The Revenge Of Her Race

"Eh, but it's what's coming that upsets me, ma'am. Eh, what suffering for my pretty lamb, and her that wouldn't have hurt a worm! Baby would be about six months old when she came in one day with him in her arms, and they were a picture. His little hand was fast in her hair. She always walked as if she'd wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful. She had on a sort of sheeny yellow silk, and her cheeks were like them damask roses at home, and her eyes fair shone like stars. 'Isn't he a beauty, Nana?' she asked me. 'If only he had blue eyes, and that hair of gold like my husband's, and not these ugly eyes of mine!' And as she spoke she sighed as I dreaded to hear. Then she told me to help her to unpack her new dress from Paris, which she was to wear at the Rochester races the next day. Master Horace always chose her dresses, and he was right proud of her in them. And next morning he came into the nursery with her, and she was all in pale red, and that beautiful! 'Isn't she scrumptious, Nana?' he said, in his boyish way. 'Don't spoil her dress, children. How like her Marie grows!' Those two little ones they had got her on her knees on the ground, and were hugging her as if they couldn't let her go. But when he said that, she got up very still and white.

" 'I am sorry,' she said; 'they must never be like me.'

" 'They can't be any one better, can they, baby?' he answered her, and he tossed the child nearly up to the ceiling. But he looked worried as he went out. I saw them drive away, and they looked happy enough. And oh, miss, I saw them come back. We were in the porch, me and the children. Master Horace lifted her down, and I heard him say, 'Never mind, Marie.' But she never looked his way nor ours; she walked straight in and upstairs to her room, past my bonny darling with his arm stretched out to her, and past Miss Marie, who was jumping up and down, and shouting 'Muvver'; and I heard her door shut. Then Master Horace took baby from me.

" 'Go up to her,' he said, and I could scarce hear him. His face was all drawn like, but I felt that silly and stupid that I could say nothing, and just went upstairs." Mrs. Bentley put her knitting down, and throwing her apron over her head sobbed aloud.

"O nurse, what was it?" cried Alice, and the colour left her cheeks. "Do tell me. I am so sorry for them. What was it?" It was several minutes before the good woman could recover herself; then she began:

"She told me, and Dick Burdas he told me, and it was like this. When they got to the race-course,--it was the first races they'd had in Rochester,--all the gentry was there, and those that knew her always made a deal of her, she had such half-shy, winning ways. And she seemed very bright, Dick said, talking with the governor's lady, who is full of fun and sparkle. The carriages were all together, and Major Beaumont, a kind old gentleman who's always been a good friend to Master Horace, would have them in his carriage for luncheon, or whatever it was. Dick says he was thinking that she was the prettiest lady there, when his eye was caught by two or three parties of Maoris setting themselves right in front of the carriages. There were four or five in each lot, and they were mostly old. They got out their sharks' flesh and that bad corn they eat, and began to make their meal of them. Near Mrs. Denison there was one old man with a better sort of face, and Dick heard her say to master, 'Isn't he like my father?' What Master Horace answered he didn't hear; he says he never saw anything like her face, so sad and wild, and working for all the world as if something were fighting her within. Then all in a minute she ran out and slipped down in her beautiful dress close by the old Maori in his dirty rags, and was rubbing her face against his, as them folks do when they meet. She had just taken a mouthful of the raw fish when Master Horace missed her. He hadn't noticed her slip away. But in a moment he seemed to understand what it meant. He saw the Maori come out strong in her face, and he knew the Maori had got the better of everything, husband and friends and all. He gave a little cry, and in a minute he had her on her feet and was bringing her back to the carriage. Some folks thought Dick Burdas a rough hard man, and I know he was a shocker of a lad (he was fra Whitby), but that night he cried like a baby when he tell 't me," and Mrs. Bentley fell for a moment into the dialect of her youth.

"He said," she continued, "that she looked like a poor stricken thing condemned, and let herself be led back as submissive as a child, and Master Horace's face was like the dead. He didn't think any one but the major and Dr. Danby saw her go, all was done in a minute. But it was done, and some few had seen, and it got out, and things were said that wasn't true. Not the doctor! No, miss, you needn't tell me that; he's told none, that I'll warrant. He's faithful and he's close."

"O Mrs. Bentley, how dreadful for her, how dreadful!" and the girl went down on her knees by the old woman, her tears flowing fast.

"That's it, miss, you understand. I feel like that. It was bad enough for Master Horace with the future before him, and his children to think of, but for her it was desperate cruel. Eh, ma'am, what she went through! She loved more than you'd have thought us poor human beings could. And, after all, the nature was in her; she didn't put it there. I've had a deal to do to keep down sinful thoughts since then; there's a lot of things that's wrong in this world, ma'am."

"What did she do?" Alice whispered.

"She! She was for going away and leaving everything; she felt herself the worst woman in the world. It was only by begging and praying of her on my knees that I got her to stay in the house that night, for she was so far English, and had such a fancy, that she saw everything blacker than any Englishwoman would, even the partick'lerest. Afterward Master Horace was that good and gentle, and she loved him so much, that he persuaded her to say nothing more about it, and to try to live as if it hadn't been. And so she seemed to do, outward like, to other people. But it wasn't ever the same again. Something had broken in them both; with him it was his trust and his pride, but in her it was her heart."

"But the children--surely they comforted her."

"Eh, miss, that was the worst. Poor lamb, poor lamb! Never after that day, though they were more to her nor children ever were to a mother before, would she have them with her. Just a morning and a good-night kiss, and a quarter of an hour at most, and I must take them away. She watched them play in the garden from her window or the little hill there, and when they were asleep she would sit by them for hours, saying how bonny they were and how good they were growing. And she looked after their clothes and their food and every little toy and pleasure, but never came in for a romp and a chat any more."

"Dear, brave heart!" murmured the girl.

"Yes, ma'am, you feel for her, I know. She was fair terrified of them turning Maori and shaming their father. That was it. You didn't notice? No; after you came she was too ill to bear them about, and it seemed natural, I dare say. The Maoris are a fearful delicate set of folks. A bad cold takes them off into consumption directly. And with her there was the sorrow as well as the cold. It was wonderful that she lived so long."

Alice threw her arms round Mrs. Bentley's neck.

"O nurse, it is all so dreadful and sad. Couldn't we have somehow kept her with us and made her happy?"

The old woman held her close. "Nay, my dear bairn, never after that happened. It, or worse, might have come again. It's something stronger in them than we know; it's the very blood, I'm thinking. But she's gone to be the angel that Dick always said she was."

Alice looked away over the starlit garden to where the plumy trees stirred in the night wind. "No," she said, fervently, "not 'gone to be,' nurse dear; she was an angel always. Dick was right."

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