"And yet she has run away!"
I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were eager to load her with reproaches.
"Run away?" I repeated.
"Yes! From him," she said, with a laugh. "If she is not found, perhaps she never will be found. She may be dead!"
The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed in any other face that ever I have seen.
"To wish her dead," said I, "may be the kindest wish that one of her own s.e.x could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much, Miss Dartle."
She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another scornful laugh, said:
"The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends of yours. You are their champion, and a.s.sert their rights. Do you wish to know what is known of her?"
"Yes," said I.
She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, "Come here!"--as if she were calling to some unclean beast.
"You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?" said she, looking over her shoulder at me with the same expression.
I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, "Come here!" again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer, who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which, strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.
"Now," said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure rather than pain. "Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight."
"Mr. James and myself, ma"am--"
"Don"t address yourself to me!" she interrupted with a frown.
"Mr. James and myself, sir--"
"Nor to me, if you please," said I.
Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most agreeable to him; and began again.
"Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever since she left Yarmouth under Mr. james"s protection. We have been in a variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts."
He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking chords upon a dumb piano.
"Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the languages; and wouldn"t have been known for the same country-person. I noticed that she was much admired wherever we went."
Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her, and slightly smile to himself.
"Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress; what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice."
He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.
Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a little on one side:
"The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr.
James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again.
The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself, that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again; and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could have expected."
Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:
"At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all concerned, he was"--here an interruption of the short cough--"gone. But Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person, who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way: her connexions being very common."
He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss Dartle"s face.
"This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The young woman"s violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to be held by force; or, if she couldn"t have got to a knife, or got to the sea, she"d have beaten her head against the marble floor."
Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.
"But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,"
said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, "which anybody might have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She had no more grat.i.tude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn"t been upon my guard, I am convinced she would have had my blood."
"I think the better of her for it," said I, indignantly.
Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, "Indeed, sir? But you"re young!" and resumed his narrative.
"It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night; forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to my knowledge, since."
"She is dead, perhaps," said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.
"She may have drowned herself, miss," returned Mr. Littimer, catching at an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. "It"s very possible. Or, she may have had a.s.sistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen"s wives and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days.
Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the children she was a boatman"s daughter, and that in her own country, long ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them."
Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting on the far-off sh.o.r.e, among the children like herself when she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her Mother had she been a poor man"s wife; and to the great voice of the sea, with its eternal "Never more!"
"When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle--"
"Did I tell you not to speak to me?" she said, with stern contempt.
"You spoke to me, miss," he replied. "I beg your pardon. But it is my service to obey."
"Do your service," she returned. "Finish your story, and go!"
"When it was clear," he said, with infinite respectability and an obedient bow, "that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed him of what had occurred. Words pa.s.sed between us in consequence, and I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother, and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of coming home to England, and relating--"
"For money which I paid him," said Miss Dartle to me.
"Just so, ma"am--and relating what I knew. I am not aware," said Mr.
Littimer, after a moment"s reflection, "that there is anything else.
I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a respectable situation."
Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had occurred to my mind, I said in reply:
"I could wish to know from this--creature," I could not bring myself to utter any more conciliatory word, "whether they intercepted a letter that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she received it."