16
Samh 9.28.1342 20:00
Beritha, as usual, was going through the day’s messages, when one of them alone seemed to interest her. Her finger hovered over the message for a moment. Suddenly, she paused.
“I will not,” she said quietly to herself. “I have not been paid. I will not toil for unfulfilled promises. I’ll let Miss Abaledina get this as it is. If my mistress's plans are foiled, so much the better. Either I shall be well paid the next time, or if there is reproach and revenge, I have only to reveal one of my many secrets."
Letting the message continue untouched, she closed the app.
* * * * * *
“Here is a message from my son," said the Lieutenant as he sat in the main sitting room perusing his com-tab.,
“I, too, just received one,” Abaledina stated.
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 and 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 is not 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 and terrified demanded, "What is in ruins?”
“Your husband will be soon, madam," responded the irritated man, "You will 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 is you who have been dreaming," vociferously shouted her husband, who was seldom angry, except with the loss of money. "I tell you, madam," he continued, "that some reduction must be made to our finances. I do not choose for the world to learn about this loss, so we will dismiss any servants as can be spared: Jeanilotta's maid, for instance. Beritha can serve you both. The new footman whom you hired yesterday must go and with him the chauffeur. Do not argue with me. It will have no effect, and tears will be utterly useless. If this is discovered, I will lose all my business!"
“Uncle," interrupted Abaledina, who had lost interest in the conversation when he had started ranting at his wife about finances. During his display, she instead chose to read the message in her inbox. “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 if you will."
“You may read it if you will, but I don’t care to hear his nonsense."
“I don’t think you will call it such once you have heard it:
“The time has arrived, Abaledina, when I must undeceive you as to my affection. Forgive me, if I cause you to be miserable. Honor demands that I should no longer allow you to waste your early and devoted love upon one who never has—nor ever can return it.
“It is no easy task, Abaledina, to bring misery upon the head of one so beautiful and good, but I trust that you will not utterly reject my sympathy. My sorrow over causing you pain is deep and sincere. However, you would not wed me, Abaledina, surely you would not, while my heart secretly longs for another. I still and will always give you a brother's love, but that feeling has destroyed every desire for any dearer—”
“Stop!” sternly exclaimed Lieutenant Gillfillian. “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 cannot fulfill my engagement—my heart is not in it.” It is supremely ridiculous.”
“Uncle,” said Abaledina, mildly, after waiting a moment, for him to calm, “Eriath is not alone in these sentiments. I do not love him. I do not wish to marry him."
“You, too!" he said, looking at Abaledina with a strangely mingled expression of anger and surprise.
Here the conversation was interrupted by a 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 on 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 is the meaning of this?” Jeanilotta asked.
“Your mother has had many shocks. 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 shall not let Adela go.”
“She must go. Beritha will wait upon you," he replied firmly.
“My maid shall not go. You have my word for it." continued Jeanilotta, who having been idolized from childhood was far more accustomed to obey her own dictates instead of the commands of her parents. She then summoned Adela to come to her.
“Adela,” she said as soon as the maid 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 Adela began to cry. “Don’t fret! You shall not go. Listen, and do what I bid you to do: Go to my private den, lock the door, and remain there till I release you. Now!”
Adela disappeared immediately.
“There, sir, you will not send her away. Do you not see?” she added, looking sharply at her father. Abaledina had unfortunately witnessed many battles such as this between her cousin and aunt and uncle. She knew what the outcome would be before it had concluded and was surprised only that her uncle had not seemed to have anticipated it.
“Now, papa,” Jeanilotta continued without another glance toward her frenzied mother, "I come here with some good news. Would you like to hear it?”
“No,” he growled.
“But you will listen, nevertheless, and it will do you good. How would you fancy Viscount Elwynalam for a son-in-law?”
Abaledina’s gasp was thankfully covered by Mrs. Gillfillian’s continued hysterics. For a second, she was worried that Beritha alone had heard it. The maid’s eyes had 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 in spite of himself.
“Simply this, I have discarded Theodomani, and Viscount Elwynalam at present pays me the most serious attentions.”
“But you gave Montrevor your word,” interrupted her father, 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 cannot always keep one's promises. I suppose you will not 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. He continued with good-natured petulance. “I won’t be held responsible for any evil that results from any such 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 over to where Abaledina and Beritha attended her mother for a few moments, but once she saw there would be no opportunity to communicate the change to a rational mother, she withdrew to her own apartment. After helping Beritha move the inconsolable woman to her bed, Abaledina soon followed her cousin’s example since she could render no farther assistance to her aunt.
* * * * * *
In her private den, she first perused Eriath's long message again. She blessed him for his goodness of heart, but she could not solve the mystery of why it contained almost the same information she had sent him without 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. She believed it to be more likely that he wanted the blame to rest upon him instead of her. Although this explained his message to her uncle, it still did not satisfy the reason he sent such a message to her. She decided she would have to wait until he arrived to secure the truth from him.
Her thoughts then turned to Jeanilotta’s proclamation and Lord 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 false premise of another visitor, she should have turned around and gone back to the main sitting room. Instead, it seemed that once she had left, Lord Elwynalam had fallen prey to her cousin’s wiles.
She was slightly unsettled because had he waited until tomorrow, she would have felt released enough from her engagement to court him. She understood that she had asked much of him, so she did not begrudge him his choice. Before she drifted off to sleep, she resolved to keep her distance from him now that he had chosen another.
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