She ate her breakfast silently, and with a sense of oppression and guilt quite new to her. She grew inwardly hot whenever Nan looked at her, which she did continually and with the utmost affection. Before the meal was over, however, Miss Middleton and Mattie made their appearance, and in the slight bustle of entrance Phillis managed to effect her escape.
The hour that followed bore the unreality of a nightmare. Outwardly, Phillis was the grave, business-like dressmaker. The lady who had sent for her, and who was a stranger to Hadleigh, was much struck with her quiet self-possessed manners and lady-like demeanor.
"Her voice was quite refined," she said afterwards to her daughter.
"And she had such a nice face and beautiful figure. I am sure she is a reduced gentlewoman, for her accent was perfect. I am quite obliged to Miss Milner for recommending us such a person, for she evidently understands her business. One thing I noticed, Ada,--the way in which she quietly laid down the parcel, and said it should be fetched presently. Any ordinary dressmaker in a small town like this would have carried it home herself."
Poor Phillis! she had laid down the parcel and drawn on her well-fitting gloves with a curious sinking at her heart: from the window of the house in Rock Building she could distinctly see Mr.
Dancy walking up and down the narrow plat of gra.s.s before the houses, behind the tamarisk hedge, his foreign-looking cloak and slouch hat making him conspicuous.
"There is that queer-looking man again, mamma," exclaimed one of the young ladies, who was seated in the window. "I am sure he is some distinguished foreigner, he has such an air with him."
Phillis listened to no more, but hurried down the stairs and then prepared to cross the green with some degree of trepidation. She was half afraid that Mr. Dancy would join her at once, in the full view of curious eyes; but he knew better. He sauntered on slowly until she had reached the Parade and was going towards a part of the beach where there was only a knot of children wading knee-deep in the water, sailing a toy-boat. She stood and watched them dreamily, until the voice she expected sounded in her ear:
"True as steel! Ah, I was never deceived in a face yet. Where shall we sit, Miss Challoner? Yes, this is a quiet corner, and the children will not disturb us. Look at that urchin, with his bare brown legs and curly head: is he not a study? Ah, if he had lived--my----" And then he sighed, and threw himself on the beach.
"Well," observed Phillis, interrogatively. She was inclined to be short with him this morning. She had kept her word, and put herself into this annoying position; but there must be no hesitation, no beating about the bush, no loss of precious time. The story she had now to hear must be told, and with out delay.
Mr. Dancy raised his eyes as he heard the tone, and then he took off his spectacles as though he felt them an inc.u.mbrance. Phillis had a very good view of a pair of handsome eyes, with a lurking gleam of humor in them, which speedily died away into sadness.
"You are in a hurry; but I was thinking how I could best begin without startling you. But I may as well get it out without any prelude. Miss Challoner, to Mrs. Williams I am only Mr. Dancy; but my real name is Herbert Dancy Cheyne."
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
MISS MEWLSTONE HAS AN INTERRUPTION.
"HERBERT DANCY CHEYNE!"
As he p.r.o.nounced the name slowly and with marked emphasis, a low cry of uncontrollable astonishment broke from Phillis: it was so unexpected. She began to shiver a little from the sudden shock.
"There! I have startled you,--and no wonder; and yet how could I help it? Yes," he repeated, calmly, "I am that unfortunate Herbert Cheyne whom his own wife believes to be dead."
"Whom every one believes to be dead," corrected Phillis, in a panting breath.
"Is it any wonder?" he returned, vehemently; and his eyes darkened, and his whole features worked, as though with the recollection of some unbearable pain. "Have I not been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the very jaws of death? Has not mine been a living death, a hideous grave, for these four years?" And then, hurriedly and almost disconnectedly, as though the mere recalling the past was torture to him, he poured into the girl"s shrinking ears fragments of a story so stern in its reality, so terrible in its details, that, regardless of the children that played on the margin of the water, Phillis hid her face in her hands and wept for sheer pity.
Wounded, bereft of all his friends, and left apparently dying in the hands of a hostile tribe, Herbert Cheyne had owed his life to the mercy of a woman, a poor, degraded ill-used creature, half-witted and ugly, but who had not lost all the instincts of her womanhood, and who fed and nursed the white stranger as tenderly as though he were her own son.
While the old negress lived, Herbert Cheyne had been left in peace to languish back to life, through days and nights of intolerable suffering, until he had regained a portion of his old strength; then a fever carried off his protectress, and he became virtually a slave.
Out of pity for the tender-hearted girl who listened to him, Mr.
Cheyne hurried over this part of his sorrowful past. He spoke briefly of indignities, abuse, and at last of positive ill treatment. Again and again his life had been in danger from brute violence; again and again he had striven to escape, and had been recaptured with blows.
Phillis pointed mutely to his scarred wrists, and the tears flowed down her cheeks.
"Yes, yes; these are the marks of my slavery," he replied, bitterly.
"They were a set of hideous brutes; and the fetish they worshipped was cruelty. I carry about me other marks that must go with me to my grave; but there is no need to dwell on these horrors. He sent His angel to deliver me," he continued, reverently; "and again my benefactor was a woman."
And then he went on to tell Phillis that one of the wives of the chief in whose service he was took pity on him, and aided him to escape on the very night before some great festival, when it had been determined to kill him. This time he had succeeded; and, after a series of hair-breadth adventures, he had fallen in with some Dutch traders who had come far into the interior in search of ivory tusks. He was so burnt by the sun and disfigured by paint that he had great difficulty in proving his ident.i.ty as an Englishman. But at last they had suffered him to join them, and after some more months of wandering he had worked his way to the coast.
There misfortune bad again overtaken him, in the form of a long and tedious illness. Fatigue, disaster, anguish of mind, and a slight sunstroke had taken dire effect upon him; but this time he had fallen into the hands of good Samaritans. The widowed sister of the consul, a very Dorcas of good works, had received the miserable stranger into her house; and she and her son, like Elijah"s widow of Zarephath, had shared with him their scanty all.
"They were very poor, but they pinched themselves for the sake of the stricken wretch that was thrown on their mercy. It was a woman again who succored me the third time," continued Mr. Cheyne: "you may judge how sacred women are in my eyes now! Dear motherly Mrs. Van Hollick!
when she at last suffered me to depart, she kissed and blessed me as though I were her own son. Never to my dying day shall I forget her goodness. My one thought, after seeing Magdalene, will be how I am to repay her goodness,--how I can make prosperity flow in on the little household, that the cruse and cake may never fail!"
"But," interrupted Phillis at this point, "did you not write, or your friends write for you, to England?"
Mr. Cheyne smiled bitterly:
"It seems as though some strange fatality were over me. Yes, I wrote.
I wrote to Magdalene, to my lawyer, and to another friend who had known me all my life, but the ship that carried these letters was burnt at sea. I only heard that when I at last worked my way to Portsmouth as a common sailor and in that guise presented myself at my lawyer"s chambers. Poor man! I thought he would have fainted when he saw me. He owned afterwards he was a believer in ghosts at that moment."
"How long ago was that?" asked Phillis, gently.
"Two months; not longer. It was then I heard of my children"s death, of my wife"s long illness and her strange state. I was ill myself, and not fit to battle through any more scenes. Mr. Standish took me home until I had rested and recovered myself a little; and then I put on this disguise--not that much of that is necessary, for few people would recognize me, I believe--and came down here and took possession of Mrs. Williams"s lodgings."
Phillis looked at him with mute questioning in her eyes. She did not venture to put it into words, but he understood her:
"Why have I waited so long, do you ask? and why am I living here within sight of my own house, a spy on my own threshold and wife? My dear Miss Challoner, there is a bitter reason for that!
"Four years ago I parted from my wife in anger. There were words said that day that few women could forgive. Has she forgiven them? That is what I am trying to find out. Will the husband who has been dead to her all these years be welcome to her living?" His voice dropped into low vehemence, and a pallor came over his face as he spoke.
Phillis laid her hand on his own. She looked strangely eager:
"This is why you want my help. Ah! I see now! Oh, it is all right--all that you can wish! It is she who is tormenting herself, who has no rest day or night! When the thunder came that evening--you remember--we sat beside the children"s empty beds, and she told me some of her thoughts. When the lighting flashed, her nerves gave way, and she cried out, in her pain, "Did he forgive?" That was her one thought. Her husband,--who was up in heaven with the children,--did he think mercifully of her, and know how she loved him? It was your name that was on her lips when that good woman, Miss Mewlstone, hushed her in her arms like a child. Oh, be comforted!" faltered Phillis, "for she loves you, and mourns for you as though she were the most desolate creature living!" But here she paused, for something that sounded like a sob came to her ear, and looking round, she saw the bowed figure of her companion shaking with uncontrollable emotion,--those hard tearless sobs that are only wrung from a man"s strong agony.
"Oh, hush!" cried the girl, tenderly. "Be comforted: there is no room for doubt. There! I will leave you; you will be better by and by." And then instinctively she turned away her face from a grief too sacred for a stranger to touch, and walked down to the water, where the children had ceased playing, and listened to the baby waves that lapped about her feet.
And by and by he joined her; and on his pale face there was a rapt, serious look, as of one who has despaired and has just listened to an angel"s tidings.
"Did I not say that you, and only you, could help me? This is what I have wanted to know: had Magdalene forgiven me? Now I need wait no longer. My wife and home are mine, and I must take possession of my treasures."
He stopped, as though overcome by the prospect of such happiness; but Phillis timidly interposed:
"But, Mr. Cheyne, think a moment. How is it to be managed? If you are in too great a hurry, will not the shock be too much for her? She is nervous,--excitable. It would hardly be safe."
"That is what troubles me," he returned, anxiously. "It is too much for any woman to bear; and Magdalene--she was always excitable. Tell me, you have such good sense; and, though you are so young, one can always rely on a woman; you understand her so well--I see you do--and she is fond of you,--how shall we act that my poor darling, who has undergone so much, may not be harmed by me any more?"
"Wait one moment," returned Phillis, earnestly. "I must consider." And she set herself to revolve all manner of possibilities, and then rejected them one by one. "There seems no other way," she observed, at last, fixing her serious glance on Mr. Cheyne. "I must seek for an opportunity to speak to Miss Mewlstone. It must be broken carefully to your poor wife; I am sure of that. Miss Mewlstone will help us. She will tell us what to do, and how to do it. Oh, she is so kind, so thoughtful and tender, just as though Mrs. Cheyne were a poor wayward child, who must be guided and helped and shielded. I like her so much: we must go to her for counsel."
"You must indeed, and at once!" he returned, rather peremptorily; and Phillis had a notion now what manner of man he had been before misfortunes had tamed and subdued him. His eyes flashed with eagerness; he grew young, alert, full of life in a moment. "Forgive me if I am too impetuous; but I have waited so long, and now my patience seems exhausted all at once during the last hour. I have been at fever-point ever since you have proved to me that my wife--my Magdalene--has been true to me. Fool that I was! why have I doubted so long? Miss Challoner, you will not desert me?--you will be my good angel a little longer? You will go to Miss Mewlstone now,--this very moment,--and ask her to prepare my wife?"
"It is time for me to be going home: mother and Nan will think I am lost," returned Phillis, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "Come Mr.
Cheyne, we can talk as we go along." For he was so wan and agitated that she felt uneasy for his sake. She took his arm gently, and guided him as though he were a child; and he obeyed her like one.