Chapter 35

A DISCOVERY.

There woman's voice flows forth in song, Or childhood's tale is told; Or lips move tunefully along Some glorious page of old. --Hemans.

Bluebell was settled in her new abode, about fifteen miles from London: and certainly few governesses have the luck to drop into a more sunshiny home. Only two little girls, pleasantly disposed; no banishment to the school-room. They all mingled sociably together after lessons were over,--walked, drove in an Irish car, or played croquet and gardened as the spring advanced.

Mr. Markham was a barrister in London, and came down to dinner most days--not always, though; and his wife, still a young woman, was glad enough to find a companion in Bluebell. Beauty, too, unless it excites jealousy, is agreeable to look at, and she soon became interested in the young Canadian. But after a while she was puzzled by her. There was a far-off, touching look in her eyes that had come there since marriage, and she was reserved about herself, though the stiffness of first acquaintance had long ago given way to affectionate intimacy. For a girl apparently so frank to be at the same time so guarded suggested something to be concealed. Mrs. Markham, being a woman, could not refrain from speculating about it. She had elicited many lively descriptions of Bluebell's life in Canada, and the children were never weary of sleighing and toboggining stories. But these were general subjects; her narratives were never personal ones.

"By-the-bye," observed Mrs. Markham, one day, "how strange it was that poor child, Evelyn Leighton, dying just as you were going there! Her mother told me of it when she enclosed Mrs. Rolleston's letter. But you arrived in October, I think. Where were you those few months?"

"I was staying with a friend," replied Bluebell; but her hand shook and she became crimson.

Mrs. Markham did not fail to note this, and suspected that during that friendly visit some love passages might have arisen. "She seems very sensitive about it," thought the kind lady. "I will get her to tell me some day. It is such a shame ignoring that sort of thing with governesses, just as if it were a crime! And if there is really anything, he might come and see her here sometimes."

But Bluebell remained nervous and out of spirits the rest of that day.

One morning they were sitting together in the pleasant drawing-room; the children had a holiday, and were playing with their dogs out of doors; Mrs. Markham was colouring a design for her flower-beds, and lamenting the non-arrival of some seeds the postman was to have brought. "The year is getting on," murmured the aggrieved lady; "they really ought to be sown, and it is such a lovely day for gardening."

"Let me go to Barton and fetch them," cried Bluebell, who was always ready for a walk. "I shall be there and back before luncheon."

"Would you really?" said Mrs. Markham. "But it looks so hot! Are you sure you don't mind?" And declaring it was the thing of all others she should enjoy, Bluebell set off.

It was one of those glorious, sultry days that sometimes occur early in the year, when summer seems actually to have arrived for the season--a delusion invariably dispelled by the biting blasts of the blackthorn winter. Lovely as it appeared it was a very oppressive day for a long walk; the white, glaring road seemed endless, and she half repented her offer.

Bluebell was scarcely so strong as she had been, and, having to hurry a good deal to be back in time for luncheon, was quite pale and exhausted on re-entering the drawing-room, prize in hand.

The second post was on the table, and the girl stopped short in the midst of a message from the seedsman, for a deep black-edged envelope, addressed to herself, caught her eye. Mrs. Markham observed her with furtive anxiety. It is terrible to watch the opening of a letter evidently containing sad tidings, yet she was hardly prepared to see Bluebell, after perusing it drop prone on the ground as though she were shot, her forehead striking against the table in the fall. Ringing the bell, Mrs. Markham flew to her assistance, and, unfastening the collar of her dress, something was disclosed to view which gave that lady a second sensational shock, more thrilling than the first. Hurriedly she closed the dress again, despatching for water a sympathetic servant who had just entered, then swiftly, dexterously, possessed herself of a ribbon encircling the girl's throat, on which hung a wedding-ring.

Bluebell recovered only to fall from one fainting fit into another. Her strength had been exhausted by the walk, and she had none to bear up against the shock that awaited her. The letter was from Miss Opie, announcing Mrs. Leigh's sudden death, after a few hours' illness. Inside, and unopened, was returned Bluebell's private enclosure revealing her married name.

A year ago this child had been innocent of the existence of nerves, but, from the trying scenes she had lately gone through, they were now so shattered that she was unable to rally. The doctor kept her in bed at first, recommended absolute quiet, and exhausted his formula with as beneficial a result as could be expected considering it attacked the secondary cause only, and was impotent to heal the suffering mind reacting upon the body. Bluebell continued in a torpid condition, scarcely giving any signs of life. One day, Mrs. Markham, who nursed her with unremitting zeal, quickened, perhaps, by the interest of her discovery, observed the patient's hand steal to her neck, and then she glanced uneasily about, as if seeking for something.

They were alone, so Mrs. Markham whispered in a low, cautious tone, "I have it quite safe, locked up in my desk. No one knows of it but myself." An apprehensive look dilated the large, sad eyes, succeeded by an expression of contented resignation. She did not perceptibly improve, her mind was incessantly trying to realize what had happened, and was haunted by a morbid conviction that the anxiety induced by her own strange marriage might have precipitated the sad event, for Miss Opie's letter did not soften the fact that Mrs. Leigh had fretted greatly about it. Still she expressly said that she had succumbed to an epidemic that had already gleaned many victims.

It was, after all, many days before Mrs. Markham remembered the seeds she had been so anxious to obtain, but one favourable afternoon, she set diligently to work to lay the foundation for summer flowers. Though the "even tenour" of her life did not afford much scope for its indulgence, this lady was not devoid of a certain spice of romance. She was also of an independent character, and in the habit of judging for herself on most matters, and had decided not to betray Bluebell's secret to her spouse.

"Men are prejudiced and unpracticable on some points," she soliloquized, "and though I am quite satisfied that the poor girl is married, he may choose to doubt it, or think we had better get out of her. Her illness was entirely occasioned by the shock, so there really is no necessity to explain my little accidental discovery."

But the plot was thickening, for that morning there arrived a letter from Mrs. Leighton written in great perturbation, to the effect that she had heard some very uncomfortable reports about Miss Leigh. Her information was derived from the captain's wife at Liverpool, to whom she had written on Bluebell's obtaining a situation, supposing that, as they had shown her so much kindness, they would feel interested in the fact. But she had received in return a most extraordinary letter from Mrs. Davidson, stating that Miss Leigh had eloped from their house, leaving only a letter containing an improbable story about going to be married, without even mentioning to whom. Her husband, to be sure, had his suspicions as to the lover, but the name had escaped her memory, and Captain Davidson was at sea.

Now Mrs. Markham began to feel her innocent complicity becoming a little embarrassing. It was rather awkward keeping a suspected person about the children. Her husband would be in fits if he knew it, but, however imprudent of Bluebell to elope, she still saw no reason to doubt the marriage. Had she not the wedding-ring in proof of it?

So as she worked and planted, unavoidably decimating a worm here and turning up an ants nest there, she conned it all over.

"The child must really tell me her secrets, or I can do nothing. I will get her out for a drive; sitting alone in one room, as that demented old Chivers prescribes, is the worst thing for a nervous complaint."

So the next fine morning she ordered the car, and, going to the governess's room, asked her, in a matter-of-course manner, to put on her hat and come out.

Bluebell had just received a visit from the local practitioner, who had reiterated his assurances that "we wanted tone, and had better adhere to the iron mixture; that we must not exert ourselves, and must be sure to lie down a great deal," etc.; but she assented to Mrs. Markham's proposal with the same indifference with which she had listened to Esculapius.

They drove on for some distance through a straggling village, with its ivied church guarded by sentinel cypresses, children were playing about with hands full of cowslips, and lilac bushes blossomed within cottage palings. A little beyond they turned into Sir Thomas Farquhar's park, where young rooks were cawing, unwitting of their predestined pastried tomb. On entering a long, shady avenue, Mrs. Markham pulled the horse up to a walk, and said quietly,--"When were you married, Miss Leigh?"

Perhaps this question had not been unexpected since the little episode of the ring, for, with equal calmness, Bluebell replied,--"The last week in November, at Liverpool."

Mrs. Markham felt a triumphant thrill. She would now hear the solution of the mystery that had been exercising her imaginative powers for some weeks. She poured forth question after question. Yet, at the end of half-an-hour, not only had she failed to extort Dutton's name, but had even entangled herself in a promise of inviolable silence as to the only admitted fact.

She had insisted, threatened, got angry; Bluebell sorrowfully offered to go, but remained firm.

"Well, keep your secret, then," cried Mrs. Markham, at last, abandoning the contest; "but I shall find it out if I can. And I must take care that Walter doesn't," thought she, with a mischievous chuckle, for that gentleman, many years older than his wife, was a servile worshipper of Mrs. Grundy, and his hair would have stood on end had he known that he was harbouring a young lady with such suspicious antecedents. Besides her personal liking for Bluebell, Mrs. Markham recollected that if dismissed at this juncture she could scarcely recommend her to any other situation, and then what would become of the poor thing? But what puzzled her most was the total disappearance of the husband to whom she had been so very lately married.

A clue to this, however, she believed herself to have obtained on observing that Bluebell never failed to study the daily papers with an avidity unusual at her age.

"He must be in the army and gone to the Crimea," thought she. "Poor thing! how dreadful! Some day she will see him in the list of killed and wounded."

Some little time after, Bluebell, who had in a great measure recovered her strength, came to her room, and said, with frank, open eyes,--"May I go to Barton and post a letter to my husband?"

A very warm assent drew forth the heartfelt exclamation,--"How I wish I could tell you all, my dear Mrs. Markham."

Without that information, it was not so easy to answer Mrs. Leighton's letter, which she did eventually in very guarded terms, stating that she had proof of the marriage having taken place, but could say no more, except that, "being much pleased with Miss Leigh, she intended to keep her, especially as the children were very much under her own eye, and seldom alone with their governess."

Mr. Markham was generally the first down, and was rather addicted to a curious inspection of the post-mark on the family correspondence, neatly placed by each recipient's plate.

His wife one morning found him standing over a large ship letter directed to the governess, with somewhat the expression of distrustful pugnacity with which a dog walks round a hedgehog.

"Is that for Miss Leigh?" said she, carelessly.

"Yes," with much solemnity. "Apparently she has a correspondent in the Navy. It is not a sort of thing I like, and I must say I have often thought Miss Leigh too young and flighty for me."

"Oh, I believe she is engaged, poor girl!" said Mrs. Markham, slipping out a white one. "And she gets the children on beautifully. You thought Emma already so improved in playing."

"Well if you know all about it, that's another thing. I trust she doesn't put nonsense in the children's heads. Emma is getting very forward and inquisitive."

His wife felt secretly excited, for she was sure this letter must be from the errant husband, especially as the governess would not read it in public, but pocketed it with a slight nervousness of manner.

Time passed on, and Mrs. Markham had discovered nothing.

Bluebell, in her diligent revision of the papers, found much of personal interest. Colonel Rolleston's regiment had been ordered home to proceed to the Crimea, and she well knew the anxiety his family must be enduring.

It seemed cold and ungrateful to be unable to write one word of sympathy to Mrs. Rolleston, but any renewal of intercourse must lead to explanations, and it was her cruel fate to be able to give none. One other name, too, she saw in the public print that ought no longer to have had the power to thrill her as it did. Well, it was not so long ago, after all: but, however mentally disquieted we leave our heroine, as she has now drifted, outwardly, into a peaceful haven, we must return to others in the narrative who have more to do.