, and had doubtless ruled her with a rod of iron all her days. The two faces seemed to me to tell their own story, and I could understand how each sister had unconsciously helped to make the other what she had been. There was a bright smile on the painted lips — a laugh in the pretty blue eyes ; and yet " Poor young thing ! " were the words which rose to my lips as I looked.

"Ah ! you may say that, ma'am," responded Mrs. Bracebridge, with a sigh — rather a leading sigh, I thought, as if she longed to be asked what she was sighing for. Lelgarde did what answered the purpose, in exclaiming : "Why was this lovely picture never finished and framed 1 And oh ! who could have done that 1 " For right across the canvas, barely sparing the face, was a broad rough splash of colour, as if an angry or careless hand had. dashed, aside a wet Inrush, not reeling where jit went.

"Ah ! it is a long story," said the old woraanj evidently dying to tell it. "If it is a doleful one, pray let us wait till to-merrow," I said ; but Lelgarde waved me aside, impatiently, and, pointing to an arm-chair. "Then sit down and tell it, Mrs. Bracebridge," she said, " and let me pour you out a cup of tea meanwhile. You see," she added, with her pretty graciousness, " you belong so completely to this place, so much more than I do ; and whatever you know about the family, I think I ought to know : so please begin."

" I will pour out the tea," 1 said, and betook myself to the massive silver salver and teapot, much amused at Lelgarde taking the high moral tone, to choke any qualms of conscience at gratifying her curiosity by a gossip with the old servant.

"It is going on for seven-and-twenty years, ma'am, since Miss Atheling's portrait was taken and this one commenced," Mrs. Bracebridge solemnly began, "and the gentleman as took both was a Mr. Hamilton, one of them artist gentleman from London. The old squire was living then, you are aware, ladies, and he had this youg gentleman down for the summer months — which many wondered as he liked to do so — to take the young ladies' portraits, and to give Miss Hilda lessons, and to make drawings about the place. "

"How old were my cousins at that time '? " Lelgarde asked from the shadowy corner where she sat intently listening.

"Let me see : Miss Atheling would have been over thirty, and Miss Hilda, I mind me, was just of age. I was lately come, then, myself, and was head housemaid under the old housekeeper — nurse, as she was mostly called, having nursed both the ladies, and the little brothers as died between. " " Was she here, when I " Lelgarde hesitated, knitting her brows as if in a painful effort to remember. t " She was, ma'am ; but she had then for some years been Miss Hilda's attendant, and Miss Atheling had been pleased to put me in her place, as housekeeper. I need not tell you, ladies," she went on, "that there is, and always Avill be, gossip in the servants' hall, let the tipper servants check it as they may ; and it was not long before we were all talking about Miss Hilda and Mr. Hamilton." • Lelgarde and I thought of the sketchbook, and exchanged glances. " You see, Miss Atheling never seemed to think of Miss Hilda as anything but a child ; and sure she did look like it, and always took it as natural that she should be treated as sueh — she was so meekspirited ; and certainly nothing, in a general way, cotxld have happened to her, even to the altering of the way she dressed her hair, but what Miss Atheling should know of it. But just that summer it fell out that the squire began of the illness which carried him off later — some terrible complaint in his inside." "And Miss Atheling wa,s with him a great deal, I suppose," I said, hastily, as the old woman seemed inclined to plunge into unpleasant details. " Night and day, ma'am ; and all that time Mr. Hamilton was thought to be busy making his sketches about the place, I and Miss Hilda practising her music, and i all that, in the room yonder, which was then called the schoolroom. But we servants, ma'am, could have told a different tale."

"It was a pity you did not," said I, virtuously. 1 ' It was nurse's place, ma'am, she being the housekeeper, not ours, and nurse could refuse nothing to Miss Hilda, not if it had been a knife to cut her own throat, we often used to say. Well, the rights of it I cannot tell you, ladies, for I was never made acquainted with it ; but one day, it is certain that Miss Atheling came into the schoolroom, and found Mr. Hamilton painting her sister's portrait, or maybe, pretending to paint it ; and what passed I cannot say — for Miss Atheling was not one to make any noise about her anger ; but I met her in the hall, taking Miss Hilda to her room ; and her face, ladies — it was terrible."

i " And what happened ?" ! ' ' Mr. Hamilton left the house that very hour, and th% portrait was huddled away in a lumber-room, and there it stayed till long, long afterwards. I saw it one day, in poor Miss Hilda's room, put away behind the cabinet ; I suppose nurse must have brought it down at her request, poor lady." "And what did my cousin do to her sister I" asked Lelgarde, with dilated eyes, as if she expected to hear that she had tortured her.

"Her look was enough to cow Miss Hilda, ma'am, at any time ; beyond that", I never heard that the poor young lady was punished ; I am sure Miss Atheling^s one wish was to keep it all from folk's knowledge, and especially the old squire. And in the autumn they all went to London, for Mr. Atheling's health, and stayed away the whole winter." "Did you go with them 1" "No, ma'am, only Miss Atheling's maid, and onq ox ttyq men-servants, as they

stayed at a hotel. And nurse went too, < and that was the beginning of her being ] about Miss Hilda ; for the maid, she had i enough to do with helping Miss Atheling attending upon the squire : oh ! he was a i great sufferer." » i "Did he die in London? I forget," c asked Lelgarde. ' s " Oh, no, ma'am, they all came back in i early spring ; and Miss Hilda, she looked i almost as like to die as her father ; all the spirit seemed to have gone, out of her : ] days and days she never stirred from her ] room : but Miss Atheling was that wrapped up in the squire, that she saw nothing ] else. At last nurse told her that poor Miss Hilda must have mild sea-air, which ] had saved her from a decline before, and < might again ; leastways nothing else would. And so at last she got leave to take her ] quite away by the seaside, down somewhere in Devonshire. I could see that it ■ angered my poor mistress that she could not go with her, and she was angry too, ] maybe, that Miss fHilda would not rather ; stay at home and die, than go so far away < when her father might be dying, any moment : but there, there was no denying how ill she was— and she let her go." "Was she away when the squire died ?" " No, ma'am, he seemed to rally for a bit, and it was not till quite the end of the ■ summer that he died ; and, as it fell out, the very day poor Miss Hilda came home. Shall 1 ever forget her face when she came out of the sick-room ? How she flung herself down, and called herself wicked and undutiful, blaming herself, no doubt, for having been away ; unless, poor lady, she had anything else to reproach herself with. Nurse was as close as the grave ; but I know folks did talk " She hesitated ; and I saw no occasion to rake up dead and gone scandal for Lcl- , garde's innocent ears ; though 1 had long been thinking that if these were Atheling manners, one might as well be Smith. "And how soon did Miss Hilda's long illness set in ?" I asked. Mr 3. Bracebridge shook her head ; and, i for the first time, the tears came into her eyes. " Ah ! ma'am, it was at tluit very time; the very week hey papa was buried ; but 'twasn't that, 'twas the sudden shock as did it." "What shock >" " That Mr. Hamilton's death, ma'am; ho was killed some'vhere in these snowmoimtains where the gentlefolks is always meeting with their deaths ; and Miss Hilda she read it on the newspaper, without a word to prepare her. Tliero is no doubt she was much attached to him, poor young lady." "I daresay her sister was sony for them," said Lelgarde, her voice sinking as she uttered this improbable conjecture. ' ' Well, ma'am, my mistress thought a great deal of the honour of the family ; perhaps it was a blessing looked at so ; but naturally Miss Hilda could not be expected to see it. Plowever, I should not talk, for whatever words they had 'twas never before their servants. Only once I clid— l did chance to hoar "—(Mrs. Bracebridge became rather confused) — " just an angry word or two. Miss Etheldreda was telling her how she ought to be ashamed to give way — how she ought rather to give "thanks on her bended knees — that it might be this was an imposition of Providence." "Interposition?" I suggested. "Just so, ma'am, to s:i,vc her and the family from disgrace. ' Disgrace !' Miss Hilda did cry out then. I never heard ncr speak U'> so proud, though her voice was all of a shake ; and then my mistress, she went on talking, bat she would always hush her voice when she was in anger ; and all [ heard was something about seeing her sister dead at her feet— rand then distinct came the words, ' killed him with my own hands,' and then, oh ! dear, what a cry Miss Hilda did give, and, poor young lady, she went off into one of those terrible hysteric Jits which grew upon her more and more — not that my mistress wouldover have donesuch a wicked thing. " "I should think not," I said, as a vivid picture of Miss Atheling ascending the gallows in a black satin gown rose before me, and made me laugh ; but a woman who wa3 in the habit of uttering* such threats as those must have been a very unpleasant person to live with, and T no longer wondered at the constantly recurring " poor Miss Hilda." ' ' And her health got worse and worse, I suppose ?" asked Lelgarde. ' ' Worse and worse ; with those hysteric fits, if they was hysteric, and one thing and another, till she had no use of her limbs ; though the doctors, and law ! she had doctors enough to have killed a. whole hospital full, would have it 'twere only nervous suppression !" ' ' Depression, was not it I" "Very likely, ma'am, or it might have been both, and a hundred other things as well, I am sure. Nurse could have told you more than I, for she was always with her night and day ; and so it went on fOl nigh fifteen years, and then poor nurse, who had been failing fov gome time witli the heart cproplajnt, she was taken fei

death, suddenly, in Miss Hilda's very room ; and Miss Hilda, she never spoke afterwards, and was dead within the week."

"Thank you ; it is a' sad story, but I think I ought to know it," said Lelgarde, morally again, as she rose to dismiss the old woman. Mrs. Bracebridge had curtsied herself to the door, when my sister, who had stood fixedly gazing, on the picture, turned suddenly towards her.

"You are sure Miss Hilda had quite lost the use of her limbs," she asked abruptly. " Oh ! entirely, ma'am, she never left her couch for many years."

Lelgarde looked at her dreamily, and passed her hand over her forehead, as if only half awake.

"Then she could not AValk about the house ! It was impossible, was it ("

"I suppose so, ma'am,." said the old woman, evidently sxirprised. "Yes," returned Lelgarde, in the same lost, dreamy manner, "Yes, I suppose so, yes, of course it must have been out of the question."

(To be continued.)