The Last of the Mortimers: A Story in Two Voices by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

POSTSCRIPT.
 BY MRS. LANGHAM.

Harry is home, safe and well. He is to get the Medjidie and the French ribbon of honour; but you can see that in the papers. It is something else I have to tell.

It is just a week before Sara’s marriage day, and Lizzie comes to me looking very foolish. I had thought she had recovered of her awkwardness. There she stands, twisting her feet again, rolling up her arms in her white apron, holding her head to one side in a paroxysm of her old use and wont. Really, if she were not standing in such a preposterous attitude, Lizzie would look rather pretty; she has such a nice complexion, and her red-brown hair pleases me—it is not too red. It suits those features which are not at all regular, but only very pleasant and bright, with health, and youth, and a good heart. But now there is something dreadful choking Lizzie, which must be got out.

“Mem, the Captain’s come hame,” came at last in a burst.

He was brevet Major now, and most people about the Park called him Colonel; and he was in the next room, no further off, so I rather stared at Lizzie’s piece of news.

“And wee Mr. Harry, he’s a grand little gentleman,” said Lizzie; “and a’s weel, and there’s no cloud in a’ the sky as big as the dear bairn’s little finger, let abee a man’s hand.”

This solemn enumeration of my joys alarmed me considerably. “Do you know of anything that has happened, Lizzie?” I cried with a momentary return of my old fears.

“Naething’s gaun to happen,” said Lizzie, “I’m meaning no to you; naething but the blessing of God that kens a’. It was just to say——”

Here Lizzie came to a dead stop, and cried, the unfailing resource in all difficulties. A perception of the truth flashed upon me as I looked at her.

“Do you mean to say——?” cried I, but got no further in my extreme amaze.

“Eh, it’s no me!” cried Lizzie. “But eh, Menico says——”

Here she stopped again, gave me a frightened look, made an attempt to go on—and finally, startled by a sound in the next room, where Harry was, dropped the apron she had unconsciously pulled off, on the floor, and fairly ran away.

Leaving me thunderstruck, and by no means pleased. I knew if I went and told Harry he would burst into fits of laughter, and there would be an end to all serious consideration of the subject. To lose Lizzie all at once like this, to let the creature go and marry a foreigner! There was something quite unbearable in the thought; what was I to do? A foreigner, and a Catholic, too, and a man twice as old as herself; the girl was mad! The more I thought of it the more distressed I grew. At last I went to seek Aunt Milly, who was the only practicable counsellor. She was in the garden, and I went to seek her there. It was July, and sultry weather. In the hall, now better occupied than it used to be, stood Domenico, in the white suit, vast and spotless, with which he always distinguished himself in summer weather, and which always put me in mind of that dreadful day when the Count Sermoneta first came, in his own name, to the Park. Domenico started forward, noiseless and smiling, to open the door. The action brought before me in a minute our little Chester lodgings, our troubled happy days, our parting, and all the simple kindness this honest fellow had done us. His face beamed through all my recollections of that time, always thus starting forward with the courtesy of the heart. My heart warmed to him in spite of all I had been cogitating against him. Perhaps he divined what it was occupied my thoughts—he followed me out at the door.

“It pleases to the Signora give me the Leezee?” said Domenico, with an insinuating look. “No? no? But what to have done? The Signora displeases herself of me? Wherefore? Because? I not know.”

“I am not displeased,” said I. “You are a very good fellow, Domenico, and have always been very kind. But she is a child; she is not seventeen. What would you do with her in a strange country? She is too young for you.”

“The Leezee contents herself,” said Domenico, with a broad smile opening out his black beard. “If it pleases to the Signora, I bring her back other times; I take the care of her; I make everything please to her. The Signora not wills to say no?”

And of course I did not say no; I had no right to say anything of the sort. And Lizzie actually was not afraid to marry that mountain of a man. She went away with him, looking dreadfully ashamed, and taking the most heartrending farewell of little Harry and me, Domenico looking on with great but smiling sympathy all the while, and not at all resenting her tears. But the Captain had come home, and little Harry had attained the independence of two and a half years. Lizzie felt she had discharged her trust, and was no longer imperatively needed to take care of me. I kissed her when she went away, as if she had been a sister of my own, and I confess was not ashamed to add a tear to the floods that poured from her brown eyes; but I am obliged to avow that it is not within the range of my powers to put correctly on paper all the long rolling syllables of her new name.

THE END.