Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (204 page)

“I can’t help it, doctor,” said Rosamond, with a look of apology. “I really can’t help treating my baby, now I am a grown woman, just as I used to treat my doll when I was a little girl. Did anybody come into the room with you? Lenny, are you there? Have you done dinner, darling, and did you drink my health when you were left at dessert all by yourself?”

“Mr. Frankland is still at dinner,” said the doctor. “But I certainly brought someone into the room with me. Where, in the name of wonder, has she gone to? — Mrs. Jazeph!”

The housekeeper had slipped round to the part of the room between the foot of the bed and the fireplace, where she was hidden by the curtains that still remained drawn. When Mr. Orridge called to her, instead of joining him where he stood, opposite the window, she appeared at the other side of the bed, where the window was behind her. Her shadow stole darkly over the bright picture which the doctor had been admiring. It stretched obliquely across the counterpane, and its dusky edges touched the figures of the mother and child.

“Gracious goodness! who are you?” exclaimed Rosamond. “A woman or a ghost?”

Mrs. Jazeph’s veil was up at last. Although her face was necessarily in shadow in the position which she had chosen to occupy, the doctor saw a change pass over it when Mrs. Frankland spoke. The lips dropped and quivered a little; the marks of care and age about the mouth deepened; and the eyebrows contracted suddenly. The eyes Mr. Orridge could not see; they were cast down on the counterpane at the first word that Rosamond uttered. Judging by the light of his medical experience, the doctor concluded that she was suffering pain, and trying to suppress any outward manifestation of it. “An affection of the heart, most likely,” he thought to himself. “She has concealed it from her mistress, but she can’t hide it from me.”

“Who are you?” repeated Rosamond. “And what in the world do you stand there for — between us and the sunlight?”

Mrs. Jazeph neither answered nor raised her eyes. She only moved back timidly to the farthest corner of the window.

“Did you not get a message from me this afternoon?” asked the doctor, appealing to Mrs. Frankland.

“To be sure I did,” replied Rosamond. “A very kind, flattering message about a new nurse.”

“There she is,” said Mr. Orridge, pointing across the bed to Mrs. Jazeph.

“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Rosamond. “But of course it must be. Who else could have come in with you? I ought to have known that. Pray come here — (what is her name, doctor? Joseph, did you say? — No? — Jazeph?) — pray come nearer, Mrs. Jazeph, and let me apologize for speaking so abruptly to you. I am more obliged than I can say for your kindness in coming here, and for your mistress’s good-nature in resigning you to me. I hope I shall not give you much trouble, and I am sure you will find the baby easy to manage. He is a perfect angel, and sleeps like a dormouse. Dear me! now I look at you a little closer, I am afraid you are in very delicate health yourself. Doctor, if Mrs. Jazeph would not be offended with me, I should almost feel inclined to say that she looks in want of nursing herself.”

Mrs. Jazeph bent down over the laburnum blossoms on the bed, and began hurriedly and confusedly to gather them together.

“I thought as you do, Mrs. Frankland,” said Mr. Orridge. “But I have been assured that Mrs. Jazeph’s looks belie her, and that her capabilities as a nurse quite equal her zeal.”

“Are you going to make all that laburnum into a nosegay?” asked Mrs. Frankland, noticing how the new nurse was occupying herself. “How thoughtful of you! and how magnificent it will be! I am afraid you will find the room very untidy. I will ring for my maid to set it to rights.”

“If you will allow me to put it in order, ma’am, I shall be very glad to begin being of use to you in that way,” said Mrs. Jazeph. When she made the offer she looked up; and her eyes and Mrs. Frankland’s met. Rosamond instantly drew back on the pillow, and her colour altered a little.

“How strangely you look at me!” she said.

Mrs. Jazeph started at the words, as if something had struck her, and moved away suddenly to the window.

“You are not offended with me, I hope?” said Rosamond, noticing the action. “I have a sad habit of saying anything that comes uppermost. And I really thought you looked just now as if you saw something about me that frightened or grieved you. Pray put the room in order, if you are kindly willing to undertake the trouble. And never mind what I say; you will soon get used to my ways — and we shall be as comfortable and friendly — ”

Just as Mrs. Frankland said the words “comfortable and friendly,” the new nurse left the window, and went back to the part of the room where she was hidden from view, between the fireplace and the closed curtains at the foot of the bed. Rosamond looked round to express her surprise to the doctor, but he turned away at the same moment so as to occupy a position which might enable him to observe what Mrs. Jazeph was doing on the other side of the bed-curtains.

When he first caught sight of her, her hands were both raised to her face. Before he could decide whether he had surprised her in the act of clasping them over her eyes or not, they changed their position, and were occupied in removing her bonnet. After she had placed this part of her wearing apparel, and her shawl and gloves, on a chair in a corner of the room, she went to the dressing-table, and began to arrange the various useful and ornamental objects scattered about it. She set them in order with remarkable dexterity and neatness, showing a taste for arrangement, and a capacity for discriminating between things that were likely to be wanted and things that were not, which impressed Mr. Orridge very favorably. He particularly noticed the carefulness with which she handled some bottles of physic, reading the labels on each, and arranging the medicine that might be required at night on one side of the table, and the medicine that might be required in the day-time on the other. When she left the dressing-table, and occupied herself in setting the furniture straight, and in folding up articles of clothing that had been thrown on one side, not the slightest movement of her thin, wasted hands seemed ever to be made at hazard or in vain. Noiselessly, modestly, observantly, she moved from side to side of the room, and neatness and order followed her steps wherever she went. When Mr. Orridge resumed his place at Mrs. Frankland’s bedside, his mind was at ease on one point at least — it was perfectly evident that the new nurse could be depended on to make no mistakes.

“What an odd woman she is,” whispered Rosamond.

“Odd, indeed,” returned Mr. Orridge, “and desperately broken in health, though she may not confess to it. However, she is wonderfully neat-handed and careful, and there can be no harm in trying her for one night — that is to say, unless you feel any objection.”

“On the contrary,” said Rosamond, “she rather interests me. There is something in her face and manner — I can’t say what — that makes me feel curious to know more of her. I must get her to talk, and try if I can’t bring out all her peculiarities. Don’t be afraid of my exciting myself, and don’t stop here in this dull room on my account. I would much rather you went downstairs, and kept my husband company over his wine. Do go and talk to him, and amuse him a little — he must be so dull, poor fellow, while I am up here; and he likes you, Mr. Orridge — he does, very much. Stop one moment, and just look at the baby again. He doesn’t take a dangerous quantity of sleep, does he? And, Mr. Orridge, one word more: When you have done your wine, you will promise to lend my husband the use of your eyes, and bring him upstairs to wish me good-night, won’t you?”

Willingly engaging to pay attention to Mrs. Frankland’s request, Mr. Orridge left the bedside.

As he opened the room door, he stopped to tell Mrs. Jazeph that he should be downstairs if she wanted him, and that he would give her any instructions of which she might stand in need later in the evening, before he left the inn for the night. The new nurse, when he passed by her, was kneeling over one of Mrs. Frankland’s open trunks, arranging some articles of clothing which had been rather carelessly folded up. Just before he spoke to her, he observed that she had a chemisette in her hand, the frill of which was laced through with ribbon.

One end of this ribbon she appeared to him to be on the point of drawing out, when the sound of his footsteps disturbed her. The moment she became aware of his approach she dropped the chemisette suddenly in the trunk, and covered it over with some handkerchiefs. Although this proceeding on Mrs. Jazeph’s part rather surprised the doctor, he abstained from showing that he had noticed it. Her mistress had vouched for her character, after five years’ experience of it, and the bit of ribbon was intrinsically worthless. On both accounts, it was impossible to suspect her of attempting to steal it; and yet, as Mr. Orridge could not help feeling when he had left the room, her conduct, when he surprised her over the trunk, was exactly the conduct of a person who is about to commit a theft.

“Pray don’t trouble yourself about my luggage,” said Rosamond, remarking Mrs. Jazeph’s occupation as soon as the doctor had gone. “That is my idle maid’s business, and you will only make her more careless than ever if you do it for her. I am sure the room is beautifully set in order. Come here and sit down and rest yourself. You must be a very unselfish, kind-hearted woman to give yourself all this trouble to serve a stranger. The doctor’s message this afternoon told me that your mistress was a friend of my poor, dear father’s. I suppose she must have known him before my time. Anyway, I feel doubly grateful to her for taking an interest in me for my father’s sake. But you can have no such feeling; you must have come here from pure good-nature and anxiety to help others. Don’t go away, there, to the window. Come and sit down by me.”

Mrs. Jazeph had risen from the trunk, and was approaching the bedside — when she suddenly turned away in the direction of the fireplace, just as Mrs. Frankland began to speak of her father.

“Come and sit here,” reiterated Rosamond, getting impatient at receiving no answer. “What in the world are you doing there at the foot of the bed?”

The figure of the new nurse again interposed between the bed and the fading evening light that glimmered through the window before there was any reply.

“The evening is closing in,” said Mrs. Jazeph, “and the window is not quite shut. I was thinking of making it fast, and of drawing down the blind — if you had no objection, ma’am?”

“Oh, not yet! not yet! Shut the window, if you please, in case the baby should catch cold, but don’t draw down the blind. Let me get my peep at the view as long as there is any light left to see it by. That long flat stretch of grazing-ground out there is just beginning, at this dim time, to look a little like my childish recollections of a Cornish moor. Do you know anything about Cornwall, Mrs. Jazeph?”

“I have heard — ” At those first three words of reply the nurse stopped. She was just then engaged in shutting the window, and she seemed to find some difficulty in closing the lock.

“What have you heard?” asked Rosamond.

“I have heard that Cornwall is a wild, dreary country,” said Mrs. Jazeph, still busying herself with the lock of the window, and, by consequence, still keeping her back turned to Mrs. Frankland.

“Can’t you shut the window, yet?” said Rosamond. “My maid always does it quite easily. Leave it till she comes up — I am going to ring for her directly. I want her to brush my hair and cool my face with a little Eau de Cologne and water.”

“I have shut it, ma’am,” said Mrs. Jazeph, suddenly succeeding in closing the lock. “And if you will allow me, I should be very glad to make you comfortable for the night, and save you the trouble of ringing for the maid.”

Thinking the new nurse the oddest woman she had ever met with, Mrs. Frankland accepted the offer. By the time Mrs. Jazeph had prepared the Eau de Cologne and water, the twilight was falling softly over the landscape outside, and the room was beginning to grow dark.

“Had you not better light a candle?” suggested Rosamond.

“I think not, ma’am,” said Mrs. Jazeph, rather hastily. “I can see quite well without.”

She began to brush Mrs. Frankland’s hair as she spoke; and, at the same time, asked a question which referred to the few words that had passed between them on the subject of Cornwall. Pleased to find that the new nurse had grown familiar enough at last to speak before she was spoken to, Rosamond desired nothing better than to talk about her recollections of her native country. But, from some inexplicable reason, Mrs. Jazeph’s touch, light and tender as it was, had such a strangely disconcerting effect on her, that she could not succeed, for the moment, in collecting her thoughts so as to reply, except in the briefest manner. The careful hands of the nurse lingered with a stealthy gentleness among the locks of her hair; the pale, wasted face of the new nurse approached, every now and then, more closely to her own than appeared at all needful. A vague sensation of uneasiness, which she could not trace to any particular part of her — which she could hardly say that she really felt, in a bodily sense, at all — seemed to be floating about her, to be hanging around and over her, like the air she breathed. She could not move, though she wanted to move in the bed; she could not turn her head so as to humour the action of the brush; she could not look round; she could not break the embarrassing silence which had been caused by her own short, discouraging answer. At last the sense of oppression — whether fancied or real — irritated her into snatching the brush out of Mrs. Jazeph’s hand. The instant she had done so, she felt ashamed of the discourteous abruptness of the action, and confused at the alarm and surprise which the manner of the nurse exhibited. With the strongest sense of the absurdity of her own conduct, and yet without the least power of controlling herself, she burst out laughing, and tossed the brush away to the foot of the bed.