The Clever Woman of the Family [177]
was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely, to be let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes, without finding the lids, as it were, lined with tiers of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on her, and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that had dreadfully terrified both her and her mother, and she felt herself to have merited! The crush of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming as the strange morbid effect of having been the focus of those many, many glances, and if she reflected at all, it was with a weary speculating wonder whether one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled at her. She thought that if they had, she could not have missed either their ironical sting, or perchance some kindly gleam of sympathy, such as had sometimes surprised her from under the flaxen lashes. There she had lain, unmolested and conscious of a certain relief in the exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle of the cathedral, and a few branches of an elm-tree alone meeting her eye through the open window, and the sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing flight amused and attracted her glance from time to time with dreamy interest. Grace had gone into court to hear Maria Hatherton's trial, and all was still. The first break was when her mother and Miss Wellwood came in, after having wandered gently together round the warm, walled Deanery garden, comparing notes about their myrtles and geraniums. Then it was that amid all their tender inquiries after her headache, and their administration of afternoon tea, it first broke upon Rachel that they expected her to go down to dinner. "Pray excuse me," she said imploringly, looking at her mother for support, "indeed, I don't know that I could sit out a dinner! A number of people together make me so dizzy and confused." "Poor child!" said Miss Wellwood, kindly, but looking to Mrs. Curtis in her turn. "Perhaps, as she has been so ill, the evening might be enough." "Oh," exclaimed Rachel, "I hope to be in bed before you have finished dinner. Indeed I am not good company for any one." "Don't say that, my dear," and Miss Wellwood looked puzzled. "Indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Curtis, evidently distressed, "I think the exertion would be good for you, if you could only think so." "Yes, indeed, said Miss Wellwood, catching at the notion; "it is your mind that needs the distraction, my dear." "I am distracted enough already," poor Rachel said, putting her hand up. "Indeed, I do not want to be disobliging," she said, interpreting her mother's anxious gestures to mean that she was wanting in civility; "it is very kind in you, Miss Wellwood, but this has been a very trying day, and I am sure I can give no pleasure to anybody, so if I might only be let off." "It is not so much--" began Miss Wellwood, getting into a puzzle, and starting afresh. "Indeed, my dear, my brother and I could not bear that you should do anything you did not like, only you see it would never do for you to seem to want to shut yourself up." "I should think all the world must feel as if I ought to be shut up for life," said Rachel, dejectedly. "Ah! but that is the very thing. If you do not show yourself it will make such a talk." Rachel had nearly said, "Let them talk;" but though she felt tormented to death, habitual respect to these two gentle, nervous, elderly women made her try to be courteous, and she said, "Indeed, I cannot much care, provided I don't hear them." "Ah! but you don't know, my dear," said Mrs. Curtis, seeing her friend looked dismayed at this indifference. "Indeed, dear Miss Wellwood, she does not know; we thought it would be so awkward for her in court." "Know what?" exclaimed Rachel, sitting upright, and putting down her feet. "What have you been keeping from me?" "Only--only, my dear, people will say such things, and nobody could think it that knew you." "What?" demanded Rachel. "Yes," said Mrs. Curtis, perhaps, since her daughter was to have the shock, rather glad to have a witness to the surprise it caused her: