"One," said Simon, sternly, "whom you will treat with respect. He brings me a blessing to lighten my loss. One harsh word to this child, and you quit my house!"
The woman looked perfectly thunderstruck; but, recovering herself, she said, whiningly--
"I! a harsh word to anything my dear, kind master cares for. And, Lord, what a sweet pretty creature it is! Come here, my dear!"
But f.a.n.n.y shrunk back, and would not let go Philip"s hand.
"To-morrow, then," said Morton; and he was turning away, when a sudden thought seemed to cross the old man,--
"Stay, sir--stay! I--I--did my son say I was rich? I am very, very poor--nothing in the house, or I should have been robbed long ago!"
"Your son told me to bring money, not to ask for it!"
"Ask for it! No; but," added the old man, and a gleam of cunning intelligence shot over his face,--"but he had got into a bad set.
Ask!--No!--Put up the door-chain, Mrs. Boxer!"
It was with doubt and misgivings that Morton, the next day, consigned the child, who had already nestled herself into the warmest core of his heart, to the care of Simon. Nothing short of that superst.i.tious respect, which all men owe to the wishes of the dead, would have made him select for her that asylum; for Fate had now, in brightening his own prospects, given him an alternative in the benevolence of Madame de Merville. But Gawtrey had been so earnest on the subject, that he felt as if he had no right to hesitate. And was it not a sort of atonement to any faults the son might have committed against the parent, to place by the old man"s hearth so sweet a charge?
The strange and peculiar mind and character of f.a.n.n.y made him, however, yet more anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy apprehensions; yet often, when some disordered, incoherent, inexplicable train of ideas most saddened the listener, it would be followed by fancies so exquisite in their strangeness, or feelings so endearing in their tenderness, that suddenly she seemed as much above, as before she seemed below, the ordinary measure of infant comprehension. She was like a creature to which Nature, in some cruel but bright caprice, has given all that belongs to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common understanding necessary to mankind; or, as a fairy changeling, not, indeed, according to the vulgar superst.i.tion, malignant and deformed, but lovelier than the children of men, and haunted by dim and struggling a.s.sociations of a gentler and fairer being, yet wholly incapable to learn the dry and hard elements which make up the knowledge of actual life.
Morton, as well as he could, sought to explain to Simon the peculiarities in f.a.n.n.y"s mental const.i.tution. He urged on him the necessity of providing for her careful instruction, and Simon promised to send her to the best school the neighbourhood could afford; but, as the old man spoke, he dwelt so much on the supposed fact that f.a.n.n.y was William"s daughter, and with his remorse, or affection, there ran so interwoven a thread of selfishness and avarice, that Morton thought it would be dangerous to his interest in the child to undeceive his error.
He, therefore,--perhaps excusably enough--remained silent on that subject.
Gawtrey had placed with the superior of the convent, together with an order to give up the child to any one who should demand her in his true name, which he confided to the superior, a sum of nearly L300., which he solemnly swore had been honestly obtained, and which, in all his shifts and adversities, he had never allowed himself to touch. This sum, with the trifling deduction made for arrears due to the convent, Morton now placed in Simon"s hands. The old man clutched the money, which was for the most in French gold, with a convulsive gripe: and then, as if ashamed of the impulse, said--
"But you, sir--will any sum--that is, any reasonable sum--be of use to you?"
"No! and if it were, it is neither yours nor mine--it is hers. Save it for her, and add to it what you can."
While this conversation took place, f.a.n.n.y had been consigned to the care of Mrs. Boxer, and Philip now rose to see and bid her farewell before he departed.
"I may come again to visit you, Mr. Gawtrey; and I pray Heaven to find that you and f.a.n.n.y have been a mutual blessing to each other. Oh, remember how your son loved her!"
"He had a good heart, in spite of all his sins. Poor William!" said Simon.
Philip Morton heard, and his lip curled with a sad and a just disdain.
If when, at the age of nineteen, William Gawtrey had quitted his father"s roof, the father had then remembered that the son"s heart was good,--the son had been alive still, an honest and a happy man. Do ye not laugh, O ye all-listening Fiends! when men praise those dead whose virtues they discovered not when alive? It takes much marble to build the sepulchre--how little of lath and plaster would have repaired the garret!
On turning into a small room adjoining the parlour in which Gawtrey sat, Morton found f.a.n.n.y standing gloomily by a dull, soot-grimed window, which looked out on the dead walls of a small yard. Mrs. Boxer, seated by a table, was employed in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a cap, and putting questions to f.a.n.n.y in that falsetto voice of endearment in which people not used to children are apt to address them.
"And so, my dear, they"ve never taught you to read or write? You"ve been sadly neglected, poor thing!"
"We must do our best to supply the deficiency," said Morton, as he entered.
"Bless me, sir, is that you?" and the gouvernante bustled up and dropped a low courtesy; for Morton, dressed then in the garb of a gentleman, was of a mien and person calculated to strike the gaze of the vulgar.
"Ah, brother!" cried f.a.n.n.y, for by that name he had taught her to call him; and she flew to his side. "Come away--it"s ugly there--it makes me cold."
"My child, I told you you must stay; but I shall hope to see you again some day. Will you not be kind to this poor creature, ma"am? Forgive me, if I offended you last night, and favour me by accepting this, to show that we are friends." As he spoke, he slid his purse into the woman"s hand. "I shall feel ever grateful for whatever you can do for f.a.n.n.y."
"f.a.n.n.y wants nothing from any one else; f.a.n.n.y wants her brother."
"Sweet child! I fear she don"t take to me. Will you like me, Miss f.a.n.n.y?"
"No! get along!"
"Fie, f.a.n.n.y--you remember you did not take to me at first. But she is so affectionate, ma"am; she never forgets a kindness."
"I will do all I can to please her, sir. And so she is really master"s grandchild?" The woman fixed her eyes, as she spoke, so intently on Morton, that he felt embarra.s.sed, and busied himself, without answering, in caressing and soothing f.a.n.n.y, who now seemed to awake to the affliction about to visit her; for though she did not weep--she very rarely wept--her slight frame trembled--her eyes closed--her cheeks, even her lips, were white--and her delicate hands were clasped tightly round the neck of the one about to abandon her to strange b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
Morton was greatly moved. "One kiss, f.a.n.n.y! and do not forget me when we meet again."
The child pressed her lips to his cheek, but the lips were cold. He put her down gently; she stood mute and pa.s.sive.
"Remember that he wished me to leave you here," whispered Morton, using an argument that never failed. "We must obey him; and so-G.o.d bless you, f.a.n.n.y!"
He rose and retreated to the door; the child unclosed her eyes, and gazed at him with a strained, painful, imploring gaze; her lips moved, but she did not speak. Morton could not bear that silent woe. He sought to smile on her consolingly; but the smile would not come. He closed the door, and hurried from the house.
From that day f.a.n.n.y settled into a kind of dreary, inanimate stupor, which resembled that of the somnambulist whom the magnetiser forgets to waken. Hitherto, with all the eccentricities or deficiencies of her mind, had mingled a wild and airy gaiety. That was vanished. She spoke little--she never played--no toys could lure her--even the poor dog failed to win her notice. If she was told to do anything she stared vacantly and stirred not. She evinced, however, a kind of dumb regard to the old blind man; she would creep to his knees and sit there for hours, seldom answering when he addressed her, but uneasy, anxious, and restless, if he left her.
"Will you die too?" she asked once; the old man understood her not, and she did not try to explain. Early one morning, some days after Morton was gone, they missed her: she was not in the house, nor the dull yard where she was sometimes dismissed and told to play--told in vain. In great alarm the old man accused Mrs. Boxer of having spirited her away, and threatened and stormed so loudly that the woman, against her will, went forth to the search. At last she found the child in the churchyard, standing wistfully beside a tomb.
"What do you here, you little plague?" said Mrs. Boxer, rudely seizing her by the arm.
"This is the way they will both come back some day! I dreamt so!"
"If ever I catch you here again!" said the housekeeper, and, wiping her brow with one hand, she struck the child with the other. f.a.n.n.y had never been struck before. She recoiled in terror and amazement, and, for the first time since her arrival, burst into tears.
"Come--come, no crying! and if you tell master I"ll beat you within an inch of your life!" So saying, she caught f.a.n.n.y in her arms, and, walking about, scolding and menacing, till she had frightened back the child"s tears, she returned triumphantly to the house, and bursting into the parlour, exclaimed, "Here"s the little darling, sir!"
When old Simon learned where the child had been found he was glad; for it was his constant habit, whenever the evening was fine, to glide out to that churchyard--his dog his guide--and sit on his one favourite spot opposite the setting sun. This, not so much for the sanct.i.ty of the place, or the meditations it might inspire, as because it was the nearest, the safest, and the loneliest spot in the neighbourhood of his home, where the blind man could inhale the air and bask in the light of heaven. Hitherto, thinking it sad for the child, he had never taken her with him; indeed, at the hour of his monotonous excursion she had generally been banished to bed. Now she was permitted to accompany him; and the old man and the infant would sit there side by side, as Age and Infancy rested side by side in the graves below. The first symptom of childlike interest and curiosity that f.a.n.n.y betrayed was awakened by the affliction of her protector. One evening, as they thus sat, she made him explain what the desolation of blindness is. She seemed to comprehend him, though he did not seek to adapt his complaints to her understanding.
"f.a.n.n.y knows," said she, touchingly; "for she, too, is blind here;" and she pressed her hands to her temples. Notwithstanding her silence and strange ways, and although he could not see the exquisite loveliness which Nature, as in remorseful pity, had lavished on her outward form, Simon soon learned to love her better than he had ever loved yet: for they most cold to the child are often dotards to the grandchild. For her even his avarice slept. Dainties, never before known at his sparing board, were ordered to tempt her appet.i.te, toy-shops ransacked to amuse her indolence. He was long, however, before he could prevail on himself to fulfil his promise to Morton, and rob himself of her presence.
At length, however, wearied with Mrs. Boxer"s lamentations at her ignorance, and alarmed himself at some evidences of helplessness, which made him dread to think what her future might be when left alone in life, he placed her at a day-school in the suburb. Here f.a.n.n.y, for a considerable time, justified the harshest a.s.sertions of her stupidity.
She could not even keep her eyes two minutes together on the page from which she was to learn the mysteries of reading; months pa.s.sed before she mastered the alphabet, and, a month after, she had again forgot it, and the labour was renewed. The only thing in which she showed ability, if so it might be called, was in the use of the needle. The sisters of the convent had already taught her many pretty devices in this art; and when she found that at the school they were admired--that she was praised instead of blamed--her vanity was pleased, and she learned so readily all that they could teach in this not unprofitable accomplishment, that Mrs. Boxer slyly and secretly turned her tasks to account and made a weekly perquisite of the poor pupil"s industry.
Another faculty she possessed, in common with persons usually deficient, and with the lower species--viz., a most accurate and faithful recollection of places. At first Mrs. Boxer had been duly sent, morning, noon, and evening, to take her to, or bring her from, the school; but this was so great a grievance to Simon"s solitary superintendent, and f.a.n.n.y coaxed the old man so endearingly to allow her to go and return alone, that the attendance, unwelcome to both, was waived. f.a.n.n.y exulted in this liberty; and she never, in going or in returning, missed pa.s.sing through the burial-ground, and gazing wistfully at the tomb from which she yet believed Morton would one day reappear. With his memory she cherished also that of her earlier and more guilty protector; but they were separate feelings, which she distinguished in her own way.
"Papa had given her up. She knew that he would not have sent her away, far--far over the great water, if he had meant to see f.a.n.n.y again; but her brother was forced to leave her--he would come to life one day, and then they should live together!"
One day, towards the end of autumn, as her schoolmistress, a good woman on the whole, but who had not yet had the wit to discover by what chords to tune the instrument, over which so wearily she drew her unskilful hand--one day, we say, the schoolmistress happened to be dressed for a christening party to which she was invited in the suburb; and, accordingly, after the morning lessons, the pupils were to be dismissed to a holiday. As f.a.n.n.y now came last, with the hopeless spelling-book, she stopped suddenly short, and her eyes rested with avidity upon a large bouquet of exotic flowers, with which the good lady had enlivened the centre of the parted kerchief, whose yellow gauze modestly veiled that tender section of female beauty which poets have likened to hills of snow--a chilling simile! It was then autumn; and field, and even garden flowers were growing rare.
"Will you give me one of those flowers?" said f.a.n.n.y, dropping her book.
"One of these flowers, child! why?"
f.a.n.n.y did not answer; but one of the elder and cleverer girls said--