The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
rose in his breast, as to _what_ it was, that fascinated him in this
woman.
At times he felt an intolerable repugnance to her--at others, he was
drawn towards her, with an irresistible attraction!
Was she a witch? Had she exercised any unholy spell over him? He
looked up in her face with its large, heifer-like eyes--so simple, so
bovine, it appeared--but as he gazed, an archness stole into the
eyes--a wicked smile hovered over the lips--and the Baron felt he was
victimised once more.
“And when are we to begin this wonderful lesson?” asked Hannah,
presently.
“You don’t seem to require any lesson to-day,” replied Von Steinberg,
“you are the most unaccountable creature I ever met in my life! If you
would only always remain the same!”
“Then--you would tire of me. It is the way with men.”
“Never!” replied the Baron, after the fashion of lovers; “you are the
one only woman who could never tire me! You are unlike all the rest.”
“So you _say!_” returned Hannah. “But with regard to my husband--he is
very despondent, you tell me?”
“Terribly so! He frightens me! Do all you can to cheer him, Hannah.”
“And he is likely to attempt his own life?”
“O! no! no! I hope not, most sincerely! But it will be as well to keep
all dangerous articles, such as razors, etc., out of his reach, until
his fit has passed away.”
“_Che sarà, sarà!_” murmured Hannah, languidly.
Von Steinberg started again. Had her lips really uttered Italian
words, and with a foreign accent.
“You frighten me sometimes,” he said, with a gasp. “Where on earth did
you pick up that Italian proverb? We shall have you talking Greek
next.”
“Is not the Professor Italian?” replied the girl. “Am I always to
listen and never to learn? What a fool you must take me for?”
“I take you for the sharpest woman I ever met in my life,” exclaimed
the Baron, as he kissed the large hand which he still retained in his.
“And now I must go, as I have an appointment at one. Good-bye! Think a
great deal of what I have said to you, Hannah--and _think a little of
me!_”
His eyes said more than his words, as he walked hastily out of the
Cottage, as if afraid to trust himself any longer in her presence.
Hannah looked after him lazily.
“He will be mine, when I choose it,” she said to herself, “and it may
not be long first! Ah! to have that house and all its contents placed
at my feet, as a free-will offering! I should feel as if I were in
Heaven!”
She rose slowly from her chair, for Hannah had become very lazy in
those days, and putting on her walking things, left the Cottage also.
When she returned, she found the Professor had reached home before
her.
It was one of the days on which he had his afternoon to himself.
Hannah was well pleased with the turn her fortunes seemed to be
taking. She was disposed to be amiable, but Ricardo had already been
too deeply wounded, and received her advances with repugnance.
“Leave me alone!” he said, testily, “I require none of your
attentions! I suppose my friend Von Steinberg has been talking to you,
and you feel ashamed that he should have heard of your bad conduct.
But I told him all! There is no need for me to conceal anything.
“He saw you with me first--an ungainly, ignorant, uncouth clod of the
earth--they were the very words he used with regard to you--and he
knows what I did, in raising you to the position of my wife! He prayed
and implored me to pause and consider what I was doing before I
brought disgrace on my name and my birth and my family connections, by
linking myself to a maid-of-all-work. But I was mad--I wouldn’t listen
to him. Had I done so, I should have been spared the awful shame you
have put me to, since! I married you, because I believed you to be a
simple, amiable, kind-hearted girl----”
“You didn’t!” interposed his wife, “you married me, because you saw
that I was a wonderful medium, and because you were always crying
after your beloved Leonora, and hoped, through me, to have daily
intercourse with her! Why don’t you tell the truth, whilst you’re
about it?”
“Well! then, that was the truth, since you will have it,” replied the
Professor, “but I wish now that I had died before I ever met you. You
refuse to give me séances--you even say that Leonora is tired of
coming to see me--you are not commonly grateful for the benefits I
have bestowed upon you.”
“Where are they?” cried Hannah, insolently. “I should like to see
them. Do you call it a _benefit_, for a young, hearty girl to be
married to an old dotard, who makes about enough money to keep himself
in victuals and drink, and no more?
“Do you think it is any pleasure to me to be shut up in this little
hole, whilst you’re at work, without money, or amusements, or friends,
and when some one is good enough to take pity on me and ask me to a
pleasant party, you declare that it shall be the last time, and you
will never let me go out again.”
“And I repeat it,” said Ricardo, “you are not fit for such gatherings.
They only make you insolent and over-bearing at home. I told you when
we were married, that you would have to perform the household duties,
as I could not afford to keep a servant. You persuaded me to go
against my own word, but it is over. I shall dismiss the girl this
evening, and for the future you shall do your own work.
“No more parties, nor dresses for you, Madame Ricardo! You are not
fitted for them. One might as well bring a cow into a drawing-room! I
have burned the dress you wore last night, and no money will you ever
get out of me to buy another!”
“That will be no obstacle!” exclaimed Hannah, triumphantly. “I have
money of my own--more than you are ever likely to have to give me.”
“Where did you get it?” said Ricardo, curiously. “Who gave it to you?”
“That’s my business, and not yours,” cried the woman, “if you are such
a beggar, that you cannot afford to give your wife a new dress, she
must get it how she can!”
“My God!” he cried, “what do you insinuate? What do you mean me to
understand?”
“What you like! You can prevent my leaving the house, p’r’aps, but you
can’t make me open my mouth, if I choose to keep it closed.”
“You are a devil! You are not fit to live!” exclaimed the Professor,
as he rose from his chair, as if to advance towards her. But Hannah
was already round the other side of the table.
“You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you?” she cried; “as you killed
Leonora, but you would find that I wouldn’t take it quite as quietly
as she did!”
At that name, and the announcement that Hannah knew how his first wife
had left the world, Ricardo sank down into the chair, from which he
had risen, trembling like an aspen leaf.
“Leonora! _Killed_ Leonora!” he gasped, with a face of ashes; “who
told you such a--a--lie? What do you mean by speaking to me like
that--of accusing me--of--of----”
Hannah stood where she was, and laughed at him.
“Ah! who?--_who?_” she said. “Find out! It isn’t all jam to have a
medium in the house, Professor! If sperrits come for one, they will
for another, and you don’t s’pose they’d keep any secrets from me!
Poor Leonora! I wouldn’t ’ave been ’er, by long chalks! And _you_--who
pretended to be so fond of ’er! Ugh! go along with yer! If you’d had
your rights, you’d been hung on a gallows tree long afore this!”
The wretched Professor could not answer her! He could only hide his
face in his hands, and groan. His dread secret dragged from him, as it
were, and spread out for the coarse criticism of Mrs. Battleby’s
maid-of-all-work!
He did indeed feel at that moment, as though his punishment was
greater than he could bear.
CHAPTER XV.
“It’s of no good crying over it now,” taunted Hannah, as the unhappy
man stirred in his seat; “you didn’t mind how much _she_ cried--did
you? You found her on a sofa with young Centi, singing a song for him,
maybe, or playing at cat’s-cradle, like a couple of babies
together--and you took out your knife, and ran her through the ’eart,
without a thought, or a pang----”
“No! no! not without a pang, God knows!” moaned the unfortunate
Professor.
“You drove your murdering weapon through ’er ’eart,” continued the
girl, without noticing his interpolation, “with no more mercy, than if
she had been a dangerous animal.
“She ’ad youth and beauty, and all ’er life before ’er, but you cut it
short, without waiting for an explanation of what you saw! Do you know
what she was thinking of, just as she was dying, and you watched the
film steal over her eyes and the blood spirting in little jets from
her blue lips. If she could ’ave spoke to you in that moment, ’er last
words would ’ave been, ‘_I ’ate you!_’”
“Let me go! Let me go! I can stand no more!” cried Ricardo, as he
rushed past her, and mounted the stairs to his own room.
Even there, Hannah would have followed him, and continued her mental
torture, but he was too quick for her, and had locked the door before
she reached it. So she was compelled to go downstairs again, and think
of some way of passing the afternoon.
The Baron had begged her to provide a tasty supper for Ricardo, and
she would not have liked him to hear that she had neglected his
advice, so she arrayed herself in her walking attire and sallied forth
to purchase it.
The Markiness had made quite a little circle of acquaintances in
Hampstead, where her manners and her title, so incongruous with each
other, had excited a great amount of curiosity and interest. Mrs.
Barnett, the grocer’s wife, declared that she had quite turned her
ideas regarding the aristocracy, she was so affable and friendly-like,
and Mrs. Thomson, the butcher’s lady, said that if she had not known
that she was a marchioness, she should have taken her for one of
themselves.
So Hannah, after having enjoyed an hour or two of converse with these
amiable creatures, returned to the Cottage with her little basket on
her arm, well primed for supper.
First, there was a fowl, ready roasted, which she had bought at the
ham and beef shop, with a pound of cut ham to eat with it--a crisp
lettuce and some ruddy tomatoes, which were Ricardo’s greatest
luxuries--and half a dozen cheese-cakes--which were hers.
When, with the aid of her little maid, Charlotte, who numbered fifteen
years, she had set these dainties forth upon the table, Hannah sent a
message up to her husband to say that his supper was ready, but in a
few minutes Charlotte returned, gaping, with the intelligence that the
Markiss wouldn’t answer her, and she thought he must be asleep. Then
Hannah piled a plate with something of everything on the table, and
carrying it upstairs herself, thundered such a tattoo upon the
Professor’s door, that he was obliged to answer it.
“Who is there?” he inquired.
“It’s me--Hannah!--I’ve brought you up your supper!”
“I don’t want it! I don’t want anything! Go away!” was the reply.
“Come on! Don’t be foolish! You’d better eat it!” said his wife.
“No! no! All I want is to be left alone!”
“All right!” exclaimed Hannah, as she placed the plate with a loud
clatter on the floor, “there it is, anyway, so don’t go and say you
haven’t had it!”
She bounced downstairs again, with the tread of an elephant, which
Ricardo, hearing, turned on his bed and sighed.
Hannah, however, did not sigh, but applying herself to the remains of
the supper, soon left nothing but the chicken bones for Charlotte to
dispose of. Then she took out some of her needle-work, and toiled
industriously for the best part of an hour.
But her mind was not entirely easy the while. She was fidgety and
anxious. More than once she rose from her chair and, casting the
embroidery aside, paced up and down the little room.
“What a fool I am!” she thought, “why should I have any scruples on
the matter? Had _he?_ Ha! ha! ha! had he?”