Samh
9.28.1342 20:00
Beritha, as usual, was going through the day’s
messages when one caught her interest. Her finger hovered over the message for
a moment. Then she pulled the finger back without opening it.
“I won’t,” she said quietly to herself. “I haven’t
been paid. I won’t toil for unfulfilled promises. I’ll let Miss Abaledina get this
as it is. If this foils my mistress’ plans, so much the better. Either I shall
be better paid the next time, or if there is reproach and revenge, I’ll reveal one
of my many secrets to the right people.”
Letting the message continue untouched, she closed
the app.
“Bah! Here’s a message from my son,” the Lieutenant
said as he sat in the main parlor, perusing his com-tab.
“I, too, just received one,” Abaledina added.
The Lieutenant glanced over his message with the
sharp, quick eye of a man of business. But Abaledina noted his face grew a
shade paler, and he became agitated as he proceeded.
“Twelve hundred-thousand-notes—four of them
belonging to—” he slowly repeated in a voice scarcely above a whisper. His eyes
fell on Abaledina before he broke off. She looked at him, puzzled, and he
quickly shook himself before continuing. “Bah! I trust this isn’t the beginning
of a series of misfortunes for me. A dozen such losses would ruin me.”
Mrs. Gillfillian had been dozing in an easy chair
by the fire, but at the word “ruin,” she opened her eyes in terror and
demanded, “What is ruined?”
“Your husband will be soon, madam,” responded the
irritated man, “You need to regulate your domestic matters accordingly.”
“Me! Are you speaking to me, Lieutenant Gillfillian?”
his wife demanded contemptuously. “And what do I have to do with the domestic
affairs of our house? You surely have been dreaming.”
“No, no—it’s you who have been dreaming,” her
husband shouted wildly. He was seldom angry except with the loss of money. “I
tell you, madam,” he continued, “that we must find some way to reduce our budget.
I don’t want the world to learn about this loss, so we will dismiss the servants
that can be spared: Jeanilotta’s maid, for instance. Beritha can serve you both.
The footman you hired yesterday must go and with him the chauffeur. Don’t argue
with me. It won’t have any effect, and tears will be utterly useless. If anyone
discovers this shortfall, I’ll lose all my business!”
“Uncle,” interrupted Abaledina. She had quickly lost
interest in the argument when he had started ranting about finances. During his
display, she instead read the message from Eriath. “Uncle, may I have your
permission to read a few lines from my message? It is from Eriath, and you may
as well hear it at once.”
“You may read it, but I don’t care to hear his
nonsense to you.”
“I don’t think you will call it such once you have
heard it:
The time has arrived, Abaledina, when I must
undeceive you about my affection. Forgive me, if I cause you to be miserable. Honor
demands that I can no longer allow you to waste your early and devoted love
upon one who never has—nor ever can return it.
It's no easy task for me to bring misery upon the
head of one so beautiful and good, but I trust you won’t utterly reject my
struggling feelings. The sorrow I feel for causing you pain is deep and
sincere. However, you would not wed me—surely you would not when my heart does
not feel anything in that way for you and secretly longs for another. I still
and will always give you a brother’s love, but that feeling has destroyed—
“Stop!” Lieutenant Gillfillian sternly exclaimed. “The
boy is infatuated with another and temporarily insane. And, yes, that is the same
nonsense he wrote to me in a post script of the message I received: ‘I can’t
fulfill my engagement—my heart isn’t in it.’ It is all supremely ridiculous.”
“Uncle,” Abaledina said mildly, after waiting a
moment for him to calm, “Eriath is not alone in these sentiments. I don’t love
him. I don’t want to marry him either.”
“You, too!” he said, looking at Abaledina with a
strangely mingled expression of anger and surprise.
Here, the conversation was interrupted by
something between a groan and a shriek from Mrs. Gillfillian. Abaledina sprang
to her aunt while her uncle condescended to press the button to summon her
maid.
A moment after Beritha entered, Jeanilotta also
came into the room highly flushed with excitement, but she stopped cold upon
beholding her mother extended upon the sofa in violent hysterics. Abaledina and
Beritha bent over Mrs. Gillfillian, attempting to calm the woman while her uncle
sat nearby reading the rest of his messages, uninterested, with a sour and
angry countenance.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Jeanilotta asked.
“Your mother had several shocks at once. Eriath
and I have called off our engagement, and your father plans to dismiss several
servants, including your maid.”
“Well, papa,” she flew at her father in a rage, “what
is this you are going to do? I won’t let Laleda go.”
“She must go. Beritha will wait upon you,” he
replied firmly without looking up from his messages.
“My maid won’t go. You have my word on it,”
continued Jeanilotta, who had been venerated from childhood and was more
accustomed to obeying her own dictates instead of her parents’ commands. She summoned
her maid.
“Laleda,” she said as soon as the girl entered, “do
you acknowledge any other masters or mistresses than myself?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do I pay you well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you wish to leave me?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, they talk of sending you away.” Jeanilotta pointed
at her father, and Laleda began to cry, adding to the shrieks of Mrs.
Gillfillian. “Don’t fret! You won’t go. Listen, and do what I bid you: Go to my
private den, lock the door, and remain there until I come to release you. Now!”
Laleda disappeared immediately.
“There. You can’t send her away. Don’t you see?”
she added, looking sharply at her father. Unfortunately, Abaledina had
witnessed many battles such as this between her cousin, aunt, and uncle. She
knew what the outcome would be before it concluded. She was surprised that her
uncle hadn’t anticipated it.
“Now, papa,” Jeanilotta continued without another
glance toward her frenzied mother, “I came here with good news. Would you like
to hear it?”
“No,” he growled.
“But you’ll listen, and it will do you good. How
would you fancy Viscount Elwynalam for a son-in-law?”
Thankfully, Abaledina’s gasp was covered by Mrs.
Gillfillian’s continued hysterics. For a second, she was worried that Beritha
alone had heard it. The maid’s eyes flicked toward her and returned to their
work so quickly that Abaledina thought perhaps she had imagined it.
“How—what do you mean?” her uncle asked, smiling despite
himself.
“Simply this—I discarded Theodomani, and Viscount Elwynalam
pays me the most serious attention.”
“But you gave Montrevor your word,” her father interrupted,
his smile falling.
“No matter,” she replied. For a moment, her lips
trembled with some unexpressed emotion. “You and Mother had not yet signed the
contract, and one can’t always keep one’s promises. I suppose you won’t object
to the change?”
“Let me alone. I am surprised only that Viscount
Elwynalam agreed to it.” Jeanilotta’s eyes fell, and a slight blush filled her
cheeks, causing Abaledina to wonder what she did to get the viscount to agree. Her
uncle continued with good-natured petulance. “I won’t be held responsible for any
evil that results from these changes.”
Lieutenant Gillfillian returned to his messages
and after a few moments, bade his wife a hasty good night.
“Try to come out of your hysterics as rapidly as possible,”
he added before retiring to his study.
Jeanilotta came to where Abaledina and Beritha
attended to her mother for a few moments. Once she saw there would be no
opportunity to communicate the alteration to a rational mother, she withdrew to
her apartment. After helping Beritha move the inconsolable woman to her bed, Abaledina
soon followed her cousin’s example since she could provide no additional
assistance to her aunt.
In her private den, Abaledina perused Eriath’s
long message again. She silently thanked him for his goodness, but she could
not solve the mystery of why it contained almost the same information she had
sent him without it being a reply to her message. She wondered if her message
had perhaps vexed him so much that he wanted to be the one rejecting her
instead of being rejected by her. She quickly discarded this solution because
it was unworthy of him. Likely he wanted to take the blame instead of having it
fall on her. Although this explained his message to her uncle, it still did not
explain why he sent such an odd message to her. She decided she would have to
wait until he arrived to learn the truth behind it.
Her thoughts then turned to Jeanilotta’s
proclamation and Viscount Elwynalam. He had expressed the most tender
sentiments to her at the museum with the statement that he would wait for her. She
saw Theodomani leaving and knew her foolish cousin must have broken his heart. When
she arrived in her empty parlor after Jeanilotta had sent her there on the
false premise of a visitor, she should have instantly returned to the main parlor.
Perhaps once she had left, Viscount Elwynalam had fallen prey to her cousin’s
wiles.
She was slightly unsettled because if he had waited
one day, she would have encouraged a more serious relationship with him now
that her cousin had released her conscience. She understood that she asked much
of him, so she did not begrudge him his choice. Before she drifted off to
sleep, she resolved to keep her distance now that he had chosen another.
No comments:
Post a Comment