The Woman with a Secret

Chapter I. Brother And Sister

I~T was about seven o'clock on a January Jevening. The air was still and cold. For stillness and coldness, it might be the corpse of the merry breezes that used, long ago, in the Summer time, to run warm through the woods. The stars were so dis tinct and brilliant that they answered the high purpose of saving gas in the streets of the little town of Brimton. The trees braved death in their glittering Winter armour of VOL. i. b hoar-frost. The hard clods of earth in the fields felt as if they had entered into a mutinous agreement never again to let a ploughshare in among them. Those men and women who had firesides crowded round them ; those who had not, shivered and went their way, making the most of any warm corners that were left unfrozen inside themselves. In few words, it was cold. About a mile from Brimton there stands a moderate-sized house, set in a pretty frame work of garden and shrubbery.

This was the house of Dr. Linacre. Gules only knows whether he was descended from the founder of the College of Physicians. His father, everybody knew, had been a physician like himself, and had left him the place, together with his large practice. Better still, the old doctor had bequeathed to his son a name for high honour and large-hearted kindli ness, a decent stock-in-trade, which the young man had known how to value and enlarge. The country gentry all treated the doctor as their friend and equal. What could he want more on this side of heaven ? The clergy turned to him for help whenever disease had brought want, or want had brought disease, into their parishes. In many a poor cottage his face was light, and his step music. Dr. Linacre was a man of simple, studi ous habits. Much of his time indoors was spent with book and pen.

At thirty he had already made his name respectably known in the medical world by certain papers he had scratched and blotted at of evenings in his quiet home. On the January evening in question, at B p.m., Dr. Linacre was not inking his fingers, but sat in his dining-room, with his feet on the fender, and a glass of claret be side him. Opposite sat his sister, Mrs. Easterton, with her knitting in her hand, and her Skye terrier on her knee. The brother and sister were not particu larly handsome, as to their eyes, mouths, and noses. With them, as with most people, the charm of their faces lay more in expression than in regularity7 of feature. They were strikingly unlike each other. The chief notion suggested by his face was that of repose. There was repose in the calm power that looked out of his grey7 eyes.

There was repose in the sweet-tempered, genial mouth, pbout the corners of which lurked very often a gleam of quiet humour. There was repose in the broad, thoughtful forehead, where the little brown curls clus tered. Mrs. Easterton's face, on the con trary, was quick with change. Into the black eyes suddenly there would flash a light, and this would just as suddenly flicker or die out. About the firm mouth there would hover all at once the most winsome smile. The cheek was generally7 pale, but in moments of strong feeling, or at a burst of fun, it glowed brisrhtlv. " Harry," said Mrs. Easterton, abruptly breaking silence in the quick way not un usual with her, " I have been wondering what could make such men as our father and you live so quietly in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. I have found out.

It is pure and simple vanity." "Vanity, dear? I don't quite see how you make that out," he answered, lazily poking the fire, and looking at her as if he were quite ready7 to be amused. When those two spoke together, there was a harmony of sound which we only find in a talk between brothers and sisters, and which comes of the likeness underlying differences in their tone. "Why," she replied, emphasizing her words by tapping the Skye terrier on the head with her knitting-needle, whereat the Skye terrier shook his ears, half lazily, like his master, half indignantly7, like a small dog as he was — " why, you like to feel that , you are the first man in the company. In Lon don you would find it a very different thing. There you would be like a barn-door cock at a poultry show. He has never been farther than his own yard, where he has been used to march up and down and crow, with nobody to crow him down, and thinks that there is not in the world so fine a fellow as himself.

Take you to London, put you in a little coop among the rows of coops, with a magnificent Cochin-China physician three hutches off, and a great glory of geese, turkeys, and all other fat fowl after their kind, each making his own noise in the world, and each admiring his own plumage more than yours. You like to have all the cock-a-doodle-do to yourself — you know you do." " I think that, without going as far as London, we might find a bird-show of our own in a small way," said the doctor, laughing heartily. " Old Squire Bugleby is certainly rather like a turkey-cock taking possession of a stubble-field, with all his family behind him, when he struts into a ball-room with the Misses Bugleby at his heels. Yes, and his voice, the other evening at the missionary meeting, was very like the gobbling of that very edifying bird."

" You are ungrateful, Cicely7. It does not become you to revile his speaking. Have you forgotten the new fact he disclosed to the company when he told them that vast quantities of gold are found in California ? Besides, think of the whole garden-full of flowers of speech he emptied on y7ou." " Don't talk of that evening, Harry, unless your mind's among your drugs again. The mere thought of it is laudanum. I was no better than a sleep-walker for forty eight hours after it. You could no more have got two table-spoonfuls of wit out of the skull of any of the speakers, than a patient of yours can get two table-spoonfuls of nectar out of a physic-bottle. I am quite certain that, if you could have made an extract of the stuff delivered to us by the speakers at that meeting, you would have got hogsheads of a soporific to which chloro form would be nothing.

Why7, Harry, it would have made your fame and fortune (medically) in a week." " Nevertheless, Cicely, y7ou put on yrour new bonnet to go to the meeting." " A woman must dress becomingly, what ever is her fate. Witness the Cenci on her road to execution. Besides, I like the Janes and Amelias of the town to stick to their studies. That bonnet would give them matter for a good deal of observation and inquiry." "Janes and Amelias! I think you care more for the effect of yTour bonnet on the Johns and Thomases. At least I know, my dear, that you have two eyes for John, and one for Jane." " Anything for a change. We women see so much of our own faces at home in the glass, that when we are abroad we look at the men by way of relief to the eyes." " Has anyone called to-day while I was out ?" asked the doctor after a short pause, during which he sat with his chin resting in his hand, a favourite habit with him, and a pleased but sad look at his sister as she wound the terrier's silky hair round her knitting-needle.

To say the truth, those needles of hers were more commonly used for some abnor mal purpose of this sort than for real work. " The curate has been here torturing Beethoven for an hour on his flute, and showing me what he calls landscapes in his sketch-book. What a blessing it would be if all amateurs could be handcuffed as a general precaution, and be exterminated on the spot, if they were found in possession of lead pencil ! Or if sheets of drawing paper could be prepared for them, some thing on the plan of the flies' catch-'em alive-o! What a mercy it would be to stop their buzzing !" " But, my dear," said the doctor, laughing, " the poor little man means all that for pure homage to your artistic majesty. His coat would hardly spread as far as Raleigh's new cloak did ; but I verily believe he would not mind casting the whole of his small body down before you, that you might walk on it."

" Ah ! we are very idle," she said with a yawn, " though perhaps there are words in the world as idle that I dream of, Harry," she added with a sigh. He looked at her with a mixture, as be fore, of pride and sadness in his eyes ; for he guessed something of what was in her mind. " Your life has been a hard knot for you to untie, my Cicely, and you have worked patiently and bravely at the dis entangling of it," he said gently. " Now, Harry, none of your doses made up of the old ounce of praise and drachm of pity — I won't swallow them," she answer ed, speaking quickly. Her nervous quickness made her seem half angry ; and yet he thought he could see tears in her eyes. " My life has shaped itself, I believe, ex actly in the way which was best for me. Poor Cuthbert would have had a bad time of it had he lived with me.

As soon as I was married I felt that there was a great crack in my nature, which could not be mended with what mends the hearts and minds of other women. I could never have thought it enough to do to put my husband back into good-humour when he was cross, secure his content at feeding time, and sew on his buttons ; which three employments are, I believe, thought by the world to con stitute the wife's share of the bliss of mar riage. When I took to my art, I found what did mend the crack, and was another creature. But Cuthbert would not have liked it had I been living with him. Men only like their wives to shine with light refleeted from themselves I know you would not feel so ; but then no one is like you, you dear old Harry ; and, you see, I could not have married you, for fear of the other old Harry."

" I think you are unjust to Cuthbert when you fancy that he would not have been proud of a wife who earned herself a name by her own genius. He was not one of those men who seem to regard every spark of female intellect as dangerous to the male tinder, and likely to blaze up into a fire that will destroy the framework of society. I believe that he was chiefly drawn to you by noticing that there was in your mind some thing different from the minds of most girls of your age." " Commend me to a brother for lame compliment. He cannot praise my mind without implying that there is nothing to be said for my face." " I would rather look at your dear household face than at a room full of Vandyck's court beauties," he said, with frank fondness in his eyes. " And there are many men in the world who would rather have a wife whose face they7 can learn to love better and better than one who is perfect in the beauty that makes all its impression at first sight.

The eyes of a good woman have each day more meaning for her husband ; her smiles come somehow to fit so exactly into the best moments of his life that, after a while, he feels as if they were part of his own nature." " I can't think why Cuthbert married me," she said thoughtfully7, hardly seeming to have heard his last words. " I don't quite know either why I married him ; I suppose it was principally because that damp blanket ' of a stepmother of ours made me hate home." " Cuthbert married you because he loved y7ou. You married him in a hurry7, because, as you say, your home was disagreeable, and without much thinking whether you cared about him. You were capricious, and were naughty to him because you were still almost a child. He went away because you discon certed and discouraged him ; but he would not have done that — he would have waited long enough to understand you, and to let you understand yourself, if he had not been drawn by his old passion for African discovery7.

That's all. If you could only both have been quiet a little while longer, and if children had come well, well ; it is of no use to plan for our old schoolmaster the past." She looked thoughtfully into the fire, but did not speak for some moments. Then she said slowly, " When I see what some men are in middle age, and think of the prayers and hopes which surrounded them as they lay in their mother's arms, I am inclined to thank God that things are as they are. But oh !" she went on after another longer silence, "oh! that only this weary uncertainty about dear Cuthbert were over ! Half wife, half widow, it is like a strange sad dream," and she spoke the last words in a low tone, almost as if she had forgotten that even a brother listened. Harry Linacre wished to speak, but he knew no word that could bring solid com fort ; he only went to her, and, standing by her, pressed her head to his honest breast for a few moments.

Then he sat down again VOL. I. c quietly in his place. She had never spoken before, even to him, so much of the dwelling of her mind upon her husband as she did to night. He therefore could not wonder that after this rare opening of a window in the prison of her secret nature, she should sit, as he saw her, sitting now, with her hands clasped, and her head bowed down, and her eyes fixed vacantly on the Skye terrier, who blinked upon her lap.

Chapter II. Cicely

TN Cicely Easterton's past life there seem- *- ed to have been one future missed, another made. She was what she was born to be, and seemed yet born to be other than she was. Throughout her childhood and girlhood, Cicely was a wild creature, fitfullv happy. She was the despair of nurses and governesses. She never had a frock that was not stained or torn an hour after it was put on. She loved a puppy better than a doll, and a scamper on her pony better than c2 a prim walk with her maid. She would never speak in company when it was proper for a little girl to do so ; but when her talk was not wanted, she would say the most un expected things. She never remembered a date at her lessons — said she hated facts ; but she could sing to herself every scrap of poetry she was taught, if it had but the right music in it ; and she could tell, with smiles or tears, and happy wanderings from fact, one thou sand and one romantic incidents from his tory.

Her favourite toys were a pencil and a box of colours. She was happiest in trying to make likenesses of everything and every7 one around her. When Cicely was six years old, and Harry three, their mother died. A great loss — such is the phrase for the deepest calamity that can befall a child. Oh, CICELY. children, who have mothers, love them while they stay, and prize possession of the high est blessing of this world ! Words cannot tell what her mother's death was to impuls ive little Cicely. When his daughter was about fifteen, Dr. Linacre married again. How such a woman as the second Mrs. Lin acre managed to catch the doctor, will not be known till after the solving of all other pro blems of that kind, this being of its kind the toughest. It is enough to say that, like many other men before and since his time, Doctor Linacre did not doubt that he was going to bring into his house a sweet and saintly creature ; but after marriage he found out what had long been known to all his neighbours.

She was a woman who seemed both in mind and bedy to be always in tight stays. Her waist was in stay7s, fine by degrees and beautifully less, as Prior says of such a waist ; so were her manners ; her pinched religion was in stays, and at its best there was not much of it ; her mind was in like case, and so was her morality. She looked in vain for figures like her own — groaned over the robust state of the world, and blessed God for her own waspishness. the one thing in the universe for which she could be thankful. Having a young girl in her charge, and being a model in herself, she gave her energies to the strait-lacing of Cicely. As may be supposed, that young lady resisted, and broke into fierce rebellion. But just when she was most bitter against her step-mother, she met at a house in the neighbourhood Cuthbert Easterton, the African traveller.

She fascinated him, and he proposed to her; she was then simply CICELY. panting for a means of escape from her step mother, and she accepted him. She would have accepted him if he had been going with her to Timbuctoo for good. As soon, however, as she was married, Cicely be came afraid of what she had done. She fancied that, as Cuthbert was fifteen years older than she was, he would seek to rule over her, even more than her step-mother did. She fancied that she should have liked to remain single some time longer ; and, after all, perhaps she was not made to be married. All these things she fancied ; and she got into her head a hundred other such things as a sensitive and imaginative girl of seventeen in her position might puzzle herself with. She knew that there was a great deal to like in her husband, but, for the present, she did not choose to dwell upon it, because she was angry with him for having been the cause of her great trouble of mind.

Thus her temper was capricious, and her manners were cold towards him. As for Cuthbert, he really loved her ; but not being gifted with that delicate insight into character which made his brother-in-law Harry so quick a judge of women, he was soon daunted by her behaviour. So Cuthbert Easterton very soon came to the conclusion that he was too old and un attractive to win much love from a girl like Cicely. When he had been married about a year, a friend, who was an old fellow traveller of his, asked him to make one again of an exploring-party into Central Africa. The wanderer's life once had a supreme charm for him, and now that family life seemed to have failed him, he CICELY. 25 turned back to it. Influenced by this, and by some thought that Cicely would be happier without him, he persuaded himself that it was best to go.

Cuthbert Easterton was a brave, true-hearted man ; but in this case he blundered. The bent of his mind certainly led him to the life of an explorer, but as he had married he should not have yielded to that bent until he had, at least, attuned his wife's heart to his own. So, however, it was ; although still loving her in his inmost soul, he went away, as he thought, for a year or two. Her husband, being a man of some small fortune, was able to leave Cicely with a comfortable little income. She did not return to her father's house to spend her life in battle with a stepmother, but resolved to battle with the world as (what she had always longed to be) an artist. She therefore went to London, and entered as a pupil in one of the great drawing-schools of the day. The position of the young lady was at first rather an awkward one ; but a great painter, whose heart was as large as his fame, struck by7 her talent, and interested in her husband, appointed himself her guardian.

Her wedding-ring was also a protecting charm. Her husband's absence was unexpectedly7 prolonged ; then people told one another who she was — for Cuthbert Easterton's old African travels had made his name well known in London — and she was treated, for her husband's sake, with respect and sympathy. In her art she had, of course, to struggle with those difficulties which young talent generally meets with ; but at CICELY. thirty-three, which is her age when we now make her acquaintance, she has won herself some name, and earned money. About five years ago, old Dr. Linacre died, and his widow went to live near her own relations. Since that time, Mrs. Easter ton, whose home is in London, has often come for long visits to her brother. She is and is not a widow. For seven years after he left England, letters had come at inter vals from Cuthbert.

One of these told of the death of the old friend who had been his companion. But after he had been absent seven years, these letters ceased, and for the last eight years no certain news had been heard of him. Once, indeed, a cir cumstantial story had reached home of his having been killed by the natives ; but that was afterwards half contradicted. Other travellers had sought news of him, but could only7 pick up vague reports. Meanwhile, what were his wife's thoughts and feelings ? The world in general said that she was very heartless about him, that she flirted with every man she met, and that she would be married again in a year, if she could only be sure Easterton was dead. But her brother, Dr. Linacre, did not quite think with the world. He saw that she was lively and witty in society, but he thought at times he could observe in her manner a feverish restlessness ; and when strangers were gone, something of the languor of re-action followed. all her liveli ness.

He knew that she was — as indeed it seemed almost natural to her to be — some thing of a coquette. But not one of her London friends could boast of being before CICELY. his neighbour in her favour ; and Harry always noticed that nothing made her so angry as the slightest hint of its being pos sible that she was looked upon as anything but a married woman. All these things Dr. Linacre, shrewd observer of human kind, made note of in his sister ; and he wondered whether the woman had not been learning, in her husband's absence, the lesson of love which the girl had refused to show that she had learnt in his presence. Harry had never seen so far into her heart as on this evening ; and what he saw seemed to confirm his guess as to her inmost feeling. Now let us turn back to Cicely herself, as she sat buried in sad thought.

She was not long in that desponding attitude. Soon she jerked up her head, and a smile played around her lips, as she cried out, " Oh ! Harry, am I not a dull companion ? I wonder you don't poke one of the crickets out of the fireplace, and ask it to chirp, that some creature may make a little cheerful noise in the room. It might worry him to be poked out, but whatever a cricket has on his mind, he chirps, and we are quite sure he is cheerful." Her brother knew that the grief was only pushed away into some quiet corner of her heart, but he also understood that she wished him to speak as if he had never seen it. " Don't pity a man," he said, "for getting a few minutes' silence when he has been living for six weeks within range of Cicely Easterton's tongue." " I wonder," she cried, " if I should shake CICELY. my tongue loose again by moving about a little."

Rising and setting down the terrier, who remonstrated with a small petulant whine, she began to walk up and down the room. Anyone who had never seen Mrs. Easterton move did not know half her charm. If her face was not perfect, her figure certainly was. There was an elastic grace and supple freedom in the movement of her limbs that made her, in animation, beautiful as a young leopard at play. In this respect she had the advantage of her brother, in whose broad shoulders there was more of strength than elegance. " How I do wish something would happen !" she went on. " I don't care what — ghost up, tiles down, cat through the sky light. I wish the chimnev would smoke. I only want something to pull at my atten tion — something quite sudden and new to talk about." "You would have made a noble lady of the olden times.

You would not have minded a fair damsel rushing in at y7our postern-door to faint at the roar of giants close upon her heels. You'd like to hear a knight clattering in over the drawbridge, shouting out that he had six ribs broken, and ho, for a leech ! — was starving, too, and wanted supper !" " Hark, brother, it comes — it comes ! My thumbs don't prick, but by the distant rumbling I hear, something precious this way comes. It is the sudden rumble of a carriage. The new topic, a momentous one in these parts, where can it be going? I am sure there is no party in the town to- CICELY. 33 night, for I have been visiting old Miss Braddleton, and she told me nothing of that sort. She knows all that is going on in every house, from the size of the curtain lecture given to the master down to the size of the cook's cap."

" Doesn't it sound as if it were coming up the coach road ?" said the doctor, listening. " Oh, no, Harry — that must be fancy ; none of your patients ever sent a carriage for you. Would the great Bugleby, even if his august spouse were in fits, send out those precious bays, for which he daily proclaims he gave a cool hundred a-piece ? Yet, hark ! it really does come nearer. Yes, it surely is drawing up to the door. Oh ! Harry, Harry, who can this be?" He saw the sudden flush on her cheek VOL. I. D and tremble of her lip, and knew what wild hope flashed through her excited brain. " Most likely it is nothing to trouble you," he said gently7, as he went out into the hall.

Chapter III. Mother And Daughter

sllHE carriage stopped before the house, -*- and the. door-bell rang a quick, tremu lous peal, as though it had caught infection of fear from the hand that touched it. The country doctor unlocked the door, which had been fastened for the night, and threw it open. On the doorstep stood a slight female figure, wrapped in a travelling-cloak. The hall-lamp was bright, but as she was standd2 ing at some little distance from it, she was seen but imperfectly. Linacre could im perfectly distinguish a pale, pretty, almost childish face, with that scared expression of grief upon it which is only seen in the looks of the very young, when they are bewilder ed with a first great unexpected trouble. As she stood in the vague light, with her hands nervously twitching her cloak, with sorrow on her face, and a faint glimmer of golden hair around her head, almost before he had opened the door she cried out, " Can y7ou tell me whether a doctor lives here?" and as she spoke, her voice shook.

"Dr. Linacre lives here, and I am he." " Thank God !" she said, earnestly ; and then added, looking at him with a whole prayer in her large, tearful eyes, " Please, Dr. Linacre, will you see if you can do anything for mamma? She is taken very ill." " I will help her if it is possible," he said, kindly, much touched by both her look and manner. " Oh ! thank you — bless you ! But pray make haste. She is in the carriage." And, with a sob, she moved on one side for him to pass. Linacre sprang into the carriage, of which the door was open. In the very faint light he could dimly perceive a woman lying back, with her white face in clear outline against the back-ground of the cushions on which her head rested. There was some thing dark in her lap. It was blood. Be side the patient sat another woman, trying to support her with her arm.