“Yes, indeed, aunt. And I thought I should never get here.”
“And where do you come from, dear?”
“From Mrs. Berry’s, aunt.”
“Who is Mrs. Berry, love?—I don’t know her, do I?”
“At Lipthwaite, aunt.”
“And you have come up from Lipthwaite?—By yourself?—Surely not?”
“Yes, I have. I could not stay any longer. I hope papa will not be angry.”
“Not he,” said Walter, promptly. “I’ll make it all right with him. I am so glad you came. It was jolly of you.”
But Clara did not look as if there were anything of jollity in her fortunes. She was pale, and indisposed to speak, and as soon as the excitement of her reception was over, she began to cry hysterically.
“Ah, that’s a case for you, Dr. Betty,” said Hawkesley. “I should prescribe a large glass of hot negus, and twelve hours in bed, before I asked another question. But I never interfere with the faculty.”
An hour later, Walter having been at length disposed of, Mrs. Hawkesley returned to the parlour to her husband.
“Asleep, I hope?” said he, laying down his book.
“She soon will be now, dear; but she would speak, and on the whole I thought it was better to let her have her way. My dear Charles, that child has the strangest story to tell.”
“Tell me this before you go into it. What about her mother?”
“She knows nothing about her mother, except that the woman with whom she has been staying has been filling her mind with the most painful hints and insinuations, telling her, in fact, that Laura is not a good woman, and that the best thing that can happen to Clara is her never seeing her mother again.”
“But who is the hag, and how did the child get to her?”
“She is Mrs. Berry, of Lipthwaite, the wife of an old gentleman down there, whose name and existence I had entirely forgotten. They live, it seems, in a pretty house out of the town, but it is a house that must have been built since I left, so far as 1 can make out from her description. I have so completely lost sight of the place and the people that I cannot identify the woman; but Mr. Berry is an old friend of Arthur’s.”
“Berry. Why, Beatrice, of course he is. I have heard Arthur speak of him as his confidential adviser, and all the rest of it. Be is an old attorney.”
“No, no, that is quite another person. That’s Mr. Allingham. Everybody knew him in my time. He lives, if he is still alive, quite in the town. He was one of our great little men there, chief clerk, or something of that sort.”
“Town clerk, perhaps? I am positive, though, that Berry is the name of Arthur’s friend. But how did Clara get there?”
“Her father took her down, the day after Laura went away, and left her in the charge of this woman.”
“While he went—where?” asked Hawkesley, eagerly.
“He did not tell the child, but the wretch with whom she was has made her think that he was gone on a very sad errand.”
“She said that,” replied Hawkesley, slowly.
“Yes, and worse; but Clara does not believe it, and I would take the child’s word rather than any one’s. She says that he went away in good spirits, and smiling, and that she was not to be deceived.”
“All this looks very bad, my dear one,” said Hawkesley, gravely, almost sadly. “Very bad, dear; and painful as it is to say so, I fear that we have something to hear which will be most bitter.”
“And are you—you who loved Laura so well—going to believe ill of her, Charles, before we know anything at all? No, I am sure that you are not.”
“I do not believe, dear Beatrice, that even your affection for her is much greater than mine; but I feel that we ought to be prepared for bad news,” said Hawkesley. “But, tell me, why has Clara left the place where her father desired her to stay?”
“Because, like any loving and high-spirited child, she could not bear to hear the things that the woman said, day by day, and night by night, about her mother. I love the dear thing from my very heart for refusing to bear it any longer. As for the wretch at Lipthwaite, she ought to be transported.”
“My dear, we had better discover her crimes coolly, and then we shall be better able to judge how to punish them. Clara is a good child, but a child’s report of people it does not like is not always to be taken literally.”
“What do you say, then, of a woman, who is not only always insinuating to a child that her mother is bad, but who actually writes out a prayer for her, and makes Clara go on her knees and ask that God will be pleased to forgive her erring mamma? Clara tore it up, and was kept on bread and water for two days for doing it, and told that very likely an evil spirit might come to her in the night and punish her for such wickedness.”
Hawkesley broke out with a word which we may forgive, as his wife forgave it.
“Yes, I knew that would be too much for you,” said Beatrice, laying her hand on his. “Think of such cruelty.”
“One would rather not think of it,” said he, “unless for a reason. Arthur, of course, could have no idea what sort of a woman he had placed his child with.”
“I hope not.”
“Nay, you are sure he had not.”
“I don’t know. Men think nothing about these things; and when a child has gone through a persecution that is enough to make it melancholy mad for the rest of its days, they think it is enough to say that the tormentor acted very injudiciously, but that many conscientious people believe with Solomon that you ought to be always beating children.”
“That is not to be said of me, I think, Beatrice.”
