"O Life, how naked and how hard when known!Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I."George Meredith.
"O Life, how naked and how hard when known!Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I."George Meredith.
"O Life, how naked and how hard when known!Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I."George Meredith.
"O Life, how naked and how hard when known!
Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I."
George Meredith.
Janey lit her bedroom candle with a hand that trembled a little, and in her turn went slowly upstairs.
She could hear the clatter of knives and forks in the dining-room, and Harry's vacant laugh, and Nurse's sharp voice. They had come back, then. She went with an effort into her mother's room, and sat down in her accustomed chair by the bed.
"It is ten o'clock. Shall I read, mother?"
"Certainly."
It was the first time they had spoken since she had been ordered out of the room earlier in the day.
Janey opened the Prayer Book on the table by the bedside, and read a psalm and a chapter from the Gospel:—
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest foryour souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
Janey closed the book, and said timidly, "May I stay until Nurse comes up?"
"Pray do exactly what you like."
She did not move.
"I am heavy laden," said her mother. "I don't suppose you have ever given it one moment's thought what it must be like to lie like a log as I do."
Her daughter dared not answer.
"How many months have I lain in this room?"
"Eight months."
"Ever since I went to Paris last October. I was too ill to go, but I went."
Silence.
"I am heavy laden, but it seems I must not look to you for help, Janey."
Janey's heart sickened within her. When had her mother ever relinquished anything if once her indomitable will were set upon it? She felt within herself no force to withstand a second attack.
The nurse came in at that moment, a tall, shrewd, capable woman of five-and-thirty, with a certain remnant of haggard good looks.
"May Mr. Harry come in to say good-night, milady?"
"Yes."
She went to the door and admitted a young man. Harry came and stood beside the bed,looking sheepishly at his mother. If his face had not been slightly vacant, the mouth ajar, he would have been beautiful. As it was, people turned in the street to see him pass. He was tall, fair, well grown, with a delightful smile. He smiled now at his mother, and she tried hard to smile back at him, her rigid face twitching a little.
"Well, my son! Had you a nice day in Ipswich?"
"Yes, mamma."
"And I hope you were brave at the dentist's, and that he did not hurt you much?"
"Oh no, mamma. He did not hurt me at all."
"Not at all?" said his mother, surprised.
The nurse stepped forward at once.
"Mr. Harry did not have his tooth out, milady."
"No," said Harry slowly, looking at the nurse as if he were repeating a lesson, "the tooth wasnottaken out. It wasnot."
"Mr. Milson had been called away," continued the nurse glibly.
"Called away," echoed Harry.
"Then the expedition was all for nothing?" said Lady Louisa wearily.
"Ohno, mamma."
The nurse intervened once more, and recounted how she had taken Harry to have his hair cut, and to buy some gloves, and to an entertainment of performing dogs, and to teaat Frobisher's. They could have been home earlier, but she knew the carriage was ordered to meet the later train.
Harry began to imitate the tricks which the dogs had done, but the nurse peremptorily interrupted him.
"Her ladyship's tired, and it's past ten o'clock. You must tell her about the dogs to-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow," echoed Harry, and he kissed his mother, and shuffled towards the door. Janey slipped out with him.
Lady Louisa did not speak again while the nurse made the arrangements for the night. She was incensed with her. She had been too peremptory with Harry. It was not for her to order him about in that way. Lady Louisa was beginning to distrust this capable, indefatigable woman, on whom she had become absolutely dependent; and when the nurse had left her for the night, and was asleep in the next room with the door open between, she began to turn over in her mind, not for the first time, the idea of parting with her, and letting Janey nurse her entirely once more, as she had done at first. Janey with Anne the housemaid to help her could manage perfectly well, whatever the doctor might say. It was not as if she wanted anything doing for her, lying still as she did day after day. She should never have had a trained nurse if her own wishes had been consulted. But when were they ever consulted? The doctor, who understoodnothing about her illness, had insisted, and Janey had not resisted the idea as she ought to have done. But the whole household could not be run to suit Janey's convenience. She had told her so already more than once. She should tell her so again. Even worms will turn. There were others to be considered besides Janey, who only considered herself.
Lady Louisa's mind left her daughter and went back, as if it had received some subtle warning, to the subject of the nurse. She was convinced by the woman's manner of intervening when she had been questioning Harry, that something had been concealed from her about the expedition to Ipswich. She constantly suspected that there was a cabal against her. She was determined to find out what it was, which she could easily do from Harry. And if Nurse had really disobeyed her, and had taken him on the water, which always excited him, or to a theatre, which was strictly forbidden, then she would make use of that act of disobedience as a pretext for dismissing her, and she would certainly not consent to have anyone else in her place. Having settled this point, she closed her eyes and tried to settle herself to sleep.
But sleep would not come. The diligent little clock, with its face turned to the strip of light shed by the shaded nightlight, recorded in a soft chime half-hour after half-hour. With forlorn anger, she reflected that every creaturein the house was sleeping—she could hear Nurse's even breathing close at hand—every one except herself, who needed sleep more than anyone to enable her to get through the coming day. It did not strike her that possibly Janey also might be lying open-eyed through the long hours.
Lady Louisa's mind wandered like a sullen, miserable tramp over her past life. She told herself that all had gone wrong with her, all had cheated her from first to last. It seems to be the doom of the egoist to crave for things for which he has no real value, on which when acquired he can only trample. Lady Louisa had acquired a good deal and had trampled heavily on her acquisitions, especially on her kindly, easy-tempered husband who had loved her. And how throughout her whole life she had longed to be loved!
To thirst voraciously to be loved, to have sufficient acumen to perceive love to be the only real bulwark, as it is, against the blows of fate; the only real refuge, as it is, from grief; the one sure consolation, as it is, in the recurring anguished ache of existence,—to perceive that life is not life without it, andthento find that love when appropriated and torn out of its shrine is no talisman, but only a wearisome, prosaic clog quickly defaced by being dragged in the dust up the thorny path of our egotism! Is there any disappointment so bitter, so devastating as that? Lady Louisa, poor soul, had enduredit. She glanced for a moment at the photograph of her husband on the mantelpiece, with his hair brushed forward over his ears. Even death had not assuaged her long-standing grievance against him. Why had he always secretly preferred his nephew Roger to his own sons? Why did he die just after their eldest son Dick came of age? And why had not he left her Hulver for her life, instead of taking for granted that she would prefer to go back to her own house, Noyes Court, a few miles off? She had told him so, but he might have known she had never meant it. She had not wanted to go back to it. She had not gone back, though all her friends and Janey had especially wished it. She had hastily let it to Mr. Stirling the novelist, to show that she should do exactly as she liked, and had made one of those temporary arrangements that with the old are always for life. She had moved into the Dower House for a year, and had been in it seven years.
Her heart swelled with anger as she thought of the conduct of her eldest son after his father's death: and yet could anyone have been a brighter, more delightful child than Dicky? But Dicky had been a source of constant anxiety to her, from the day when he was nearly drowned in the mill-race at Riff to the present hour, when he was lying dying by inches of spinal paralysis at his aunt's house in Paris as the result of a racing accident. What a heartbreaking record his life had been, of one folly,one insane extravagance after another! And shame had not been wanting. He had not even made a foolish marriage, and left a son whom she and Janey could have taken from its mother and educated; but there was an illegitimate child—a girl—whom Roger had told her about, by a village schoolmistress, an honest woman whom Dick had seduced under promise of marriage.
Perhaps, after all, Lady Louisa had some grounds for feeling that everything had gone against her. Dick was dying, and her second son Harry—what of him? She was doggedly convinced that Harry was not "wanting": that "he could help it if he liked." In that case, all that could be said was that he did not like. She stuck to it that his was a case of arrested development, in strenuous opposition to her husband, who had held that Harry's brain was not normal from the awful day when as a baby they first noticed that he always stared at the ceiling. Lady Louisa had fiercely convinced herself, but no one else, that it was the glitter of the old cut-glass chandelier which attracted him. But after a time even she had to own to herself, though never to others, that he had a trick of staring upwards where no chandelier was. Even now, at two-and-twenty, Harry furtively gazed upon the sky, and perhaps vaguely wondered why he could only do so by stealth—why that was one of the innumerable forbidden things among which he had to pickhis way, and for which he was sharply reprimanded by that dread personage his mother.
Mr. Manvers on his death-bed had said to Dick in Lady Louisa's presence, "Remember, if you don't have a son, Roger ought to have Hulver. Harry is not fit."
She had never forgiven her husband for trying to denude Harry of his birthright. And to-night she felt a faint gleam of consolation in the surrounding dreariness in the thought that he had not been successful. When Dick died, Harry would certainly come in. On her last visit to Paris she had ransacked Dick's rooms at his training-stable. She had gone through all his papers. She had visited his lawyers. She had satisfied herself that he had not made a will. It was all the more important, as Harry would be very rich, that Janey should take entire and personal charge of him, lest he should fall into the hands of some designing woman. That pretty French adventuress, Miss Georges, who had come to live at Riff and whom Janey had made such friends with, was just the kind of person who might entangle him into marrying her. And then if Roger and Janey should eventually marry, Harry could perfectly well live with them. He must be guarded at all costs. Lady Louisa sighed. That seemed on the whole the best plan. She had looked at it all round. But Janey was frustrating it by refusing to do her part. She must fall into line. To-morrow she would sendfor her lawyer and alter her will once more, leaving Noyes to Harry, instead of Janey, as she had done by a promise to her husband. Janey had no one but herself to thank for such a decision. She had forced it on her mother by her obstinacy and her colossal selfishness. What had she done that she of all women should have such selfish children? Then Janey would have nothing of her own at all, and then she would be so dependent on Harry that she would have no alternative but to do her duty by him.
Lady Louisa sighed again. Her mind was made up. Janey must give way, and the nurse must be got rid of. Those were the two next things to be achieved. Then perhaps she would be suffered to rest in peace.
"And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band.'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.'He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in."John Masefield.
"And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band.'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.'He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in."John Masefield.
"And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band.'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.'He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in."John Masefield.
"And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band.
'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.'
He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in."
John Masefield.
After a sleepless night, and after the protracted toilet of the old and feeble, Lady Louisa tackled her task with unabated determination. She dictated a telegram to her lawyer, sent out the nurse for a walk, and desired Janey to bring Harry to her.
Harry, who was toiling over his arithmetic under the cedar, with the help of a tutor from Riebenbridge and a box of counters, obeyed with alacrity. He looked a very beaming creature, with "fresh morning face," as he came into his mother's room.
"Good morning, mamma."
"Good morning, my son."
The terrible ruler looked benign. She nodded and smiled at him. He did not feel as cowed as usual.
"You can go away, Janey, and you needn't come back till I ring."
"And now tell me all about the performingdogs," said the terrible ruler in the bed, when Janey had left the room.
Harry saw that she was really interested, and he gave her an exact account, interrupted by the bubbling up of his own laughter, of a dog which had been dressed up as a man in a red coat, with a cocked hat and a gun. He could hardly tell her for laughing. The dread personage laughed too, and said, "Capital! Capital!" And he showed her one of the tricks, which consisted of sitting up on your hind legs with a pipe in your mouth. He imitated exactly how the dog had sat, which in a man was perhaps not quite so mirth-provoking as in a dog. Nevertheless, the dread personage laughed again.
It promised to be an agreeable morning. He hoped it would be a long time before she remembered his arithmetic and sent him back to it, that hopeless guess-work which he sometimes bribed Tommy the gardener's boy to do for him in the tool-shed.
"And then you got your gloves!" said the dread personage suddenly. "How many pairs was it?" Harry was bewildered, and stared blankly at her.
"You must remember how many pairs it was." Harry knit his poor brow, rallied his faculties, and said it was two pairs.
"And now," said Lady Louisa, "you may have a chocolate out of my silver box, and let me hear all about—you know what," and she nodded confidentially at him.
But he only gaped at her, half frightened. She smiled reassuringly at him.
"Nurse told me all about it," she said encouragingly. "That was why you weren't to tell me. She wanted it to be a great surprise to me."
"I wasn't to say a word," said Harry doubtfully,—"not a word—aboutthat."
"No. That was just what Nurse said to me. You weren't to say a single word last night, until she had told me. But now I know all about it, so we can talk. Was it great fun?"
"I don't know."
"It was great fun when I did it. How I laughed!"
"I didn't laugh. She told me not to."
"Well, no. Not at first. She was quite right. And what did her brother say? Nurse said he went with you."
"Yes. We called for him, and he went with us, with a flower in his button-hole—a rose it was. He gave me one too."
Harry looked at his button-hole, as if expecting to see the rose still in it. But that sign of merry-making was absent.
Lady Louisa had on a previous occasion severely reprimanded Nurse for taking Harry to tea at her brother's house, a solicitor's clerk in Ipswich. Her spirits rose. She had detected her in an act of flagrant disobedience. And as likely as not they had all gone to a play together.
"Capital!" she said suavely. "He was justthe right person to go with. That was what I said to Nurse. And what didhetalk about?"
"He said, 'Mum's the word. Keep it all quiet till the old cat dies,' and he slapped me on the back and said, 'Mind that, brother-in-law.' He was very nice indeed."
A purple mark like a bruise came to Lady Louisa's clay-coloured cheeks. There was a long pause before she spoke again.
"And did you write your name nicely, like Janey taught you?" She spoke with long-drawn gasps, each word articulated with difficulty.
"Yes," said Harry anxiously, awed by the fixity of her eyes upon him. "I did indeed, mamma. I was very particular."
"Your full name?"
"Yes, the man said my full name—Henry de la Pole Manvers."
"That was the man at the registry office?"
"Yes."
"And"—the voice laboured heavily and was barely audible—"did Nurse write her name nicely too?"
"Yes, and her brother and the man. We all wrote them, and then we all had tea at Frobisher's,—only it wasn't tea,—and Nurse's brother ordered a bottle of champagne. Nurse didn't want him to, but he said people didn't get married every day. And he drank our health, and I drank a little tiny sip, and it made me sneeze."
Lady Louisa lay quite motionless, the sweat upon her forehead, looking at her son, who smiled seraphically back at her.
And so Nurse had actually thought she could outwither—had pitted herself againsther? She would shortly learn a thing or two on that head.
A great cold was invading her. And as she looked at Harry, it was as if some key, some master key, were suddenly and noiselessly turned in the lock. Without moving her eyes, she saw beyond him the door, expecting to see the handle turn, and Nurse or Janey to come in. But the door remained motionless. Nevertheless, a key somewhere had turned. Everything was locked tight—the room, the walls, the bed, herself in it—as in a vice.
"Go back to your lessons," she said to Harry, "and send Janey to me." She felt a sudden imperative need of Janey.
But Harry, so docile, so schooled to obedience, made no motion to obey her. He only looked vacantly, expectantly at her.
She spoke again, but he paid no heed. She spoke yet again with anger, but this time he was fidgeting with the watch on her table and did not even look up. She saw him as if through a glass screen.
A wave of anger shook her.
"Leave the room this moment, and do as I tell you," she said, with her whole strength. Had he suddenly became deaf? Or had she——? Was she——? A great fear took her. He putback the watch on its stand, and touched the silver box in which the chocolates were kept.
"May I have another—just one other?" he said, opening it, his voice barely audible through the glass screen.
And then, glancing at her for permission, he was seized with helpless laughter.
"Oh, mamma! You do look so funny, with your mouth all on one side—funnier than the dog in the hat."
His words and his laughter reached her, faint yet distinct, and she understood what had befallen her. Two large tears gathered in her anguished eyes and then slowly ran down her distorted face. Everything else remained fixed, as in a vice, save Harry, rocking himself to and fro, and snapping his fingers with delight.
"After all, I think there are only two kinds of people in the world, lovers and egotists. I fear that lovers must smile when they see me making myself comfortable, collecting refined luxuries and a pleasant society round myself, protecting myself from an uneasy conscience by measured ornamental acts of kindness and duty; mounting guard over my health and my seclusion and my liberty. Yes! I have seen them smile."—M. N.
"After all, I think there are only two kinds of people in the world, lovers and egotists. I fear that lovers must smile when they see me making myself comfortable, collecting refined luxuries and a pleasant society round myself, protecting myself from an uneasy conscience by measured ornamental acts of kindness and duty; mounting guard over my health and my seclusion and my liberty. Yes! I have seen them smile."—M. N.
The violet dusk was deepening and the dew was falling as Annette crossed the garden under the apple trees on her return from the choir practice. There was a light in Aunt Maria's window, which showed that she was evidently grappling with the smoking embroglio which was racking two young hearts. Even a footfall in the passage was apt to scare that shy bird Aunt Maria's genius, so Annette stole on tiptoe to the parlour.
Aunt Harriet, extended on a sofa near a shaded lamp, looked up from her cushions with a bright smile of welcome, and held out both her hands.
Aunt Harriet was the youngest of three sisters, but she had not realized that that fact may in time cease to mean much. It was obvious that she had not yet kissed the rod of middle age. She had been moderatelygood-looking twenty years ago, and still possessed a willowy figure and a slender hand, and a fair amount of ash-coloured hair which she wore in imitation of the then Princess of Wales tilted forward in a dome of innumerable little curls over a longish pinkish face, leaving the thin flat back of her head unmitigated by a coil. Aunt Harriet gave the impression of being a bas-relief, especially on the few occasions on which she stood up, when it seemed as if part of her had become momentarily unglued from the sofa, leaving her spinal column and the back of her head behind.
She had had an unhappy and misunderstood—I mean too accurately understood—existence, during the early years when her elder sister Maria ruthlessly exhorted her to exert herself, and continually frustrated her mild inveterate determination to have everything done for her. But a temporary ailment long since cured and a sympathetic doctor had enabled her to circumvent Maria, and to establish herself for good on her sofa, with the soft-hearted Catherine in attendance. Her unlined face showed that she had found her niche in this uneasy world, and was no longer as in all her earlier years a drifter through life, terrified by the possibility of fatiguing herself. Greatly to her credit, and possibly owing to Catherine's mediation, Aunt Maria accepted the situation, and never sought to undermine the castle, not in Spain but on a sofa, which her sister had erected, and in whichshe had found the somewhat colourless happiness of her life.
"Come in, my love, come in," said Aunt Harriet, with playful gaiety. "Come in and sit by me."
Her love came in and sat down obediently on the low stool by her aunt's couch, that stool to which she was so frequently beckoned, on which it was her lot to hear so much advice on the subject of the housekeeping and the management of the servants.
"I think, Annette, you ought to speak to Hodgkins about the Albert biscuits. I know I left six in the tin yesterday, and there were only four to-day. I went directly I was down to count them. It is not good forherto take the dining-room Alberts and then to deny it, as she did the other day. So I think it will be best if I don't move in the matter, and if you mention it as if you had noticed it yourself." Or, "There was a cobweb on my glass yesterday. I think, dearest, you must not overlook that. Servants become very slack unless they are kept up to their work." Aunt Harriet was an enemy of all slackness, idleness, want of energy, shirking in all its branches. She had taken to reading Emerson of late, and often quoted his words that "the only way of escape in all the worlds of God was performance."
Annette would never have kept a servant if she had listened to her aunt's endless promptings. But she did not listen to them. Her placid,rather happy-go-lucky temperament made her forget them at once.
"Have you had supper, dear child?"
"Not yet. I will go now."
"And did you remember to take a lozenge as you left the church?"
"I am afraid I forgot."
"Ah! my dear, it's a good thing you have some one to look after you and mother you. It's not too late to take one now."
"I should like to go and have supper now. I am very hungry."
"I rejoice to hear it. It is wonderful to me how you can do without a regular meal on choir nights. If it had been me, I should have fainted. But sit down again for one moment. I have something to tell you. You will never guess whom we have had here."
"I am sure I never shall."
"You know how much Maria thinks of literary people?"
"Yes."
"I don't care for them quite so much as she does. I am more drawn to those who have suffered, whose lives have been shattered like glass as my own life has been, and who gather up the fragments that remain and weave a beautiful embroidery out of them."
Annette knew that her aunt wanted her to say, "As you do yourself."
She considered a moment and then said, "You are thinking of Aunt Catherine."
Aunt Harriet was entirely nonplussed. She felt unable to own that she had no such thought. She sighed deeply, and said after a pause, "I don't want it repeated, Annette,—I learned long ago that it is my first duty to keep my troubles to myself, to consume my own smoke,—but my circulation has never been normal since the day Aunt Cathie died."
Then after a moment she added, with sudden brightness, as one who relumes the torch on which a whole household depends—
"But you have not guessed who our visitor was, and what a droll adventure it all turned out. How I did laugh when it was all over and he was safely out of hearing! Maria said there was nothing to laugh at, but then she never sees the comic side of things as I do."
"I begin to think it must have been Canon Wetherby, the clergyman who told you that story about the parrot who said 'Damn' at prayers, and made Aunt Maria promise not to put it in one of her books."
"She will, all the same. It is too good to be lost. No, it was not Canon Wetherby. But you will never guess. I've never known you guess anything, Annette. You are totally devoid of imagination, and ah! how much happier your life will be in consequence. I shall have to tell you. It was Mr. Reginald Stirling."
"The novelist?"
"Yes, and you know Maria was beginning to feel a little hurt because he hadn't called, as theyare both writers. There is a sort of freemasonry in these things, and, of course, in a neighbourhood like this we naturally miss very much the extremely interesting literary society to which we were accustomed in London, and in which Maria especially shone. But anyhow he came at last, and he was quite delightful. Not much to look at. Not Mr. Harvey's presence, but most agreeable. And he seemed to know all about us. He said he went to Riff Church sometimes, and had seen our youngest sister in the choir. How I laughed after he was gone! I often wish the comic side did not appeal to me quite so forcibly. To think of poor me, who have not been to church for years, boldly holding forth in the choir, or Maria, dear Maria, who only knows 'God save the Queen' because every one gets up: as Canon Wetherby said in his funny way, 'Does not know "Pop goes the Queen" from "God save the weasel."' Maria said afterwards that probably he thought you were our younger sister, and that sent me off into fits again."
"I certainly sit in the choir."
"He was much interested in the house too, and said it was full of old-world memories."
"Did he really say that?" Annette's face fell.
"No. Now I come to think of it,Isaid that, and he agreed. And his visit, and his conversation about Mrs. Humphry Ward, comparingDavid GrieveandRobert Elsmere, quite cured dear Maria's headache, and we agreed thatneither of us would tell you about it in the absence of the other, so that we might make you guess. So remember, Annette, when Maria comes in, you don't know a word, a single word, of what I've told you."
Aunt Maria came in at that moment, and sat down on the other side of the fire.
Aunt Maria was a short, sacklike woman between fifty and sixty, who had long since given up any pretensions to middle age, and who wore her grey hair parted under a little cap. Many antagonistic qualities struggled for precedence in Aunt Maria's stout, uneasy face: benevolence and irritability, self-consciousness and absent-mindedness, a suspicious pride and the self-depreciation which so often dogs it; and the fatigue of one who daily and hourly is trying to be "an influence for good," with little or no help from temperament. Annette had developed a compassionate affection for both her aunts, now that they were under her protection, but the greater degree of compassion was for Aunt Maria.
"Aunt Harriet will have told you who has been to see us," she said as a matter of course.
Aunt Harriet fixed an imploring glance on Annette, who explained that she had seen a dogcart in the courtyard, and how later she had seen Mr. Stirling driving in it.
"I wished, Harriet," said Aunt Maria, without looking at her sister, "that you had not asked him if he had read my books."
"But he had, Maria. He was only doubtful the first minute, till I told him some of the names, and then——"
"Then the poor man perjured himself."
"And I thought that was so true how he said to you, 'You and I, Miss Nevill, have no time in our hard-worked lives to read even the best modern fiction.'"
"I found time to readThe Magnet," said Aunt Maria in a hollow voice.
At this moment the door opened and Hodgkins the parlour-maid advanced into the room bearing a tray, which she put down in an aggressive manner on a small table beside Annette.
"I am certain Hodgkins is vexed about something," said Aunt Harriet solemnly, when that functionary had withdrawn. "I am as sensitive as a mental thermometer to what others are feeling, and I saw by the way she set the tray down that she was angry. She must have guessed that I've found out about the Alberts."
"Perhaps she guessed that Annette was starving," said Aunt Maria.
"Life is like a nest in the winter,The heart of man is always cold therein."Roumanian Folk Song.
"Life is like a nest in the winter,The heart of man is always cold therein."Roumanian Folk Song.
"Life is like a nest in the winter,The heart of man is always cold therein."Roumanian Folk Song.
"Life is like a nest in the winter,
The heart of man is always cold therein."
Roumanian Folk Song.
The lawyer who was to have altered Lady Louisa's will was sent away as soon as he arrived. No one knew why she had telegraphed for him. She had had a second stroke, and with it the last vestige of power dropped from her numb hands. She was unable to speak, unable to move, unable even to die.
Janey sat by her for days together in a great compassion, not unmixed with shame. Every one, Roger included, thought she was overwhelmed by the catastrophe which had befallen her mother, and he made shy, clumsy attempts at consolation, little pattings on the back, invitations to "come out and have a look at the hay harvest." But Janey was stunned by the thought that she was in danger of losing not her mother but her Roger, had perhaps already lost him; and that her one friend Annette was unconsciously taking him from her. Her mother's bedside had become a refuge for the first time. As she sat hour after hour with Lady Louisa's cold hand in hers, it was in vain thatshe told herself that it was foolish, ridiculous, to attach importance to such a trivial incident as the fact that when Roger was actually at her door he should have made himself late by walking home with Annette. But she realized now that she had been vaguely anxious before that happened, that it had been a formless dread at the back of her mind which had nothing to do with her mother, which had made her feel that night of the choir practice as if she had reached the end of her strength. Is there any exhaustion like that which guards the steep, endless steps up to the shrine of love? Which of us has struggled as far as the altar and laid our offering upon it? Which of us faint-hearted pilgrims has not given up the attempt half-way? But Janey was not of these, not even to be daunted by a fear that had taken shape at last.
We all know that jealousy fabricates its own "confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ." But with Janey it was not so much suspicion as observation, that close observation born of love, which if it is once dislinked from love not even Sir Galahad could endure scathless. With steady eyes she dumbly watched her happiness grow dim and dimmer. Roger was her all, and he was leaving her. His very kindness might have warned her as to his real feeling for her, and it seemed to Janey as if for months she had been shutting her eyes forcibly against the truth.
There is a great deal of talk nowadays aboutlosing the one we love, and that attractive personality generally turns out to be some sagacious stranger who has the agility to elude us in the crowd. But Roger was as much an integral part of Janey's life as Hulver was part of his. Janey's life had grown round Roger. Roger's had grown round Hulver.
Small incidents spread over the last two months, since Annette had come to Riff, rose to her memory; things too small to count by themselves hooked themselves like links one after another into a chain. For instance, the Ipswich Agricultural Show.
Janey had always gone to that annual event with Roger and Harry. And since the Blacks had come to Riff, they had accompanied them. It seemed pleasant to Janey to go in a little bunch together, and Mr. Black was good-natured to Harry and took him to the side shows, and Janey always had a new gown for the occasion. She had a new one this year, a pink one, and a white straw hat covered with pink roses. And Roger had said approvingly, "My word, Janey, youhavedone it this time!" They had taken Annette with them, in a flowing pale amber muslin which made her hair and eyes seem darker than ever, and which Miss Black, in her navy-blue silk, pronounced at once in a loud aside to be theatrical. When they all arrived they divided, Annette owning she did not like the pigs and sheep. Janey at once said shepreferred them, because she knew Roger did. If there was one thing more than another that Roger loved, it was to stand among the cattle pens, with his hat a little at the back of his head, exchanging oracular remarks with other agents and stock-breeders, who gathered with gratifying respect the pearls of wisdom which he let drop. For there was no sounder opinion in Lowshire on a brood mare or a two-year-old "vanner" than Roger.
It was always stiflingly hot among the cattle pens, and the pigs in their domestic life had no bouquet more penetrating than that which they brought with them to these public functions. Janey did not love that animal, of which it might with truth be said that its "best is yet to be," but she always accompanied Roger on these occasions, standing beside him, a neat, dainty little figure, by the hour together, giving her full attention to the various points of the animals as he indicated them to her. They did the same again this year. Roger said, "Come on, Janey," as usual, and hurried in the direction of the cattle pens, while Annette and Harry and Mr. Black wandered towards the flower tents. But when they had reached the pandemonium of the "live stock," Roger appeared dissatisfied. The animals, it seemed, were a poor lot this year. The flower of the Lowshire land agentry was absent. He didn't see Smith anywhere. And Blower was not about. He expressed the opinion frequently that theymust be "getting on," and they were soon getting on to such an extent that they had got past the reaping-machines, and even the dogcarts, and were back near the band-stand, Roger continually wondering what had become of the others. Janey, suddenly hot and tired, suggested that they should look for them. And they set out immediately, and elbowed their way through the crowded flower tents, and past side shows innumerable, till they finally came upon Mr. Black and Annette and Harry at an "Aunt Sally"; Harry in a seventh heaven of enjoyment, Mr. Black blissfully content, and Annette under her lace parasol as cool as a water-lily. Janey never forgot the throb of envy and despair to which the sudden sight of Annette gave rise, as she smiled at her and made room for her on the bench beside her, while Roger, suddenly peaceful and inclined to giggle, tried his luck at the "Aunt Sally." They all stayed together in a tight bunch for the remainder of the day, the endless weary day which every one seemed to enjoy except herself. And at tea-time they were joined by Miss Black and her friend, an entirely deaf Miss Conder, secretary of the Lowshire Plain Needlework Guild, who had adhered to Miss Black since morning greetings had been exchanged at the station, and who at this, the first opportunity, deserted her for Janey. And when they all came back late in the evening, Roger had driven Annette home in his dogcart, while she and the Blacks andHarry, who could hardly be kept awake, squeezed into the wagonnette. And when Janey got home she tore off the pink gown and the gay hat, and wondered why she was tired out. She knew now, but she had not realized it at the time. She had somehow got it into her head, and if Janey once got an idea into her little head it was apt to remain there some time, that Annette and Mr. Black were attracted to each other. In these days, as she sat by her mother, Janey saw that that idea had led her astray. Mr. Black's hapless condition was sufficiently obvious. But perhaps Annette did not care for Mr. Black? Perhaps she preferred Roger? And if she did——
The reed on which Janey's maimed life had leaned showed for the first time that heartbreaking tendency inherent in every reed, to pierce the hand of the leaner. Strange, how slow we are to learn that everything in this pretty world is fragile as spun glass, and nothing in it is strong enough to bear our weight, least of all that reed shaken in the wind—human love. We may draw near, we may hearken to its ghostly music, we may worship, but we must not lean.
Janey was not a leaner by nature. She was one on whom others leaned. Nevertheless, she had counted on Roger.
"So fast does a little leaven spread within us—so incalculable is the effect of one personality on another."—George Eliot.
"So fast does a little leaven spread within us—so incalculable is the effect of one personality on another."—George Eliot.
Janey's set face distressed Roger.
Presently he had a brilliant idea. Miss Georges was the person to cheer her, to tempt her out of her mother's sick-room. So the next time he was going to Red Riff to inspect some repairs in the roof—the next time was the same afternoon—he expounded this view at considerable length to Annette, whom he found thinning the annuals in a lilac pinafore and sunbonnet in the walled garden.
She sat down on the circular bench round the apple tree while he talked, and as he sat by her it seemed to him, not for the first time, that in some mysterious way it was a very particular occasion. There was a delightful tremor in the air. It suggested the remark which he at once made that it was a remarkably fine afternoon. Annette agreed, rather too fine for thinning annuals, though just the weather for her aunts to drive over to Noyes to call on Mr. Stirling Now that Roger came to look at Annette he perceived that she herself was part of thedelicious trouble in the air. It lurked in her hair, and the pure oval of her cheek, and her eyes—most of all in her eyes. He was so taken aback by this discovery that he could only stare at the sky. And yet if the silly man had been able to put two and two together, if he had known as much about human nature as he did about reaping-machines, he would not have been in the dark as to why he was sitting under the apple tree at this moment, why he had ordered those new riding-breeches, why he had them on at this instant, why he had begun to dislike Mr. Black, and why he had been so expeditious in retiling thelaiterieafter the tree fell on it. If he had had a grain of self-knowledge, he would have realized that there must indeed be a grave reason for these prompt repairs which the Miss Nevills had taken as a matter of course.
For in the ordinary course of things tiles could hardly be wrested out of Roger, and drainpipes and sections of lead guttering were as his life-blood, never to be parted with except as a last resort after a desperate struggle. The estate was understaffed, underfinanced, and the repairs were always in arrear. Even the estate bricklayer, ruthlessly torn from a neighbouring farm to spread himself on the Miss Nevills' roof, opined to his nephew with the hod, that "Mr. Roger must be uncommon sweet on Miss Georges to be in such a mortial hurry with them tiles."
Annette's voice recalled Roger from the contemplation of the heavens.
"I will go down to-day, after tea," she was saying, "and I will persuade Janey to come and sit in the hay-field. It is such a pretty thing a hay-field. I've never seen hay in—in what do you call it?"
"In cock."
"Yes. Such a funny word! I've never seen hay in cock before."
Roger smiled indulgently. Annette's gross ignorance of country-life did not pain him. It seemed as much part of her as a certain little curl on the white nape of her neck.
Down the lane a child's voice came singing—