A Country Gentleman and His Family · Chapter 25 (2/2)

“And if you’ll believe me, she once was just as good and as innocent⁠—! Well, and she’s a kind of innocent now for that matter. Oh, poor thing! Oh, Miss Warrender, don’t you be angry if I’m choking and crying, I can’t help it! She don’t know what she’s doing. She don’t know bad from good, or right from wrong. There’s some like that. Just what pleases them at the moment, that’s all they think of. She once had as happy a life before her! and a good husband, and served hand and foot.”

“Lizzie,” said Chatty, with a shudder, “don’t please tell me any more. If anything can be done⁠—”

“Nothing,” said the girl, shaking her head. “What could be done? If the good ladies were to get her into their hands, they would put her in a penitentiary or something. A penitentiary for her! Oh, Miss Chatty, it’s little they know. If they could put her in a palace, and give her horses and carriages and plenty to amuse her, that might do. But she doesn’t want to repent; she doesn’t know what it means. She wants to be well off and happy. And she’s so young. Oh, don’t think I would be like that for the world, not for the world, don’t think it! But I can’t help knowing how she feels. Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear!”

The wonder with which Chatty heard this strange plea was beyond description; but she would ask no more questions, and hear no more, though Lizzie seemed ready enough to furnish her with all details. She went back with the girl to the shop, thus disarming Mrs. Bagley, who was always full of suspicions and alarm when Lizzie was out of the way, and stood talking to the old woman while Lizzie stole into the parlour behind and got rid of the traces of her tears. Chatty felt very solemn as she stood and talked about her patterns, feeling as if she had come from a deathbed or a funeral It was something still more terrible and solemnising; it was her first glimpse into a darkness of which she knew nothing, and her voice sounded in her own ears like a mockery as she asked about the bundle of new things that had come from Highcombe. “There’s one as is called the honeysuckle,” said Mrs. Bagley: “it will just please you, Miss Chatty, as likes nice delicate little things.” The old woman thought she must be feeling her sister’s loss dreadful, looking as melancholy as if it was her coffin she was buying. And Chatty accepted the honeysuckle pattern and looked out the materials for working it, without relaxing from that seriousness which was so little habitual to her. She even forgot all about her own problems, as she went home, seeing constantly before her the pretty childlike face all blurred with tears. Was it true, as Lizzie said, that there was no way to help or deliver? If she had stopped, perhaps, as she had almost been impelled to do, and said, as it was on her lips to say, “Oh, I am so sorry for you; oh, don’t do wrong any more,” would the unhappy creature perhaps have listened to her, and repented, though Lizzie said she did not want to repent? Chatty could not forget that pitiful face. Would she ever, she wondered, meet it again?